Back to School Series Part II: Confluence

In an earlier post I waxed poetic about the ways in which my two courses this semester, The History of the Book (taught at the Library of Congress) and Foundations of Digital Libraries, might collide or coalesce in interesting ways. They have, although not in ways quite as obscure or dramatic as I may have imagined. In a very practical way, my expanding knowledge of these two subjects would be more than challenged by the good folks at the Semitics/ICOR Library at the Catholic University of America where papyri and ostraca are being digitized and cataloged in CONTENTdm.

The Catholic University inherited a large collection of ancient documents from Monsignor Henri Hyvernat, who founded the Semitics Department at the University, as well as the Institute of Christian Oriental Research (ICOR). This collection forms the core of the current library, now boasting some 45,000 volumes. Scholars of Coptic Christianity and other early Christian practices in the Near East have used and added to this collection since the 1940s. Now this collection is being digitized.

In the basement of Mullen Library, down several halls and around several corners is the tiny Semitics Library. You would never know this treasure trove existed unless you were trying to find it, which my class was doing last week. Inside there are two small offices and a reading room filled with ancient treasures displayed in glass cabinets. To say it looks like something out of Indiana Jones would be spot on: Curator Monica Blanchard told us the Discovery Channel once filmed there for this very reason. Blanchard deftly handles the ostraca and papyri collection with soft white gloves as she explains the restoration and digitization process. The collections are being cataloged in CONTENTdm through a collaborative agreement with Brigham Young University, and their Advanced Papyrological Information System (APIS) is made available online through Columbia University.

Tech Fair 2008: How to Get Users Excited about SEARCH

I am a proud member of my organization's technology team. In the past I have done trainings on Web 2.0 basics, advanced search strategy, and social bookmarking. I usually give out Google posters with search tips as prizes and incentives. Our team's upcoming training (which was supposed to be a "back to school" activity but will now have a Halloween theme) is a "Tech or Treat" afternoon with five tech stations and trainers throughout the office to help staff with various technology or research tips and strategies. Here is how we're planning it...

In late August, each member of the tech team decided on a specialty and then started keeping notes on FAQs about that topic among our 25 or so staff members, as well as popular shortcuts and tips. We will be covering web searching, Microsoft Office, preparing web-ready content, Blackberry troubleshooting (we do not have real phones), laptop tuneups and Constant Contact, our mass mailing software. 

Next, the tech team met to decide on a few key points to emphasize about each topic. In the coming weeks we will be doing informal "walk-around" surveys to ask staff what they feel their comfort level is (low, medium or high) with each topic, and we will use this information to group teams for the Tech Fair, which is now scheduled for October 28th. Luckily, we have the endorsement of the Executive Director, so we expect that all staff in town that day will attend. 

The event is scheduled for 2-5 PM. We will all meet together in our main conference room to kick off Tech Fair 2008 and introduce staff to our new tech wiki, which features links and FAQs for all equipment and software that we use. The staff will then split up into their pre-assigned teams and go station by station on the half hour. Each team will have to ask and answer key tech or search questions to compete for some final prizes, and we will have Halloween candy at each station.

By integrating search training into general tech training, and by having the librarian on the tech team, I feel that our office is growing toward being more savvy with information AND technology, and all of the various ways that they go together. It's an easy way to get people excited about search.

Reflections on the 2008 National Book Festival

On Saturday I attended the 2008 National Book Festival. Overall I found the Festival to be an event about inclusion more than reading, but with a good message that everyone should have access to books and authors, and anyone can write a book about anything. The most striking thing about this event is that it is the polar opposite of what some would think a literary festival would be. If one imagined the festival based on book stores, book reviews, book magazines, and people known to be bookish types, one might expect the Festival to have an air of affluence, scholarliness, seriousness, formality, entitlement, historical purpose and authority. (Read Heidi Julavits' March 2003 Believer piece as a case in point.)

Instead, the Festival seemed to me to be a big, muddy party on the Mall. It brought to mind Emma Lazarus’ 1883 poem The New Colossus, of Ellis Island fame and now in the Statue of Liberty. As I was walking the Mall Saturday, I thought of Lazarus’ words, "Give me your tired, your poor, Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, The wretched refuse of your teeming shore. Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me, I lift my lamp beside the golden door!" Instead of aloof, pensive, coffee-house intellectuals hanging on a writer’s every word, I felt I saw the diversity and breadth of American readers, and for that matter, American citizens. 

The Festival was casual, with people undaunted by three days’ mud on the walking paths. People ate during the presentations, stepped out of tents to take cell phone calls, or camped out in Harley Davidson T-shirts to get a glimpse of popular children’s authors. People got up to ask Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison questions without preparing their remarks or removing their hats or introducing themselves. I think this is great: the proximity, both literally and figuratively, that Americans have to great writers via the National Book Festival is generous and ingenious. ANYONE can ask a question of a U.S. Senator this way, or of Salman Rushdie. And when Daniel Schorr was asked about the role of the media in presidential politics by a less than nonpartisan attendee, the attendee was booed and yelled at from others in the audience screaming that he should ask his question and get out of the way. The Library of Congress organized the Festival, but the People were in charge. 

The Festival mirrored the same inclusion and acceptance that Lazarus spoke of, which I believe is the most treasured value of Americans. The fact that this value is manifest at a book festival was a bit surprising, but it makes me hopeful for the future of books and democracy in America—two freedoms that are inextricably linked.

Banned Books Week - Cause for Celebration?

Why do we celebrate Banned Books Week? Well, it's a worthy celebration, but a more apt title would be "Freedom to Read Week" or "Freedom of Ideas Week." I think this topic is more complex than most readers acknowledge. It's no fun to celebrate a negative thing, but if that injustice is still pervasive in many parts of the world, then it's important for those of us who have the right to read as we choose to do so and to celebrate this right.

I learned this lesson through the lens of another issue: gay rights. I remember having a college professor look me in the eye and tell me he was not against gay rights but then he said unequivocally, "What I am not in favor of is gay pride!" He was a professor I respected and I think this really mixed me up for a while. I think what he meant was that this is a difference we're entitled to, so why focus attention on it as if it's a virtue?....sounds a bit like Banned Books Week.

In the ten years since I graduated from college I have thought of that conversation many times and have come into my own in terms of challenging that professor should our paths meet again: so long as gay rights are not universal, I applaud any and all celebration of the rights that are secure for the gay community (which, by the way, are not all-inclusive...as if we didn't know). Gays in Israel and Palestine need to see Americans celebrating this difference so they can at least have a distant glimmer of hope for their own situation. (Sorry for this diversion into non-library matters. I just watched Freedom on the Rocks.)

But when I promoted this post last week I called it "I can think of worse things than banning books..." and I can. What is the real problem with banning books (there is one, this is not a rhetorical question)? The problem is that the people for whose supposed benefit the books are burned do not see the power play in progress: if a book is banned or burned, it's probably a book I want to have. So the real injustice is either people not knowing that or not having any recourse to obtain the information being banned.

In this month's Harper's there is a great article that finally confirmed for me that I am not the only one thinking along these lines, although I admit it is totally unconventional. [I also highly recommend (for what that's worth) the article entitled The Western Cannon by Jason Armagost.] John Leonard, in his review of A Universal History of the Destruction of Books, brilliantly points out that, "The fact that 15 million books were destroyed in Poland from 1939 through 1941 is not the most important thing to know about the Holocaust."

Celebrating the freedom to read is fantastic, and working for greater freedoms everywhere is even more fantastic. From where I sit that means increasing access to transportation for the sick, elderly, working poor, veterans and people with disabilities. So I think there are greater lessons to be learned from Banned Books Week than those contained between the covers of a codex. What do you think?

Embedded?

Okay, I have avoided this topic long enough. For several months my "Coming Soon" sidebar has promised a post on whether I am embedded or not. While I am not ready to reconstruct my blog with a new address (I originally tried for "Sassy Librarian," but that was taken), I am ready to open myself up to the possibility that, as many have suggested, I am not, in fact, embedded, but "only" a special, solo librarian in as traditional a sense as that job can be.

I have tried to remember where I originally heard the term "embedded librarian" and why I grew to see this position that way. I remember that the first time I heard Susan Fifer Canby's brilliant notion that "special librarians work in the white spaces of the organizational chart" was when her colleague Karen Huffman addressed my Information Systems class last fall. Perhaps I have confounded the terms "special librarian" and "embedded librarian," and perhaps the latter term is too young to warrant a full-on debate of my status.

Mary Talley and Dave Shumaker are currently researching this topic through an SLA research grant. Their survey takes into account organizational structure, proximity to physical library resources, administrative reporting requirements (i.e. is your boss a librarian?), and other criteria that will eventually lead to an operational definition of embeddedness, or at least a cogent spectrum of models of embeddedness. While the vast majority of my Google alerts on "embedded librarian" return tales of academic instruction librarians embedded in Freshman Composition courses and accounts of media librarians embedded with subject specialists, I still feel a pull toward the moniker because of the structure of my position within this organization.

I work with transportation people. We have a dozen or so technical assistance specialists, a webmaster, a finance department, and me. I do manage a print library but that is a very small part of my job. I am not exactly part of the "program staff," but I am more involved with the substance of what we do than the accountants and the webmaster. My boss has tasked me with becoming a "content generalist." So far, maybe I am just a solo special librarian in a very small organization that is going digital. But consider this....

My salary comes from three separate federal grants, each of which calls for a part-time information specialist to carry out its strategic goals. My primary project, which determines who my supervisor is and how I spend most of my time, is to provide information services to a National Resource Center that is housed at our organization. The National Resource Center team consists of six staff people: five program staff and me. While in our team meetings, I feel I am the quintessential "embedded librarian." I am a full-fledged member of the team, but I have funding through them because they need an information specialist. Parts of what I do may not be considered library-like, but all my tasks can be improved by drawing on my library science education.

So where does that leave me? We may have to wait for Shumaker and Talley to publish their study before making an informed decision. In the meantime, I hope this topic will encourage the blog-comment-activity I have tried unsuccessfully to encourage on this site, but which will be a nice primer before I draft my "Controversial Topics" posts later this fall.

Back to School Series: Part I

Over the next few weeks I will be chronicling the juxtaposition of my two fall courses, History of the Book and Foundations of Digital Libraries. So far, the overlap is clear. Both professors, in different buildings, on different days, in different quadrants of the District--and they have different native languages and home countries--uttered this maxim: "There is nothing new under the sun." Professor Delfino drove this message home by tearing up a copy of From Fields of Gold by Alexandra Ripley, and then having us narrate our reactions as he pulled the pages from the spine. We learned that our feelings about destroying an "old" medium would likely not be replicated by watching him delete an electronic text file, but there would still be some analogous loss. There is nothing new under the sun. The issues we are dealing with with e-books are not so different from the issues we dealt with when transitioning from orality to literacy. We also learned that we are still in said transition (and we got to play with a Kindle!). Perhaps the most important moment in class was when Professor Delfino said, "Wikipedia is a fact of life." Later in the semester each student will fact-check and enhance the content of a Wikipedia entry about publishing.

Professor Choi wisely made us go all the way back to Vannevar Bush's As We May Think to ground our study of digital libraries and prepare us mentally for the digital collections project that will account for most of our semester grade. We got one hell of a history lesson from her on Day 1, which occurred conveniently less than 24 hours after Delfino's dramatic spectacle. There is nothing new under the sun. As humans we will continue to create and synthesize content, and then automate access to that content, whether our medium be digital libraries, hypercard stacks, or compact shelving.

Stay tuned for more confluence and collision as I navigate my penultimate semester of library and information science!

Transferable Skills Part 2: From Linguist to Librarian

In my former life I was a linguist, or at I least aspired to be. I wouldn't describe this as a complete waste of time (even though I hurried back to school to get my MLS after only two years on the job market with my MA in linguistics). Au contraire...studying syntax got me into programming, and programming got me interested in information science.

One of my favorite topics in linguistics, and the fastest way to explain the field to those who think it is the work of William Safire, is to describe the interplay between prescriptive and descriptive approaches to language use. In a nutshell, look up the word unique in the American Heritage dictionary and compare what you find there with the Oxford English Dictionary's entry for the same word. Not all dictionaries are created equal. Linguists can create a whole curriculum based on dictionary comparisons...but does the average person even know who wrote his or her dictionary?

The same can be said of search engines. People like to claim that their information came from an authoritative source, without knowing much about that authority. "Google said so" is not a far cry from "it says so in the dictionary." Get to know your sources. There is more than one way to write a dictionary and build a search algorithm and to the lay person these distinctions are often overlooked. There are ways of diplomatically explaining this and reaping the benefits of all sources. It starts by acknowledging that there is more than one place to go for information.

But it begs the question: is there truth, or is there only information? What do you think?

Guest Blogger Steve Jeffery: How Job Hunting is Different for the Non-Traditional Librarian

Steven Jeffery is an embedded subject specialist librarian at a state agency who is finishing his MLIS at the University of Wisconsin – Milwaukee. His interests include information architecture/organization as well as web development.

As I was looking at signing up for my last three classes in the fall I decided to take a bold step and start looking for a full time job prior to graduating. I did this for two important reasons. The first was cost. As I calculated it I would be far better off financially to find a full time job and spread out my last few classes than to continue in grad school full time through the rest of the 2008 calendar year. The second reason was that I could. I was enrolled in a program that offered both on-site and on-line coursework, making the transition completely seamless. From there I had to decide what I was going to do. I am something of a self-taught IT generalist and I wanted to work in an environment where those skills would be utilized. Along with this I recognized that most library environments were not dynamic enough to hold my interest. Beyond this I was really not at all certain what I wanted to do or where I wanted to work.

My first step in my job hunt was to get advice from my professors and to work on my resume (which you can find if your Google-fu is strong). The immediate problem that I encountered in getting advice is that most professors in my program had been in academia for at least five years and few had any experience with non-traditional librarianship. This is not to say that they were not able to provide advice (and a couple of them were fantastic) but I had to disregard much of it as being not applicable in the corporate world. One example of this would be volunteer service. Public librarians in particular will emphasize the importance of having experience in a library setting. In the public environment this may be true, but in special libraries (and the corporate environment in particular) its value is much degraded. While doing this I was also trying to improve my resume. I recognized that most jobs I would be applying for would be at larger corporations and so I attempted to tailor my resume to this. The largest issue I ran into was that few people could fully understand my background. People in IT would ask where my programming skills and project management background were emphasized, because to many of them that is the extent of IT. Librarians would ask about my volunteer service and cataloging work. Those in business would read through it and not understand more than every few words (and miss the concepts entirely). I never did find a good solution to this, but I think the final result was acceptable. After this I began my job search.

Living in a major city at the time I used a number of different job boards. My list of these and comments are below:

• Indeed – Probably the best as well as the easiest to use.


• Monster – Overall it was pretty good but failed in many cases because the more entry-level/early career jobs tend not to be posted here (probably due to the cost of posting)


• Milwaukee Jobs – Terrible sorting of results but was overwhelmingly the best for local jobs


• CareerBuilder – I believe the only thing I ever got out of here was spam


• Dice – Helpful but most of the jobs are heavily programming oriented

Once I had my list of sites I then conducted regular searches based on a keyword list (developed from my resume). I tried to do the searches twice a week, usually on Wednesday and Sundays. I would conduct the search for the keyword and open all of the jobs that were a possibility in a new tab. When I was done with the site I would quickly browse through every listing and print* all of those that were a strong possibility. Finally, I would thoroughly go through each and apply to those that I was interested in. This also helped when interviewing so that I could know exactly what had been communicated. In addition to this I kept a spreadsheet containing the company, job title, posting date, submission date, submission format, etc.

Results
There are daily stories in the news about the state of the economy and the difficulty in finding jobs but from what I saw this is not true for this industry. Those businesses that recognize a need for these skills are unlikely to not hire for them because of an economic downturn. Once someone begins and demonstrates their success, their position is much more secure both because of the niche factor (nobody is available to cover for the position) and hopefully the outcry from other employees that depend on the position. The position which I eventually took was not in the corporate world but in a government library. This was for a number of reasons but the most important was the challenge. The position was as a subject specialist at a library where none had ever been in any kind of similar role. And while the pay is low by most standards the opportunities and the challenges make it worth it.

* I would keep printed copies of all job postings and correspondence as postings tend to disappear after a few days to weeks.

Librarian as Patriot

I am patriotic. I am liberal. I am anti-war. And in what I feel is in no way contradictory, and in every way a natural outgrowth of these traits, I am a librarian. Libraries and librarians are two of the most enduring manifestations of American values and the American dream: inclusion, opportunity, free enterprise, freedom of information, education, free speech. Some things in life are free. Be one of those.

Sixty-six years ago, in a letter to SLA president Laura Woodward, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt heralded the work of special librarians as being "on America's front line." We can be. Are you? An oft-quoted part of that letter says special librarians do their work "anonymously and unsung." While this is a fitting tribute to many, there is no reason the anonymity has to continue. Express your librarianship, and your patriotism, with pride.

To those who know me it comes as no surprise that in my library office I have a large American flag, on the North wall, to its own right, as specified in flag code. Not only am I a patriot, I am a patriot who is not afraid to show it, and not afraid of those who think the flag, particularly since 9-11, belongs to the right or to those who openly support the current war(s). I have flown my flag since long before it was commonplace, and I will continue to do so even when the contemporary yet precarious popularity of flying it fades.

FDR's tribute is as timely as it is timeless, even if it means different things to different people.

Access to a transcription of FDR's letter appears in "Selective Publication of Information" by John Sherrod, on page 387 of the 55th Anniversary issue of Special Libraries, July-August 1964, volume 55, number 6.

Information Empowerment

What are you doing to empower others to access and use information for the benefit of your organization's mission? Consider asking to be included on various work groups' conference calls, ask for a "spotlight" in the organization's newsletter, or request five minutes on someone's meeting agenda. Add a "Meet the Librarian" blurb to your organization's website and/or the intranet. Keep it short and sweet: describe the information products and services you offer, be open to feedback, and solicit training suggestions (keep in mind that some employees will prefer group training and others will prefer one-on-one training). Let them know you are there! And smile....

Ready About? Transferable Skills for the Embedded Librarian

Yesterday I sailed for the first time in my life. And I mean, I sailed. My boss, whose boat I had the pleasure of sailing on through the Chesapeake Bay, let me steer for a while. All I had to do was choose a fixed point on the horizon and pretend I was guiding the boat toward it. Easier said than done, but it worked. And with a little more practice, the feel of the delay and the muscle memory will help me steer much better. Knowing yoga proved to be an excellent transferable skill for steering a sloop (and spending a few hours with sailors transfers well to crossword puzzling). Guiding the steering wheel was very much like learning tree pose (vrikshasana): choose a fixed point; breathe in; remember your objective; breathe out.

Object, inhale. Objective, exhale.

If your job description is fluid, know what you know, and be ready to demonstrate it if asked. Most librarians have had other careers, and so they have other skills. Use them. Bruce Rosenstein uses this model for marketing specifically, but it works for librarianship in general:

• Know what you can do.


• Tell them you can do it.


• Do it.


• Tell them what you did.

Yesterday I steered my boss' boat, and although I was only able to maintain this for five minutes, he was watching, so he knows I am capable. He also knows that I have been trained on advanced layout techniques in Adobe InDesign and Photoshop, just to give one concrete example, so if the opportunity arises for me to get into more publication work here (or publish my own library newsletter!), I'll be ready, and he'll know that I'm equal to the task.

Will you be ready if your boss asks you to steer?

Beyond 2.0: The Internet Librarian Conference 2008

Get ready for the 2008 Internet Librarian conference! This year's theme is Beyond 2.0: User-Focused Tools & Practices. Pre-conference workshops offer everything from advanced search techniques and social networking for libraries to a two-day K-12 track for school librarians.

The conference, to be held in Monterey, California, will feature many of the biggest names in the Library 2.0 world, including SLA President Stephen Abram, Information Broker Mary Ellen Bates, and Sophia Guevara of the Kellogg Foundation. Special sessions include webmetrics exploration using Google Analytics, and library automation (a hot topic this year)! Also, don't miss the exhibit hall with representatives from top vendors and i-schools. A great place to network and pick up some S.W.A.G. ("stuff we all get").

Be there or.....attend virtually, by following the conference wiki and blog.

Postcard from Copyright Camp

This week I am attending the Institute on Intellectual Property Issues in Library and Information Centers at the Library of Congress. We are learning from such reknowned experts as Kenny Crews, Donna Ferullo, Marybeth Peters, Georgia Harper, Seth Watkins, Scott Bain, Cindy Weber , Dave Shumaker, Kim Kelley and Beth Winston.

Thursday's Supreme Court ruling regarding the DC handgun ban, in addition to coming from within shouting distance of LC, set an interesting backdrop for our discussion of DRM and fair use. Shall we go with what we think the framers intended two hundred years ago or shall we interpret the law in today's context? Some contemporary issues in which the fair use doctrine, section 107 of USC 17 (The Copyright Act), impacts library and information services include digitizing public domain works, preservation of library materials, the TEACH Act, and section 1201 of the DMCA regarding anti-circumvention technologies.

We also visited the Institute for Museum and Library Services where we heard from Kaydian Smith about the inherent tension's between WIPO's stance on protected cultural expresions from indigenous communities and UNESCO's draft provisions for preservation and dissemination of those expressions.

A Tribute to Iowa Libraries

During the two years I lived in Iowa, I probably spent half my waking hours at one of three local libraries: the main library on the east campus of the University of Iowa, the downtown Iowa City Public Library, and the Coralville Public Library, which was three blocks from my house. Both the campus and the community are blessed to have a very strong library system with competent, caring people behind the reference desk.

At the campus library, I spent hours in the east wing of the 4th floor, near the P118s and such...tracking down books for the professor I served as a research assistant. When you are that high up in the library, especially on the far east side near the windows overlooking the education building, the Iowa wind can be so strong, whipping as it does on the old campus buildings, that you can barely concentrate. Rows of study carrels give way to doctoral students' cubicles (a little nicer, with cabinets), and at the end of the wing you'll find small offices with closing doors for visiting scholars. Near the central corridor of the 3rd floor are the bound theses and dissertations that always greeted me with a rather foreboding presence as I made my way toward the serials starting with "J."

At the Iowa City Public Library, which opened a completely remodeled branch while I lived there, I attended a City forum in which citizens were asked for public comment on proposed redevelopment of the downtown area, specifically looking at mixed-use buildings. The community rooms in this library probably get as much use as the stacks and newspapers. Active civic engagement is a big part of Iowa City life, and the library--located in the center of the pedestrian mall--is a huge part of that lifestyle. From the main reading room you can look out over the ped mall summer concerts, Marco's Grilled Cheese stand, and a group of Hacky Sackers playing and skating in front of the Tobacco Bowl.

The Coralville Public Library is where I tutored an African friend who was learning to read and trying to make it as an immigrant in Southeast Iowa. The librarians always helped us find a quiet corner where we could work together and still be able to talk at normal volume. The video collection and large print chapter books were great literacy aids that were offered to us. We also spent a great deal of time across from the reference desk, learning how to use an atlas one week, an encyclopedia the next, and always looking up a few words in various dictionaries before leaving each time. The reference desk greets you right as you walk in, and they have a great view of the community display case which, in the time I lived there, featured such important community groups as La Leche League, a local cancer support group, and of course, information on the local farmers market, which met just behind the library, often with live music in the summer. My husband started a magazine writing class with the help of the Coralville Public Library, and was still dependent on their assistance and their Internet connection when he had his first short story published. We will forever be indebted to Iowa Libraries!

Hold a good thought for the people, and the libraries, in these communities.

Postcard from New Orleans

At our annual conference last week, I proudly introduced myself as "the librarian," since our staff is pretty small and newcomers were easily spotted by members and board members. I was told more than once that I did not look like a librarian, but never during my session on social bookmarking, which garnered much interest, enthusiasm, and yes, praise (that's just for me to keep in mind for my performance review)!

The link between del.icio.us and our members' notions of what the company librarian does was easy to forge-I began by saying that librarians organize information and, based on the system they use to organize it (be it a card catalog or a del.icio.us account), they use that system to find the information later. So far, so good. The del.icio.us presentation came through almost more easily than the wiki presentation, so needless to say we sent a message. The best part was being able to tell the audience, some of whom were just learning to use Google, that we are only one step ahead of them so we will continue to reach out to them and help them expand their skills as we expand ours.

Key to both presentations were the Common Craft videos expertly produced by Sachi and Lee Lefever. And during a session I was attending, I was lucky enough to receive an email from Lee Lefever himself! Thank you, Lee Lefever. We couldn't do it without you.