After working out and showering I got into the office, answered some emails, and did some much needed organizing of my desk and reading area (as you can see from the papers strewn about on my floor).

I then spent the morning at the reference desk. I chatted with our director about spring/summer planning and staff retreats that are always really productive. I also got a video uploaded to our YouTube channel about annotated bibliographies (related to an assignment that our students will be working on soon).

I also was able to help a couple people on some really interesting questions. One was a student who wanted help brainstorming ideas for a capstone project on ethics in marketing. I was thinking about issues like privacy and filter bubbles, but we hit on to the idea of stereotyping and gender in marketing. I was thinking of a misogynistic commercial for Dr Pepper 10 that especially annoyed me and all the questions that marketing of that nature raised. I also was able to help someone who was looking for historical and primary material related to Samuel de Champlain and records of his journeys. I referred him to the bibliography of the newish book Champlain’s Dream and ultimately found digitized copies of Champlain’s work and works related to him from the Champlain Society (pretty awesome).

The best part of the day though was when I left the desk and headed over to our Emergent Media Center on campus and joined a group of faculty, staff, grad students, and undergrads who came together for a Design for America brainstorming meeting. “Design for America teaches human centered design to young adults and collaborating community partners through extra-curricular, university based, student led design studios.” These studios bring together folks from all disciplines to create real solutions to real problems in their communities. Champlain students want to bring a DFA studio to our college and this was a big step in that process.

The brainstorming session involved thinking about a specific scenario, taking time on our own to come up with solutions and then brainstorm as a four person team to solve a problem. We got to write, draw, use blocks, and mold clay to creatively come up with solutions to our problem. It was an awesome start to the process and I’m going to continue working on the team. We have a month to agree on a problem, design a solution, briefly test our design, and create a video about it. As the librarian in the group I’ve agreed to start working on the research aspect of the problem.

Projects like this are undoubtedly one of the most valuable things I can do in my job. They allow me to connect and build relationships with other faculty members, staff, and grad & undergrad students and bring my expertise to things that we are all working on.

The day ended by running back to the office late, picking up my CSA, and catching the bus home. Luckily it’s almost the weekend…

“Eighty percent of success is just showing up”   – Woody Allen

I’ve found the above quote to have a lot of truth in my career so far, but I’m not talking about just showing up at work. It’s easy to simply spend all your time in your office. You have a lot of work to do. It’s comfortable there. It’s safe. But I’m not sure that just showing up at your office is going to bring success.

What I’m talking about is just showing up in other places, especially outside the library. Go to faculty senate meetings. Go to community gatherings. Attend board or town hall meetings. Join committees. Go to conferences or informal gatherings of librarians. Go to social events or holiday parties. The benefits of just showing up at events or meetings quickly become clear. You begin developing relationships with others. People remember your face, know who you are, and know that you are from the library. By just showing up you become an ambassador of the library. You’re getting out of the library and spreading your message of information and helpfulness in multiple places. If you go where the action is, good things just start to happen.

You may be able to help someone on a project that they have been thinking about for a while. You may have a great suggestion at a meeting that utilizes library resources. You may find a colleague or faculty member to collaborate with on a shared interest. Informal conversations with community members, faculty, staff, or students outside the library can and do lead to much bigger things. But these things won’t happen if you are sitting in your office all day. The first step is to just show up.

On Friday I was at the LJ/Temple Library Future Symposium. I was on a panel with some great folks about bridging the culture gaps in our libraries. Courtney Young, our moderator framed the panel in terms of misunderstandings, and I found this to be really enlightening. Many of the problems we face when groups interact with one another, whether it’s the library vs. IT, change agents vs. resistors, or librarians vs. students, stem from these groups having different perspectives and a lack of mutual understanding of those perspectives.

Let’s take change agents vs. resistors as an example. For this example we’ll use changing the food policy as the conflict (though any change could be substituted here). On one side, you think that the food policy is outdated and that food and drink should be allowed in the library. On the other side there is a group resistant to this change who believe that it shouldn’t change. In order to get past this, there needs to be clear understanding on both sides.

You should first try to understand the other person’s perspective. And don’t just pretend to listen while dismissing what they say in your head. Pay attention and genuinely understand their concerns. Are they concerned about damage to the books or computers? Are they concerned with messes? Are they concerned with the smell? These are all genuine concerns and should be (and can be) addressed. Get to the bottom of why they are resisting the change. When you understand concerns you can then address them.

Then you need to communicate clearly to them why you think the policy should change and make sure that they understand your concerns. Do you think it will create a more welcoming environment? Do you see it happening other places (bookstores, etc.)? Are your users asking for it? Make a clear case for why you think the change is necessary. In discussing the change and coming up with solutions together make sure that their concerns are addressed. You can say something like, “I understand you are concerned with damage to our collection. I don’t want anything to get ruined either. Do we think that will happen a lot though? It seems like Barnes and Noble is not concerned with food or coffee ruining their merchandise. And at home I drink coffee and read books all the time. Does the benefit of making the library more comfortable and welcoming outweighs the risk of a few damaged books? Is there a way that we can limit damage while still allowing food and drink?”

Too often we assume that something is obvious or that someone is just obtuse when in reality we just have differing perspectives. The above approach might work and it might not, but it will be a lot more effective when we try to understand others and address them in terms of their concerns instead of only ours.

Change starts with you

Sitting around and waiting for inspiration to strike or the perfect moment is not going to bring about change. These are outside circumstances that you have no control over. What you can can control is yourself and your own decisions. This is the starting place, and having this mindset is the most important part of being an agent for positive change. One of the biggest mistakes that librarians can make is getting discouraged or giving up because of colleagues who actively resist change, an administration or board that is stuck in the past, or an institution that is seemingly calcified. You cannot control these things (but you can influence them). What you can control is your response. If you direct your anger and energy at the board or your “backwards” colleague or your inflexible institution, you will only reap frustration.

In chatting with librarians who are frustrated, I hear a lot people say things like “we can’t have drinks in the library because x,” or “if only x would retire, then we could enact change.” But this is giving up control. You still can respond. Stephen Covey in his book The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People (I’m getting hooked on this book) talks about using proactive language instead of using reactive language. Instead of using phrases like “I can’t” you can say “I choose.” Instead of saying “there’s nothing I can do,” say “let’s look at our alternatives.” By understanding that you have the control over your choices and the decisions you make, you empower yourself.

I’ve seen other librarians talking about this same idea. There was recently a great post by the folks at In the Library with the Lead Pipe on the theme of the Occupy Movement. One of the sections was about occupying yourself and they discussed this idea of owning your own power and not giving it away to others. In the post they give a great model for a positive communication technique to bring about change without sounding like you’re attacking.

Know what change you want to see

In bringing about change it’s also necessary to be strategic. One person can’t change everything; they just don’t have the time. So you have to clearly understand what it is you want to change. You also need to be able to prioritize and recognize when a service or resource needs to be dropped. We can’t be everything to everyone in libraries, so we have to play to our strengths. Jenica Rogers talks a lot about this and she recently did a presentation for the LIANZA conference entitled Reality-based Librarianship for Passionate Librarians. In it she discusses identifying goals, but also this idea of picking your battles. Not everything can be changed, or it may not be worth the time, effort, and effects on your sanity to change something. Change doesn’t come easily, but have a road map for how to get there makes things simpler.

You’re not alone

My favorite part about library conferences is meeting with other librarians and hearing what they are working on and what they are passionate about. It’s easy to get caught up in the very narrow view from your own institution, but when you talk with others, you realize there are a lot of different ways to bring about change. By talking with others outside of your own institution you can begin to see other perspectives and different approaches to problems you are trying to solve. It is also a way to invigorate yourself and gain new energy. If you feel that no one at your institution wants change or has the same interests as you, find others who share your passion and collaborate with them.

You have to take care of yourself as a librarian. Burnout is real, and if your passion and creativity continually gets stifled at your institution, try to collaborate with other passionate librarians at different institutions. There is no shortage of passionate librarians. Go to conferences. Go to local meet-ups of librarians. Connect with folks via social networking. And if there aren’t many networking opportunities in your area, start some. There are likely others who want to connect and share ideas and are looking for a venue.

What strategies are most helpful to you in bringing about change at your library?

One book I’ve begun reading is Stephen Covey’s classic The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People. I originally picked it up because I remembered (and highly agree with) habit 5 “Seek first to understand, then be understood.” I think this one is key to getting along with colleagues, managers, doing reference, etc.

But now that I am actually reading the book, what I have been thinking a lot about is the third habit: “Put first things first.” Most librarians I talk to are generally very busy people. We have a lot of ideas, initiatives, and commitments. I know I wish that I had more time, and I really want to work on managing my time better. Covey puts forth a simple framework for thinking about time and projects that was really illuminating for me. He breaks activities down into a matrix of urgent/not urgent and important/not-important:

Covey says that the most impact comes when you focus on Quadrant II (important and not-urgent). These are things that you know are important and you know that they would make a big difference, but you “just don’t have the time.” In reality this is the work we should be focusing on and it would do the most to improve our work and our libraries. Clearly working on things like long-term planning, redesigning the website, or figuring out a coherent approach to ebooks, would be much more beneficial than, say cleaning up email or another meeting.

Of course meetings and email are necessary, but it’s easy to get caught up thinking that you have to go to every meeting or that all the emails in your inbox demand your attention. By carving out time specifically for Quadrant II tasks, those important things that keep getting kicked down the road actually start coming to fruition. This type of work is also much more fulfilling. It feels great to finish that article you keep putting off or finally get that annual report done.

Time management is something that I know I need work on and this framework is really helpful to me. Do other people find this helpful or have other useful ways of thinking about managing their time?

“In terms of librarianship then, what are the qualities that academic librarians today should possess to be successful in their careers and in serving their users? In the spirit of Franklin, these are a proposed list of virtues of next-gen librarians. Franklin used his virtues to grow as an individual. These virtues can be used as a tool to guide our self improvement as librarians in the 21st century, though they aren’t limited to that purpose. They can also be used by administrators to determine the qualities that they want in new hires, or by job seekers determining the culture of an institution. They can be used in evaluating managers or directors. The uses are myriad, but ultimately they are qualities that we should all strive for as next-gen librarians.”

If you have thoughts about any of the virtues or ones that should be added or removed, I’d love to hear them.

photo by NELLS participant Kathleen Spahn

This past week I attended the New England Library Leadership Symposium facilitated by Maureen Sullivan in North Andover, MA. She lead a challenging and rewarding program over the course of a week, and as a group we did a lot of sharing and learning.  I wanted to distill down a few lessons that stuck out for me after reflecting on the symposium:

Authenticity is key to leadership and a positive work environment

In order to be successful as a leader you need to be authentic and an open, honest communicator. You need to have a good understanding of yourself. You should not avoid problems or just let them solve themselves. One of the keys to leadership is to foster an environment where you and the whole staff can be their authentic selves and not worry about speaking up or challenging assumptions. If people are constantly walking on eggshells, few new ideas will be presented. One way to do this is by treating people like whole adult human beings as opposed to resources to be managed. You should do things like say thank you or admit mistakes, not because that is what you are “supposed” to do, but because you genuinely respect the other humans that you work with. This will foster trust and allow others to be open, honest, and authentic with you and each other.

You have to manage your own career and happiness

If you are not happy somewhere or are no longer being fulfilled or challenged, you should try to find a way out. In this economy that is not always possible, but if that’s the case you should be looking for other opportunities, even ones that might not be in libraries. Maureen talked about how it would be great if more folks would find work outside of libraries and effect change with libraries in mind. But while you are looking for opportunities, you also need to make sure that you are currently doing work that is fulfilling. This could be serving a state organization, organizing a conference or volunteering in your community. Everyone deserves to be happy and fulfilled in their work. This means you have to take control of your own happiness instead of having it dictated to you.

Leadership exists on a continuum

Leadership is not an either/or position. Everyone has opportunities and the capacity for leadership no matter what they do. One concept Maureen discussed was emergent leadership. This is the idea that leaders can arise out of groups not based on their status but on their abilities. She also called it leading from the middle. Even if you are not in a position of formalized leadership that does not mean you cannot still gain leadership experience. There are a number of programs (ALA’s Emerging Leaders program comes to mind) that offer opportunities to practice leadership skills. There is also no shortage of work to be done in state, regional or national associations. You can take on projects that require project management skills. If you want to learn to lead, the opportunities abound.

The symposium was awesome and I’m likely going to write a few more posts that were inspired by it. I would recommend NELLS or something like it (Tall Texans, Harvard Leadership Institute for Academic Librarians) to anyone, no matter what your current position is. There are a lot of changes that need to be made in libraries starting now. We can all effect this change, it just takes some practice.

In librarianship, speaking in public is necessary if you want to be in academia, present at conferences, or hold any sort of leadership position. We have to teach classes, run meetings, present to faculty, other librarians, and the public, and sometimes even give presentations to land a job.

Read the rest here

image from Susan Sharpless Smith on Flickr

ACRL 2011 wrapped up this past weekend and much like the last time I attended, it was a great conference. There was a lot of great content and ideas in the papers, panels, posters and Cyber Zed Sheds. There were also some excellent keynotes that challenged us to think outside of the echo chamber of the library world. But my favorite part of ACRL conferences are the people and the networking that goes on. I love connecting with smart, like-minded people who are thinking about the same problems that I am. I got a lot out of the conference and figured I would share a few of the ideas that got my mind buzzing:

Planned abandonment

One great session I attended was called When Interdependence Becomes Codependence: Knowing When and How to Let Go of Legacy Services by Katherine Furlong and Mary Evangeliste. I’ve thought a lot about the idea of dropping services, but this presentation really brought the idea home for me. Libraries often keep adding new services, but we rarely drop them. We need to examine services from time to time to see if they are still really best serving our users. The presentation drew from literature in the field of management and exhorted people to ask two big questions of their current services: “would we do this service again” and “is it still relevant?”

Image is important

Clinton Kelly talked about how to be stylish. But he also talked about why style counts. On a personal level, Kelly says that image is important because “how you dress tells the rest of the world how you expect to be treated.” This can also apply to the profession as a whole. The way we act and present ourselves will be how others treat us. If we are quiet or deferential we’ll be treated accordingly, but if we own our expertise as information professionals and assert that expertise, then students, faculty, and administrators will treat us as such.

Intentional Innovation

David Dahl, in his session Lightning in a Bottle: Managing Ideas to Spur Innovation, discussed innovation, but he didn’t use it as the buzzword that it is often used as these days. He talked about it as an intentional process as opposed to something that just happens. It’s something that can be fostered and recreated. We need to set aside time just for idea generation. He also said that there must be people who select and champion ideas or the ideas will never go anywhere. In addition, ideas come to us all the time, but if we don’t purposefully collect these ideas, we’ll lose them. Having a process and structure in place are necessary in order to consistently generate and implement useful new ideas.

There was so much awesome stuff going on it couldn’t all make it into this post, but there’s another great writeup over at Library Journal . Did you attend in person or virtually? What was an insight that you had?

I enjoyed both Karen Schneider’s post and Meredith Farkas’ follow-up post about devil’s advocates. They talk about new ideas and how they require a lot of experimentation and iterations as well as people to challenge them to make them stronger. I’ve been thinking about this topic for a while, and I think it’s a very important one for people in the library profession to think about, especially those in leadership positions.

Like I mentioned in my last post I am reading the book What Technology Wants. In this book Kevin Kelly relates a story about a missionary in China introducing a new technology which serves as an excellent parable about the resistance to new ideas:

“The missionary wanted to improve the laborious way the Chinese peasants in his province harvested grain. The local farmers clipped the stalks with some kind of small hand shear. So the missionary had a scythe shipped in from America and demonstrated its superior productivity to an enthralled crowd. “The next morning, however, a delegation came to see the missionary. The scythe must be destroyed at once. What, they said, if it should fall into the hands of thieves; a whole field could be cut and carried away in a single night.” And so the scythe was banished, progress stopped, because nonusers could imagine a possible — but wholly improbable — way it could significantly harm their society.”

Devil’s advocates are useful people to have around, but they can also stop new ideas in their tracks. If we try to imagine every negative thing that can happen with a new idea it will surely die. Often devil’s advocates imagine unrealistic or unlikely situations that have little chance of happening. Looking at something new as a threat leads to no new ideas.

A new idea is a very fragile thing. It needs a healthy environment to germinate and time to grow. We as librarians and people in leadership positions should try to cultivate this environment among our teams and in our workplaces. There is a place for devil’s advocates and looking at possible challenges that a new idea could face, but it seems that should come later in the process. Libraries are desperately in need of new ideas. Just as in the case of the scythe in the story above, if we only see the negative aspects of an idea or technology we will become really good at maintaining the status quo.

So when people are proposing new ideas, listen first instead of criticizing. Bobbi Newman shared an excellent sentiment recently about contributing more than criticizing and it very much applies here. I know at times when someone is proposing a new idea I think to myself, “that’s stupid, it’ll never work.” But instead of dismissing it or nitpicking it, the more productive course of action would be to contribute to the idea to refine it or make it better. Not every new idea is a polished gem, but there may be the beginnings of something great in it. We just have to give it the proper environment to let it flourish.