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!