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Conduct Unbecoming (a Library Conference)

Saturday, January 18, 2014
Samuel Johnson ponders ALA's Code of Conduct

Samuel Johnson ponders ALA’s Code of Conduct

A passel of librarians just did two very cool things. First they pulled together on their own to synthesize existing American Library Association policies to create a code of conduct “statement” for ALA conferences — an action that makes ALA a safer space for people vulnerable to harassment. Then these librarians worked through the system to get ALA’s Executive Board to approve the statement. Andromeda Yelton, ALA member, was the lead “macher” for the CoC.

For an excellent round-up of current and contextual articles and commentary on the CoC, see Lisa Rabey’s blog post.

Needless to say, once these cool things happened, Complaints Were Voiced. These complaints fell into  three categories:

  • ALA policy should ONLY come through ALA Council
  • A code of conduct is unnecessary
  • A code of conduct conflicts with ALA’s principles of intellectual freedom

Point 1: On statements versus policy

I begin with the first objection, which surfaced on the ALA Council list, only so I can immediately correct the errors of fact. As any number of people have pointed out, the Code of Conduct is not “policy.” It is an amalgamation of existing policy and procedure reinterpreted to apply to conference behavior. ALA has a long tradition of developing interpretations of existing policy and procedures, and it would seriously hobble the work of committees and other ALA units if every interpretation or statement had to be voted on, particularly by a body, such as ALA Council, which meets twice a year and spends far too much time in its own version of Groundhog Day, flogging the same toothless resolutions for hours on end.

There was a sub-objection under the “policy” discussion that the conversation about the CoC should have been brought to Council’s attention.  Another error of fact: Executive Board was aware of this conversation and voted on it to boot, as it votes on many things that need attention between ALA conferences or is otherwise on their agenda. The Executive Board “is” ALA to a great extent; the Executive Director reports to the EB, and Council elects EB to do that work. The “conversation” argument also has poor moral standing because Council does not go to great lengths to make its own deliberations accessible, as I have been pointing out for many years.

In terms of political strategery, I’m divided. On the one hand, bringing more people into the fold on the discussion might have made the CoC less of a bad surprise and reduced the NIH (Not Invented Here) reaction of some Councilors. On the other hand, I have seen Council take something lucid and spot-on and timely and either send the poor thing into indefinite and infernal referral Purgatory or hack it into unintelligible word pudding. (Or both.)

If I got my modified Delorean DMC-12 out of the garage, I would drive back to the moment where the statement was almost ready (which I was oblivious to at that historical moment, having a few months back said “oh yes, such a thing needs to be done,” and then trotting off to other things while Andromeda et al actually DID it). Then I would  encourage Andromeda et al to launch a sotto voce campaign among a broader circle of ALA folk, using those ancient but honorable mechanisms of email and even telephones to share ideas, if only so that some of us would not end up simultaneously absorbing and defending the CoC. But this isn’t a criticism of the CoC, only an observation on building buy-in.

Finally, as I said on the Council list, Andromeda et al. did exactly what ALA members should do: they gathered together to take action on an issue, leveraging both their own group processes and their ability to communicate within ALA’s bureaucracy. They did it in a modern meetup style, coalescing around an idea, creating ad-hoc virtual space, and finishing their project on a timeline that met their other objectives, and that’s how these folk roll.

Note that this form of activity has interesting implications for considering the recruitment and retention of future ALA members. The traditional committee structure has its value, but the maxim that for each and every idea or project there must be an equal and opposite committee should be looked at very closely, particularly as we seek ways to streamline ALA so it can rebuild itself to fighting strength and also to help ALA attract and retain newer librarians. John Chrastka had a fresh mindset during his tenure as head of ALA’s member development and proposed different ways of involvement, but I got the sense he wearied of fighting City Hall.

Point 2: on the necessity of a code of conduct.

Besides, if anyone on Council felt that invested in a conference Code of Conduct, they should have made themselves useful and taken this on a long, a very very very very very VERY VERY VERY!!!!!! long, time ago — this, the governing body that only takes action at ALA’s annual and midwinter conferences. How typical of Council to emulate Samuel Johnson’s view of patrons of the arts: “Is not a patron, my lord, one who looks with unconcern on a man struggling for life in the water, and when he has reached ground, encumbers him with help?”

Johnson aside, the initial and subsequent reactions from some pundits explains why this CoC is necessary: because they thought otherwise.

When the CoC was announced, Will Manley posted a blistering renunciation of the Code of Conduct to his blog, which his inner circle of devotees lapped up. No surprise there. I can’t link  to the post, though Lisa Rabey has a cached version, because after the tables began turning, and people used the comment function on his blog post to defend the CoC, Will finally surprised me: he shut down his blog.

Nobody asked Will Manley to shut down his blog.  I’ve been ruminating about his action for some time. What I get from his action, in the end, is that codes of conduct work. They work by pointing out that not all conduct is ok. They work by speaking truth to power. They work by shaking up mindsets. They work by acknowledging historical wrongs. They work by saying, no, this is not your space, it’s OUR space, and we have a right to be safe in that space. We have a right to that space. All of us.  And if you do that thing you know is wrong to do, you are now accountable for your actions. When that is said out loud, there are those who will gather up their toys and go home, and to them I say: don’t let the door hit you in the butt.

You don’t have to know explicit sexual harassment to get what I’m saying about “space.” The sexual action is just a mechanism; aggressive space cooptation takes all forms.  If you’ve ever had to squeeze your female body into a bus or airline seat next to a man who was sitting legs akimbo, jiggling his foot in your face, pressing his elbow into your bosom, you know what I am talking about. If you’ve ever sat on a committee or participated in a discussion list where you had to fight to be heard because men immediately commandeered the airspace (“Yes! Feminism is important! Let me spend the next 20 minutes explaining why…”), you know what I mean. If you’ve ever had the uncomfortable realization on a subway train or bus that the object pressing against your behind was not someone’s flashlight, you are nodding with me.

I have never experienced harassment at a conference other than heckling (which I’ll get to a bit later). But as a woman and a lesbian, I know harassment exists, and I’ve personally experienced it in a variety of settings.

The most blatant harassment I ever experienced happened in the military, when I was a captain stationed overseas at an airbase where the current regime was morally bankrupt. The harassment I experienced was a weirdly indirect “forced viewing,” in which a senior officer would habitually make highly sexualized references about two enlisted women in their, and my, presence, fully confident I wouldn’t talk back to a senior officer. When a new commander took over promising to right a lot of wrongs, I reported this captain’s behavior and requested a move to another unit. The move was granted without comment. Fortunately for the two young women left behind, the captain had orders for another assignment, and quickly left. Within a year he was promoted to major.

My story is hardly unique, and that’s the point: harassment is endemic to our culture. People who harass do so knowing this, and knowing that in many cases, they will not be held accountable. People have been harassed at ALA conferences for being female, transgender, differently-abled, of color — you name it. Andromeda brought this issue to her ALA peers because it had become a crusade in the tech conference world, where women were pushing back on the many ways men had used sexual power to diminish the space for women at conferences and in their profession. It wasn’t even a new issue for library conferences; Code4Lib, for example, had created a CoC a while back. It was just new for ALA conferences.

Point 3: The code of conduct and intellectual freedom

Boy howdy do I love it when men assert their right to pinch women’s behinds and frame it in the context of keeping information free.  This brain-free nattering underscores exactly why codes of conduct are important. If you make the tremendous effort to actually read the 575 words in the Code of Conduct (which I have pasted at the end of this post, copied from my registration form for ALA Annual), you will see that as long as you aren’t a butt-smacking, “flashlight”-poking, sexist-comment-making galoot determined to make restrooms inaccessible for transgender attendees (and yes, that happened at an ALA conference, by a contractor for a conference center), you will be empowered, not limited, by the CoC. If you are such a galoot, guess what: you’re on notice.

Finally, a word about heckling. My first take on the CoC’s statements about heckling were that it too strong. I have been heckled twice at library conferences. Once was during the Internet Filtering Wars, when in a talk I proffered my opinion that filtering computers used by very young children was not a bad idea, which ran up against the “all filtering: BAD” position of ALA’s intellectual freedom establishment. It was helpful to see how strongly these opinions were held (strong enough that a woman stood up, I assume so her lungs could gather enough air to REALLY TELL ME HOW SHE FELT), and frankly, the heckling caused me no damage.

The other heckling incident was at Code4Lib, where a man began shouting at me when I compared open source software to free kittens. He did not yell “Liar!” in the manner of Wilson insulting the President, but he was clearly angry and in disagreement, and felt that his opinion needed to be made available to the (largely white male) crowd, right there at that point in my talk. In the time since that has happened I’ve approached it with a sense of humor, but the farther I get from this incident — and it has stayed with me a long time — the more I wonder why I couldn’t be allowed to finish my keynote before we had a Time of Sharing.

Someone on Facebook (I don’t remember who) commented that the difference was whether the heckler was “punching up.” In the first case, an ALA member with strong feelings shared her opinion. In the second, it’s sometimes hard to say where “up” is, but if you’re one of a handful of women in a room with several hundred men, it probably doesn’t rest with you.

Finally, I know the CoC is important because as soon as it was announced, a man who hadn’t done anything on this project immediately took credit for it. No really — that happened. It happened in a private discussion that shall not be quoted from, and as soon as it happened I did that thing I hate doing, which is how I know it needs to be done, which is to say “No, actually, it happened this way, and these people were involved,” and that of course was enough to nip that in the bud. But hey, the CoC was an idea worth stealing.

ALA’s CoC is not set in stone. Like all interpretations of policy, it can and will change as we and our world change. You don’t have to agree with every word of the CoC to pick up your registration badge and participate in the conference. But the world is just a little better, a little more right, a little more safe, because ALA’s CoC exists.

The ALA Code of Conduct (copied from the ALA Annual online registration form) 

The American Library Association holds professional conferences and meetings to enable its members to receive continuing education, build professional networks, and discover new products and services for professional use. To provide all participants – members and other attendees, speakers, exhibitors, staff and volunteers – the opportunity to benefit from the event, the American Library Association is committed to providing a harassment-free environment for everyone, regardless of gender, sexual orientation, gender identity, gender expression, disability, physical appearance, ethnicity, religion or other group identity.As an association, ALA is strongly committed to diversity, equity and the free expression of ideas. These values have been repeatedly delineated in ALA policy (for instance: Policy A.1.4 – Core Organizational Values; Policy B.1.1 – Core Values of Librarianship; Policy B.1.2 – Code of Professional Ethics). Taken cumulatively, the values and beliefs delineated within ALA policy describe conduct based on a firm belief in the value of civil discourse and the free exploration of competing ideas and concepts – with a fundamental respect for the rights, dignity and value of all persons.Within the context of ALA policy and the professional practices of librarianship, critical examination of beliefs and viewpoints does not, by itself, constitute hostile conduct or harassment. Similarly, use of sexual imagery or language in the context of a professional discussion might not constitute hostile conduct or harassment.ALA seeks to provide a conference environment in which diverse participants may learn, network and enjoy the company of colleagues in an environment of mutual human respect. We recognize a shared responsibility to create and hold that environment for the benefit of all.

Some behaviors are, therefore, specifically prohibited:
Harassment or intimidation based on race, religion, language, gender, sexual orientation, gender identity, gender expression, disability, appearance, or other group status.
Sexual harassment or intimidation, including unwelcome sexual attention, stalking (physical or virtual), or unsolicited physical contact.
Yelling at or threatening speakers (verbally or physically).

Speakers are asked to frame discussions as openly and inclusively as possible and to be aware of how language or images may be perceived by others. Participants may – and do – exercise the “law of two feet.” [kgs edit: I added a link, as I was unfamiliar with this concept.] Exhibitors must follow all ALA Exhibits rules and regulations and ALA policies.

All participants are expected to observe these rules and behaviors in all conference venues, including online venues, and conference social events. Participants asked to stop a hostile or harassing behavior are expected to comply immediately.

Conference participants seek to learn, network and have fun. Please do so responsibly and with respect for the right of others to do likewise.Please contact Conference Services staff in the ALA Office at conference if you believe you have been harassed or that a harassment problem exists. All such reports will be directed immediately to the Director of Conference Services, who will determine and carry out the appropriate course of action, and who may consult with and engage other ALA staff, leaders and legal counsel as appropriate. Event security and/or local law enforcement may be involved, as appropriate based on the specific circumstances. A follow-up report will be made to individuals who report being harassed.Prior to each ALA Midwinter Meeting and ALA Annual Conference, ALA Conference Services will make the following information available:
Information on how to report incidents of any sort to Conference Management (telephone, room location)
Emergency contact information:
Venue (convention center, hotel) security
Local law enforcement, emergency and non-emergency
Local emergency and non-emergency medical information
Local taxi company(s)
Other local services, e.g. hotlines

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Postcards from the underworld: Doctoral program, semester 2

Sunday, December 22, 2013
Harry Potter's Marauder's Map

Harry Potter’s Marauder’s Map

I was told this, my second semester, would be the hardest, and by gum, they delivered. For a lot of reasons, this was a heck of a time, an overload of schoolwork in the midst of a crisis at work that left me sleepless and scrambling for weeks on end.

But I’m done. When I received my grade on one overwhelming project I expressed relief to one cohort colleague, who replied, “Welcome to the Fraternal Order of Slackers.” Yes, it was not a grade commensurate of my other academic achievements. But I advanced to the next semester and this is my last degree and I’m too old to be grounded, so I just don’t care.

The big lesson I was reminded of for this semester came from a recent grad in our program with a gift for summarizing our experience: “Perseverance through high drama.”  I can dig it! The second big lesson: during this break I am lowering the flame under the kettle, but I’m not turning off the stove. It was wonderful to “have a life” after the first semester, but it’s a doctoral program, not elementary school. I need to keep my brain, and my projects, at a steady simmer, percolating away at various activities, and  ready to kick it up a notch when the third semester begins.  So along with resting and celebrating and whatnot, I’ll do some research and thinking and reading.

The three really big plusses for me for the second semester semester were first, getting into the groove on topics that excited me, second, having a Hail-Mary save on an assignment I had no background for (thank you Kara, amazing stats tutor at Holy Names), and third, having yet another Hail-Mary save just five days before my big assignment was due when I realized — in a flash of insight while driving on the Redwood Highway near Guerneville, an epiphanal moment so deep and striking I had to pull over — that this 45-page article proposal  had major structural flaws and needed to be reorganized from soup to nuts. I could even see how it needed to be reorganized: my brain, in this moment, was my own private Marauder’s Map.

I also traveled deep, deep into the heart of grounded theory, as well as into theories of social influence. Though maybe the most delicious moment came when my research converged with the writings of Rensis Likert, who deserves a better Wikipedia page than the one I linked to.

Once upon a time I learned about Likert scales when I met a consultant, Dr. Alison Head (before her Project Information Literacy days), who helped me develop surveys for the project I managed. She knows far more than I ever will, but I learned a little. It never occurred to me that “Likert” was a real person, and one who on paper, at least, seems like a mensch.

Studying Likert in the context of his era is interesting. I have been delving into the literature of leadership in the context of the LGBT experience, which is a very small body of literature indeed, though that has its advantages.

I became interested in grounded theory when I realized that far too many leadership “theories” felt specious, particularly when viewed by anything other than a “majority” perspective.  These theories either have an innate emptiness — q.v. “resonant leadership,” in which leaders benefit by practicing “mindfulness, hope, and compassion,” a cheerful thought, but one that cannot be reliably traced along an evidentiary path explaining the origins of these three emotional behaviors  — or fluffily prescribe practices such as “Bring more of yourself to work,” which rests on assumptions that are almost laughable when viewed through the lens of race, gender, sexual identity, or other “otherness.”

LGBT status is a “concealable difference” (at least in theory), and a fascinating area to study. (I am fighting the urge to add a footnote or two here.) People who elect to conceal their differences do so for many reasons, but one reason is to present one’s self as the de facto standard, that is, the norm — which proves the power and privilege issues raised by Cecily Walker in an elegant blog post.

Cecily was responding to a blog post written in what I think of as “Should-Speak,” in which someone from the “default” tells others what they “should” do (if a pointing finger is not actually present, I see one in my mind). In this case, the blogger had warned librarians that “if you step outside of the people’s expectations as to how [insert your kind of librarian] should look it’s going to take work to show them that you are a competent professional.”

Andy Woodworth was probably referring to things like unusual hair color or dress choices, but the twist on that statement, however casually or facetiously made,  is what it looks like from other sides of the power struggle. As Cecily argues, in the case of immutable distinctions such as race, “When we place the burden of of being the exception on those who fall outside of the norm, we are furthering an agenda that supports the idea that whiteness is the highest standard, indeed, the only standard that should be used to measure suitability.”

LGBT leadership research is interesting to me for more than just the most obvious reason (I love to research myself, just as I love watching myself on those TV cameras in store lobbies–after a while, Sandy shouts, “Stop watching yourself!”).  It’s also an area of research that inevitably overlaps with many other conversations, such as the one Cecily launched. When you research “otherness,” you open doors into entirely new ways of looking at the world.

One of my favorite discoveries during the research process this fall was a dissertation about openly LGBT university presidents. The investigator, Eric Bullard, had intended to use the lens of Queer Theory for his research, a theoretical approach that is too complex to describe here but includes the idea that sexual identity is constructed. I’ll resist the temptation to comment on the dangerous allure of the poststructuralist sirens to junior researchers, and focus instead on Bullard’s conclusion that “Queer Theory may not have been the best theoretical lens through which to view the experiences of out gay and lesbian higher education presidents.”

Bullard noted that the presidents were heavily invested in being perceived as “just like their heterosexual counterparts.”  I chuckle every time I re-read this, because it makes perfect sense that these smart, striving higher-ed types were invested in being LGBT equivalents of Mr. and Mrs. Cleaver (I recently viewed the first episode of Leave it to Beaver, so I speak with great authority on this matter). It takes a lot of emotional, intellectual, and physical labor to demonstrate that you’re university president material, and it’s even harder to do that when your innate self is not congruent with “people’s expectations.”

That said, major props to the author for even taking on this topic, and for being attuned to the intersectionalities that surfaced in the research process, particularly gender and sexual orientation. It was very moving to hear the stories of university presidents, such as the gay male president who was mocked for “redecorating” after implementing a physical plant improvement early in his administration, and the female president’s conclusion that “sexual orientation is really about gender. It’s misogyny. The problem for [lesbian] women is how can you get along without a man? And for [gay] men the problem is someone is perceived as acting like a woman.”  I know there were many criticisms of Denise Denton, the UC Santa Cruz president who was young, inexperienced, and openly lesbian, but however flawed her leadership may have been — and I have no real insight into the matter — whether or not she outwardly acknowledged it, she was shouldering quite a burden during her tenure.

Twenty years ago, in our field, library science, James Carmichael was soldiering on with research and findings similar to Bullard’s; in a random sampling of male members of ALA, Carmichael found that nearly two-thirds of the 482 respondents agreed that they “recognized a male librarian stereotype which corresponded to the negative female stereotype” and was “effeminate, probably gay.” There’s a whole lot of confirmatory research on the extent to which people confound gender and sexual identity, but it’s impressive that a researcher in my field was working on this problem two decades ago. (Whoops, had that footnote urge again.)

Anyway, my last thought I’ll share via this potluck blog post has more to do on the meta level. It’s so wonderful we have self-publishing avenues such as blogs and social networks such as Facebook and Twitter. There’s  a constant slipstream of thinking and discussion that just wasn’t available prior to the Internet. I’ve been blogging for over a decade, and though my blogging is something I now squeeze between semesters, I appreciate the ability to write and be read outside of the “scholarly” canon, and I appreciate the discourse.

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Project Info Lit and the “Ginormous” Problem

Monday, December 16, 2013

 

Mastodon (via Wikipedia)

Mastodon (via Wikipedia)

Project Information Literacy has once again dug deep into information behavior, turning some of our assumptions upside down while showing that others have grains of common-sense truth. (Full disclosure: I’m on the PIL Board; my compensation is the ability to say “I’m on the PIL Board.”)

As a librarian, my default approach is that more is always better: more books, more metadata, more databases.  In my doctoral studies, more, for me, is wonderful, and I’m unfazed, indeed delighted, by the sheer width of the river of information I’m fording. Navigating all that stuff is the least of my problems. In fact, looking back at the doctoral program orientation, I recall turning up my nose at a handout listing a few useful but rather obvious databases, because, for heaven’s sake, I know that stuff.

But PIL’s latest study, “Learning the Ropes: How Freshmen Conduct Course Research Once They Enter College,” underscores that more, from the perspective of an incoming freshman, is a complex, scary, and not necessarily good thing. The report notes, “In their words, the college library had a collection that was ‘ginormous’ and there was ‘a ton of stuff,’ including both online and on-site resources.”

The sheer scale of the difference between high school and college is illuminated through students’ own words: “the majority of freshmen used dichotomous pairs of words to describe their  feelings: overwhelming and exciting, overwhelming and amazing, scary and exciting, and  stressful and competitive.”

What can we do better during this critical period? It caught mey attention that “Freshmen said they found campus librarians (29%) and their English composition instructors (29%) were the most helpful individuals on campus with guiding them through college-level research.” We know from earlier PIL studies, quoted in this report, that later in the university experience, librarians rank 17 out of 18 among resources students will turn to for help.  Somewhere in that transition is a lost opportunity.

I particularly admire how the study confirms the “ginormous” problem by comparing the limited array of resources available to high school students to the resources available in universities. Barbara Fister notes that we “already know” that the college experience is much more complex, but we tend to “forget” this fact.

Without data, this exponential increase in complexity is only a truism; but PIL’s research confirms this as an actual problem. A high school library may have a couple of databases; where I work, we trumpet that we have over sixty, and if we were a fancy school, you could multiply that five-fold. Even if high school students wanted to ramp up to college-level work, they don’t have the tools to do so. Furthermore, they have no awareness of the scale of college-level information resources.

It had never occurred to me that when we crow about the bazillion resources we offer, we might be scaring the pants off students, and yet, without any context for all this new stuff, how could it not? This may be even more true in California, where there is no mandate for school libraries in public schools, and funding for school libraries is abysmal.

By the time students get to college, the report notes, students have been strongly acculturated to relying on Google and other non-scholarly resources, a process that they may associate with success — because, after all, they made it to  college. But as we know from instruction and other interactions with students and as this report makes clear, freshmen are ill-equipped to formulate search queries or evaluate information — a situation only exacerbated by rolling out barrels of “stuff” and heralding this as exclusively a good thing.

The report’s chart comparing the resources students have in high school versus college nails this sobering reality and gives us a concrete reminder that those students are complex human beings undergoing a huge, jolting life transformation — one that a one-shot instruction session can only begin to address.

The report also made me reflect on the importance of convincing faculty of the value of information literacy. Students interact with instructors far more than they ever will with librarians, a level of influence we cannot hope to match.

Like most libraries, where I work we are not uniformly successful in persuading instructors of the value of our services. I once tried, unsuccessfully, to convince a particular professor of the value of having a librarian come to his class to share how to find and use information for the assignments (I know, crazy concept, right?). After a few minutes of back-and-forth, the professor said, as if to prove his point that such a session would be useless, “Look, I bring them to the computer classroom and tell them to search for an hour, and at the end of that hour they aren’t any better at searching!” Yet I wasn’t able to convince him to once, just once, embed a librarian’s session in his class to help his students become “better.” Perhaps this report can be a pathway to a new conversation.

There are excellent recommendations in this report, and each one struck a bell. The first recommendation talks about building bridges between high school and college experiences. Our university has an “early admit” program which helps prepare students for the higher-education experience. A couple of years ago, when the program was getting started, I suggested we embed librarians in that process. I’m going to reopen that suggestion–this time, armed with a report that helps me make this case–and see if I can get some traction.

The second recommendation boils down to Patti Ianuzzi’s advice: don’t teach the databases; teach transferable skills. Of course, that means focusing on how librarians teach. Like many library directors in universities where the focus is on student learning, I care deeply about information literacy, and 100% of our instructional librarians have attended the very high-quality “teach the teacher” program, ACRL Immersion (yes, that means all two of them–but still!).

Immersion is not the only path to enhancing instructional skills, but it’s an important one. I’d dearly like to see a regional Immersion in California, and I know a couple more administrators who feel the same way. I’ve tried through a couple of avenues that didn’t quite pan out, but I haven’t given up on the idea; I’ll just keep beating on this problem with a stick. Let me know if you’d like to pick up a stick and join me.

The final recommendations in the report call on us to “reframe … expectations of today’s freshmen.” Thank you, PIL! I wish I had a nickel for every time the phrase “digital native” cropped up in promotional material for universities. You don’t hear librarians using that phrase because we understand how ridiculous it is. Refreshingly, PIL’s report strongly discourages this mindset — “It is incorrect to assume that because most of today’s freshmen grew up with a thriving Internet at their fingertips, they are naturals at college-level research” – and recommends bringing more comprehensive research instruction across the curriculum, asking,”Why not integrate advising and training into the course from librarians?”

Many of us see this as a goal, and we chip away at it, but the assumption that college students do not need early and persistent guidance in the use of information, coupled with a lack of understanding of the value librarians bring to that equation, lies sotto voce under too many practices in higher education.

One of the things I appreciate about working in a teaching university is that, paradoxically enough, the fact that we are not a research institution makes teaching research skills more important; we’ve made inroads with information literacy that might not have been possible in a university where student learning — the presumed end-goal of higher education — was lost in the shuffle.  I just passed my four-year anniversary at my job, and as I watch the renaissance of the library and the impact we have on student learning, I am increasingly convinced that all roads lead to information literacy. If I can’t map a service to student learning, we might as well not be doing it.

At the same time, all of us can do more, particularly with finding methods for embedding librarians in students’ research workflows.  A parishioner said in church this Sunday, “We are very good at being welcoming, but we are not so good at being inviting.” Similarly, for many libraries, the model of support is based on actively reaching out to faculty members through a liaison model for instruction, but research help (aka reference) — the more informal relationship outside of the classroom — frequently has a more passive design.

Even where libraries do everything they can to build relations with the campus community, when it comes to diagnosis and treatment for information “problems” — the hallmark of a profession, so saith Andrew Abbott in The System of Professions — by and large, librarians wait to be approached by students. Yet PIL’s data on the disconnect between librarians and students during the course of a four-year education suggests this model isn’t working for us.

The director of our university’s new, and highly successful, advising center recently spoke to our faculty senate about the relationships they had built and planned to build. The library was on their “to-do” list, which pleased me. As the director talked, I reflected that the center’s existing relationships are based on a model of diagnosis and identification: for example, math and writing problems are referred to math and writing tutors.

After the presentation, I approached the director and commented that the library could come up with methods for clarifying when and how to make a referral to a librarian (an “information tutor”). This idea was well-received, and I brought it up on the ACRL College Library Section email list, where it had more discussion. This is just one small example of how librarians can rethink how we reach out to students grappling with all the challenges the college experience introduces, “ginormous” and otherwise. And we have PIL to thank for providing us robust data and head-turning insights to help us get there.

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Lessons Learned from the First Semester

Thursday, October 10, 2013
Tater tot

Tater tot

So I’ve been planning a catch-up post following the conclusion of my first semester in the doctoral program. All is well… learning and growing… though there are some lessons learned.

Lesson #1: Have a life between semesters. Before the first semester I “studied” things that ultimately didn’t prove relevant. When the semester ended, I made sure I had my textbooks purchased and articles downloaded for this semester, then shifted my focus to my personal life, where I did everything from museum trips to replacing the little bulbs over the stove to tossing files to making gallon batches of bolognese sauce and three-gallon batches of coconut porter. I bought a car. I read a pile of books. I cleaned carpets, updated my office wardrobe, saw movies in a real theater, and had oysters on the Embarcadero with Sandy. And oh right, got married!  That left plenty of time for a reentry period where I could read assigned materials and reflect about the upcoming semester.

Lesson #2: Find pleasure in the process. My pleasure is a) the relationships with other students and faculty, and b) the relationships with others in the research communities, and c) learning in general. When I read something that strikes a chord, I write the author and thank them, and sometimes that sparks an interesting conversation on its own. (This is why I found it odd when a professor at MPOW told me the process was lonely. Writing is a conversation… a very long conversation at that.)

Lesson #3: Cooperate and graduate. Also known as, “It’s all about the tam.” It’s like Officer Training School: there are many times when mine is not to question why (and attending two military training camps in my life has been useful for that lesson). Either the guidance and direction will prove correct in the long run, or it won’t, but it is what it is.

Lesson #4: Take care of my body. It’s physically challenging to work full-time and be a doctoral student. I did everything I could to carve out time for moderate exercise, even if I felt like a zombie on the treadmill. But being sedentary adds up. Two weeks after my last paper I was 5 pounds lighter, thanks to a brief no-carb regimen and overall more activity, and I felt better overall. I suspect that will be a cycle throughout the program. What can I say? The occasional Tater Tot lightens the darkness.

Lesson #5: Don’t mess with Mother Nature. I’ve had all kinds of advice about when to do schoolwork. I’ve tried getting up early (keep in mind I get to work by 7 am), staying up late (9 pm is late for me!), spending one or two weeknights in a coffee shop… what works for me is to slog through work during the week, ensuring I have a minimum of weekend spillover, and then knuckle down over the weekend. I start early and work until almost-dinner, and then I knock off. My body has its own rhythm, and barring the occasional midweek emergency edit, or a second wind on a Wednesday when I can do a couple hours at Starbucks, that’s that.

Lesson #6: Be forthright about my delicate condition. Early in the semester, a respected colleague at another institution with whom I was collaborating on a work-related project began writing me on Saturday mornings, and it became clear the weekend was his preferred time for working on this project. I finally said, I cannot do this on the weekend; that time is now allotted for doctoral studies. He took it in stride. (I think.) I bring my day-job work home when I have to, including the weekend, and I work a full day and then some, but working-as-a-fun-weekend-hobby has ended for me, if it ever existed.

I also let other people know that I’m more tired and less focused than usual. (My boss says PhD stands for “Pooped, Harried, and Distracted.”) They deserve to know what they’re dealing with.

Lesson #7: Throttle back. I was invited to an event marking the 10-year anniversary of the decision on the Children’s Internet Protection Act. I struggled with complicated feelings and turned to a respected colleague who pointed out that I was asking permission not to go. These conflicts are hard for me; I want to be on the dais making references to all the important work I did back in the day. But I have one body, one job, one family, and only so many hours in a day, and I had been given very good advice to Not Take On Anything New (waving at Candy and Jennifer). In the end, not going ensured I had that extra chunk of time, energy, and focus I needed to get to the finish line my first semester — a little early, in fact.

Lesson #8: Retrieve and organize anything remotely useful. Refworks and Dropbox are my dear, dear, DEAR friends. (Dropbox has been for a while.)  I am already reaping the rewards of this discipline.

Lesson #9: Don’t bop around from topic to topic. This is not my personal advice; this comes from nearly everyone I know who has a PhD, or is a doctoral student. Thank you and so noted.

Lesson #10: Librarians rock. There’s this librarian at Simmons who has offered the most amazing help! I consider myself a reasonably decent searcher, but there are times when I hit a wall or need affirmation that I’m in the right direction.  If you can imagine how much a librarians’ librarian needs to know, that’s the kind of resource she is. Thanks, Linda!

 

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Our surfer-dude wedding

Saturday, August 31, 2013

So nearly 22 years after we met and almost 9 years to the day our marriage was invalidated, Sandy and I were married on August 30, 2013, at the foot of the surfer dude statue in Santa Cruz, an event officiated by our friend Dinah, witnessed by her spouse Gail, and accompanied by Sandy’s pastor friend David, as people waved and clapped from cars rolling by on West Cliff Drive.

Marriage Dinner

Marriage Dinner

Friends can be forgiven for thinking we were already legally married. We did marry in San Francisco in 2004, but that marriage was invalidated several months later when it was determined that San Francisco can do many things but preempting state law is not one of them. I actually agree with that conclusion in the broader sense. But I also believe we wouldn’t be married today if Gavin Newsom hadn’t taken the law into his own hands. Those 4,000-some licenses are now historic relics, preserved by the city library, though I have ours as well, tucked into a folder.

Some friends wonder why we didn’t marry in 2008 (or assume we did marry), when same-sex marriage was briefly legal in California. We were living in Florida and knew our marriage wouldn’t be recognized by Florida. I didn’t anticipate how quickly things would change at the federal level. I am greatly pleased, but also amused in a devilish way, by the fact that two people can marry in a freedom state such as California and have their marriage recognized federally in their home state, however backward it may be.  If we had to return to a state that thought otherwise, the IRS, the Treasury Department, and the Department of Defense have our back.

People keep asking me if I feel different. I feel the same; it’s you folks who are different. As I wrote in my essay The Outlaw Bride, I never fully recognized the invalidation of our 2004 marriage. I have felt for nine years like a left-wing version of a Sovereign Citizen (except I paid taxes and obeyed laws because I’m prudent that way); I did not intellectually recognize the invalidation of our marriage. But the world caught up with us anyway when all kinds of people, from everyday citizens to Supreme Court justices, allowed themselves to evolve.

We had some discussion about what to call ourselves, and we decided on “spouses.” The term “partner” is one of those weak-coffee terms to use for people who can’t or don’t wish to marry. As for “wife,” we’re in agreement that while we’d like one,  neither of us want to be one. (Those of a certain generation may recall the feminist plaint, “I want a wife.” ) Younger women may be wondering what the fuss is about, but it is just too loaded a term for us. “Spouse,” meanwhile, has lovely foundation that recalls the commitment marriage represents, as the dictionary notes (plus a little celebration to boot):

Middle English, from Anglo-French espus (masculine) &espuse (feminine), from Latin sponsus betrothed man, groom & sponsa betrothed woman, bride, both from sponsus, past participle of spondēre to promise, betroth; akin to Greek spendein to pour a libation, Hittite šipant-

I admit I am a little concerned by the many friends who have wished us well with the caveat that they hope our marriage continues to be legally recognized. It’s my assumption that the engines of change have pushed us too far forward for backsliding to be possible, particularly as most reasonable people realize, if they have not done so before, that two people marrying, regardless of their gender, has absolutely no impact on the quality of their own lives, and that a world with more love and more commitment is better for everyone.  There will be dissenters, with Justice Scalia as flag-bearer, but it is now clear that the reason so many states passed laws against same-sex marriage before it became legal is the fear that once marriage equality became a reality, it would be glaringly obvious what a non-issue this issue has been.

So, we are married. I cannot imagine my life these past 22 years without Sandy, and we are blessed to honor our love not only as a private matter between two people, but as full citizens in the eyes of our state and country.  Yet we have not given up on all outlaw aspects of our marriage. All love is a little bit outlaw in its magic and its extravagance. We love more generously than we think is possible, more powerfully than we realize, with a oceanic depth than can subsume us in grief in its loss. A friend sobbed on the phone to me as his wife lay dying that he didn’t understand why anyone married, because it hurt so much to lose the one you love. I was without words because I could not disagree. Therein lies the paradox of the greatest emotion we are privileged to experience.

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All the lonely MOOCers. Where do they all come from?

Thursday, July 11, 2013

So about that math MOOC I took earlier this year. It can be easy to focus on the technology aspects of online instruction, since so much  hinges on adequate access to and support for hardware, Internet connections, software, operating systems, and even peripherals, q.v. the widespread chuckling last year over the meltdown of the Coursera class on online learning. Despite careful piloting and design,  the MOOC I was enrolled in had a tough first week, caused by four days of service interruptions for their learning management system, on top of problems related to the course webinar product they were using, which relies on Java. Due to upcropping security issues, Apple blocked Java, later providing an update to the iOS operating system… it was a hot mess.

I largely missed this episode because I was at a conference for most of this ordeal. I don’t know whether this techno-crisis had any impact on student retention, because for the most part, as was true throughout the class, student engagement was almost nonexistent.

Though I sense that enrollment was in the hundreds (based on a math problem posed in an early video), there were fewer than 20 students in the one synchronous online session I attended. Most of the posts to the discussion board were from the initial “introduce yourself” phase. The “Math Assistance” section of the discussion board had 13 posts, the last one, from mid-March, asking, “Any body around?” (There was no response.) Questions from students went unanswered. For most of the class, I was as solitary as when I crammed for the GRE last fall — 7 weeks of manic cramming for the GRE, a period filled with flash cards and study guides and endless exercises. In other words, it was self-study, with videos.

Course Design

The math MOOC I was in offered weekly synchronous sessions through Collaborate and open drop-in hours. The weekly sessions, which were recorded, repeated the concepts offered through a series of smaller videos, homework, and quizzes.

The short videos were competent walk-throughs in which questions were posed and answered. A typical session included a problem, a “Chalk Talk” video where an instructor walks students through the solution, a brief “more info” slide, and a slide with two or three  additional practice equations (though the answers were presented right on the same screen, forcing me to put a hand up while I scribbled the problems on a piece of paper).

Often the Khan Academy video on the topic was included on a separate tab, I assume as a form of alternate reinforcement, although I find that Khan often talks too fast and scribbles too much; I preferred the slower pace of the MOOC instructors and I also found it easier to follow their handwriting.

The homework was similar to the material I used for GRE self-study — stolid, reasonable math problems.However, the 10-question quizzes used to determine eligibility to move to the next math section were sheer frustration. We were given scores, but not results. To quote another student, “It is immensely frustrating and annoying that we are not told which questions we got wrong at the end of each quiz.”

I know this issue has had some press, and in response some have bandied about the idea of peer review or that students don’t need grading or whatnot. Certainly that may work in some settings.  But in a math class, students need clear answers, preferably with some underpinning of what went wrong. One plus one is never going to be “you decide.”

When I wrote the program to express my concern, I was told, “we want you to continue working on the material until you feel you have mastered it.  If we provided that feedback, participants could just guess their way through a quiz.”So in other words, rather than develop a testing structure that enabled students to get real feedback, use the limitations of the system to excuse poor pedagogy.  If I don’t know where I am having problems, how can I work on those areas?

In contrast, the excellent quality of the one real-time online class I intended was instructive. The instructor knew her stuff, both the subject and how to teach it, and when the class ended and I was staring at a problem, pondering its ineffable algebraic logic, the instructor intuited I was not done and asked if I had questions, then spent another 10 minutes clarifying a concept I had struggled with not only in class but in my self-study last year.

But those online classes weren’t built for success. As I found out after I had enrolled, the classes were mostly offered during the day, staggered around the week, and with meetings and such, I was not able to attend another session. I tried watching a session I hadn’t attended, but it was hard to stay tuned to an hour-long recording of a class I hadn’t participated in.

The MOOC offered generous drop-in hours for online tutoring, but no similar drop-in technical assistance. The one time I dropped in, I had a question about submitting the homework, but the tutor knew math, not the MOOC environment, and wasn’t familiar with the course I was in per se, so no luck there.

So after investing dozens of weekend hours to complete 5 modules, what do I think?

First, if we’re going to offer (let alone require) online classes to college students, their technical preparedness needs to be a priority so every student begins the class on an even playing field. Despite all the blather about “digital natives,” what I see every day where I work are students with a wide range of technical abilities and network operating environments. The for-profit MOOCs are looking at higher education and licking their chops. These students should not be at their sacrificial alter.

If you look at successful online programs such as SJSU SLIS or UIUC LEEP, they make no assumptions about the skill levels or equipment capacity of the typical graduate student–well, actually there is an assumption: as a LEEP  page says, “The Instructional Technology and Design Office (ITD) is here to help bridge the gap between the learner and technology in the classroom setting.”

As that sentence explicitly acknowledges,  this gap is real, not theoretical. This gap can be an issue for even reasonably competent students, as I learned from an online LIS graduate (not LEEP) who told me he didn’t participate in class discussions for his last year in school because the audio on his laptop had become misconfigured and he didn’t know how to fix it.

The tech gap was real for everyone my first week of class, and persisted for a while for those of us on Apple platforms, and persisted for me when I had a technical issue that couldn’t be answered when I sought help, and cropped up repeatedly whenever I had technical issues at home or when I traveled. I spent a few hours configuring my mother’s guest wifi network, including time on the phone with her Internet provider, just so I would not miss my homework that weekend–and that presumed a level of expertise and equipment not everyone has. (My mother wasn’t aware she HAD wifi.)

Online engagement takes effort, especially among strangers who have nothing in common other than they are taking a free online math class. Yes, I had a reasonable reasons to drop out of my math MOOC; I had learned pretty much what I needed to know, and I needed to divert time to getting other tasks out of the way before I started school. But beyond sending one email when I took more than a week to return to my studies, there wasn’t a strong effort to keep students going. Sure, it’s self-study, and it’s a massive class, etc… and yet. If this is the future of education, then education has effectively ended.

The instructors at one point commented on the discussion board, in response to student complaints about course design, that this MOOC was designed largely for research purposes, a strange thing to tell students who are supposedly there to learn math, but revealing all the same. When these educators produce their research, as they inevitably will, I hope they conclude that, for example, simply providing a discussion board does not actually create discussion.

It’s not the online-ness of MOOCs that concerns me. I took three online writing courses several years ago through Stanford Continuing Education, and in these small, discussion-focused classes, participation and retention were quite strong. But these were courses led by instructors who understood that there was more to instruction than providing a discussion board and leading a weekly class session, and that they–or their delegates–needed to be an active presence for the duration of these classes. It helped that the subject, writing, is a low bar, technically, and that writers tend to be good at communicating.

It’s not even the “massive” part. I co-managed a very large discussion list for close to two decades, and it’s actually possible to have substantive conversations among 10,000 people, given the right people and effort. It’s also possible to have bad instruction in a much smaller class.

My concerns are that as the MOOC bandwagon has rolled into town, its wheels have kicked up huge clouds of dust that obscure reasonable questions about what constitutes good course design, with an emphasis on student performance and success. It is one thing for a well-educated librarian to sample parts of a math class and conclude she is ready to move on. It is quite another to assume the same environment will work for at-risk and/or digitally tenuous students.

I have struggled for months to pinpoint the crux of the problem, and as is usually the case, I have concluded it has little or nothing to do with technology. Bad online instruction  has the same problem as bad traditional instruction: a serious lack of attention to molecular engagement with the student learner.

In the MOOC I took, had I been a student struggling with technology, I would have been gone the first week. Had I been an at-risk student for other reasons, I would have been easily spun off the course by the combined centrifugal force of the Potemkin village that was the “discussion board,” with its unanswered pleas for assistance; the classes held during daytime hours, when presumably I would be working or, if unemployed, pursuing work; the “tutors” who could not offer technical assistance and were only marginally familiar with the course itself; and the assessment design, which gave me no serious feedback about progress or the lack of it. And of course, no advisers, peer mentors, or other champions for my success. In the end, I was not a student with real needs, struggling to learn; I was somebody’s “research.”

And I am deeply bothered that these students will become even more invisible and even more underserved in the online environment, and that as their faces disappear behind the digital curtain, their needs will take a back seat to everything else — greed, political expediency, the privileging of “research” over education — even as their advocates are pooh-poohed as old-fart Luddites for expressing even the tiniest soupcon of concern on their behalf.

I have tried to wrap up this post for over two months now, but have been in the undertow of my first semester “back to school.” (I have to thank Andy Woodworth for goosing me into wrapping this up.) One of the comparison points I can now offer is that in a five-person cohort, I have been kept busy, engaged, and on track for nearly two months — exactly the experience I didn’t have in my MOOC. Students deserve a real education. Education matters. If it’s not happening, no bells or whistles can make up for its absence.

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ALA Annual 2013: My Schedule Can Beat Up Your Schedule

Wednesday, June 26, 2013

Bolded items are given. The italicized items are maybes. Whew! Hard to refocus on conference administrivia on such a momentous day in history.

Print Archive Network (PAN)
Friday, 06/28/2013 – 09:00am – 12:00pm
Newberry Library
60 W Walton St  Chicago, IL 60610

OCLC Americas Regional Council Member Meeting and Symposium
Friday, 06/28/2013 – 11:00am – 04:00pm
Hyatt Regency McCormick Place – Prairie Room
Exhibitor session

Budget Analysis & Review Committee Meeting
Friday, 06/28/2013 – 12:00pm – 03:00pm
McCormick Place Convention Center – N426c
Committee meeting
FY 2014 budget reviews; review Council referrals.

Opening General Session featuring Steven D. Levitt
Friday, 06/28/2013 – 04:00pm – 05:15pm
McCormick Place Convention Center – Behind Registration, Hall B1

S – Meetup
Friday, 06/28/2013 – 06:30pm – 07:30pm

B – Meetup
Friday, 06/28/2013 – 07:30pm – 08:30pm

ALA Council Orientation Session for New and Reelected Councilors
Saturday, 06/29/2013 – 08:00am – 10:30am
McCormick Place Convention Center – S100c

Nominating Committee for the 2014 ALA Elections Meeting
Saturday, 06/29/2013 – 10:30am – 11:30am
Hyatt Regency McCormick Place – Boardroom 3
Committee meeting

Finance & Audit Committee of the ALA Executive Board Meeting
Saturday, 06/29/2013 – 11:00am – 01:30pm
McCormick Place Convention Center – N426c
Committee meeting
Review and recommend financial items.

Meet with Peter
Saturday, 06/29/2013 – 01:30pm – 02:30pm
Palmer House Hotel Lobby

ALA Council/Executive Board/Membership Information Session
Saturday, 06/29/2013 – 03:00pm – 04:30pm
McCormick Place Convention Center – S100c
Governance/Membership Meeting

MLIP Reception
Saturday, 06/29/2013 – 09:30pm – 11:00pm
Hilton, Conrad Suite, T-4, 29th Floor

ALA Council I
Sunday, 06/30/2013 – 08:30am – 11:00am
McCormick Place Convention Center – S100c
Governance/Membership Meeting
Tis is a meeting of the governing and policy body of the Association.

ALA Planning & Budget Assembly Meeting
Sunday, 06/30/2013 – 01:00pm – 02:30pm
Hyatt Regency McCormick Place – Hyde Park 11AB
Committee meeting
Review financial updates

Top Technology Trends & LITA Awards Presentation
Sunday, 06/30/2013 – 01:00pm – 02:30pm
McCormick Place Convention Center – S105a-c
Program

Cory Doctorow: More than a Book-lined Internet Cafe
Sunday, 06/30/2013 – 03:00pm – 04:00pm
McCormick Place Convention Center – S105a-c
Presidents program, Speaker series

Social (GLBTRT)
Sunday, 06/30/2013 – 06:00pm – 08:00pm
Offsite Location – Off Site
Social event
Come mix with the membership of the GLBT Round Table. $5.00 recommended donation accepted at the door.

Ann Sather 909 W Belmont Ave, Chicago, IL 60657 (773)348-2378

Dinner
Sunday, 06/30/2013 – 07:30pm – 09:30pm
Quartino (http://www.quartinochicago.com/)

ALA Council Forum I
Sunday, 06/30/2013 – 08:30pm – 10:00pm
Hilton Chicago – Astoria Room

Breakfast – LIAL 11 

Hyatt, McCormick Place, Shor

ALA Council II
Monday, 07/01/2013 – 08:30am – 11:30am
McCormick Place Convention Center – S100c
Governance/Membership Meeting

Stonewall Book Awards Brunch (GLBT RT)
Monday, 07/01/2013 – 10:30am – 02:00pm
Hyatt Regency McCormick Place – Hyde Park 11AB
Award Presentation, Ticketed event

Dinner with Z
Monday, 07/01/2013 – 07:00pm – 09:00pm

ALA Council Forum II
Monday, 07/01/2013 – 08:30pm – 10:00pm
Hilton Chicago – Astoria Room
Other

ALA Council III
Tuesday, 07/02/2013 – 07:45am – 09:15am
McCormick Place Convention Center – S100c
Governance/Membership Meeting

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Shared print initiatives: Skating to where the puck is going to be

Wednesday, June 12, 2013
Let's go to the library!

Let’s go to the library!

In 2012, our library completed a major, thorough facility inspection and a consultant-led space planning program (yes, with all kinds of buy-in and focus groups and active sessions… by the end, I was thoroughly tired of being perky). Our next step is to tie this work into an architectural vision of what our library, post-renovation, will be.

In commissioning the building program, I specified to the consultant that I wanted two scenarios: one based on retaining most of the print in the library (excepting those materials that we are culling due to being duplicates, outdated materials, or irrelevant to our mission), and another in which 80% of the materials — those that are very low use — are off-site in shared storage, where they can be retrieved within one or two days.

The latter scenario accomplishes several key objectives.

Points one and two: it’s all about me (and us)

First, in our compact but lovely building, we get much more space for student learning: classrooms, carrels, study rooms, computer stations, ultra-quiet area, etc.  In the end, shared regional storage will be much more reasonable per square foot than new construction (if new construction were even a possibility on our campus). Reusing existing space is the green approach.

And for anyone who has seen our library, if you can look past the ancient furniture and ghastly 1950s linoleum (hey ma, I learned a new phrase! “9 hot, 12 not”), the building itself has a striking Midcentury design that’s worth preserving for at least one more generation if not longer. Milton Pfleuger may have been 50 years ahead of himself in extravagantly daylighting the main level of a campus library, but we’ve caught up to him today. (Unfortunately, so has global warming — with all-time-high usage and no a/c, on warm days it’s a wee fragrant.)

Second, relocating the low-use materials makes our higher-use items far more visible. Every librarian understands that when you weed a collection, circulation goes up. And in case you think that 80% is too sharp, well over 90% of our print collection has not circulated in the last ten years if not longer–a very typical statistic.

In which I digress about the power of a good (e)book

(I have a sidebar regarding circulation that I absolutely must include because it’s so fascinating. We have a small popular-reading ebook collection — the kinds of ebooks you can check out on tablets and phones. Not too many titles, around 500; circ activity looks modest at first glance. I was actually thinking, in the manner of someone who manages the budget and the work effort, should I keep or kill this service? So I looked at our two-year circ behavior yesterday: 60% of that collection has circulated. I can tell you that with every effort to promote materials, less than 5 percent of our standard print collection circulated in the last academic year. I still need to break out our new-book and popular-reading circ, which will be better, but especially with exhausting our book budget by January, which meant no more new books, period, paper or electronic, until, well, next week, that’s pretty interesting. I am sure faculty and staff are driving the ebook circ because our students don’t have tablets, for the most part, reflecting Pew’s recent findings.)

Write this down: shared print is good stewardship

Uh, where was I? Anyhoo: third, for those who understand that not only is not everything “online,” but not everything is ever going to be online, shared regional storage is crucial stewardship for print books. Let me repeat: shared print is good stewardship. Stored print is just a way to house books today, not that I wouldn’t give my eyeteeth for an easy solution to all that “stuff.” Shared print is long-term curation–the stuff of leadership.

Shared print forces us into intentional curation agreements where we understand how many copies of a book are retained, who is retaining them, and under what conditions any one item can be deaccessioned.

Fourth, shared print provides a sharing alternative for scholarly resources. Ebooks are convenient, until they aren’t, and a key reality is they can’t be shared.

Every time I bring up our two-scenario building program with an architect-type, the first thing they ask me is if this shared storage exists. My answer is “Not yet.” This is usually followed by a moment of silence, as if I had specified a library parking pad for flying cars.

Here’s that puck deal, and I don’t really understand sports, let alone ice hockey

But here’s the deal. When I arrived in late 2009, I immediately agreed for us to join a new resource-sharing network, so new it had no members and no name. (A facetious early name was “The Dude,” as in “get it from the Dude”; its final name, an homage to a historic road, is Camino, which has a shared catalog you can actually visit but in our own library is part of the secret sauce of our library discovery.)  That was pretty daring because our library had been circulating online for less than six months, most of its collection had not migrated online, and we essentially had no interlibrary loan service (if by “essentially” you mean anything other than paper forms).

Camino is still, but it’s growing, and it works. Camino provides a significant alternative to the many academic libraries in California that for one reason or another do not have access to Link+. And Camino gave us a premium resource-sharing service to offer our users–the ability to request books from libraries worldwide with a simple click on a button labeled “request.” (Simple to you, dear readers; there are many moving parts that make that happen.)

Plus, providing the logistical framework for making shared print happen is a major reason why, when Rick Burke approached me about Camino, I enthusiastically embraced this idea (and I kind of miss that Karen, the one who was so precipitous, though the new version of me is a much better manager).

Now I am one of many librarians saying shared print initiatives can, should, and will happen.  The main reason I specified an alternative building program, based on the lack of such an initiative, is to make it clear why and when this should happen.  As in, stewardship, and yesterday.

Let’s talk this to death for another twenty years, no please don’t

It doesn’t need to happen in one monolithic manner. There are shared initiatives everywhere. None of the answers we come up with today need to be the answers we use tomorrow. I keep saying that about Camino; the technology isn’t important, what’s essential is the commitment to resource sharing and the muscle-memory we’re gaining about how to cooperate and move materials among libraries that’s super-critical. I could make a cheap joke about the technology, Navigator, not being important to OCLC, either, based on the lugubrious pace of critical updates, but I’d have to exclude our ever-patient and wonderful implementation manager, who is all kinds of awesome.

The one thing I’d really like to avoid is having us hem and haw for twenty years and go around and around and around with the same conversations. Working with some amazing colleagues here in the Golden State, I’m doing everything I can to move us past the “kawfee tawk” phase and into some serious activity. I’m not the only one and I’m not even a major brain behind it all (though our library will be housing a major conversation later this month, so I am at least the food-hotel-and-conference-room brain). My cranium is mostly taken up with the first semester of my doctoral program, and yes thank you, there is some irony in the study of leadership eating up brainpower that could otherwise be deployed in the practice of leadership.  But it’s a worthy investment (yes, all is well, too busy writing to write, etc.), and all of it will happen, more slowly than I wish, but still it will get there — the doctorate, shared print, and our collective future.

 

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Life sans banana slicer

Tuesday, April 23, 2013

Dear somewhat-still-new librarian who did not receive a banana slicer (per a recent realia-based meme in which Some People were anonymously mailed banana slicers), was not anointed as a Mover & Shaker, has not been tapped for Emerging Leader, ran and lost for an association office or didn’t even get nominated in the first place, has been too busy raising a baby/goat/library/career/yurt to blog, tweet, post on Facebook, and publish all over the place, and at times feels a wee bit Uncool:

Banana slicers are hard to clean.

Many, many, many of those chosen over time to be Movers & Shakers are wonderful librarians. But statistically, not all.  (Please, M&Ts, do not read this as Free Range Librarian Is Trashing Movers and Shakers. It’s just a natural law of population density that if you gather enough people in one room, at least one will be a doofus.)

Emerging Leaders: see above, Movers & Shakers. Yes, it’s a wonderful wonderful initiative! Yes, it helps the young’uns grow strong librarian bones twelve ways! But the law of population density is immutable.

Lost an election? Didn’t even get nominated? Dodged that bullet!  (I grin over the fact that I serve on the ALA Nominating Committee… have been elected to ALA Council three times… and yet have never been nominated to run for Councilor at Large.) A colleague told me that Norman Horrocks,  one of the most significant, larger-than-life librarians to have roamed our world, ran and lost for ALA President more than once.

A lot of published library literature is simply terrible, and far too many bloggers are unacquainted with Mr. Apostrophe and Ms. Comma.  When the time comes to publish, you’ll have years of wisdom under your belt and far more patience with fiddly citation rules.

The odds are you’re amazing anyway.

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Dropped my MOOC. Picked up a doctoral program.

Sunday, April 14, 2013

I’m one of the vast majority of MOOC drop-outs, but in my case my course abandonment had two causes:

1. By the end of the 5th section, I had learned as much math as I need to know for the moment. What I wish for (and it probably exists) is an  app or website that would give me one or two problems per week to solve, so the stuff in my brain doesn’t slide out on the floor. My (mixed) review of life as a MOOC student will appear in a week or two.

2. I’m starting a PhD program in less than two weeks, and it’s already keeping me busy–my brow is still furrowed, just not over math. I feel anxiety going so public with this knowledge (the PhD, not the extent to which book-larnin’ furrows my brow), but eventually people are going to find out anyway.

To combat anxiety, I have been reflecting on some of the more improbable successes of my life. The day in 1985 I was commissioned in the Air Force, one of our leaders remarked that early on she had expected me to wash out. That possibility was on my mind for the entire twelve weeks, but somehow I survived a process in which candidates stronger, better-coordinated, and smarter than I had failed.

I am glad that leader didn’t share her thoughts in the beginning. I do remember the smile on her face the day I finally passed the long jump, my last obstacle to becoming an officer.  Wanting something doesn’t automatically make it happen, but in the words of grandmothers everywhere, “Can’t never could.”  (The story of that long jump is the opening to my food essay “Chow,” published in Gastronomica in 2007.)

So let me repeat: HOORAY! I’m starting a PhD program in two weeks! No, I’m not leaving my job! No, I’m not moving! Yes, I’m doing a PhD while running a small university library! The program has a very very long name! It’s at Simmons! That’s in Boston! That’s a long way from California! I will fly there twice a year and study under erudite scholars and professors of practice while averting my eyes from whatever fires get ignited back at the ranch! My cohort has 5 people, including me!  They’re nice, too! Yes, I won’t have time for literary writing! No, I haven’t mastered APA citation! Yes, I’ll complete the PhD in SIX WEEKS! All right, let’s say hopefully  four to five years, barring Life introducing other obstacles!

I’m surrounded by support — from my institution, from my library team, from Sandy, from my colleagues, even from the cats, who in the last six months became very accustomed to lolling in the sun, snoring gently, while I crammed for the GRE, worked on the application process, and post-GRE, studied math (not required for the PhD, and in fact part of my fallback plan in which I would support my own solo research by learning statistics).

I am also impressed by the extravagant welcome extended by the other cohorts–so much like the “radical hospitality” we strive for where I work. We may all toil in solitude, but we are not alone.

I also know why I am doing this. Of course, in any endeavor, reasons change along the way. But I’m in library leadership in higher education, or things related to it (or similar to it), for the remainder of my career, which will not conclude for a very, very long time. It only took me twenty years to learn the color of my parachute–talk about precocious!  Is a PhD necessary? Of course not. Will I learn from it, grow, and become better at what I do? Absolutely.  When it comes to education, it’s all good.

So, onward. As orientation approaches, I am nervously smoothing my starched pinafore, twiddling with my hair bow, rubbing the toes of my patent-leather shoes on my ankle socks, making sure I have a ruler and compass tucked in my Peechee — and very much looking forward to this next stage in my life. Viva learning!

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