Friday Jams! (12/19/2014)

Rachel:

Well, it's hanukah. חג חנוכה שמח as we say. (wow, blogger, that's where you're going with a hebrew font? wow.)

I can only think of two hanukah jams, so I will share them both with you.  First is this which I am not sorry at all about  HAHAHA.

Second is Matisyahu, of course. You can't say no, just try. see? you can't.

Well that's all a little ridiculous.

Erin:
As the end of 2014 approaches, I have been reflecting on my favorite albums of 2014. Teeth Dreams, the sixth studio album from The Hold Steady, is certainly on that list.

In February 2014, I went to The Hold Steady's 10th anniversary show. At that show, the filmed the video for the first single off Teeth Dreams, "I hope this whole thing didn't frighten you." They asked the audience to film the performance and the final edit of the video is a mix of professional footage and fan footage.

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Magical Thinking

In academic libraries, we've come to winter break.  If we're not actually off work, we have some time when there are no students and no faculty. I know that public libraries have a different schedule but surely there are similar times when the routine of the day to day calms enough for a librarian to start thinking.  Thinking big.

It is so tempting to think of all of the things that you can get done over break, or over the summer. I, for instance, according to this list, am going to catch up on my reading for an outside course, completely clean my house decimating the number of things I own, write two papers, outline a book, completely cull and reorganize my email, plan all of 2015 with subgoals any waymarkers, work on the library at my synagogue, apply to business school, do a 4,000 piece jigsaw puzzle while catching up on netflix, and, of course, catch up on all of my email and do budget planning for the next three years. Oh, and I have to also do that conference presentation.

It's break! I can do anything! I can do everything! It's break!

Now. Friends. I submit to you that whatever plans you have for break it is impossible to do them over break. It is possible that it is impossible for any person in any period of time to complete all of those things that you thought of. You simply cannot do it. I know I can't do it.

Even as I wrote the above paragraph I thought of about four more things that I can do can't possibly get done over break. So two things about the magical thinking of break:

There is a middle ground between doing all of the things you can never do and eating cookie dough in front of netflix for three weeks. Making the most of break means actually making it more relaxing and recharging for next semester. I've, sadly, found that eating cookie dough while playing Doctor Mario all day long is not the most reinvigorating. How do you, personally, reach a place where you're able to make progress on the things that are important to you while still making the most of break? It's different for everyone, so just think about that.

What other time are you able to sit down and think about all of the things that you need or want to make happen and still remain in a good mood than thinking about break? When the broad expanse of break is before us, possibilities are open. We can think "what WOULD I do, if I had all the time in the world?" Don't waste that feeling. Go ahead and make that list that not even an alien from the future could complete. Harness your dreams.

Knowing that I can't get all of this done over break and figuring out what is most important to me will let me set goals for each day where I am easily able to get everything done on my list, feel great about my productivity, and still chill out. I think I will be able to get more done AND feel more refreshed going in to next semester.

What's your plan for break? What is the thing that you're gonna get done? What is the thing you can't possibly accomplish?

Keep Rockin',
Rachel

All that you can't leave behind

In advance of upcoming renovations, MIT Libraries asked its users what library spaces should look like. The full list of notes from that session provides some really interesting insight into what academic library users want from their Libraries. The five-page document might not be entirely applicable to the work your library does, but it's well worth your time since it provides an enormous amount of insight into what your users might want your space to look like.

The tl;dr version of these notes comes from the summary blog posts. Generally, the feedback that MIT students gave is that:

• Library spaces should support a variety of activities
• The Library environment should be inviting and comfortable
• Library spaces should support technology.

Cool. I agree with that. Libraries should be inviting and comfortable spaces that support a variety of activities, including technology support. Well done, MIT students!

In the full list of notes, the students offer a variety of suggestions on how to accomplish these three goals, mostly through a mix of noise-levels and seating types. But also through a mix of activities, some of which are not Traditional Library Activities. My favorite piece of feedback from the full list of notes is "Mix fun and studies to attract people to the Library."

What the students are asking for is a Third place. It's not a new concept--create a place for people to spend time that isn't their workplace or their home. Or, in the case of college students, a place that isn't a classroom/lab or dorm/apartment/sorority or fraternity house.

It seems like we're always trying to get students into our libraries. We build coffee shops and makerspaces and large, open collaborative spaces for students to work. We are present on social media and engage with our users there. We build relationships with faculty and do outreach in their classrooms. We are present (and active) in the communities we serve.

But I wonder how much of this engagement from users is about getting them to consider the library as a third place and how much of it is to get students to make use of the collections we pay a lot of money to acquire.

So how do we do it? How do we "mix fun and studies to attract people to the Library?"

I suspect that the answer lies in the balance between our space and our collections/services. I think we have to loosen our grip on the notion that a Library is for housing collections and, in doing so, really open ourselves to the idea that a Library might also be for creating spaces for users to play games, take naps, and work together to create and display art. And that, in doing so, we will bring people into our libraries who will never make use of our collections.

What is one thing you can do right now to make your library a more third place-like space to people who have never stepped foot in your library before? Do it. Today.

Friday Jams! (12/12/2014)

Rachel:

I will make one concession to Christmas.  It is this GAP add from back in the day with Luscious Jackson. This one:

Okay but also there was the other thirty second spot that made me JUMP UP from however I was laying on the couch and RUN across the room to turn up the television volume. For this 26 seconds of pure joy: Yeah Yeah Yeah.

Erin:

I can't really compete with Rachel's awesome Luscious Jackson jam. So I'm taking it in an entirely different direction. 

I'm still stuck on 'do what you can to make a difference with what you have' jams. Say what you will about Phil Collins-era Genesis, but Land of Confusion is a great jam for when you need to dig a little deeper for the energy and enthusiasm to make a difference.

When I was looking for a version of Land of Confusion on YouTube,  I found this awesome Mashup of that song and Michael Jackson's Beat It. So it's not all seriousness here today, I suppose.

Actively Reject Complicity: On Radical Compassion

Our chancellor recently sent out a message about injustice, student protests, change, and caring.  One of the parts of the message that touched me the most was the phrase, "we must actively reject complicity." She also stated "we must and will hold one another accountable for instances of ignorance and cruelty."  Hearing these words from positions of power is meaningful. Leaders saying the right things doesn't always mean that things happen, but it does mean something.

Let's talk about actively rejecting complicity.  What does this mean for us in our lives and in our work?  I know I write about this a lot, and it is because it needs to be talked about over and over. So I'm not going to apologize about talking about the same stuff again.

Last week, Erin talked about radical hospitality, about "standing up and meeting the needs of your community" and how that will mean "putting the needs of your users ahead of your own comfort." You need to know, and be a part of, your community to be able to offer this radical kind of hospitality, and they need to know you so that you can build the kind of trust that creates change.  We shouldn't be afraid of taking the steps we need to take to be the kind of libraries we want to be. In fact, doing anything other than more and more meaningful interactions our communities results in increased isolation and obsolescence.


Actively rejecting complicity means, at first, realizing where there is complicity with injustice through what we do or think. Step one is hardly enough (although hard enough), what we need to do to get to an active rejection of complicity is to stand up and negate that complicity, to fight against assumptions, unthinking actions, and against injustice.

I do believe that fear is a huge barrier to actively rejecting complicity, because complicity isn't doing something, it is letting an injust system stand, which doesn't take any effort at all. We can confront that fear by reminding ourselves of the damage we do when we do nothing.

Above all, I think that actively rejecting complicity engages radical compassion and empathy. We need to step outside of ourselves and understand other stories (which is why I shared one of mine), we need to allow for nuance and diversity within all groups. We have to step back from ourselves.

It is so enticing to stand on what professional knowledge we've developed through education and experience. When we are working for change against systematic injustices, that knowledge is only one small part of the solution. It is definitely not the first step: the first step is listening, hearing, understanding. It is stepping back from all you know professionally, all you know personally, everything you know, to try to deeply understand the experiences of another. To understand their needs on their terms. Listen. Hear. Understand.

Stepping back and practicing compassion works on all scales. It helps us provide the best reference service to a student who, in the midst of finals weeks, doesn't need you to teach them how the scanner works, just needs you to scan the thing because one more thing is the last thing. It helps us develop the best instruction programs that are responsive to curricula and student experiences, centered in the life of the researcher instead of being centered in the library. It helps us notice where we fail to meet the needs of minorities in our community and see why that hurts our entire community. It helps us speak authoritatively on issues that are important to us and to our communities. It helps us sit down when we need to sit down and stand up when we need to stand up.


Any practitioner of meditation will tell you that this takes practice. So I encourage you to practice. A practice that is centered around a difficult problem, a difficult solution, and slow moving change also needs support: share your successes, your stories. Let us practice together.

I want us to be leaders. And leadership isn't about us. 

Work Hard, & Keep Rockin'.
Rachel

Take your passion (and make it happen)

Being the change you want to see isn't just about the change you affect in your own library. It's also about finding ways to contribute to librarianship. There are a lot of organizations, professional associations, and causes that need people to care deeply about them and you're only one person with a day job and a life to manage. If you're a passionate person, it can be easy to over-extend yourself by committing to too many things.

Tenure can make the waters of being an active professional even murkier. Being on the tenure track means you have to balance your passion with the kind of service that your institution values. It's also possible that your institution values other things (like publications or presentations) over service.

I thought about trying to give some advice on how to choose where to get involved, but thought better of it. Ultimately, being professionally active looks different for everyone. Ideally, it should be guided by the issues and ideas about which you feel passionately. Practically, it should make the best uses of your energy, resources, and talent. So I came up with four questions for you to ask yourself. You know yourself better than I know you, so let those answers be your guide.

Four questions to help you decide where to direct your professional efforts:

1. How many of your resources are you willing to part with?
When I say "resources," I mean: time, energy, and money. Some activities have rigid participation requirements that ask you to contribute a significant amount of time. Some activities require you to attend conferences, a task that your library may not be able to support financially. How much of your own dime are you comfortably able to part with and how much time can you comfortably give? Tailor your activities to that, and know that it's okay to choose not to be active in ways that require a lot from you.

2. Are you okay with giving your time to a large, bureaucratic professional association?
Even the smallest professional association is often a bureaucracy. If you choose to volunteer in one of these associations, you will probably be placed on a committee. Most of these committees do rewarding work, but some of them do work that doesn't provide an immediate payoff. And some of these committees do work that doesn't really feel rewarding at all. It's also worth noting that these associations often require that volunteers pay dues before joining committees, which may also serve as a barrier to your getting involved.

3. Do you prefer to act locally?
There are probably organizations in your community that could use your help and you have quite a few skills as a librarian that can help them. Volunteering at a school or for an on-campus organization is just as worthy an activity as being on a committee buried deep within the organizational structure of a professional association. Your efforts are often more immediately felt and helping people accomplish things they couldn't do without you is unbelievably rewarding. And not having to attend conferences or pay dues means that these acts of service are easier for people to do. It's also possible that you can find other areas of your library beyond your own department in which to be active. If you're in cataloging, consider doing reference hours or teaching a class.

4. What are you most passionate about?
In the end, the ideas and issues you love are where you should give your time, talent, and resources. Are you passionate about information literacy? Great! Are you passionate about library website usability? Right on! Are you passionate about making libraries inclusive spaces? Awesome! Identify what matters most to you and figure out where the people who also value that thing are. Often, that's where you should be, too.

A final thought:
This post presumes that you have the time and/or money to be professionally active. The truth is that some people don't have the luxury of giving away their time or their money. If you're lucky enough to have the time or money to spare, don't be a judge-y jerk about what other people are (or aren't) doing to be active in librarianship. Instead, direct that energy into finding ways to remove the barriers to entry for professional activities for other people who want to be active but can't.

Stay positive,
Erin

Friday Jams (12/05/2014)

Rachel:
Now that I have an increasingly administrative position, I feel much more like this. There's a lot of misconceptions about administration. I mean, we're not going to eat your eyes.

Erin:
This is my favorite Ben Harper song. And I feel like maybe we all need to be reminded that as small as we feel sometimes, there's always something we can do to make a difference.

Christmas is the Worst

I couldn't be in deeper agreement with the wonderful School Library Journal opinion piece by Kendra Jones, Ditch Holiday Programming.  In summary, her argument, which you should read and consider deeply, goes, you aren't expert enough to offer any holiday programming and your attempts at inclusion are misguided and possibly offensive.  I'm telling you, it's true.  I don't want your token menorah. I really don't want your tree and there is no language that makes me believe your tree isn't Christian.

Here's the thing, though. Christmas is the worst. The. Worst. And I don't even care. There is a reason why we let Christmas slide when it is (because it is?) the most all-encompassing and DEEPLY religious time of year. There is a lot of talk about how there is this secular Christmas. Look, you just said "secular Christmas," so it isn't secular. It's Christmas and even non-religious, agnostic and athiest Christians celebrate it. There are hundreds of winter holidays. Their presence in the same season does not imply that they are related to one another. Conflating other winter holidays into a Holiday Season is an erasure, a sublimation, an added slight.

So Christmas is everywhere, but I don't even care. I mean, whatever. Have it. I grew up in a non-religious American family. I got winter presents. There was a tree. I wouldn't do those things now, but I feel no need to stand up and demand a space at this time of year. I mean, it's great if you want to advocate to your peers on my behalf, but this is not a moment when I want to stand up and shout about what it feels like to be systematically excluded and to have my faith elided into yours. (Ḥanukah is NOT CHRISTMAS, it is not even close, not even in the same town.) If you ask me I'll explain (or refer you to the article above), but I'm not about to pitch a fit about it.  It's not important to take a stand on this hill.

Not on a hill that will be defended to the death. Why would we chose that moment, that thing, to take a stand on? No, it's a time for retreat every year. Because there is no way that we'll ever win this in a way that will mean anything really. Meanwhile, there are real things that we need to stand on: Can you adhere to your religious obligations without taking vacation days (are you allowed vacation time for this?)? Do you have to explain yourself if you do get to take time off work? Do you breathe a sigh of relief every time you see your religious building still stands, is not vandalized? That's just this fall, that's not counting every day things, and not counting the people that literally want me dead. So take the tree. It's a good reminder that I'm never truly welcome here. I'm not going to fight it. I'm saving my energy for a fight that matters, a fight that may save my life or livelihood.

Helping people to Do Awesome Things

My friend, @winelibrarian, writes a really great blog about Boss Stuff. Basically, she blogs about all of the things you wish your administrator would talk to you about.

Yesterday she wrote a blog post about learning to let go of control when you're in a management position and can no longer do all of the things. She points out that even when you have staff that Do Amazing Things, it's still not easy to let them do it. One of the things that struck me about this blog post was the list of "resolutions" at the end of the post--especially #3: If you think someone in your organization cannot do something so you'll just do it yourself, get them the training they need.

In librarianship, it seems like we go to great lengths to work around the people who we think can't (or, perhaps, can no longer) do the jobs they were hired to do.  Departments are restructured and job duties reallocated to work around people. We play Org Chart Twister to the point that when people look at how our institutions are structured, we have to explain how a certain decision was made because so-and-so doesn't do their job well. Sometimes I think we do this because we can't stomach the thought of letting people go who don't meet our expectations or do their share to realize our library's mission. Other times, structural situations like tenure make the decision for us.

Working around people to get things done is hard on everyone. People who have to absorb additional job duties have a harder time getting excited about coming to work because we teach them that being a conscientious, skilled worker leads to having more worked piled on you. People who have job duties taken away from them have a harder time getting excited about coming to work because they feel isolated and like their contributions to the organization don't matter. It's a lose-lose situation.

What if, instead of taking people's responsibilities away from them, we assess what they need to succeed and then provide them with as many resources as is reasonably possible? What if we identified the problems that hold them back and got their buy-in in identifying and implementing solutions?

I recognize that this approach won't work with every person in a library. Some people don't want to improve or can't be helped with any amount of resources. But what about those people who can be helped? Don't we owe it to each other to put our colleagues in a position to be successful?

I get it. This kind of coaching takes time--time that you don't have. You're being pulled in a million different directions by people and projects who compete for your attention and your resources. But the people who work in a library are, perhaps, it's most valuable asset. And what would it be like if we could put them in a position to Do Awesome Things?

Stay positive,
Erin

On radical hospitality

For me, the Unified Library Scene means a lot of things. It means collaboration across functional areas in libraries. It means putting library users squarely in the center of any decision you make about how your library runs. It means leaving Librarianship better than you found it.

But mostly, the Unified Library Scene means being the change you wish to see in both Librarianship and in the world.

Today, in the wake of the non-indictment of Darren Wilson in the shooting death of Michael Brown, the Ferguson-Florissant School District is closed. But the Ferguson Municipal Public Library is open. And from 9-3, they're inviting teachers and volunteers into the library to work with kids.

WE ARE OPEN! Teachers and volunteers are here 9am-3pm to help kids who can't go to school today. Library open 9-4, presuming it stays safe.
— Ferguson Library (@fergusonlibrary) November 25, 2014

The Ferguson Municipal Public Library also opened its doors to kids, teachers, and volunteers back in August after the killing of Michael Brown and the subsequent protests delayed the start of school in the Ferguson-Florissant School District.

This. This is what a library does. A library opens its doors to the community and meets its needs. Maybe that means building collections. Maybe this means building a makerspace so that users can dream and build and create. Maybe this means teaching classes on any number of topics relevant to the needs of the community. Maybe that means opening your library so that children in your community have a place to go and process their feelings and where teachers can continue the work of helping the children in your community grow.

The how looks different for every library in every community. But the why? The why is always the same. It is the job of a library and its staff to be hospitable in the most radical way possible to the community it serves.

It's possible that you didn't go into Librarianship to practice this kind of radical hospitality. Too bad. This is your job now, in a world that is increasingly and unequally unsafe for members of your community. It's possible that you think that Libraries are only for collections. Too bad. As R. David Lankes put it in this blog post, great libraries build communities.

Being the change means standing up and meeting the needs of your community. It means putting yourself at risk to ensure that your library is a safe space for the most vulnerable in your community. It means thinking critically about the collections you build and the services you offer. It means putting the needs of your users ahead of your own comfort.

So, here's the question: What is one thing that you can do today to practice radical hospitality to the community you serve?

Friday jams (11/21/2014)

Erin:
I was on vacation last week and was woefully under prepared for jams-time. Not so, this week!

I was listening to the Lydia Loveless album this week and the last track is a cover of the Kirsty MacColl song "They don't know." I didn't know it was Kirsty MacColl song, let alone that it had been covered by Tracey Ullman. For those of you who are too young to remember, Tracey Ullman's sketch comedy show is where the cartoon The Simpsons got its start.

Anyway, here is the Tracy Ullman version of the song:

And the Kirsty MacColl version:

Rachel:

Have I ever told you about the Cher Index of Personal Wellbeing? It's a scale I use to measure the level and nature of stress that I am under.  It uses a scale of 1 - 10, with 1 being not stressed at all.  I'm pretty sure that's on a logarithmic scale. Levels 1 - 7 can be measured by how much Cher you're listening to on your daily use personal device.  It's not normal to listen to no Cher, as it is unhealthy to have no stress.  But when you start to seek Cher out, to listen to large chunks of Cher, things might be getting bad.  Levels 8, 9, and 10 are all videos, and, well, maybe another time.  I'm rocking about a 6 or a 7 on the Cher Index of Personal Wellbeing, so we're going to watch the most hilariously bored horse of all time. Yeah, I know, I know, but Cher.

READER JAMS!

Friend-of-the-blog Jessica Olin responded to Rachel's post yesterday with her go-to jam for psyching herself up, and we share it here with you.

An Abundance of Whelming

I have recently taken on some new administrative responsibilities. It's been about a week and literally a thousand emails. (possibly more. there is a lot of email.) I'm really honored that I was chosen to do this work, I take it very seriously, and I want to do it right. Dealing with the idea of moving closer to being a full-time administrator is different than dealing with the reality of additional administration duties.  There is a lot of whelm involved.

I have great mentors, including our friend Jessica Olin from Letters To A Young Librarian, who are always there if I need a quick vent or a longer chat. I have faith in my skills, I know what I'm doing. There is this other level, like how I need a bigger container in which to store my whelm.  We all encounter it at some time or another.  Earlier in the week, two poems came to mind as thought devices for reflecting on my current whelm-excess.

The first to consider is Things to Think by Robert Bly. This is possibly the only poem by Bly I really like, as he's guilty of a lot of broetry, but I like this one quite a bit. Here goes:

Think in ways you've never thought before.
If the phone rings, think of it as carrying a message
Larger than anything you've ever heard,
Vaster than a hundred lines of Yeats.

Think that someone may bring a bear to your door,
Maybe wounded and deranged; or think that a moose
Has risen out of the lake, and he's carrying on his antlers
A child of your own whom you've never seen.

When someone knocks on the door, think that he's about
To give you something large: tell you you're forgiven,
Or that it's not necessary to work all the time, or that it's
Been decided that if you lie down no one will die.

This is for a feeling of yes, yes I can do this. I can do all of the things and do them well and make a real change. It is possible. Anything is possible. Anything at all.
I like the frame of impossible things as well: things you have never thought; impossible improbable things; important things.
A poem for when you've got a nice warm cup of whelm with room for cream.

But let's be honest, it's not like that. Not most of the time. It's like this:

Nobody heard him, the dead man, But still he lay moaning:
I was much further out than you thought
And not waving but drowning.

Poor chap, he always loved larking
And now he’s dead
It must have been too cold for him his heart gave way,
They said.

Oh, no no no, it was too cold always
(Still the dead one lay moaning)
I was much too far out all my life
And not waving but drowning.

If Not Waving But Drowning by Stevie Smith isn't already one of your favorite poems, I am sorry for you and I feel like maybe you weren't raised right. Thankfully we've remedied that now.


I think about this poem every time I am overflowing with whelm. It says everything I feel and everything I need to hear.



What do you turn to in your times of stress, what helps you get through transitions? Let me know, especially if it is a modernist poem.

Keep Rockin',
Rachel

P.S. also, this song is a good one for the subject:

On being the change you wish to see

There's a really great thing happening on LibraryTwitter in November called #BeTheRainbow. The brainchild of @winelibrarian and @sarainthestacks, #BeTheRainbow asks librarians to identify the good things that are going on in their professional lives instead of complaining about the awful stuff. It's amazing to see the really neat things going on that people are proud of and it's fun to see a redirection of energy, as people focus on positive things instead of negative ones.

Look, let's be clear. We all have unpleasantness in our daily lives in the form of problem patrons or problem colleagues or problem policies. And social media makes it easy to put a rant off the tips of your fingers into the ether of the online world. But it's not just the ether. People read it and not only does it reflect on the kind of person you are, but it also creates an energy around the profession.

I'm not suggesting that you refrain from venting. Dashing off a quick tweet or Facebook post is often cathartic and helps us make space to get back into a positive place. Goodness knows I've done my fair share of venting. But if venting is all you do in online spaces, maybe it's time to put things back into perspective. It's easy to forget to say the things we're grateful for aloud because it's easier to find the bad things than it is to find the good. We shrug off the positive things in favor of wallowing in the bad ones and it makes us into certain kinds of people: sadder, more cynical, snarkier.

LibraryTwitter and LibraryFacebook can sometimes seem like an echo chamber of negativity and snark. But if we want to leave librarianship a better place than we found it, we have to flip the script and focus as much on the things we're doing to better the lives of the people we serve as we do on the things that they do that make us mad.

What is that one thing that's happening in your professional life that you can be grateful for? What's that one thing that's going right in a sea of things going wrong? Focus on that for a second and feel how that gratitude makes you better at being not only a human being but a librarian.

Stay positive,
Erin

Friday Jams (11/14/2014)

Rachel:

I've got several jams for you to illustrate how my mind works.  We start off the week with my post conference jam:

This song by Robbie Fulks is everything to me after a lot of social interactions.  And from there we go to Robbie singing an old standard:

And from there we get to the original, my real Friday Jam.  oh my god this video, it is everything.

Now Erin seems to be still on vacation or something, so I'll go ahead and post this, I'm sure she won't mind at all:

Conference Power

Academic libraries can be lonesome, especially for folks in areas where there are not a lot of people (like my field of acquisitions). When you're already in a place like that, and you're trying to build the constructive summer, it can be, you know, a little

There are so many paths of new doctor who references I could follow from here, but I'm not going to follow any of them! Admire my restraint!

Just like Erin talked about earlier this week, we gotta take care of ourselves.  Part of that is recharging personally in things like vacations, or playing games, or building elaborate blanket forts, or building elaborate cakes to share with me. Another equally important part of recharging is taking a break professionally.

Stepping away from our daily duties to think big thoughts about what we do, to see what other people are up to, to meet and talk to people who are both as tired of the day to day and excited about the possibilities that exist, to drink new and exciting beers in new and exciting towns.  Yes, my friends, I'm talking about going to a conference.  While it is possible for a conference to be hard work, I also find them extraordinarily rejuvenating.

I just got back from my conference, the Charleston Conference, and I have a TON of new ideas, and a TON of leads to follow up from vendors, and a TON to share with y'all and maybe even a new research project or two. And I'm excited about it all. Again. It happens every year.

The level of interaction with other people can be overwhelming, and the lack of sleep can wear, but I suspend all rules at conferences because the returns on fully engaging are so high. If I wish one thing professionally, it would be a way to get a real conference experience to folks who don't have the means to regularly get to regional or national conferences.

 Go Conferences!

Here's a bonus song about feeling alone and how that's true and not true.

Gone fishin'

I am on vacation this week. In fact, I am composing this post while looking for Key Deer, so I'll keep it brief.

We've talked about self-care on the blog before. Taking time to do the things that make you happy and healthy make you a better you: a better friend, a better librarian, a better difference-maker. Self-care gives you the energy to come back to the things that matter to you with fresh eyes and a fuller heart.

Whether it's a trip out of town or a day to yourself, take some time taking care of you. It'll make all the difference.

In the midst of writing this, I saw four Key Deer grazing in somebody's yard. I am appropriately amazed.

Friday Jams! (11/7/2014)

Rachel:
I'm conferencing at a conference. When you're conferencing at conferences, you need the most powerful of energy-providing-jams.  ENERJAMS. When you're getting ready to present at a conference your conference presentation, you need the kind of jam that you would use in a fight walk-out. For me, there is no question about what that jam would be. When they turn that knob at 1:30, I am reborn.

You might remember this from the Teddybears version which was featured on the television show Chuck whenever something kick-ass was about to happen, you huge nerds you.  If you see me in Charleston totally rocking out, this is what is playing.

Erin:
I am rocking out especially hard today because I'm on vacation next week. Sometimes it's hard to combat Vacation Brain Creep when there's so much to do, so you need ENERJAMS for a whole different reason. One of my favorite thing is A.V. Club Undercover, where bands come to the A.V. Club offices and do a cover of a pop songs from a list of choices generated by A.V. Club readers. Constructive Summer reader, Ethan, pointed out this amazing Reggie Watts cover of Van Halen's Panama. Which led me down the rabbit hole of A.V. Club Undercover performances. This cover of R. Kelly's Ignition (Remix) is probably my favorite A.V. Club Undercover performance ever.

For Fun: My Favorite Flash Games

I don't play classic video games because I am terrible at them. They make me frustrated to the point of destructive rage (issues, I know).  Well, I do play Tekken and Doctor Mario pretty religiously still, and I probably spent about 30 hours a week playing tetris as a child.  Anything else? I'm terrible. I'm even terrible at Mario Brothers and Sonic.

I do love some flash games though. I'm going to share them with you because I feel like it and because I've got conference brain.

First, I absolutely adore the Shift series, available in one, two, and three. The Shift games are probably my favorite online games in the history of forever.  Similar games that I enjoy because their conceits are appealing to me are the series This Is The Only Level (in four parts), and Achievement Unlocked (in three parts). These games please me because the conceit is simple and adorable, they are mildly challenging at times, but just plain fun. I don't care! It's FUN! Look at the little elephant dude!

I also like a life-sucking insanely leveled tower defense game to keep me warm all winter. I will not hear your suggestions, I have GemCraft. I will play the labyrinth over and over again, same as I will delete the memory on my Tekken game and play it all the way through on each character in succession. 

You may have noticed that these are all coming from the same place. I found it years ago and have had no cause for other game-sources.  There is a plethora of other weird stuff there, too.  Like I mentioned on twitter earlier this week, a game called Ignite People On Fire, which is pretty self explanatory and exactly as enjoyable as you think it is right now.  Another game, Every Day The Same Dream, I find so compelling and artful (it is kind of depressing and possibly triggering).

And if you just need to do something while you drink alone, get yourself a distance game. I am partial to Into Space and Learn To Fly, but Fisher-Diver takes a very strange and existential turn and will blow your mind.

I like to play these games for the same reason I like to do jigsaw puzzles. The goal is simple, and the path is fairly clear. You develop an algorithm and execute it and you get to the goal. I get enough highly complex problems at work. Sometimes I want to do a thing and see a result. If there is something pleasing about it, all the better.

What do you look for in a time-waster game? What about a game do you find the most relaxing? Let me know in the comments!

Keep Rockin'

Rachel

It's a beautiful day in your neighborhood

I keep the Harvard Business Review's blog in my Twitter feed because it often has posts whose messages can be easily transferred from the business world to libraryland. So when this post entitled "Coworkers should be like neighbors, not like family" showed up last week, I tweeted that I wanted to spend a lot of time thinking about this idea.

In the continuum between strangers and family, Art Markman suggests that colleagues should have relationships akin to that of neighbors. He writes:

Strangers are people with whom we do not have a close connection; if we need their help, we pay them to provide it. Families are people with whom we have a close bond and for whom we do whatever is needed, often expecting nothing in return. In between strangers and family are neighbors — people with whom we have a reasonably close relationship, who offer us help, and expect help in return.

Markman goes on the state that neighborly relationships between colleagues work because everyone has a clear understanding of the organization's goals and a belief that the organization has their best interests in mind. In this type of environment, he posits, people are willing to go out of their way to help each other be successful.

I find the idea of a library as a neighborhood really compelling. Each functional area is like a house in the subdivision. Imagine if Reference lived next to Access Services and one street over from Interlibrary Loan. And Metadata and Cataloging live on the same block and one street over from Preservation. It makes sense to me that each functional area is both independent and interdependent. And if Reference's basement floods, Metadata will be there with towels and mops. Or if Cataloging's dog goes missing, Interlibrary Loan will help put up Lost Dog fliers. Basically, the library is working toward a common goal: Providing users with the information and services they need to be successful. And in this context, it makes sense that each functional area would go out of its way to assist the other.

In this library-as-neighborhood illustration, I can see how certain functional areas would have closer relationships with each other as their interests overlap. Metadata and Cataloging might be closer neighbors as they consider how evolving standards for description affect their work. Or Access Services and Reference might be closer neighbors as the consider the most effective way to assist students with locating and checking out library materials. And cross-departmental teams give members of every household the opportunity to work together to achieve a goal.

The only way our libraries can function as neighborhoods is if we keep firmly at the forefront of our minds our shared goal. When our focus starts to slip toward other things, like the minutia of our daily tasks, we start to become strangers. And, Markman suggests that strangers consider every interaction a pay-for-services interaction. And when working relationships feel more like family, Markman suggests that people become resentful when certain family members don't pull their weight.

Building that neighborly environment requires commitment from both a library's staff and its leadership. It takes effort to ensure that everyone has a common goal in mind and feels like their concerns are being heard and addressed. But, I think it's also really valuable for morale to have a neighborhood that is running well and moving toward a common goal.

I guess, for me, this feeling of neighborliness is what the Unified Library Scene means to me. It's a place where we're all tending to our functional areas and working together across those divides to create the best experience for users. So...won't you be my neighbor?

Friday jams (10/31/2014)

Erin:
I've never really been into Halloween--especially since, as an adult, I can buy candy any time I want. But the town I live in now goes wild for Halloween. So I've decided that the only appropriate jam for today is a spooky jam. And nothing is spookier to me than Michael Jackson's Thriller. I find both the song and the video irrationally terrifying--especially Vincent Price's throaty, maniacal laughter at the end. For a video made in the early 80s, I have to say that it's aged pretty well.

Beware...the video is 13 minutes long.

Rachel:

Now that we're done with THAT. Let's move along to Robyn. I have no idea why I don't post a Robyn song every single week because she is an all-powerful life-giver. This week, we're gonna rock some positive jam from the new mini-album with Röyksopp. I'm gonna listen to this song. and then I'm gonna do it. a. gain.

You Never Know Who Is In The Room

I was required to go to a training last week as part of a wonderful campus initiative to improve awareness and response to sexual assault and sexual violence. The training was conducted by the fantastically amazingly awesome Juliette Grimmett, who I cannot say enough good things about. Since I've written on being the only one, I want to talk to you today about how it feels to be seen and heard. How powerful it is, especially when you're not expecting it.

And we don't expect it. That's the nature of being in a marginalized group. You get used to not being accounted for, you expect it, you develop strategies for dealing with it.  So when Juliette conducted an entire training session with attention to using gender neutral terms and being inclusive of gender non-conforming folks throughout our three-hour session, without making any kind of deal, just as her way of being, I was blown away. I really was. At first I thought "oh that's nice, nice to hear these things," but as the session went on, I started to feel... safe.  This was all on the acts of one person, nobody else in the room (to my knowledge) had made any kind of special commitment to being gender inclusive. Nobody else was being forced or even asked to be gender inclusive. Having one person speak in an inclusive way without being asked and without making a huge deal about it in a room of dozens of people told me that at least this one person, I could trust. It made me think: maybe there is a world where this is the norm, maybe we can get there.

This is the weight of it: I felt that I should thank Juliette because I have NEVER seen that before, and I went to tell her, and when I did, I cried. That surprised me. I don't know that it surprised her, but it probably reinforced what she told me, which is that she does it because it is important to her.

I'm telling you this story because it is an example of the kind of profound impact we all can have, every day, by being careful about and attentive to our language. You can create a space where someone feels safe, feels heard, feels at home.  It is so easy, especially as we live busy lives, to use lazy and dangerous language. You, me, we might think, I will be careful to use inclusive language when it is appropriate.  But look, you never know who is in the room. You don't know their entire story. When you are careful all of the time, you will surely happen upon a staff member, a student, a teen, a colleague, someone who will be changed. Someone who will be open to working with you because they know you care about language and you care about them because you use careful language.

It isn't just that it's the right thing to do, it is that the biggest impact is going to happen when you least expect it. So let's be open by being careful. Let's make the world that I didn't dare hope existed. Let's go.

Keep rockin',
Rachel

On getting up and trying again

In March of 2011, I ran a 10k in South Florida. It was a hot, slow, terrible race with very little shade and I finished it by sheer force of will.

I had no idea, in retrospect how important that race was going to be.

Since 2011, I have run five half-marathons and a lot of shorter races. In 2012 and 2013, I ran a race every month. And in 2013, I participated in New York Road Runner's 9+1 program to get guaranteed entry into the NYC Marathon.

In 2014, I moved from Brooklyn to Georgia to take a new job. Two weeks into my new job, I stepped of a curb, rolled my ankle, and sprained it pretty significantly. I was kind of bummed that I didn't get crutches, but I did get a pretty intimidating looking lace-up brace. Between the new job and the injury, I had to take a few months off from running. I haven't come anywhere close to running a race per month and 5k, a distance that has pretty recently felt easy to me, seems like a huge challenge.

Despite all of that, I've been running since mid-August. I started on the Couch to 5k program, the program that I used when I started running. I started with run/walks on the treadmill that were more walking than running and moved to running outside. I have increased my distance and need fewer walking breaks. I have to wear my brace when I run, but it's pretty cool to see how far I've come in such a short amount of time.

On Sunday, I ran my first 5k since moving to Georgia on an out-and-back on our town's greenway. I had, for a few weeks, been running the greenway three times per week. I'd been building up distance-1.5 miles, 1.75 miles, 2 miles but I'd never done the full 5k out-and-back.

Sunday was warmer than it had been for most of the month of October and the race was at 2:30 in the afternoon. I had never run the entire 5k course before and I didn't realize how much of it wasn't shaded. Even in a sleeveless shirt and shorts, I overheated. I had a hot, slow, terrible run and it was devastating to me. I was sad that I couldn't run like I used to and sad that 3 years of work had seemingly been wiped out by three months of inactivity driven by injury.

I was embarrassed and sad and I really wanted to quit running forever. For about two hours on Sunday afternoon, I was ready to turn in my running shoes and all of the free shirts I've gotten as race giveaways. I didn't feel like I had it in me to go running ever again.

I think failure does that to you. I think failure makes you forget that sometimes you don't succeed on the first try. I think failure clouds your vision and renders you incapable of seeing what you've done well. Having a terrible time on a hot day made me forget that four months ago, walking was difficult and I had to wear a brace to ALA Annual in Vegas. One run blinded me to everything that I wrote in the previous paragraphs in this post.

When the fog of embarrassment and sadness lifted, I recognized that while I had come a long way from where I started in August, between the hilly terrain and warmer climate of Georgia and the injury I'd sustained, I was going to have recalibrate what success in running meant to me. I would have to build my endurance more slowly and be kinder to myself when an unexpected warm day led to a less than stellar run.

This week, I'm going to sign up to run another 5k that will take place on that same greenway in a couple of weeks. My hope is that a few more weeks of training and (hopefully) cooler temperatures will lead to a more agreeable outcome. I am using my time from Sunday's 5k as a benchmark and I'm hopeful that my run in a couple of week will lead to a new-to-me PR. Sure, it's a lot slower than where I was at the beginning of 2014, but I have to start somewhere.

The point is this, dear reader: don't let failure stop you from doing the things you really want to do. Allow yourself to wallow for a minute if you need to, but get back up and try again. Whether it's a run that didn't go well or a work project that didn't go as planned, there's always another chance to do it again. Don't let the fog of embarrassment and sadness derail you from that awesome plan you have. Instead, use that failure to serve as your baseline for the next attempt. Do better, push past it, and set a new baseline. The thing that nobody ever thinks to tell you is that sometimes your dreams are more of an iterative design process than a straight line.

Stay positive,
Erin

Friday Jams (10/24/2014)

Rachel:
I feel like I've had a sub-par week and I need to up my game. I feel like I could be kicking significantly more ass than I am currently kicking. I feeeeeeel, I feeeeeeel, I don't know, maybe this?

Erin:
This weekend I'm running my first race since moving halfway across the country in May and then spraining my ankle. It's only a 5k, but I'm excited and nervous and hopeful about what this 5k means in my progress back toward being a "real" runner again. Matt and Kim have been a playlist staple of mine since I started running. This song is currently the one in the rotation, but it might change.

Don't forget to breathe now, forget to breathe now.

What We Do All Day

I'm a middle manager. I'm not afraid to admit it, and I'm not ashamed of being it. I make things happen. On the ground. I advocate for staff, I advocate for the institution. I get to do all kinds of awesome things. I really, really, really enjoy it.

One of the greatest challenges of being a middle manager is the way that a line can be drawn between the kinds of work we do. Between administrative work and what I'll call it production work, between your team and the team of which you're a smaller part.

What is not cool, I tell you it is not cool, is when we think of administrative work as "meetings" and production work as "real work."  Meetings are real work. Say it with me. Meetings are real work. It is my job to go to meetings. It is my real job to go and talk to people. It is my real job to know what is going on in our building and in the larger organization and to talk to people and go to meetings. Meetings are real work.

"Real Work" is real work, too. And meetings take time. In middle management, the challenge is to balance the administrative work (both broadly and of your group specifically) along with the other duties you may have (original cataloging, vendor relations, teaching and reference, assessment, etc. etc.) and for me, also faculty responsibilities for research and scholarship.  That's a lot of stuff. Perhaps another time we'll talk about strategies for managing all these things.

What is not okay is a scenario in which you do administrative work during the day, when other people are around and able to have meetings, and production work at night or in other off hours. That's not okay because the night is not for work. Work time is for work. Night time is for, you know, your life. No.

I insist you have a life even if you do not want one. You need it to make that leap from good at your job to omg so incredibly amazing at your job.

So, case in point. I have about six meetings a week. That's not too many. But sometimes, they come all at once, like yesterday and today. I thought, on Wednesday night, let me just write my blog now, during the baseball game, and then it'll be done and cool cool. But instead I did this:

I made a tiny cover for the tiny torah that @thewanderingjew sent me. Because. pic.twitter.com/uYMV9sp4em
— M is for Malevolent (@RachelMFleming) October 23, 2014

Which was good. Because it made me feel good. And that's a good use of my time.

The Knight News Challenge and the real future of libraries

The Knight Foundation is an American non-profit that, according to their About the Foundation page "supports transformational ideas that promote quality journalism, advance media innovation, engage communities and foster the arts."

In addition to the regular grant work that the Knight Foundation does, the foundation has a suite of "challenges" that it has on a regular basis: the Knight News Challenge, the Knight Arts Challenge, and the Knight Community Information Challenge.

This year's Knight News Challenge drew the interest of the library community because it had a libraries-related prompt: How might we leverage libraries as a platform to build more knowledgeable communities?

The Knight News Challenge received 680 submissions. Of those 680 submissions, 41 were chosen as semifinalists. These 41 semifinalists stand to receive anywhere between $1,000 and $1,000,000 to develop their ideas in exchange for (with some exceptions) making their outputs either open source or Creative Commons.

Take a look at these semifinalists; in their applications you'll see the real future of libraries. From creating 3-D books for blind children to creating a Media Mentor Academy to equip current and future librarians to serve as technology guides in their communities, to creating a lending library for skill sharing, each of these semifinalists represents what libraries will become if we ask the hard questions about which of our services are vital to the community.

To me, these 41 semifinalists represent the real future of libraries: user-centered, needs-driven organizations. Yes, we'll have to push off some of the tasks that have less value to our users. But the things we can take on, as we dream big and keep the needs of our community squarely in mind, have the capacity to transform. I'm thrilled to see not only which ideas are chosen as the winners, but also to see how those ideas that aren't funded play out on a potentially smaller scale.

I think it's also worth noting that the Knight News Challenge spins the Future of Libraries question in a positive light. We often see news items or think pieces about how librarianship is headed for certain doom or obsolescence. The Knight Foundation's library-oriented challenge points out something in its prompt: libraries are not only the collections they provide. They can also be a platforms for community engagement and safe havens in stressful times for a community.

Congratulations are owed not only to those chosen as semi-finalists, but also to all of the people who submitted ideas. It's your enthusiasm, forward thinking, and user-centeredness that will help librarianship grow into something amazing.

Stay positive,
Erin

Emergency Monday Jams (10/20/2014)

What's with today today?

It's just not as amazing as it should be for me, and library twitter seems a little slow and sad, too. So Erin and I figured that we might need some emergency Monday jams. I'd say we're going to kick them out, but we might just gently scoot them with our feet at first.

Rachel:
Some europop is a go-to for a re-pep-ifying for me. Here's some now:

Erin:
I know a song is good for raising my spirits and my energy level if it makes me dance in my chair. This song definitely gets me moving.

So...what songs do you turn to when you need an Emergency Monday Jam? Let us know in the comments!

Friday Jams! (10/17/2014)

Rachel:

The students are gone so we can feel free to listen to the jams from when we were their age:

Erin:
I try to keep up with new music, but I often find myself listening to the 80s channel on satellite radio when I'm in the car. I've heard this song a lot lately and I feel like it's a good Friday Jam, especially if you've had a long week. You're still standing! You made it to Friday! Well done, you!

What Are We Afraid Of?

I have this fear of dropping my keys down a grate.  It's like my fear of heights, only infinitely more reasonable. If I am not mindful of my keys, a perfectly reasonable series of events could lead to my dropping my keys down a grate and that would totally suck. A friend of mine once had his keys in his sweatshirt pocket, and they ended up flushed down a convenience store bathroom toilet two hours from his house. These things happen! Moreover, my fear of dropping my keys down a grate causes me to act in ways which result in my keys never getting dropped down a grate. So it is a reasonable and effective fear.

Now, librarians have some fears which are, if I may, just ridiculous. These are, of course, the Image Of Librarians and The Future Of Libraries. Personally, I am so confused about why we have these fears I can hardly react. But I'm going to have a go at deconstructing them because that seems like fun and I learned some stuff about how to think about things last week. So.

We're afraid of our perceptions of people's perceptions: of librarians and libraries. The cultural thing that is "a library" and "a librarian" is much easier to define, and people's "perceptions" about them are easy to say. It's lazy thinking, and as I've talked about before, lazy thinking is dangerous, and it's our collective responsibility to say something about it.

If we don't know what folks in our communities really think about libraries and librarians, that's on us. People have deeply complex ideas about libraries and librarians. People have deeply complex views on pretty much everything. If you ask and are willing to listen, people will tell you all about it. Erin wrote about asking our users this question a little while back.

So the real question is why do we prefer our lazy thinking to having a discussion with people in our community? I think we're scared of what they'll say. I think we know that we might not be doing a super job. I think we know that we've somehow got our entire identities tied up in doing work we know isn't vital. I think we want to do what's best for our libraries and our communities but are scared to jump. That's not about the Image Of Librarians or the Future Of Librarians at all, that's on us as individual people dealing with our Stuff.  Trust me, I know Stuff isn't easy, but, I mean, suck it up. We've got important work to be doing.


Reasonable fears keep my keys out of grates, but lazy thinking, unreasonable fears and hand-wringing keep our focus away from the simple steps that will lead to our institutions being vital in our communities and our ability to make powerful change in those communities. Let's keep our eye on the prize.

Keep Rockin',
Rachel

The care and feeding of tall poppies

I wrote a guest post over at Letters to a Young Librarian last week directed toward librarianship's tall poppies. I wanted to follow-up that post with a second one directed toward everyone else.

If you are a librarian who has been in the profession for any length of time, you probably have tall poppies in your midst. You know, those high-achieving librarians, mostly newer to the profession, who have great ideas. It's possible that you have a tall poppy for a colleague in your library or that you serve alongside one in the professional association of your choice. Unfortunately, tall poppies aren't treated very well in librarianship. They are often attacked and alienated because their drive to succeed intimidates people. As a result of this treatment, tall poppies often end up leaving librarianship for more welcoming professions.

As a colleague of a tall poppy, I think that it's your duty to help create a warm, welcoming atmosphere in which a tall poppy can flourish.

We can start to create an atmosphere where tall poppies can flourish by creating a workplace where they can ask questions and make suggestions without fearing alienation from colleagues. Maybe you've been a librarian so long that you've forgotten, but I think that being a new librarian is really tough. I think it's doubly difficult when you come to a workplace with ideas and get shut down by colleagues who say but we've always done it this way! By being the colleague who listens to a tall poppy's ideas and giving feedback, you can help them understand the best way to present an idea to the appropriate person at the appropriate time. Being a mentor to a tall poppy is the best way to ensure a smooth transition for that new librarian into their new workplace. Yes, being a mentor is time consuming and you have a lot to do, but we owe it to our tall poppies to help them assimilate.

I think that another way to create a warm, welcoming environment for tall poppies is to stop treating them like new hire messiahs. While they come to us with a variety of talents, our tall poppy colleagues do not have the ability to magically transform our libraries into vibrant, user-centered spaces. And furthermore, this kind of work can't be done by a single person. We can't expect that our tall poppy colleagues will be good at everything, nor can we ask them to single-handedly create a library-wide service without support from library leadership. Rather than expecting a tall poppy to carry the library on their back, managers needs to develop the skills to support tall poppies as they develop as professionals and assume their place as leaders in librarianship.

Finally, we must start owning our behavior when it comes to being cruel to tall poppies, especially in online spaces. If you spend any time online, you are probably familiar with Wheaton's Law. Essentially, it boils down to making the choice not to be a jerk to people. When we encounter a tall poppy, our first instinct might be to feel threatened by their success. Or, we might feel weary by all of the awards and accolades handed out to tall poppies. Both, I think, are reasonable responses. But we have a choice: we can react unkindly and attack the accolade and the recipient or we can react kindly and congratulate the tall poppy on their success. If we truly feel like the awards system is flawed, we can work to change it. But I would argue that we should also endeavor to choose kindness we can.

Last week, Rachel argued that what we're about in the Unified Library Scene is ownership: owning our profession, our institution, and our community. Part of ownership is taking responsibility for creating a safe space for others to grow. By caring for our tallest poppies, we build the Unified Library Scene. And that's what we're about here.

Stay positive,
Erin

Friday jams (10/10/2014)

Erin:
For a while now, one of my favorite bands has been Against Me!, a punk band out of Gainesville. Their lead singer, Laura Jane Grace, has a web series on AOL On called True Trans, which debuts today. In honor of that, I wanted to share the video for my favorite Against Me! song called "Borne on the FM waves of the heart." It features Tegan Quin from Tegan and Sara and it's pretty much the perfect sad song.

A weird aside: Australian singer Ben Lee covered New Wave, the album this song comes from, in it entirety and released it for free. It's kind of amazing.

Rachel:
Okay, it's still Erin. Rachel is still off at the ALA/Harwood Institute Public Innovators Lab in Atlanta and it's my job to post Rachel's jam: Salt-N-Pepa's Push it.

Here's Salt-N-Pepa performing Push it live in 2011 at the SiriusXM Backspin studios:

When I was looking for a version of that song to put on the blog, I also came across the video entitled "Animals dancing to Salt-N-Pepa's Push it" and, well, it's exactly what it sounds like.

You're welcome. Happy Friday.