Last night, in my IST511 class (Introduction to the Library and Information Profession) we did an activity that I enjoyed far too much. Dividing up into pairs, we each spent two minutes talking to our partner about something we were passionate about. I devoted 120 delicious, uninterrupted seconds to geeking out over opera. In return, I was treated to an enthusiastic description of crochet and its increasing popularity.
The purpose of the exercise was to teach/remind us that community conversations are easier when you discover what excites people. A great way to learn what a library members want or need is to ask “What do you love? What can’t you get enough of?”
My desire to serve my community, to connect people with resources, is what drew me to librarianship. Blogging about my journey is a pleasure, but sometimes feels a bit narcissistic. So that’s why this post is now dedicated to YOU. Really!
Instead of writing anymore about myself today, let’s talk about you. Whoever you are, librarian or non-librarian, friend or stranger… what are you most passionate about?
What ideas could you spend two minutes, or two hours, discussing non-stop? Sea creatures? Gourmet cooking? Aboriginal art?
What are the really nerdy things that you wish other people were as giddy over? What topic makes you jump for joy when you hear or read about it in the media?
Please share your enthusiasm in the comments below, whether in just one word, or several paragraphs on your favorite hobby. I’m sincerely curious and I promise to read every word.
P.S. Want to see two good examples of public libraries asking these sorts of questions? The Fayetteville Free Library has a first-rate Community Engagement Survey. Simple but effective, the form allows them to gauge their members’ interests and contact those who might have skills and information to share. The Geek the Library campaign (in the village of Hamilton and many other participating libraries) achieves a similar goal, giving the public a chance to express what motivates and inspires them to learn. How are other libraries initiating these conversations?
Although I’m enjoying all of my classes this semester, I must confess to some challenges when tackling the readings for IST 616 – Information Resources: Organization and Access. Librarians love acronyms. Although I am generally fond of acronyms myself, I seem to have met my match in this particular class regarding the number I’m able to absorb, understand, and remember: AACR2, DC, RDA, MODS, DACS, CCO, EAD, MARC, CDWA, VRA Core, TEI, CIDOC, ONIX, etc.
Last week, I cheekily shared my opinion that reading the textbook reminded me of this (only with no Robin Williams, so much less fun):
My mind is well and truly boggled by all these acronyms. Only the well-organized lectures of the professor, weekly visits to office hours, and class discussions with other students have kept me from losing my mind. I’m in the midst of making flash cards to aid my memory, but confess that I’ve viewed the above video clip multiple times as a stress-reduction technique.
Tonight, I’ve been skimming the AACR2 section of the RDA Toolkit in preparing for my Friday morning class. In spite of being blessedly free of acronyms, the reading is not without its challenges. My brain seems determined to treat it like semi-comprehensible legalese. What’s a girl to do when confronted with instructions like:
Base the description on the first part or, lacking this, on the earliest available part. For numbered multipart monographs, the first part is the lowest numbered part. For unnumbered multipart monographs, the first part is the part with the earliest publication, distribution, etc., date.
Why… remember her Marx Brothers, of course:
Here’s hoping I don’t have to invoke the Sanity Clause before the semester is through.
On the first day of Reference class, Professor Jill Hurst-Wahl shared a list she’d compiled of “Advice and Wisdom for New Graduate Students.” I’m finding it quite helpful. Take a peek and you’ll see that I’ve already highlighted a few of the most useful phrases. One of them is:
“Network, don’t be shy. Volunteer. Be active in any of the out of classroom activities.”
Anyone who knows me knows that I’m not shy. Unless I’m feeling particularly introverted, networking, volunteering, and being active in extra-curricular activities are my idea of fun. And there’s so much to get involved with. I’ve been attending weekly meetings of the Library and Information Science Student Assembly (LISSA), the iSchool’s chapter of the American Library Association (ALA). As a result of those meetings, I’ve already signed up for the following activities:
Helping to staff the LISSA table at the iSchool Student Groups Fair.
Based on opportunities I’ve heard about elsewhere, I’d also really enjoy:
Coordinating instructional learning sessions for LISSA members.
Blogging for the iSchool’s Information Space. (I submitted a form indicating I was interested, but no one has replied. This bodes ill for my blogging career.)
Reading the optional/enrichment articles mentioned in my classes.
Socializing with my fellow LIS students.
Completely reasonable, right?
Oh, and I’m currently taking three classes and working 20 hours a week. I also have a husband I enjoy spending time with, a niece and nephews who live close enough to visit, and friends in Hamilton whom I miss. Do you see the problem? In the absence of a TARDIS or a time-turner, I cannot possibly do all the mega-interesting things I’m convinced I simply must do.
Which brings me to the second crucial piece of Advice and Wisdom from the Reference class handout:
Don’t over-extend yourself.
I wondered (aloud, in class) how to reconcile those two contradictory bits of wisdom: get involved but don’t over-extend yourself. In response, I received the wisest tip yet, not from the handout, but from my professor:
You don’t have to do everything. It’s OK to say no to some things.
Simple advice, but will I listen? After a series of deep breaths and the donning of my thinking cap, I’ve crossed some non-essential items off the second list. (I’ll leave you to discover which ones.) We’ll see if I can become a more balanced person who commits just enough but not too much. Please wish me luck!
What about you? Do you over-extend? Wish you volunteered more? How would you prioritize my lists if you were me? I’d love to hear from librarians and non-librarians alike.
I mean this quite literally, because I’m a little bit in love with the Belmont Public Library for the birds. They are visited by a lovely variety of feathered friends, and whoever writes the captions does a nice job. I visit this site whenever I’ve had a particularly trying day. Check it out:
(Please note: all pictures and captions belong to the Belmont Public Library. I claim no ownership, I just want to share the joy.)
I just read a post called “Where Reference Fits in the Modern Library” written by White Plains Public Library director Brian Kenney for Publishers Weekly. It’s a thoughtful and impassioned piece, although slightly woeful, in which Kenney suggests that library reference services have “just disappeared” and “no one in the library field seems intent on figuring out what happened.”
He goes on to talk about how library members have less interest in traditional reference resources, but do want help “doing things” (like using the technology that’s become ubiquitous in our daily lives) rather than “finding things.” With that, I wholeheartedly agree. Kinney says that “it’s time to acknowledge that something else… is taking the place of traditional reference service in public libraries” and reassures librarians that there’s room for hope but that “the challenge isn’t going to get any easier until we start talking about it.”
I’ve never met Brian Kenney. I do know that he is an intelligent and highly educated librarian who started his library science degree while I was still in 3rd grade. I also agree with him that traditional reference services, with a stern-looking librarian sitting behind an imposing desk, are a thing of the past.
Stern librarian, surrounded by old books.
But I don’t see reference as having “disappeared” at all. Changed, certainly, but it’s not exactly hiding. Kinney’s examples don’t reflect my experience (either as a user, a volunteer, or a new professional) with libraries and their services over the past several years.
I’m not sure which library schools Kinney is referring to in this post, but I can assure everyone that far from “not discussing references services at all,” I’m currently taking a required course in library Reference & Info Literacy Services, learning new things, and enjoying it very much. In fact, one of my class assignments is to shadow a reference librarian for 6 hours this semester, and I’ll be conducting my observation at the Fayetteville Free Library which has three makerspaces on site and offers its members multiple resources for STEM learning, technology assistance, and job/resume/career help.
Hamilton Public Library. Photo shamelessly borrowed from their Facebook page since I’m reasonably sure the Library Director won’t mind.
Most of the librarians I know (especially my friends Bev and Hilary) are certainly not “clinging to an outdated reference mission.” As a matter of fact, I don’t think I know a single librarian who is “carrying on as though little has changed” or expecting to remain stationary at a desk all day (wearing the stereotypical dowdy cardigan sweater and sporting a severe bun in their hair, whilst speaking quietly, and shushing people).
The mental model of the old-school library/librarian may still persist in our society, but mostly as a humorous relic of the past. When I tell people that I’m pursuing an MS in Library and Information Science, the majority don’t even mention books but instead comment on how important technology is in the field, and what a wonderful community resource libraries are. They know that libraries aren’t dead, but serving their communities in exciting new ways.
Brian Kenney has written a good article presenting his experience, and if it serves as a wake-up call to reactionary, heads-in-the-sand reference librarians who don’t want to think about change, all the better! My experience has been somewhat different. And, yes, I fully acknowledge that I’m only a first-semester LIS student approaching this as a library user, volunteer, and community member, rather then as someone who’s been in the profession for years. But a large part of the reason I decided to change careers was hearing and reading librarians talk and write about how the profession has been changing and how they’re dynamically meeting the challenges inherent in the seismic shift.
Maybe I’m inexperienced and out of touch. Or maybe I’m just phenomenally privileged to only know forward-thinking librarians who have been talking about these issues for as long as I’ve known them. Either way, I’m all-in when it comes to my quest for knowledge and my goal to become a kick-ass Super Librarian of the Future.
Please tell me what you think. Is reference dead? Disappearing? Or responding well to change and thriving? What’s your experience with library reference services? I’m eager to know.
I may eventually submit this blog as a Maker Activity project for my IST 511 class, but honestly, it’s something I was already planning to do, and my intention is to continue it through grad school and into my career as a librarian.
This way to librarian adventures.
(What is a Maker Activity, you might be asking? That’s what I also asked when I started exploring graduate programs and started following librarians on Twitter. Librarians these days are all about maker spaces – and I say that in an awe-filled and enthusiastic tone. The short answer: places to create knowledge, ideally, sometimes with physical objects to show for it. The Fayetteville Free Library has three makerspaces. I’ll be checking them out in a few weeks.)
In which I explain my blog post titles
Being a voracious reader, I’ve always pictured my life as an adventure with myself as the protagonist. I try to live by Nora Ephron’s advice, “Above all, be the heroine of your own life, not the victim.” As a fan of 18th- and 19th-century English novels, I enjoy reading about the thrilling changes of fortune and often unbelievable circumstances found in novels like The Fortunes and Misfortunes of the Famous Moll Flanders by Daniel Defoe and The Life and Adventures of Nicholas Nickleby by Charles Dickens. I especially like the old-fashioned literary trope of using a descriptive title to summarize the whole chapter, usually styled as “In which the hero(ine) does such-and-such.” Although I trust my library career will follow an upward trajectory, unmarred by wicked schoolmasters or bigamous marriages, I believe it will still be an exciting and occasionally amusing quest for knowledge, both for me and anyone who kindly reads this blog.
The Adventures of Library Heather 