LibraryTechtonics

Blake at LISNews asked me to be a part of a conference call panel commenting on the WI situation where librarians now have new titles and pay cuts after a somewhat controversial restructuring, and that conversation is now available as LISten episode 12. Our panel of three (I was joined by Aaron Schmidt and Nate Hill) clocked in at around 17 minutes of talking, which is pretty good given that we covered a few angles of the story, and we had a really interesting discussion which is totally worth a listen. However, this story still rubs me the wrong way, and probably not for the same reasons as it bothers most other librarians.

This story is a tangled mess of issues that exemplifies our profession today:

• a library board director doing it by the numbers
• the library offering reduced-pay positions just to keep the positions and pay for rising health care costs
• librarians feeling pushed around and powerless
• an almost invisible community (at least, from the way this story plays in the press)
• everyone misunderstanding what librarians actually do
• what librarians should be able to do
• what librarians should get paid for their skills
• assumptions, assumptions, assumptions
• stereotypes about the internet, its users, libraries, and librarians

It makes me think about library culture, and how completely fuzzy it is, and how that part of the meta problem that keeps us from making any progress. Library culture, for a long time, has followed a “we tell you how do to it, and you do it” structure, and I’m surprised it’s worked this long. Library culture, like user-centric design, is not and cannot be entirely determined by libraries, librarians, boards, trustees, and parent organizations. It’s about being what we need to be and learning what we need to learn to serve our users. It’s following paradigm shifts (read Thomas Kuhn’s The Structure of Scientific Revolutions!), getting ahead of trends, learning to innovate in every area of what we do, NOT just technology. It’s about changing up our business model, to create better service models, to provide customer service that is taylored to our communities.  Because only the strongest, smartest, and most relevant paradigms survive.

I think libraries and librarians need to prove worth everyday, with every service, at every service point. Librarians need to understand people, understand their communities, to provide the right services, and to change minds. I believe firmly that the reason librarians can’t always get their head around new technologies is that they don’t understand the user behaviors of the people who use them, and how those user behaviors bleed into the real world, intentionally and unintentionally. Usability isn’t just a components of technology sciences, it’s about the everyday world, and user-centric design isn’t building something *for* users, but working with the community to build what works for them, digital or not.

Until we see and start to affect this paradigm shift in thinking, in education, in professional development, in everyday practice, and on the very meta level of library culture as not truly, selflessly focused on users and still too focused on controlled environments, we will continue to see stories like this as just another unfair blow against libraries and librarians, or just a problem with library education, or just a problem with technology use or non-use in libraries. It’s time for real change. It’s time to step up the game and innovate (in all areas), or die.

I received an email today from Stephanie Gerding announcing that her book The Accidental Technology Trainer is now available for purchase.  I wrote some snippets for her a while back about the Geek Out, Don’t Freak Out classes and the Netguides program, and I can see from the table of contents that the Netguides program definitely made it in as a whole sidebar (w00t!).  I won’t know about the rest of the content until I get my hands on a copy.   Congratulations, Stephanie!

I like writing snippets for books, because I can help the author and contribute to the content of the work, without having to write an entire book.  While I always enjoy a good challenge, finding myself in the middle of NaNoWriMo and sinfully behind in my word count is a sobering reminder of why writing a whole book (on my own, anyway) just isn’t on my list, and puts me in awe of those who can actually do it successfully.

Today is my one-year anniversary at Reading Public Library. It’s hard to believe I’ve been there a year, and at the same time, it feels like I’ve always worked there.

As it turns out, I was reminded of the anniversary of my blog on April 6, when I received the reminder email from my domain host saying that my domain would expire if I didn’t renew that very day. Scrolling back in my list of entries, indeed, my blog is now officially over two-years old, as of April 6. Who knew I’d get this far?

Talking to Meredith on the phone last night, she mentioned that it would be neat if I did a “year in review” post to celebrate my year at my job and blogoversary, since I’ve been so in and out about my posting, and she really wanted to hear more about what I’ve been up to. I think it’s a splendid idea, so I’ll take her up on it. It’s all kinda flown by… let’s see how much of it I remember… ;D

Activities, Achievements, and Whathaveyou, April 2005 – April 2006
(In roughly chronological order)

• Landed a gig as the co-manager of the PLA Blog.
• Started working at RPL.
• The “Free stuff to do in Boston” calendar entered it’s first full year of service to the online world. I’ve gotten emails from people, thank me for saving them all sorts of money, which is really all sorts of shiny.
• LibraryTechtonics.info celebrated it’s first blogoversary, with very minimal fanfare from me.
• Attended ALA Annual in Chicago as an official PLA Blog co-manager.
• Attended Simmons GSLIS Alumni Day 2005, then never blogged my notes , but met Claudette Newhall, which led to…
• …Visited the Congregational Library in Boston. Neat, old stuff for which Claudette has been working on creating an online catalog.
• Started a Flickr account for RPL, which is still growing and forming and stuff.
• Started the Geek Out Don’t Freak Out! series at RPL, which has been getting a good bit of play in the library blog realm, or at least in the emails I’ve been getting.
• Working with my boss Lorraine, the town tech guy Kevin, the NOBLE tech guy George, upgraded around 24 public computers from a very locked-down Windows 2000 environment to Windows XP with Office 2003 with a more “normalized” computing environment, just in time for my 8-month review.
• Wrote and article and gave a presentation at WebJunction on using Flickr in the library.
• Thanks to Jessamyn and Eli (where’s your blog URL? I can’t find it in my notes…), got to attend the Big Open Archive Announcement in October, and blog it live.
• Gave my very first conference presentation at Internet Librarian.
• Had my blog cited as having a “broad reach” by Walt Crawford. Shiny!
• Read 12 or so books for leisure (hurray!).
• Implemented a NaNoWriMo program at my library.
• Started the “Why librarians should read posts” — a.k.a. Mag Geektastic — for your reading leisure. Haven’t had much feedback on it, but I’ll probably keep doing it until someone tells me it sucks, and then stop.
• Started a “Train the Tech Trainer” program at my library, training designated contacts in each department (and whoever else can stop by) in various techie things (using the digital cameras, uploading to Flickr, using the wiki), who then go back and train their departments, as well as serving as tech points of service when I’m not around.
• Implemented a MediaWiki installation to serve as the RPL intranet-ish thing (which will then be ported from my domain to an intranet server once we have the money in July), with the side benefit (see also: ulterior motive) of priming the library staff to work on Wikipedia (it seems to be working, slowly).
• Took over the coding of the new item lists for the library, and will slowly be taking over the library website, complete with certain redesign fixin’s.
• Despite unnecessarily epic illness, attended ALA Midwinter in San Antonio, and wrangled bloggers successfully from the confines of a hotel room.
• Cited in an awesomely cool and very well written article by Ellyssa Kroski about the folksonomy (I did get your email, and see the article, and I’m sorry I didn’t talk it up more… It’s in The Long Queue…). I think I got cited in a handful of other articles, too, and I know that I’ve been linked to by bunches of blogs.
• Got mentioned a bunch of times in the Carnival of Infosciences (which I will take up soon) and This Week in LibraryBlogLand.
• Saw Cory Doctorow speak at MIT, and heard him say, so many times, that “librarians are culture heroes.” He signed my laptop, and I turned into a beaming, yammering mess with nothing intelligent to say. I dropped John Klima’s name (Congrats on the job! I’ll email you soon, John, I *swear*), scifi/fantasy zine guy gone rock star librarian, because they know each other. I’m such a geek.
• Was (proudly) dubbed a B-list blogger.
• Coined the term “The Long Queue.” You all know you have one. ;D
• Went to China with a delegation of American librarians and library workers to visit Chinese libraries and learn from Chinese librarians.
• Attended PLA 2006 here in Boston, all sorts of jetlagged-yet-bushytailed, blogging for PLA and writing for the PLA Daily News.
• Attended Simmons GSLIS Alumni Day 2006 and actually blogged *live* (what a difference a year makes ).

It’s been a busy year. I’m sure there’s a bunch of stuff I missed. I didn’t link to my stuff, since it seemed so terribly gratuitous, but you can always do searches on my site for anything listed here.

At some point, I’ll post a list of things I want to get done this year. My general plan: keep writing stuff you’ll find interesting, but still have a life. For now, I need to get a bunch of stuff done before an Open Archive webinar that I’m attending in a few hours.

Thanks to everyone for reading!

Chris Zammarelli over at Libraryola wrote a post about the notion of blogebrity in the library blog world (the “biblioblogosphere,” if you will), where he declares himself to be a C-lister and revels in his obscurity. It’s a really good and interesting post.

I, too, must revel. I had the honor of being ranked B-list by Mr. Zammarelli, and I love it (he expressed some concern at offending the B-list crowd).

I’ve even been deemed to have a “broad reach by some measures” by Mr. Walt Crawford (way near the bottom of the page), which is really ideal and also an honor. See, while I am buddies with various A-list library bloggers, I have always said that if I did achieve any level of celebrity in my life, it should be a niche celebrity. No bright, shiny lights, no multitudes of swooning stalkers, rag articles about where my next job might be, or who the baby daddy might be. Just people who appreciate my brain, sense of humor, professionalism, and knowledge. (Honestly lately I hadn’t felt very talented blogwise until I got a link from Siva’s blog about his Daily Show appearance. *Too hot* for words.)

The nice thing about the B-list is that my name gets around, but I’m not too all sorts of famous. At least I don’t think I am. I can afford to spend time talking to people, although I’m notoriously bad with email. My deeds are highly regarded and my potential remains promising, but I don’t need to live up to horribly high external expectations (my horribly high internal expectations, however, are another story).

While, for the most part, I have only myself to answer to or blame for anything I do or say here, I still feel guilty when I don’t have something for my readers, especially when there’s so much I want to share in what I’ve come to call The Long Queue. But I haven’t given up yet. I come, I go, I do it for fun and professional development. And people keep reading my blog, which will never, ever cease to be novel to me.

So it’s really not about fame, or hits and sessions. It’s about the fun and fullfillment meeting and helping people, sharing knowledge, and riding the shift.

Thank you, Chris.

While I continue to crunch the content of Monday night’s presentation by Cory Doctorow (he talks fast, a lot, and *everything* he says is interesting), I’ll distract you with the four things meme (as I’ve been tagged by Jessamyn).

Four Jobs I’ve Had
In chronological order:

1. Web site developer
2. Volunteer butterfly wrangler and question answerer (AMNH)
3. Assistant costume designer for a children’s circus
4. Librarian

You can find more on my history on my about page (yes Walt, I *still* haven’t updated it; it’s in The Long Queue).

Four movies I can watch over and over
In no particular order:

• Raising Arizona
• Hard Boiled [Lashou shentan] (almost anything Woo is brilliant, really, especially if it stars Chow Yun Fat)
• Empire of the Sun (first viewed at age 13; thus began my enormous, ongoing crush on Christian Bale)
• Battle Royale

Four TV Shows I Love to Watch
I don’t rearrange my life around television shows, but there are shows that I love to watch if I’m home/not busy and they’re on:

• Foster’s Home for Imaginary Friends (Eduardo is my *favorite*!)
• Adult Swim (I consider it one long show which varies depending on the day, where I can opt out at any time, especially since so these days much of it is just ugly filler… brilliant bits include: Family Guy, Futurama, The Boondocks, Cowboy Bebop, Big O, Ghost in the Shell, and Home Movies)
• CSI (the *real* one in Vegas, not the cheesy knock-offs)
• The Daily Show (I can watch The Daily Show at 11p if Adult Swim is reruns that I don’t care to see again, but worst case, I can catch the 7p slot, and get my “news” for the day)

Honorable Mention: Law and Order (all of them, really, though I’m a big fan of the Criminal Intent flavor, as Vincent D’onofrio is brilliant).

Four Places I’ve Been on Vacation
I don’t vacation much just for the sake of vacation, and even when I do, they tend to be of the longish weekend variety. Since money being tight has been a theme since childhood, big vacations aren’t normally in my plan. I do a lot of working vacations, which makes up for it. In any case, these are the pure pleasure vacation spots I’ve visited:

• Yarmouth, Nova Scotia
• Colonial Williamsburg, VA (when I was 12)
• Mt. Greylock & The Porches Inn, North Adams, MA
• Bethel & West Topsham, VT (visiting Jessamyn)

Four Favorite Dishes

• Sushi with miso soup (bento box, even better)
• Puerto Rican rice and beans with pernil (roast pork shoulder), yucca drizzled with olive oil and salt, and a little salad
• My husband’s doctored-up mac ‘n’ cheese from a box (usually includes veggie meat crumbles and veggies)
• Anything seafood that doesn’t involve tartar sauce, cheese, or mayo

Four Websites I Visit Daily
I really only visit three daily without fail:

• My MSN home page
• My Yahoo! home page
• Weather.com

Four Places I’d Rather Be
I’m not sure how to answer this. I like my home, I like my job, I like my life. There are countries I’d like to visit, like Japan, Australia, and New Zealand. There are places I’d like to visit and things I’d like to do more, like Vermont, Maryland, camping, hiking, geocaching, and more fun like that. There are friends I’d like to visit in places I’ve never been, like Phoenix, Los Angeles, and Portland in Oregon. But I wouldn’t “rather be” anywhere.

Four [fiction] Books I Recommend

• Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoevsky (a good translation)
• The Secret Agent by Joseph Conrad
• Norwegian Wood by Haruki Murakami (it’s a better book if you understand Japanese culture, especially in relation to psychology)
• The Unbearable Lightness of Being by Milan Kundera

Four Bloggers I’m Tagging

• Jen over at Not Too Late To Change The Name (good friend from Wesleyan)
• John over at Electric Velocipede
• My friend Colin (also from Wesleyan)
• Greg over at Open Stacks