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ALA Annual 2010: The Trip Report

Friday, July 9, 2010
Free Kittens

ALA 2010

Hotter than blazes, but still a great venue, even after a major blister on one foot made me limp. Great discovery: the Circulator, which for $1 brought me from Georgetown (church with my stepmom) back to the CC in air-conditioned bliss.

Presentations: “Ultimate Debate 2010: Open Source Software: Free Beer or Free Puppies?” Sunday, June 27, 1:30-3:30 p.m. Approximately 400 in attendance. Co-presenters: Stephen Abrams, Gale/Cengage; Marshall Breeding, Vanderbilt University; Roy Tennant, OCLC (debate moderator). It was what it was. The best responses came from audience members who testified to the value of “open” in their libraries. Thanks to Ranti Junus for the “Free Kittens” badges.

Best showcase: ALA Learning Roundtable (LearnRT), of course, because Nicole Greenland of MPOW, was presenting, and her poster session about faculty development was excellent.  This was a well-attended event where librarians showed off their innovative techniques for information literacy.

Best program: LITA President’s Program; Mary Madden from Pew Internet Research on “four or mores”—people who own four or more portable electronic devices. Early adopters are as racially diverse as the general population, but tend to be male, and the biggest early adopter group is not teens or young adults, but the 30-49 age range. She spent quite a while covering actual (as opposed to assumed) behavior of teens and young adults. While a typical teen texts on average 50 times per day (probably due to all-you-can-eat texting plans and the fact that parents are paying for these plans), not all other popular assumptions are correct. For example, teens and young adults are far more attentive to managing their privacy settings than other age groups. For similar higher ed issues, Madden also recommends Steven Jones’ work on the impact of tech on faculty.

Best unofficial program: Battledecks. This program first appeared in 2008 at South by Southwest, the popular tech/music conference. Librarians have adapted Battledecks to make it even harder! In front of a packed, boisterous audience, 7 contestants (kept in advance in a “green room”) presented consecutively on 20-slide sets of PowerPoint slides they had never seen before on the theme of “change in libraries,” with additional rules that they had to stay within 5 minutes. All were good, and some were excellent. Judges then picked the winners, and the audience picked their own favorites. I have been asked to help bring technology to the last day of the California Library Association next fall, and if I accept this activity, Battledecks will be on the menu.

Best vendor visits: RefWorks (nice to get hugged by a vendor 🙂 ), Ebsco (will visit soon), Serial Solutions (gave us a credible  display of its spendy new COUNTER-compliant usage product), ITG (our incredibly patient RFID vendor), Marcive (a recon vendor), ebrary, Computype (despite its name, it deals primarily in spine label printers), and Equinox.

Best user group meeting: Navigator, where Rick Burke, ED for SCELC, diplomatically but clearly explained to OCLC areas of growth for their project management for Camino, the SCELC Navigator pilot. I am a big, big believer in Camino. This has the potential to tie together over 100 small libraries into a  resource-sharing powerhouse. It is bumpy, but we will get there.

Best product demo: ContentDM, a discovery tool for electronic scholarly communications (ETDs, etc.). We have a free license for the starter version (up to 3000 “objects” can be displayed and ingested in this hosted version). Two libraries demonstrated how ContentDM provided an easily-configurable gateway for a wide variety of heterogeneous content.

Best social hours: LITA Happy Hour, where I met with nerdy colleagues, and then an event at the Hotel Monaco celebrating the 40th Anniversary of GLBTRT (Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, and Transgender Roundtable). Networked with people I have known for decades, including Amy Kautzman of UC Davis, who is quite sharp on metadata and encouraged me to tap her brain on issues related to cataloging. Brought my friend Zoe, who is a candidate for LITA President.

Best free-range idea to surface in my mind while taking Super Shuttle to my hotel: With respect to our backlog… why not replace those books with e-books? I ran this idea past a dozen colleagues. I never heard one strong reason not to include this in the choices for addressing our cataloging backlog. I know some terrific recon vendors. No quarrels there. But… hmmm.

Best geek moment: Using my iPhone to read a QR code in the Alexander Press booth, which won me a special playlist good through July. I was their first booth visitor to recognize the QR code and have a reader that could interpret it.

Best nomenclature suggestion: Substitute “research success” for “information literacy” (by way of Pat Wagner, library services consultant).

Best hallway advice: Look at Lippincott’s e-journal collection to replace some of our print journals for nursing (Roy Ziegler, Florida State).

Best personal demo of technology: Several friends allowed me to play with their iPads. A definitely interesting device with strong potential for activities that are reading/viewing intensive. Not a (keyboard) input device, but still useful in ways people are just beginning to understand. Everyone I spoke with who owned one said they found it extremely useful.

Other things I did: Attended the OCLC Record Use Policy session; have a quiet dinner with a friend who is a librarian for the State Department and is on the move from Delhi to Pretoria; attended the LITA Awards ceremony.

A great ALA.

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Thinking about Open Source

Thursday, June 24, 2010
Free Puppies, by Flickr user calamity_hane

Free Puppies, by Flickr user calamity_hane

This Monday, 1:30-3:30 at WCC-146B, I am participating in yet another Ultimate Debate:  “Open Source Software – Free Beer or Free Puppy?”  The event features Marshall Breeding and Stephen Abram, and will be moderated by Roy Tennant. It has a hashtag of #ultdebate, and even John Berry will be there.

(Sidebar: Berry, how is it that four years is “enough” for our debate when you’ve been writing that column for hmmmm… how long? But no matter…)

The debate has the potential to be really dull or unusually interesting.  When I was invited to this event, I was just transitioning from spending a little over a year in a development and support company for open source software toward my new role as university librarian, and Stephen Abram would soon be leaving his high-profile job at Sirsi-Dynix for a position at Gale.

I suspect some people expect me to renounce open source (get thee away, open code!), and others expect me to doggedly embrace it no matter what, like those annoying Apple cultics who would devour arsenic if it arrived in a rounded white plastic container with that familiar fruit emblazoned on its bottlecap.

At MPOW, I’ve been very busy with urgent priorities, from repairing bathroom exhaust fans and tearing out unneeded shelving to rebuilding relations with campus departments and on to creating Team MPOW — a 100% tech-literate, forward-thinking, entrepreneurial squad of library miracle workers.

My library management system… well, it works, which means I can stay focused on other stuff, and its contract is really, really long. That doesn’t mean we have no other choices–there’s always a buy-out, or even a walk-away option–but I am frying all those other fish. (The issues with long ILS contracts I will save for another post someday.)

To me it boils down to who we are as a profession–not just now, but historically. I think companies that produce proprietary library software assume that libraries such as mine wouldn’t benefit from open source software because we would never be able to use OSS without paying for support services and we’d be very unlikely to engage with the development community to any great extent. But I think that’s like assuming that people who don’t use libraries don’t benefit from library service. We, LibraryLand, benefit from our hive mind, particularly in such a sharing profession.

The fundamental problem with the proprietary software model is not one of evil ownership or grasping vendors. I’ve seen both of those occur in the open source software community. The problem with proprietary library management software–from a high-level perspective, profession-wide–is that it makes us stupid. It deprofessionalizes who we are and disengages us from tool creation.

Conversely, every librarian who engages in tool creation to any degree improves the state of librarianship for all of us. This has been true since some guy in a toga put holes in a wall to store the papyrus, and it was true in the 19th century when we agreed as a profession on the size of catalog cards (which led to our early adoption of standards and network-level records), and it  is true in the open source community today.

If you think that’s not the case, compare the discussion lists for proprietary products with open source products. I do that every day. For Evergreen, I observe librarians from all roles in their organizations thinking out loud about the tools they are building. For My Home Product, enquiries are limited to simple how-tos. I’m aware there’s a mindset that librarians don’t have the skills to engage with their tools–but I think we have created these librarians. Take someone who is fresh out of library school, put a brick wall between their tools and their services, and decades later you will have someone who has lost the ability to think in terms of tool creation. Invention of any kind is a muscular activity, one that requires constant use in order not to atrophy.

One viable question is whether any of this matters. The debate on open source will probably focus on the integrated library systems most of us use. I mean no disrespect to library development companies of any type, but the local “book catalog” is a dwindling focus of our services (and the architecture of all current LMS’s, regardless of the openness of their code, is built around 20th-century workflows). Our e-services are key.

Some of you may say that projects such as OLE will replace the ILS. But I question how we can truly design new workflows when we have no insight into (and very little role in) the evolution of digital content in the next decade.

Nevertheless, most of us continue to have traditional print collections and most of us need to move that stuff around–catalog it, check it in, check it out, etc.  Furthermore, engagement with library management software–even at a distance–keeps those invention muscles buffed and toned. It is a logical focus of our attention.

If librarianship will survive the Big Shift, it will do so by reinventing itself. To reinvent itself will require many muscles of invention. And that, in the end, is why we need open source.

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ALA Conference Survival Tips — 35 Conferences Later

Saturday, June 19, 2010

By my count, since I first attended ALA at Midwinter 1992 (San Antonio), I have attended roughly 35 ALA conferences, if you include Midwinter “meetings”–so many that I have founded the (actually nonexistent) Old Members Round Table, which sports a hashtag on Twitter of #OMRT.

There are many tips for surviving and enjoying ALA, and I’ve shared some before, but for the sake of anyone new to ALA who stumbles across this blog, I’ll do it again. Feel free to add your own tips!

Packing list. I use one because it means I arrive at the conference with everything I need. This is broader than ALA, but if you don’t do a lot of business travel, take it from me that a packing list will make your life easier.

Wear comfortable shoes. You will be walking… a lot. ALA is very spread out. Not only that, because ALA goes to hot places in the summer and cold places in the winter, your feet are either very hot or very cold. So be nice to your feet because when your dogs hurt, it’s hard to enjoy anything else. You will look like a librarian. Suck it up: you ARE a librarian. If you can, rotate your shoes so you are wearing different shoes every other day. And never bring new shoes to ALA!

Dress in layers. Once upon a time everyone wore suits to ALA. These days, I see more business casual, and for DC I’m bringing a mix of loose dresses (which I find comfortable in hot muggy weather). Whatever: be comfortable, but dress in layers so you can be prepared for meeting rooms that are fiery hot or freezing cold (generally the opposite of the outdoor environment). I have a shawl I drag to meetings when I don’t have a sweater for the outfit I’m wearing.

Bring more business cards than you think you need. You will always run out.  I also know I’m ready to go home when I start handing out other people’s cards. When you get back, go through your cards and write people.

Always visit the exhibits. ALA conferences survive because vendors continue to send entire cotillions of staff and equipment to the exhibit hall. At the very least, go in and greet the vendors your library uses (yes, even the vendors you don’t like). But if you have more time, wander the halls.  I always schedule at least four hours for the exhibit hall because I learn so much, and because I like to say hi to the people who have been serving us all year  (waving hi to ITG, Ebsco, Proquest, Wilson, SerSol, RefWorks, Wiley, Sage, Sirsi…and my ol’ pals at Equinox!).

Get creative with transportation. ALA has shuttle buses, and sometimes I use them. But usually I find other forms of transportation between conference sites are faster (especially after Big Events, where people will be lined up for hours). Quite often I  hoof it, sometimes with a colleague with whom I can catch up. Other times I share a cab (get bold: ask that librarian, “Want to share?”). In DC, get a Metro pass and when appropriate, use the Metro to get from A to B very quickly.

Attend a program hosted by an entity outside your usual “space.” If you are an academic librarian, see a PLA program, and so on. You’d be surprised what you can learn, who you meet, and what it feels like to be outside your arena.

Have backup plans for your schedule. Sometimes a great-looking program is a bomb. Other times, you look out at the pouring rain and realize you don’t have an easy way to get to your next event on time. Have an idea for what you’ll do with that time–an alternate program, some time in the exhibits, or even a tourism moment.

Socialize with people outside your area code. You can see local folks back at the ranch. Use ALA to extend your networking circle to people you don’t get to meet so often, people you’ve wanted to connect with, vendors who have invited you to events, or activities that intrigue you (Battle Decks anyone?).

Be a tourist. No matter how packed your schedule, do something interesting in the fair city you are visiting (beyond the inevitable good meals).  That could be a ball game, a visit to a museum, or a church service, or all three, or even more–just do it.

Tip the people who make our visit so comfortable. Tip the shuttle driver, the hotel concierge who drags your suitcase to the lobby, the clerk who brings your bags up to the room, the hotel desk clerk who retrieves your suitcase, the maid who cleans your hotel room,  the restaurant wait staff, and the cab drivers who hustle you around the city.  Your tips mean a lot to these service workers, and enhance the image of the profession as a caring, sharing group.  Bring dollar bills for the smaller tips (I rarely tip under $2 these days for anything) and a $20 (at least) for the hotel maid.

If need be, take a Quiet Night. If I’m at a conference for more than two or three days, I find I sometimes need a “time-0ut” evening where I hunker in my room with take-out or room service and a book or good movie, so I can rebound for the remainder of the conference.  (For a long time, my go-to hunker-down meal was a bacon cheeseburger and fries with a glass of red wine, but with the “A-word” [aging] it’s more often a salad.) This is one of those “socialize outside of your area code” exceptions; if your co-workers are in the same boat, it could be a good Movie Night with Team Library.

Plan for The New. When I look back, I think of Gloria Steinem talking about butterflies. A very late night drinking session with new friends I still have dinner with almost 20 years later. My first Council Forum. Presenting “You Say You Want a Resolution” with GraceAnne DeCandido.  Being grilled by almost 200 librarians on my first Council resolution. And many, many committees and interest groups and Council meetings I experienced for the very first time, when a group of us gelled around a topic and made something happen. New is good. New makes you better.

And even sad things: Marvin Scilken dying. Yes, at a conference of 20,000+, people get sick and sometimes die; it’s the rule of demographics. But I also remember running into Marvin that same conference at a museum, where he was arguing some point with another librarian he generally only got to see at ALA.  I’m not suggesting you plan on expelling your last breath at an ALA conference. But you know,  there  are worse ways to go.

Write your trip report on the flight home. I know, you’d rather chill out and rest up, and I don’t blame you. But if you can possibly crank out the report on the flight home (based on the notes which you have of course jotted down as things happened), it will be fresh in your mind and even fun to do, and those who couldn’t be there will also benefit earlier. If you wait, you will get back to work and be overcome by a tsunami of crises and backlogs, and the trip report will become a pain in the tush which when finally completed will lack the zest and detail it would have had if you’d just followed my advice which I share with you completely free of charge. As we say in the OMRT, Someday You’ll Thank Me!

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ALA 2010 Preliminary Schedule

Thursday, June 10, 2010

Away, away, to ALA… I have attended all but three of the combined Midwinter and Annual conferences since January 1992, and I know one thing for sure: there is no “final schedule” for me–it evolves throughout the conference! I’m really looking forward to reconnecting with friends, colleagues, and vendors, and bouncing along with the whole ALA kabobble.

I should probably squeeze in a little more ACRL activity–suggestions for this division (and anything else) welcome.

Friday 6/25

  • 8:30 am – 12:00 noon, Marriott at Metro Center, Grand Ballroom – OCLC Americas Regional Council Meeting
  • 11-ish Elevenses with G., near exhibits
  • 1:30 – 3:30 pm, Marriott at Metro Center, Grand Ballroom – OCLC Symposium: The Next Generation of Publishing
  • 4:00 pm – 5:15 pm LITA 101: Open House Hilton, Joy
  • 5:30 pm – 8:00 pm LITA Happy Hour Renaissance Downtown, Lobby Bar 999 9th Street Northwest
  • Dinner, S.

Saturday 6/26

  • 8:00 AM – 12:00 PM LITA: Cloud computing for library services WCC-143A
  • 10:30 am – 12:00 noon, Renaissance Washington, Auditorium – OCLC Record Use Policy Update
  • Noon lunch with K.
  • 1:30-3:00 Navigator inaugural user group meeting.  OCLC Red Suite Grand Hyatt.
  • 1:30 – 3:30 pm, Web-scale or Bust: Harnessing Cooperative Innovation for Management Services Four Points by Sheraton, Franklin Rooms A-C
  • 1:30 – 3:30 p.m. Pecha Kucha Presentations of Marketing Ideas that Worked in Academic Libraries
  • 3:30 – 5:00 pm, Washington Convention Center, Room 210 – Share Special Collections on the Web with Easy-to-use CONTENTdm
  • 5:30 cocktail, L.
  • 6:30 Dinner with SGBC Interest Group

Sunday 6/27

  • Morning: church with JR
  • 12:00 – 1:30 p.m. EBSCO E-Resource Management Luncheon, Washington Marriott at Metro Center, Junior Ballrooms 1 & 2775 12th Street NW
  • 1:30-3:30 LearnRT Training Showcase (Nicole from MPOW is participating!)
  • 4:00 pm – 5:30 pm LITA President’s Program: Four or More: The New Demographic
    Washington Convention Center, Ballroom B. Topic: “those who own four or more internet-connected devices.” Speaker: Mary Madden, Senior Research Specialist, Pew Internet & American Life Project
  • 5:00 – 8 pm 40th Anniversary GLBRT Social Hotel Monaco
  • Late dinner, possibly

Monday 6/28

  • 9:00 a.m. SD booth?
  • 9:30 Ebsco booth visit
  • 10:30 am – 1pm Stonewall Book Awards Brunch Washington Convention Center – Room 207A (Still need to buy the ticket if I’m doing this…)
  • 1:30 IRSG Ultimate Debate: Open Source Software, Free Beer or Free Puppy?
    WCC-146B (I’m a panelist)
  • 4:00 – 5:30 pm, WorldCat Local ‘quick start’ Information Session Grand Hyatt Washington, Independence Rooms G-I
  • 5:30 p.m. Battledecks Washington Convention Center room 103A
  • Post-Battle-decks get-together?
  • 8:30 p.m. – 10:00 p.m. ALA Council Forum (just to see what’s happening… assuming I’m still awake)

Tuesday

Morning: final sweep through exhibits. Afternoon: Smithsonian. Evening: Return home to Most Favored City!

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City view, sunny day

Thursday, June 3, 2010



City view, sunny day

Originally uploaded by freerangelibrarian

I work in a great place… I live in a great city… I have wonderful friends and family and love in my life. And naturally curly hair.

I am moved by how many people have written me to share their own stories about fathers and loss.

My father lived in San Francisco for half a century. He spent his last nine years back on the East Coast, where he grew up. But a beautiful city day always reminds me of my father, and how he appreciated San Francisco. Sunny, foggy, rainy–in this city they are always beautiful days–so every day is another good memory of my dad.

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RIP Michael Meyer Schneider

Sunday, May 23, 2010

I didn’t even check my voicemail when I got out of the hair salon, because I could see that my sister had tried to call me twice in a matter of minutes, which means  “serious family business.” I didn’t even really need to ask what it was about. My father has been in frail health for decades, and in very bad health for the last few years, and this is just one of those phone calls where you know what you will hear.

We are all relieved that Dad had a massive heart attack and died instantly. He never wanted to be in a nursing home–who aspires to that status, anyway?–and in large part due to the selfless efforts of Joyce, my stepmother, he avoided that sad coda.

I could go on about my father’s many wonderful qualities; I could go on about the stuff that was less than wonderful. Families are complicated; love is hard. I think I’d rather capture the memories that surfaced while my sister was talking. My dad was many other things–my stepbrother Ben calls him a “great statesman,” and I think of Dad as one of the last true liberals, a man who actually walked the walk, from the piers of San Francisco to the picket lines at segregated hotels to his last years in civil service–but he was also, very simply, my dad.

I am five years old and I have stretch pants with stirrups and a matching top. Dad takes me to the San Francisco wharf, where we sit for a little bit on the pier, and he then introduces me to one of his longshoremen friends, who asks me what 3 plus 2 is, and when I say 5, he gives me a nickel.

I am eight years old, and Dad drives me twice a week to the West Portal branch of San Francisco Public Library. We each take out the maximum at the time–8 books–which we cull from the new-book shelves, and for three days we will read and swap books, before returning the pile and getting another. Adult murder mysteries and police procedurals, to be precise. Sometimes I take a break and read things like A Secret Garden or A Wrinkle in Time, or even Mr. Potter’s Penguins, but mostly I am a gumshoe on a case.

I am of some age–who knows–and I am in a movie theater with my dad, who has an unmistakable honking laugh that instantly advertises to those that knew him that Michael Schneider Is In The House. The movie has its funny moment, Dad immediately laughs–henh henh HENH HENH HENH!–and then there is a pause and everyone else laughs at his laughter, and I am not even embarrassed because it is funny.

I am having dinner at Dad’s house (where? when? I do not recall) and I mention going to services at Glide Memorial. Dad pauses thoughtfully, and says in his trademark stammer, “Oh yeah, Cecil Williams. Buh-buh-back in the 60s we were arrested together for puh-picketing the Puh-Palace Hotel.”

It is the 1980s, and in their house on Douglas Street, Dad has a ficus he calls Benjy that is now roughly the size of a small oak tree. Joyce says she that when Dad brought Benjy home she had expressed great skepticism that Dad (no green thumb) could tend a plant, and that whenever Dad showed off Benjy, he wore what Joyce called his “shit-eating grin.”

It is 1987, and Dad is taking a trip in Europe and stops to visit me in the Huhnsruck where I am stationed in the Air Force. I pick him up and then become lost… lost… lost in the foggy roads late at night. I worry he will be angry at me, but he is patient and sweet. The next day I show him how just a few seconds on very low in my newfangled microwave oven can take the chill off those delicious German cold cuts, bringing them to perfect room temperature, and he is suitably impressed. I hope I took him to the Hotel Morbach for lamb mit spargel, or at least to our local Backerei.

It is 2004, and Sandy and I are in Dad and Joyce’s living room (during their brief relocation to Exeter), and when we show them our marriage certificate, my father is so excited he immediately trots to the next room to make a copy on his inkjet printer-copier.

It is early 2009 and I am waiting for my father at Old Ebbitt Grill (he and my stepmother relocated to DC a few years ago, after the Exeter Experiment). The restaurant is very crowded and I am worried because he is so frail. I see the crowd part, like the sea parting for Jesus, and there is my father, toddling very slowly with his cane, grinning as he sees me at the table.  The service staff are all smiling at him, perhaps in part because he is wearing an Obama button the size of a dessert plate.

There would be one more dinner a few months later at Old Ebbitt Grill (where he enjoyed crab, wine, and buttered bread with abandon, and I’m so glad he did–and Joyce was greatly amused by a pun I made about Proust), and that would be my last memory of Dad. He was wearing his Obama button, pinned to his khaki windbreaker, and he was smaller than ever, and tottered very slowly to and from the table, with long pauses between steps; and the service workers tilted their heads,  smiled his way, and ensured he traveled without harm; and he still grinned when he saw me.

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Surviving the Silly Season

Thursday, May 13, 2010

Note: if you’re a SCELC member reading this, I’m running for the SCELC Board, and I’d really appreciate your vote. My election statement is on the ballot. Voting ends May 21.

“Silly Season” is how I refer to the academic end-of-year period from about March through Commencement, a solid extrusion of busy-ness that crams together everything from final exams and commencement to next year’s contractual decisions. I’ve called it that for a long time, but now I’m living the dream.

You can add to that mix an annual consortium conference usually held in March that had to be moved to this week; preparing to interview candidates for a key position (and when your library has 4.0 FTE, every position is key); rolling out new-to-us services (I’ll have to look up the history of OCLC resource-sharing, but in this respect I think we’re catching up with 1985); and writing a slew of policy and procedure, most of it based on demand (“Do we have a donations policy?” “Hang on… I’m writing…”).

Also, due to unavoidable issues that pushed it out from its usual March scheduling, that consortium conference–SCELC’s annual colloquium and Vendor Day–fell this week, just two weeks before our master renewal invoice for electronic resources is due to SCELC, and due to the change of command at MPOW (new university president), small matters such as next year’s budget are still up in the air. So I am not really sure whether I need to add, cut, or hold the course on something that represents 20% of our entire budget, and I’m still absorbing new information from vendors we visited.

I’m also not sure what resources I have to keep our doors open after June 30 (the end of our budget year)–most specifically, student labor–so I have no idea what our hours are as of July 1, though I do have elaborate multi-colored spreadsheets for just about every scenario.

Then there’s a Dean’s Conference next Tuesday where with several faculty I’m presenting on a conference (the CUR Dialogs) I attended what feels like five years ago but was actually in February. My talk for CCLI went very well more on that later–I felt better about that talk then I’ve felt about any talk I’ve given in a long time–but it took its pound of flesh from me at a time when I didn’t have much flesh to spare.

But the reality is that no children or animals are harmed in this or any other Silly Season. It’s All Good. Awkward timing notwithstanding (and it couldn’t be helped), the SCELC conference reconnected me with old friends and introduced me to new colleagues. In this Saturday’s commencement I get to carry a walky-talky, wear an academic robe, and even shush people, which thrills me no end.  The students will go home or go out into the world. I’ll figure out what to say next Tuesday, and perhaps in doing so will finally tease out those grant ideas that have been rattling around my cerebral cortex for months. Eventually I’ll get a budget. The new position will be filled.

And last night, returning from Los Angeles, I was able to do what I love best of all: come home to the Bay Area.

It will begin again, ticking over, and there will be new experiences and challenges, surprises, disappointments, and delights, and we shall survive and even thrive through many more Silly Seasons, in academia, in other venues, in life itself.

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Help, I’ve fallen and I can’t get up

Saturday, May 1, 2010
Goose, by Flickr user HVargas

Goose, by Flickr user HVargas

I am doing a keynote address this coming Friday for the California Clearinghouse on Library Instruction and I cannot get my brain past the first three ideas I want to share. Help! Goose me!

The title of my talk is “Take the best and leave the rest,” which is the first problem. My original title was “Everything You Know is Wrong,” but I think they wanted something peppy. I’m the one who suggested “Take the best and leave the rest” as an alternate title, but it doesn’t even sound like me. It’s all squeaky and namby-pamby and sing-song and… ugh.

I do plan to address the title’s topic in my point about leveraging times of crisis for controlled burns–it’s a great time to let go of practices we know we shouldn’t be doing, under cover of economic crisis–but it’s not the focus of my talk.

However, I did one thing right: I just wrote to ask to be connected with my IT support for the talk. Years ago, when I was on the speaking circuit a lot on my own recognizance, I always, always did that, and it always, always was the right thing to do. I learned to do that the hard way, because there are a few too many people in LibraryLand who are simply dumbfounded by something like ensuring the projector doomaflatchy is available. You might think that someone wouldn’t organize a major event and fly someone cross-country–someone who has spent many hours cooking up a talk–and yet not make sure the crucial doomaflatchies were available, but you’d be wrong. (And now that I’m on a MacBook I absolutely must tape that little white video dongle to my forehead before I leave the house on the day of the talk.)

I feel in my heart of hearts that CCLI, of all groups, would get this stuff right, but What If the person in charge of all things important gets sick or has a family crisis? (That has happened.) Or What If it’s a venue they haven’t used before, and we’re both badly surprised? (That has happened, too.)  I’ll sleep better, and that’s reason enough for this belt-and-suspenders approach. (Sometimes it takes persistence–“Don’t worry, we have it under control!”–but I do have this ace up my sleeve: I’m the speaker.)

Naturally, “Everything You Know is Wrong” is intended to be playful, but the core of my talk is about moving toward evidence-based, well, everything, so it isn’t wrong. I’m starting with research findings related to students’ information-seeking behaviors. I’m using data from OCLC, Project Information Literacy (yes, I am on the PiL board–my compensation is I sometimes get to yak with Alison Head, one of the most interesting people I know), and anything else I can find in the next week.

One of the findings that emerges again and again is that librarians are at the bottom of the list of the resources students will use for help with research papers and other information needs. I keep worrying that finding is old hat and I’ll come across as some old geezer yammering about stuff everyone already knows and they’ll all start Tweeting about how they could have invited someone really sharp to come talk but no, they are wasting their time listening to an old wash-up. Which is scary because I usually go into a presentation thinking I’ll do at least credibly.

Should I pull a Lee Rainie and find some tweets about myself–critical as well as flattering? Wait, I don’t really think I get discussed on Twitter anyway. Pre-Twitter, I was famously heckled at Code4Lib, and attendees later complained that the talk wasn’t “technical” enough–that might be useful stuff.

How else could I frame this talk that would be fresh and amusing? Should I engage the audience more? Should I talk about high-octane stuff I did in the past and joke about being a busy administrator? (Remember Michael Gorman? Good times!)

I also want to talk about how we need to do assessment better in LibraryLand. I did something difficult several weeks ago: I handed out evaluation forms for two information literacy sessions I was conducting. That was a new thing for our library, and I felt I could not ask anyone to do what I would not do myself.

The first session was one of those technology tailspins where my classroom changed at the last minute, the projector was ordered for the wrong time so it had to be hustled in from elsewhere, the authentication wasn’t working and I was suddenly fumbling to log into the databases, and by the time I started my talk I was flustered and off my game.

I’m sorry that I’m not the cool cucumber who doesn’t get flustered, but that’s someone else. If there’s enough challenges, I will crumble a bit around the edges. So despite having an outline, I didn’t ground them well, I rushed them through stuff, I had any number of blips during my talk, and the evals were simply OK. No checkmarks below average, no “you suck” comments, but OK. Which meant that my one hour with these students, who may never get another info lit class again, was not all it could be.

For the  second session, I got into the room in advance, got all hooked up, felt comfortable with the slick new Smartboard (I’ve used them in previous lives), and was largely fluster-free. Plus the students were a little late so I was waiting for them, not vice versa. I followed my timed agenda, deviating a little when it seemed right to do so, but largely clipping along where I needed to be. I felt myself grounding them in the talk… felt the synergy… felt the mojo… felt the pacing click along… and the evals were excellent. I should send them to my mother.

In any event, I feel I did right by the students for both classes by having them do evaluations of my instruction. Which boils down to a point I want to make in my talk about measuring versus assessing. We do the former a lot. We need to focus more on the latter. Again, I’m hoping that’s not something everyone at CCLI has already assimilated and gone on board with.

One other point I want to make is know your users better. We make a lot of assumptions. At MPOW, I’ve had faculty tell me that all of their students own laptops. Working in the library, we know anecdotally that a lot of our students are dependent on campus computing–some entirely. We need to prove that (keep reading), but we see it every day.

Also, course evals may be important, but they still don’t answer the question: are students learning what they need to know?

We’re planning to use Project Sails this fall at MPOW to benchmark and then assess information literacy acquisition. (There’s an optional survey section in this product where we will also ask them a question about their computing environments–do they have a computer, a laptop, a smartphone, etc.)

(Though I am dying to do that tech asssessment as part of our “Hawk Day” registration activities… hmmm. We could even begin our assessment May 22, the first registration day, and repeat this six times over the summer. Hmmm, hmmmm, hmmmmmmmmm.)

I am looking forward to informating not just the students’ baseline skills, but how well we are addressing them. Project Sails is soon going to have the capacity for individual measurement, and when that happens, I’ll go first. (In fact, a faculty member who heard about Project Sails commented that she felt faculty should take it, too… which leads back into my talk, given the key role faculty play in students’ information literacy. Who should we really be teaching?)

A wise soul wrote me this past week to suggest using part of the database budget for marketing databases better, per a study that was done some years back, and though I need to wait to see what’s happening with our 2010-2011 budget, I’m in agreement that having one or two fewer resources but getting more usage out of what we have makes sense. But it doesn’t stop at marketing; evaluating usage matters as well. (The wise soul in question would probably agree that assessment and marketing go together.)

Developing a culture of assessment reminds me of how I first learned public speaking at Squadron Officer School, the Air Force’s charm school for junior captains. We presented to our peers and we were videotaped. Our peers gave us real-time feedback, and we reviewed the videos later. This was painful, but extremely effective.

I still remember one young pilot who had a problem with saying “Uh,” and our instructor had us repeat “Uh” whenever he said it. Cured him but good. There are several LibraryLand presenters, some quite well-known, who have tics that would go away forever if they watched themselves even once, such as the presenter who grunts a little “Enh” at the end of nearly every sentence. (In HomebrewLand, one occasional guest on Basic Brewing Radio has almost the same tic, but it’s a nasal “Anh” at the beginning of each sentence.)

How willing are we to self-inflict pain in order to improve? I wonder if that’s key to my talk.

Anyway, I have got to get this talk done… and it has to happen at home, preferably this weekend, as during the week I get home, exercise, eat dinner, and last another hour before I fall asleep…. not quality time. I get to work too early for creative time in the morning before I leave our apartment.

Anyway, ideas welcome, and my humble thanks for making it to the end of this think-out-loud post.

Filed in Talks and Tours | | Comments (12)

Yet another portmanteau position at MPOW

Monday, April 26, 2010
Are you a spork?

Are you a spork?

We’ve posted another position at My Place of Work — one that like the last position for Head of Access Services (now filled by an excellent librarian-to-be) is designed to be transformative. Not to mention fun, absorbing, interesting, challenging, and greatly satisfying.

I’m a little — well, really, quite — unhappy with how I worded the conclusion of the job ad:

This is a position ideally suited for a librarian with a solid grounding in traditional library services who seeks more responsibility and a wide range of job knowledge.

What I meant was “the technology part is really, really important — not just what you know, but your worldview and your ability to synthesize and evolve — but you also need to be a strong, upbeat library generalist with a penchant for learning.”

And what THAT means is you need to know a little MARC and a little XML, have a great teaching presence, have some insights into the database acquisitions process and a knack for working with vendors, get along with faculty, students, and staff, be able to switch quickly among tasks and know when a good B+ is acceptable and when it needs to be an A or a C, enjoy the challenge of working in a resource-limited environment, and be familiar enough with modern circ, reserves, ILL, and acquisitions practices to do everything from pitch in at the desk as needed to provide mile-high oversight for our book selection process, which is being reoriented toward faculty selections and shelf-ready materials.

And then, as needs change and evolve, do other things As They Arise. Edit: not to mention the reference hours, which if we are at flat funding (which is better than declining funding, the experience for many libraries this year) will inevitably include at least one night and every other weekend.

Short-range, the most pressing leadership opportunities for this position are information literacy and electronic resource management. (For you non-librarians out there, ERM is its own library specialty — them what’s in charge of the databases.)

We are rethinking information literacy: how it’s delivered, to whom, and by whom, and when; its assessment models, its benchmarking — all of it. This is not just a teaching responsibility, but a planning, sales, and evangelism position. The community is open to change here, but they need leadership. Plus you have to be able to see around corners and know what’s ahead.

(Speaking of which, immersed in spreadsheets galore, I’m already beginning to feel like the little old administrator who’s completely out of it… at MPOW folks were talking about Chrome for the Mac, and there I was peeping, “Chrome came out for the Mac? What?”)

ERM is currently juggled between me and our systems person, who is also responsible for educational technology for faculty. You do not need to be steeped in ERM experience, but you need to know what ERM is and why it’s important, and have the requisite technical and organizational skills to keep the ERM ship afloat — from remote-access configuration to thinking hard and strategically about the resources we license — so that I can spend  more time shaking the money tree and, if it yields fruit, gathering its harvest, while continuing and expanding events, outreach, and communications.

The list goes on. Recently the Education department agreed to a pilot for electronic theses. A peer university shared their policies and procedures. We even have a clean, empty ContentDM instance. Now it just needs to happen. The faculty are also clearly ready for a liaison program, and we need to divide responsibilities and plan that out. And so forth. Can we get to all of this? Well, I don’t know, but we can have fun trying. We are moving toward Navigator. We’re just a few, uh, tasks away. I can feel it. Just need a little more to make it happen.

As an aside, I hope you looked, and yes, we need to fix our website. I realize it’s quite possibly the world’s worst library website… ghastly, confusing, spartan, and yet too complicated, with mystifying jargon (“e-source”?). There’s a whole legacy behind that and now we’re all too busy to fix what needs fixing… This isn’t part of this position, but I do feel I should explain that we all know we need to do something about our digital welcome. We’ve done a lot with our physical welcome. I looked around today, and though we still have a lot of work to do, the library is beginning to look and feel inhabited and loved.   But the website… ah well. At least you know we know!

Anyhoo… MPOW (the library, but also the broader community it supports) is a place where nobody has enough resources, but we all want one another to succeed. I’ve worked in environments that were the polar opposite, and I know where I want to be. I hope you do as well.

Filed in MPOW | | Comments (2)

ACRL and “diversity”: A rainbow has more than one color

Sunday, April 25, 2010
Rainbow by Flickr user Proggie

Rainbow by Flickr user Proggie

My Place Of Work is one of the most diverse universities in the United States. That’s a fact we’re very proud of, and it’s an environment I enjoy. Diversity was a matter-of-fact reality in the middle-class San Francisco neighborhood I grew up in, and throughout my life, when I’ve been in environments flavored with only one or two dominant ethnic groups, I have missed God’s rainbow.

So when friends recommended the rather spendy but well-regarded ACRL-Harvard institute for new academic directors, I was intrigued to see that ACRL offered a “diversity” scholarship, until I read the fine print:

ACRL is pleased to announce the availability of a scholarship to support participation at the 2010 ACRL/Harvard Leadership Institute. The scholarship covers the cost of tuition ($2,600) and a $1,500 travel stipend. In support of ACRL’s commitment to librarians serving diverse communities, the scholarship is for individuals currently working in Historically Black Colleges and Universities, Tribal Colleges or Universities, or those employed at Hispanic Serving Institutions.

In other words, ACRL’s “diversity” is limited to institutions serving dominant majorities of ethnic groups.

I have no quarrel with these universities being eligible for this scholarship. I went to a women’s college (well, two, to be precise–Mills and then Barnard) because I was seeking my own “dominant majority” experience, and I appreciate how important that can be, and I salute ACRL for their attention to these institutions.

But ACRL should think beyond such a narrow definition of diversity and include institutions that are doing the very hard work of serving highly diverse student bodies.

We have challenges at MPOW: many of our students are first-generation college students; many arrive woefully unprepared for their first year of college; many struggle financially. We also have strengths, perhaps the most notable being the ineffable benefits–professionally, but also spiritually–of living, studying, and working inside this numinous rainbow.

For that matter, why not add income level to the mix? Those of us in higher ed know the powerful ties between family income level and risk factors for student success. Isn’t economic status its own diversity challenge–the issue that Martin Luther King graduated to in his last years on this planet?

Not only that, but some schools have more money than others, and tuition-dependent schools serving first-generation students are the least likely to have $4100 sitting around. I feel very well supported by MPOW–this is the best library job I’ve ever had–but the need is great in so many directions here, and I’ve already been cannibalizing important line items to do things like update our ancient public computers, last “refreshed” in 2002 and 2004.  I’ve already robbed Peter to pay Paul, and I can’t turn around and hit up Mary for some dinero.

ACRL means well, but if it were truly committed to “librarians serving diverse communities,” it would broaden its definition of “diversity.” Meanwhile, I’ll keep scraping together my leadership education from my peers at equally diverse universities, while I continue enjoying life within the rainbow’s beautiful spectrum.

Filed in American Liberry Ass'n, Digital Divide Issues, MPOW | | Comments (4)