THE JERSEY EXILE

Make It Happen: Day 22

2012-01-22T16:07:00.000-05:00

As of this morning, I've managed to lose 18.3 pounds since starting my diet earlier this month. This was Week Three using Weight Watchers, and I have to say that my appetite has decreased significantly compared to the first two weeks of dieting. I mentioned this before, but it's almost disconcerting not to be hungry all the time, or to finish a meal and (amazingly enough) feel full, so much so that I was convinced that I was not going to have lot any weight this week when I got on the Wii Balance Board. But lo and behold, the plan appears to be working. I'm looking forward to crossing the 20-pound mark, and perhaps reaching my 10% goal of 27 pounds in the next couple of weeks. As impatient as I am to lose all this weight, I'm mindful of the fact that the goal is not just to shed the pounds but actually keep them off this time.

Slowly but surely, I'll get there...

The Great Librarian Massacre (and Other Episodes in Harvard Cultural History)*

2012-01-20T09:56:00.005-05:00

If you are a librarian and you have access to the Internet, then you've probably already heard that Harvard fired all of its library staff yesterday.

Well, sort of. By which I mean: not really. Which is to say that no one was fired at all, in fact.

Nevertheless I have to say that we Harvard library folk were by and large blindsided when we went to one of three "Town Hall Meetings" yesterday for an update about the Library Transition, as many of us had been cautioned not to expect any substantive news until at least next month. Imagine our surprise then when after a few brief introductory remarks our Senior Associate Provost and Executive Director began outlining some of key points of what's being called the "Implementation Phase" of what's now been a three-year reorganization.

I was in attendance and livetweeting at the first of the three meetings, but I can confirm through other colleagues who Tweeted from the second and third showings that even though we have not been fired or laid off, that the following things were announced:

1. Pending approval of the Implementation Plan by Harvard's President, an overall reduction in library staff is guaranteed- of the jobs that remain, "There will certainly be new roles, requiring new skills" (direct quote)

2. Next month library staff will be informed by local library directors or HR whether or not their jobs as considered to be "local" or part of "shared services"

3. The final disposition of local library staff is a matter for the deans and their respective school budgets

4. Library staff falling into the category of Shared Services will either be assigned to new positions or required to apply for them anew in some informal or formal capacity, with preference going to existing Harvard Library staff

5. The Harvard Library will be offering some kind of voluntary ~~retirement~~ staff reduction incentive,~~but has not ruled out~~ as well as involuntary ~~retirement~~ staff reductions to meet its strategic goals (edited x2)

6. All library staff have been encouraged but not required to create and submit an Employee Profile, which is meant to highlight one's individual strengths and accomplishments and "inject oneself into the process" (direct quote)

Colleagues, please feel free to correct me if I misreported any of the above!

Anything else at this point is mere speculation. Seeing that President Faust has yet even to approve the Library Transition's plan, even what I've reported above is by no means carved in stone yet. So be careful what you read on the Internet...

That being said, I don't think I'm the only librarian at Harvard who feels that however well-intentioned yesterday's Town Hall Meetings were envisioned to be, the overall effect has been the exact opposite of whatever our Library Transition team was hoping to achieve. The most frustrating aspect by far of the meetings was the lack of concrete answers to any of the natural follow-up questions one would anticipate given the situation. While I understand that what's coming down the pike next month is potentially so big that they felt they needed this meeting to try and prepare us for it, but the manner in which they did it only served to ratchet up the level of anxiety among the attendees.

My primary concern right now, however, is not for my own neck but that of my support staff, who have worked in this office for an average of ten years or more each. After having endured the departure of two coworkers- one in 2010, the other last Fall- and taking on their workloads to ensure that our services to our patrons and other libraries remained unaffected, they are now frightened that even in a shop cut to the bone there is no guarantee that they'll be kept on in the new University-wide shared services. ~~I have heard that the HUCTW has been working with the Library Transition team~~, and that the union has assured workers that changes such as the ones currently being proposed must be done through "union-management consultation," but that hasn't prevented a gallows-like pall from settling over my office nonetheless.

{EDIT: In a letter to its members, the HUCTW confirmed that it had not in fact been alerted about potential layoffs by Harvard Library administrators, nor had it been informed about the need for library staff to fill out Employee Profiles and possibly re-apply for changed positions within the new University Library structure. Needless to say, this is extremely disappointing news, and I hope that from this point forward the union is appropriately consulted in good faith about any changes on the table.)

So while a lot of what's been said on the Internet has bordered on hysteria, I hope you'll at least forgive those of us Twittering from the epicenter of yesterday's announcements for our gut reactions to the endgame of a very long and painful reorganization process. For a more objective take on the whole brouhaha, Chris Bourg- aka The Feral Librarian- an associate librarian at Stanford University, did some serious yeoman's work in teasing fact from fiction during yesterday's social media shitstorm. I highly recommend her blog post as the best third-party observer to what's going on here in the Harvard Library.

The tl;dr? We're not dead quite yet, though this feels an awful lot like we're walking the Green Mile (or would that be the Crimson Mile?). I promise to keep all y'all informed as to how events proceed, but in the meantime I hope our leadership takes a good hard look at how poorly the day went yesterday and plans accordingly for what will no doubt be even more charged and contentious Town Hall Meetings next month if/when the Library Transition plan is approved. I still cling to a shred of optimism that we can use this reorganization to create something special, but right now I'm feeling like I'm living one Office Space cliche after another.

* Apologies to Robert Darnton, who, ironically enough, was Director of the Harvard University Libraries until last year and who continues to serve on the Library Transition board.

Make It Happen: Day 18

2012-01-18T09:54:00.000-05:00

This post intentionally left blank in support of those protesting SOPA/PIPA and internet censorship.

LEARN MORE HERE!

5%

2012-01-15T20:01:00.000-05:00

So today's weigh-in put me just half a pound under 260, which means I've managed to lose almost fifteen pounds on my diet thus far. That's 5% of my starting weight! I know I still have a long way to go, but I'm going to enjoy this milestone nevertheless...

Make It Happen 2012: Day 12 and 13

2012-01-13T16:20:00.001-05:00

I love to teach.

What surprises me most about this realization is how many times I seem to have to make it. This past week I've been rediscovering the joys of getting in front of a group of people and sharing what I know, as our ILL shop is offering what we've billed as a series of "Open Training" sessions on various topics in resource sharing. At first we were simply thinking about doing some cross-training in the office, but then my boss said why not open it up to the rest of the Harvard ILL community at large?

Which, as it turns out, was a great idea. After two successful sessions this week- one in a lecture format, the other a hands-on workshop- not only is everyone already excited for next week's offerings, but they're already asking that we make this an ongoing thing. I would be thrilled to do some instruction on a regular basis, as I've really enjoyed being back in a classroom setting, but it also makes me think that I need to find a way to make teaching a more integral component of my job as I move forward.

In a former life I used to teach adult education, introducing students to the wonders of Ancient, Homeric, and New Testament Greek at a nonprofit cultural institution. Although the hours were nothing short of insane between my day job and my epic commute back to the North Shore every evening, I always left the classroom feeling exhilarated. Of course it always helps to have a self-selecting lot of motivated students who are taking a class not because they have to but because they genuinely want to know more about a given subject, but even when the going was tough I relished in helping get a struggling student out of the weeds and into a better understanding of the language.

I must say that this is something I miss dearly. While my job has its instructional opportunities and librarianship as a whole is chock full of teachable moments, I'm keenly aware of the fact that I have certain academic itches which aren't being scratched. Does this mean going back to school? I've been kicking around the idea of going for a Ph.D. in library science. Maybe this is a sign that I should stop dithering and do it already...

Make It Happen 2012: Day 11

2012-01-11T15:25:00.000-05:00

Thoughts on losing weight:

1. I seem to lose weight in my feet first- who knew I had so much foot fat?

2. 10 days on my diet and I haven't had so much as a spark of heartburn.

3. Losing even a token amount of weight (at this point 10+ pounds) means my sleep apnea problems go away as well.

4. Shit, I'm going to need smaller pants... ASAP!

5. I know that the point of a successful diet is not to feel hungry all the time, but whenever I do manage to feel sated on my daily allotment of points bestowed unto me by the Weight Watchers Gods, I immediately become worried that I'm doing it wrong and I won't have lost any weight by the next weekly weigh-in. Does anyone else experience this when dieting as well?

6. The Cabot Creamery seems to have entered into some kind of pact with the Devil to make their 75% Reduced Fat Cheddar taste like real cheese. You guys are a lifesaver!

7. If I can get my weight under 250 pounds, I'm so doing this.

Make It Happen 2012: Day 10

2012-01-11T00:07:00.002-05:00

"I'm going to ask you for a favor, but just so you know I'm not expecting you to say yes."

These are my favorite moments as a librarian, when I get to snatch a Yes out of the jaws of No. I love being the person who can make things happen, though I wonder what it says about a workplace when people expect to be disappointed by their colleagues.

Are we too busy? Too siloed? Too worried about setting the bar of expectations too high?

I don't know, but I've never been comfortable with letting people down- especially when I've been given explicit permission to do so.

Make It Happen: Day 9 (Belated)

2012-01-10T13:26:00.000-05:00

Sometimes it is not within your power to Make It Happen. While I do not for one enjoy being subject to forces which are completely beyond my capacity to affect, it can nevertheless be liberating to realize as much. Right now my future here at the Big Library depends on decisions being made on levels several layers above my own pay grade as Harvard decides which direction it wants to go in revamping its centuries-old library system. Until the new marching orders come down from on high, the best I can do is make sure that my humble ILL shop is in order so that when we *do* know what's what we can hit the ground running.

I suppose that this, too, is a form of Making It Happen, albeit in a very Zen mode...

It's a mystery!

2012-01-10T07:25:00.001-05:00

Suspicious white powder at Gloucester Station this morning- anyone know what this is?

Make It Happen 2012: Day 8

2012-01-08T15:53:00.000-05:00

This morning was my first weekly check-in for the new diet: according to my Nintendo Wii and the hyper-judgmental Wii Fit balance board, I weighed in at 263.7 pounds. That means I've already lost about ten pounds since starting with Weight Watchers online last week!

Just another 64 pounds to my goal...

Make It Happen 2012: Day 6 and 7

2012-01-08T15:47:00.000-05:00

Okay, so nothing really happened on Day 6. But given the week I'd had up to that point, perhaps a down day was inevitable. Four-day workweeks are always a struggle, but four-day workweeks following a week and half of vacation? It's almost a miracle in and of itself that any of us got to 5pm this Friday.

Day 7 was all about making new habits. Although my wife, daughter, and I were all in dire need of a down day, we made sure we got out and exercised nevertheless while the beautiful weather held, taking a walk and clambering all over the rocks of Stage Fort Park. I also decided to cook a vegetarian dinner, making some gazpacho and grilling some eggplant. Although I don't think my wife and I will ever be able to give up eating meat and seafood entirely, it's nice to prepare a meal that Andriana can share with us from start to finish- she even helped make the gazpacho! For the evening's entertainment we turned off the T.V. and played Ticket to Ride, which turned out to be a lot more fun than reruns on Nickelodeon.

Make It Happen 2012: Day 5

2012-01-05T22:18:00.000-05:00

Professional development is always a tricky prospect, because to a very large extent the opportunities are defined more by external factors than internal motivation. That being said, even during these times of declining library budgets I've been able to attend a few more conferences than I otherwise would have been allowed to go to by presenting instead of simply attending. My presentation about international interlibrary loan at the IDS Conference in Oswego, New York in the Summer of 2010 garnered a couple of additional invitations from impressed attendees, and I was just informed that my joint proposal with a colleague to present about our electronic document delivery service (aka Scan & Deliver) was accepted for the 2012 ILLiad International Conference in Virginia Beach.

What I've really missed, however, are the ALA Conferences, which have been more or less off the table for a few years due to reduced travel funds. This was a bitter pill for me to swallow at first, especially as I was only just getting my feet wet as a budding library professional with committee work when the hammer came down. Fortunately Boston comes up on the Midwinter circuit frequently enough that I've been able to attend two of the January meetings, but aside from one summer in Anaheim (2008) I haven't been able to attend the Annual Conference since then. Now that my wife is finishing her Masters in Library Science this June, however, I would really like her to experience the full library conference experience- the fact that Annual will be returning to Anaheim this year means that we could even bring our daughter and make a Disneyland vacation of the long weekend while we were at it.

So I put in for the travel funds today, emboldened by the news that due to some recent departures we might actually have enough professional development money to go around. Even if I don't end up getting approved, I suspect that my wife and I will find a way to Make It Happen anyway, because 2012 is shaping up to be that kind of year. Just the same, I'm hoping for good news. And who knows? Maybe ALA will become a regular gig again, and I'll be able to pick up where I'd left off with my committee participation. Now that's optimism!

Make It Happen 2012: Day 4

2012-01-04T23:24:00.001-05:00

A few months ago I wrote a blog post for Speak Out With Your Geek Out in which I described the fantasy world that my best friend and I have been creatively inhabiting on an on-again, off-again basis for more than twenty years. The world of Varo, which had begun as just a dot on a hastily drawn map, grew over time into a living, breathing metropolis of a million souls that became the setting for several Dungeons & Dragons campaigns and the inspiration for three novels and eleven short stories. My friend and I had attempted twice to turn Varo into a published gaming world, but on both occasions real life managed to conspire against us, either pulling us in separate directions as we left college or pushing us towards the increasing responsibilities of career, marriage, and family. Each time was a learning experience but ultimately a disappointment, and after we gave up on the second attempt I don't think either of us ever thought we'd try and give it another go.

Well, guess what? It seems that we're getting the band back together. Not only do my friend and I have our heads screwed on a lot better than during our previous attempts, but after starting a new D&D campaign in the same setting we have way more publishable material than we've ever had before, including lots and lots of homebrewed charts and rules variants to transform any generic fantasy RPG system into the gritty crossbow noir world of Varo. We also have all of the Varonian fiction I've written since the last try, which we intend to draw upon heavily for source material and flavor text (while linking out to purchasable ebook copies of said works), as well as ongoing dispatches and other occasional fiction which will help introduce newcomers to this universe from varying first-person perspectives. My best friend has already been successfully managing his wife's e-commerce site for her knitting efforts, so he's able to leverage his experience there into coding a fitting online portal for our creation.

Here's to hoping, in the spirit of Make It Happen, that the third time's a charm! If anything has changed between our previous efforts and this new attempt, it's that I think we're more realistic about our expectations. While it would be great to make some money, this is more about sharing what we've created with our fellow RPG travelers, as we've discovered that the more we open up this world to others the more we find ourselves inspired in turn. At any rate, I will be sure to post a link to the web portal as soon as we have some content online...

Make It Happen: Day 3

2012-01-03T17:59:00.000-05:00

Not only have I allowed my diet to get the best of me, but I've also let regular exercise take a backseat to other priorities. While I'm still walking from my house to the train station 2-3 times a week, I know I should be doing it daily, and as much as the family enjoys getting out on the weekends for a nice long walk or a hike in the woods, we seem to find an excuse not to do it more often than not. Therefore, I'm resolving to do the following this year:

1. Walk every day- on the days that I drive to work, I will be joining my colleagues for Harvard on the Move and getting my daily walking fix in during my lunch hour.

2. Do one outdoorsy activity every weekend. I'm literally a block and a half away from Ravenswood Park, so there's no good reason not to go for a quick hike.

3. Take the family camping this summer. I used to love hiking and backcountry camping, and always assumed that I'd drag my family along for the adventure as well. Maria and I went camping twice one summer before Andriana was born, but we've yet to give it a try as an extended family unit. Well, this year I'm going to Make It Happen!

A pretty good explanation (I hope!)

2012-01-02T23:36:00.000-05:00

Okay, so my last post of 2011 was on October 31. Why so much radio silence?

Although I didn't end up doing NaNoWriMo, I was inspired nevertheless to kickstart my creative writing again. Having just finished reading Michael A. Burstein's excellent sci-fi anthology I Remember the Future, I decided to return to science fiction myself and wrote "Bibliophile," an 11,000-word short story about a librarian at the edge of the galaxy.

I wasn't even a few hundred words into the effort when it suddenly hit me- why not write a whole collection of sci-fi shorts where librarians are the central characters? As an homage to Ray Bradbury, I'm going to name this anthology "L is for Librarian" (after Bradbury's own collections "R is for Rocket" and "S is for Space"). I'm already working on the next installment, and am busy brainstorming the stories after that.

The breakthrough for me on this particular project was that I realized that of the several science fiction short story ideas I had gestating, the common theme which ran through most of them was that they all somehow involved a library or librarian. I know, what are the odds? Even the ones which didn't feature a librarian, however, took on a new creative life once I started to re-imagine them with this new focus. Which just goes to demonstrate the inherent awesomeness of librarianship... I wonder if I manage to post a copy of "Bibliophile" and sell it before ALA Midwinter, would I be eligible for The Great Librarian Write-Out Award?

I promise to share the first story in L is for Librarian in the near future (getting my writing organized and for sale online is a big part of Make It Happen 2012), but in the meantime I thought I'd let you know what was keeping me away from my blog for all of these weeks. I hope you'll agree that it was a worthy cause, but I promise not to keep you in the dark about such matters for so long in the future!

Make It Happen 2012: Day 2

2012-01-02T17:33:00.000-05:00

Long-time readers of this blog may recall that I've struggled with maintaining a healthy weight since childhood. I was a chunky kid, and although I managed to shed my baby fat at some point I found myself gaining weight at an alarming rate after graduating college and getting my first sedentary job as a library assistant- wooing my then-girlfriend (now my wife) with my cooking prowess probably didn't help things much, either! As an adult I've successfully lost weight on two separate occasions: one was with Weight Watchers back around 2000, and another following the South Beach Diet in 2004. Both times I dropped more than fifty pounds, but for one reason or another I ended up putting the weight back on and then some.

Keeping with my New Year's Resolution to Make It Happen in 2012, I've decided to give Weight Watchers another go. I really responded well to tracking my food and activities the last time I tried it, and that was with a hand-rigged spreadsheet on my ancient Ipaq PDA- this time around not only will I have the online resources available to me via my web browser, but Weight Watchers have tracker apps for both iOS and Android devices, so I'll have no excuse not to document every last calorie wherever I go. It also looks like there are ways to incorporate game-like elements like challenges into the online program as well, which would help keep things interesting as I progressed.

My current weight as of this evening is 274 pounds (thanks, Five Guys!). The goal is for me to lose 75 pounds, so that I weigh in just shy of the two hundred mark. I know from past experience that this is by no means an unreasonable goal, so at least I have that going for me at the outset. I just have to make it happen...

Every Sunday I will keep you apprised of my progress. Wish me luck!

Make It Happen 2012: Day 1

2012-01-01T19:02:00.004-05:00

Instead of making a list of various New Year's resolutions that I may or may not stick to, I've resolved that 2012 will be dedicated to one simple yet all-encompassing theme: Make It Happen.

Every day this year I will update the blog with an example of what I've done to challenge my status quo- whether it's putting a short story up for sale on Kindle or jumping in the ocean on New Year's Day. The idea behind Make It Happen is that all of the necessary ingredients for change are at your disposal. It's up to you to take that first plunge and get things started.

Speaking of plunges, this is me joining a few hundred hardy Gloucester residents starting 2012 by doing something crazy:

Want to Make It Happen in 2012 as well? Leave a link to your blog in the comments, or post to the #makeithappen hashtag on Twitter.

(Thanks to my friend and fellow librarian JP Porcaro for the inspiration!)

To NaNo or not to NaNo?

2011-10-31T14:52:00.000-05:00

That is the question I ask myself every time this year, ever since National Novel Writing Month (or NaNoWriMo) made its debut in 1999. Its premise is simple: write a 50,000-word novel during the month of November, a challenge which has attracted more and more participants every year- from just 21 in 1999 to over 200,000 brave souls for NaNoWriMo 2010. I took part in '06 and '09, finishing (or "winning") both times, and heinous as my schedule is this November I'm seriously thinking about making another go of it this year.

Why NaNo? For those who have never written something ambitious as a novel-length work of fiction before, NaNoWriMo is a dare to stop talking about writing that book and just do it already. Many would-be writers get themselves fatally tripped up over whether or not what they have to say is any good, with the result that they endless obsess over every single word they write. With its strict and unforgiving deadline, NaNo takes that kind of self-consciousness out of the equation. In order to write 50,000 words in a month, one must crank out an average of 1,667 words per day, which means if you attempt to stop and edit yourself as you write you will never make it to the finish line.

Just keep writing.

The other brilliant thing about NaNo is that it readily accepts the fact that most of the fifty thousand-plus words that each contestant writes will be crap. Of course it's crap! The point of National Novel Writing Month is not to produce a perfect literary specimen in thirty days or less, it's to produce. Many would-be writers are experts at starting things, but NaNoWriMo challenges you to take an idea and see it through to its conclusion. Yes, it's going to an unholy mess, riddled with plot holes, gaping continuity errors, and more typos than a text message conversation between a couple of teenagers. But it will be finished. And that's an accomplishment to be proud of no matter what you end up doing with your novel.

I get tired of the NaNo haters who come out around this time every year like clockwork to deride the whole event as a gimmick at best or in the worst case an affront to "real" writers, who as they are so quick to point out spend their whole year writing and do not appreciate having the market flooded with NaNo hacks who think that just because they finally wrote that novel that they deserve to have it published.

How to respond to these criticisms? First of all, simply hating on NaNo in general is like giving a person shit for wanting to run a marathon. Both of these things are extremely hard, each in its own way pushing a human being to the absolute limits of their physical or creative endurance, and I honestly cannot think of a reason not to encourage anyone who is brave or foolish enough to attempt either endeavor.

Second, I happen to know a lot of writers-- including published authors-- who participate in NaNoWriMo. Although this event is often negatively portrayed as one extended Amateur Night for literary wannabes, there are many people (such as myself) who have no problem with getting words onto the page but view NaNo as an opportunity to shake things up creatively. To return to the running metaphor, even if you do write or at least try to write during the other eleven months out of the year, National Novel Writing Month is like suddenly running wind sprints for thirty days. Even if you've already won in a previous year, the effort itself can still be exhilarating nevertheless.

And as for the concern that we who NaNo are flooding the fiction market every December 1st, if you look at the broader trends of digitization and self-publishing which are currently causing the publishing industry to implode, I think the literary efforts of each year's NaNoWriMo cohort are merely a drop in a vast ocean of radical change that is only just beginning to redefine our notions of writing and authorship in the 21st century and beyond.

So if you're thinking about participating in National Novel Writing Month, I say go for it. Whether I decide to join you or not this year, be sure that I will be cheering you all along the way next month. One of the best features of NaNoWriMo is the sense of community which it engenders, from the NaNo message boards to the Municipal Liaisons program providing mutual support and encouraging people to gather and write together in public, as well as the lively NaNoWriMo groups on Facebook and the Twitter hashtag. If you choose to NaNo, you are never alone, and many times that feeling that you have a quarter of a million people pulling for you is all you need to muster all those extra adverbs to get you across the 50k mark.

Good luck, all, and remember to just keep writing!

Here, Squiddy Squiddy Squiddy

2011-10-31T12:20:00.005-05:00

My daughter and I are ready for Halloween 2011!

The one that got away

2011-10-28T20:16:00.000-05:00

No, I'm not talking about fishing or lost loves here, but a library job that you passed on at some point in your career for reasons that may have made sense at the time but now cause you to kick yourself for missing what might have been a great opportunity. I'm sure everyone had one or two critical decision points in their lives where their career could have taken a completely different tack, had the other road been taken, leading one to think back and speculate "What If?"

For me it was a special collections job at a public library. I was just barely out of library school when I landed an interview for this position, which promised equal time maintaining a small but very interesting and eclectic historical collection with hours at the library's reference desk. As my degree concentration had been in Archives Management but my work experience in libraries had been in public services, this job seemed a perfect fit for me.

The only downside is that the library in question was in another state. While we would end up being much closer to my family, the prospect of such a move seemed daunting to say the least. My wife and I felt that we'd only just begun to settle down in New England, and with our daughter only three years old it just didn't seem like it was the right time to contemplate starting over again somewhere else. Nevertheless the job sounded fascinating enough on paper and the initial phone interview with the person who would be my boss went so promisingly that I felt like I had to go and see the library itself.

In retrospect, this was probably a huge mistake. Had I bowed out earlier on in the process, I probably wouldn't have felt as conflicted as I did after I actually got to see the special collection first-hand and confirm that it was in fact as cool as it had sounded. As long as the job had remained in the abstract, the "What If?" factor would not capture my imagination as fiercely as it did now that I had been there.

Of course my in-person interview ended up going well, such that they invited me back for a final round. This is where my wife and I had our final gut check and realized that we weren't ready for a change as life-altering as this- not yet. And yet... why does my mind keep coming back to this job, The One That Got Away, and beguile me in a way that no job prospect either real or hypothetical has ever done since? Perhaps I've been thinking a lot more about this lately because I am aware of the fact that I am inexorably approaching another one of those all-important decision points. When the time comes, will I seize the opportunity and embrace radical change this time around, or will I let another one get away...

How about the rest of you out there in Libraryland- does anyone else have a "What If?" they'd like to share?

Occupy Copyright

2011-10-27T11:39:00.000-05:00

I've been mulling this post over ever since Occupy Wall Street and its various local spinoffs got started, but I first wanted to make sure what I did end up saying was more thoughtful than opportunistic (also, Real Life came at me this month with a one-two punch that I'm still a bit staggered from and trying to process, but more about that when I'm at liberty to discuss it!). I'm pleased to see, however, that I'm not the first librarian to connect the dots between the causes fueling the OWS movement and the pressures currently facing libraries.

In the Library With a Lead Pipe gives a great rundown of those colleagues who are out there occupying librarianship in various clever and thought-provoking ways, from trying to overthrow the "Doing More With Less" mindset to demanding an occupation of scholarly literature and/or knowledge. I've already addressed the former issue here in my previous blog post, but today I'd like to take the latter point and drive it off the proverbial cliff by suggesting that we occupy nothing less than copyright itself.

How would we begin to do such a thing? Occupying Copyright is equal parts advocacy and action, and revolves around the following key precepts:

Libraries are meant to coexist with copyright, not stand in opposition to it. I don't know how we ended up in this sad situation where librarians are being equated in some circles with illegal file sharers and the Authors' Guild is suing a nonprofit attempt to make orphaned and out of print works more widely available to readers and researchers, but here we are. It wasn't always this way, you know. When Congress crafted a series of special exceptions for libraries to the U.S. Copyright Code back in the 1970's it was to acknowledge the vital relationship between copyrighted materials and the institutions which collected them for the purpose of advancing human knowledge and not merely the bottom line. Just as copyright itself was once envisioned as a productive force in its original limited incarnation, libraries answered the fair question of who was going to provide reasonable access to this vast proliferation of books and other media to those who couldn't possibly afford to buy it all.

Fair Use must be vigorously asserted in order to preserve it. For too long libraries and librarians have been cowed into accepting an ever-diminishing horizon as their legal right, either at the behest of a risk-averse general counsel or as the result of actual lawsuits- such as the Georgia State Copyright Case, which threatens to severely limit the exercise of Fair Use in higher education. In its original formulation, Fair Use was supposed to put the burden of proof on the offended party whose copyright was allegedly violated, but on a playing field where Big Content can effectively lawyer up until the end of time even the large universities are leery of pushing their luck. Couple this everpresent looming threat with a digital revolution that is pushing the for-profit sector inexorably towards a pay per view content delivery model (either a la carte or in subscription format, like Netflix) and it's all too easy for libraries to resort to coughing up licensing fees for what might otherwise be construed as Fair Use. Rather than accept this "better safe than sorry" mentality, librarians should be educating both themselves and their patrons in how to make their own Fair Use determinations and encouraging the lawful occupation of Fair Use whenever possible.

First Sale should apply to all forms of media- print, electronic, or whatever comes next. The doctrine of First Sale has served as the bedrock of libraries since time immemorial, but technological change, the triumph of End User Licensing Agreements, and recent legal developments are threatening to whittle this fundamental right down into a mere sliver of itself. This is a more difficult issue for individual librarians to occupy, but we can and should be agitating on behalf of our patrons for broader licensing terms from ebook and journal vendors, as well as lobbying Congress to carve out a new set of copyright exceptions that would trump digital licensing for non-profit educational and research purposes. At the recent Interlending and Document Supply Conference in Chicago, one of the presenters only half-jokingly suggested that librarians should form their own PAC, as even a modestly-funded political action committee is capable of wielding significant influence if they are able to stay tightly focused on a small set of key issues. Is it time to consider occupying the lobbying process in order to make these kinds of demands heard?

Libraries exist because copyright exists, but this is by no means a one-way relationship, as not only do libraries buy multiple copies of popular items, but they will also invest in more esoteric materials that the invisible hand of the market might otherwise allow to fail. They also purchase- at no small expense, mind you- the published fruit of the research process in the forms of scholarly monographs and academic journals, materials that simply would not have a market if not for libraries. Libraries also promote books, authors, and the cause of literacy. If we are currently losing the rhetorical battle, perhaps librarians need to open a new kind of charm offensive.

#OccupyCopyright

(Pic from Logo Designer Blog, where you can download the image as a free poster!)

Doing less with more

2011-10-24T08:54:00.002-05:00

My good friend Andy Woodworth wants to retire the phrase "Doing More With Less":

Unless someone can unequivocally demonstrate how “doing more with less” is a good thing (which I doubt highly), I think librarians should drop the phrase from their lexicon forever. It does nothing but cover up the real hurt of what budget cuts mean for our communities; because less is less and spinning it into some kind of positive helps no one.

Not only do I agree with this sentiment 100%, but I think we should taking things a step further- not only retiring the phrase, but the mindset altogether. In jest I commented on Andy's blog that we should try doing less with more for a change, but the more I think about it the less I'm convinced that I was joking.

So what does "Doing Less With More" mean exactly?

1. You Can't Do Everything. Implicit in Doing Less With More is, well, the doing less part (actually, I think it's explicit in this case, not implicit). Thinking about my previous post, whenever Gordon Ramsay revamped a failing restaurant, what was the one of the first things he did? He simplified the menu. Most of these eateries had boasted menus longer than a sequel by George R.R. Martin, with a page seemingly for every cuisine that had been trendy at one point. Never mind what the actual purported theme of the restaurant was, or whether or not the kitchen was any good at turning out General Tso's chicken or media noche sandwiches. Establishments that embraced such a scattershot approach to their offerings were trying to pander to everyone but ironically enough pleasing nobody in the end.

So, too, are libraries tempted to overextend themselves so as to please as many of our patrons or stakeholders as possible, offering all manners of services and/or programs regardless of actual demand, let alone whether or not we can afford to pay for them. The rapid advancement of technology is in part to blame for this kind of overextension, for as librarians we all too often feel obligated to remain either out in front of innovation as it occurs or at least remain open to its transformational capacities in how we do business as librarians. While I am by no means advocating a Luddite approach to this problem, we must at the same acknowledge that there are only so many FTE hours in a week. By all means leave yourself room for "20% Time," but don't forget to spend some time identifying your strengths and leveraging them, so that you do not wear yourself hopelessly thin.

2. Efficiency Is Your Best Frenemy. What's the first thing that any institution does in response to budget cuts? That's right, workflow assessment. The idea that one can always squeeze a little more efficiency out of any existing procedure in the workplace is by no means new, nor is it limited to the library world, but librarians' recent infatuation with assessment (or, as I like to call it, the "A-word") can make this process a double-edged sword. Again, please don't get me wrong here- I am a self-proclaimed stats geek and proud of it, and I have used assessment constructively in my own office to bring some long overdue change to workflows that were riddled with various inefficiencies. However, whenever I hear a fellow librarian talk about breaking out the stopwatches I can't help but think about Amazon, who has recently come under fire for pushing Taylorism to inhumane extremes in its distribution centers.

As a manager I have no choice to think about the bottom line, but at the same time bottom-line thinking absolutely terrifies me, especially as I see more and more of it trickle into our profession. I've always liked to think that what makes librarians different than their private-sector counterparts is that we don't run things like a business. Of course there are various business principles which can be successfully adapted into the library workplace, but however much we now compete with businesses like Barnes & Noble and Amazon and services like Netflix or Hulu for our patrons' needs we follow their business models at our own peril. Do we know where to draw the line when we assess, or is the temptation to turn a data point into an actionable performance benchmark too strong in this leaner, meaner age? Doing Less With More doesn't mean you need to reject efficiency and assessment, just that you know how to deploy these things intelligently, discreetly, and (above all else) humanely.

3. Find Your Joy. I blog a lot about joy being at the center of librarianship. Indeed, in a Doing Less With More philosophy, joy is absolutely essential, as the goal of doing less with more is to spend more time on what really matters- i.e., your joy. Once you've found that and made it the center of your work, everything you do will proceed outward from that point and inform your work as a librarian. It is far too easy in this day and age to simply circle the wagons and assume a purely defensive position, but once you allow yourself to succumb to a "Doing More With Less" mindset there's only one logical outcome. The older and presumably wiser I get, the more I become convinced that framing is more than half of the battle. A more cynical person might think of Doing Less With More as nothing more than window dressing, an amusing but sad attempt to put a positive spin on a truly depressing situation, but I see it as an opportunity to turn the tables on the prevailing negative discourse and refocus our efforts on the joy of librarianship. Because it is this joy that will carry us through the darkness.

"I can get sad, I can get frustrated, I can get scared, but I never get depressed – because there’s joy in my life." - Michael J. Fox

Gordon Ramsay's Library Nightmares

2011-10-07T12:01:00.001-05:00

When left to my own devices, I like to watch either BBC America or the Food Network. One of my guiltiest pleasures is Gordon Ramsay's Kitchen Nightmares, a series on the BBC where the celebrated chef with the foul mouth and ill temper visits a restaurant teetering on the brink of closure and attempts to rescue their operations with expert advice and tough love. Although Chef Ramsay does not shy away from yelling and dropping the f-bomb when warranted (when you see the condition of some of these kitchens you'll curse as well), he is first and foremost a mentoring figure in this show, which may come as a surprise to those who only know him from reality cooking competition Hell's Kitchen on the Fox Network.

No matter how short his fuse, Gordon knows the restaurant industry inside and out, and if he sees so much as a spark of life in an establishment, no matter how beleaguered, he will move heaven and earth to kindle it so as to give the proprietors the best possible odds of success moving forward. The Food Network now has a similar show, Restaurant Impossible, in which Robert Irvine, another U.K. chef, stages similar eatery interventions. I find both shows to be eminently watchable, and will easily surrender my afternoon or evening if either network is running them back to back. Not only do I find the human drama compelling in and of itself, but I think the challenges that people face in the food service industry are almost identical to those facing libraries today.

What are these challenges? After dedicating myself to way too many hours of informal "research" on the living room couch, I've decided that every episode of Kitchen Nightmares or Restaurant Impossible can be boiled down to the following three themes:

1. Unlearning dysfunction

2. Embracing passion

3. Committing to change

Let's look at each in the context of the show(s), then how it can be applied to librarianship...

1. Unlearning dysfunction. When Chef Ramsay or Irvine (for simplicity's sake we will just call him 'Chef' from here on in) arrives on the scene, the first thing he does is experience a typical service at that restaurant, both as a diner then as an observer in the kitchen. Only then will he give his honest, often scathing assessment of the establishment's operations. Usually the restaurant in question is failing because somewhere along the line it embraced a critical mass of dysfunctional processes, which Chef will proceed to unpack and identify, one by one. No workplace chooses dysfunction willingly, but it is uncanny how easily dysfunctional processes can become enshrined as "the way we've always done things" and therefore off-limits to critique or change. Nor does dysfunction spontaneously occur from out the void- instead, it is the net result of received wisdom and questionable assumptions which may very well have been true at some point in the organization's history but are no longer valid.

For example, when I took over my ILL office we were still fulfilling article requests by photocopying the pages in question then scanning them through a document feeder. Despite the fact that most of our peers had long since moved over to an all-digital workflow for these kinds of requests, my initial pleas to acquire a new scanner were rebuffed on the grounds that our copy and scan method was more efficient. While this may have been true when the workflow was decided upon some ten years ago, faster scanners and software that could automate the fulfillment process had since come onto the market that disproved the underlying assumption that "digital = slower." In my case it took some detailed time studies and the fortuitous intervention of another administrator to make my case and get that scanner, proving that the hardest dysfunction of all to overcome is the one that once made perfect sense.

2. Embracing passion. Another constant which emerges from the myriad failing restaurants featured in both shows is that there is either no passion left among the owners and workers or that there was none to begin with. A kitchen that is bereft of passion might as well shutter its doors permanently, as even if all of the underlying dysfunction can be rooted out and eliminated the service will lack the very soul it needs in order not just to survive but to prosper. Usually the midpoint of each episode will feature Chef sitting down with either the owner or the head chef and trying to remind them of why they got mixed up in the food service business in the first place. Once that spark is successfully kindled, it is possible to start talking about things like excellence in service, attention to detail, and a focus on quality, with the goal of providing an overall first-rate dining experience, but without passion these things are all just empty words and phrases.

The same is manifestly true for libraries. I'm sure many of us have had the good fortune at one point in our careers to have worked in a library where a genuine passion for sharing knowledge and championing intellectual freedom- what I like to call "the delightful absurdity of librarianship"- was fully embraced. The idea of working in such an environment is what lured me into library school and down the path of becoming professional librarians, in hopes that someday I might be able to nurture a similar oasis of my own. Working in a library should be a joy so infectious that even the members of your staff who are just in it for the steady paycheck can't help but smile and laugh along with everyone else. When we fall short of this ideal is it because of all of those external pressures that have always been there to some varying extent, or is it because your workplace does not cultivate and embrace a passion for librarianship?

3. Committing to change. Diagnosing the problem is often the easiest part of these restaurant shows, especially when the establishments have obviously gone so far down the wrong path. Even if Chef is able to help a kitchen crew rediscover their passion, the food service industry is still no cakewalk, such that it is all too easy to fall back into the old dysfunction or embrace new bad habits as a form of compromise. One of the things that Gordon Ramsay does in his Kitchen Nightmares is pay a follow-up visit to the same restaurant a few months or even a year later to see if his mentoring and advice were taken to heart. Although sometimes the places embrace Chef's wisdom without reservation, most of the time there's been at least a little bit backsliding on the restaurant's part. Even the successful establishments are not immune to this- in fact, success can often lead to complaisance and renewed temptation to cut corners.

Genuine commitment to change isn't just hard, but an ongoing challenge. Assuming that you are serious about questioning your fundamental assumptions and getting your staff to embrace a passion for their work, it's still all too easy to default to dysfunctional behavior, especially when the chips are down. Back to my example of scanning ILL articles, even after I had secured the new hardware and software it was a constant battle with my staff not to panic when we felt overwhelmed by the learning curve of an all-digital workflow. Instead of running back to the old copy and scan workflow when things got busy, I played the part of cheerleader and encouraged staff and students to tough it out until the new way of doing things was as comfortable as the old. The result was better service for our patrons, better care and handling of our library materials, better use of natural resources (not to mention saving us a boatload in paper and toner costs!), and a more enjoyable experience for our students, who instead of passively photocopying articles were now actively engaged in tweaking the image quality as they scanned so that they took a genuine pride in their work. Whereas before we practically had to force student workers to do photocopying duty, working at the scanner became the most popular student activity in our office!

It's too bad that there is no library equivalent to restaurant reality programming, because I think many library workplaces would in fact benefit from a Gordon Ramsay-style intervention. I consider myself fortunate that I was able to get a free consultation from a giant in the resource sharing community, who offered some valuable constructive criticism about improving our workflows and making the office a better overall place to work. Even though I considered his advice to be friendly, I have to admit that you need to have a thick skin about opening your operations up to such scrutiny, as the natural impulse is to defend even the most indisputably dysfunctional of policies and procedures. That being said, I wouldn't have traded his visit for the world, for even during the uncomfortable bits I was learning more than I could have possibly picked up through any other means of evaluation.

The library world needs its very own Gordon Ramsay, though perhaps with less swearing. Any volunteers out there?

Is that the Love Boat?

2011-09-28T14:32:00.001-05:00

Tell Isaac I need a double!

After the sky

2011-09-28T10:20:00.001-05:00

There are Giants in the sky!
There are big tall terrible Giants
in the sky!

Maybe it's just the air travel that always makes me think of this song from Stephen Sondheim's Into The Woods whenever I go to a library conference, but the more I reflect upon the phenomenon the more I'm convinced that there's something deeper going on. Having just returned from Interlending & Document Supply in Chicago, I thought I'd take a closer look at the lyrics and how they apply to the library conference experience.

When you're way up high
And you look below
At the world you left
And the things you know,
Little more than a glance
Is enough to show
You just how small you are.

Conferences provide both perspective and context. Simply being removed from one's everyday library environment is an important aspect of this shift in perception, and one of the main reasons why virtual conferences (as relatively cheaper and useful as they may be in certain circumstances) will never be able to replicate fully the experience of traveling and meeting your colleagues in person.

One of the more humbling aspects of Interlending & Document Supply was the international scope of the conference. Even working for a major university library I routinely felt that each speaker was opening up vistas that I could only dimly apprehend before, giving me a true sense of my place in the grand scheme of global research sharing.

When you're way up high
And you're own your own
In a world like none
That you've ever known,
Where the sky is lead
And the earth is stone,

You're free, to do
Whatever pleases you,
Exploring things you'd never dare
'Cause you don't care,

Being at a conference can be absolutely liberating. While you may have some colleagues there whom you look forward to seeing again, often you will find yourself in an unfamiliar setting (perhaps in a city you've never even been to before), speaking from the heart and sharing your thoughts and opinions with total strangers. As much as this social aspect of conference-going can be daunting, I always look forward to those serendipitous encounters that bring me in contact both with new colleagues or people I've actually been doing business with from afar for years.

In that light, it's funny and a little frightening how one's reputation can precede oneself among your peers. On the first day of ILDS I was standing in line talking with someone when suddenly the person in front of us whirled around and said: "Wait! You're Tom Bruno?" As it turned out, she was a colleague at a library that we have a lot of dealings with, many of them rather complicated and headache-inducing for both of us to resolve. Never in a million years did I think I'd meet the person at the other end of those ILL requests, but now that I have I feel a much closer kinship than I had before. I had worried that I was at the very best a "frenemy" in her list of resource sharing contacts, but by the conference's end we were fast friends.

When suddenly there's
A big tall terrible Giant at the door,
A big tall terrible lady Giant
sweeping the floor.
And she gives you food
And she gives you rest
And she draws you close
To her Giant breast,
And you know things now
that you never knew before,
Not till the sky.

I'm a fairly extroverted guy when I need to be. but the library conference experience always pushes my limits in how social I can be. After an exhilarating day of engaging presentations and thought-provoking conversations with fellow libraries during coffee breaks and over lunch it can be sorely tempting to crawl back to your hotel room and zone out in front of the Food Network for the rest of the evening, but a conference is charmed time. You only have it for so long, and once the opportunity is lost you will almost certainly regret having squandered it on something mundane that you could do any day of the week at home.

There are indeed giants in the sky, but the rock stars and superheroes of our profession are more accessible than you might think. After hours is the time when keynote speakers, distinguished presenters, and guests of honor mix and mingle with the rest of the conference attendees, and there's literally no telling who you may end up talking to after the first two glasses of wine. It's okay to be a gobsmacked fan- I must have amused the heck out of the folks of the Center for Research Libraries by telling them over and over again that visiting their library facility was on my "Bucket List" of things I wanted to see before I died- but it's not okay to be a wallflower.

Only just when you've made
A friend and all,
And you know she's big
But you don't feel small,
Someone bigger than her
Comes along the hall
To swallow you for lunch.

And you heart is lead
And your stomach stone
And you're really scared
Being all alone...

And it's then that you miss
All the things you've known
And the world you've left
And the little you own-

The fun is done.
You steal what you can and run.

No conference can last forever. At some point your brain will be filled to bursting with new ideas and you will be so emotionally tapped out that even the prospect of gourmet food and an open bar won't be inspiration enough to spend another night out on the town with your fellow librarians. It's funny how quickly this threshold can be reached at a good conference, which is perhaps all for the better that some of the best library conferences I've attended over the past few years have kept it short and sweet. No sooner have you accepted this caffeine and adrenaline powered whirlwind of ideas as your reality than it is time to leave- and suddenly you are rushing to make your travel connections because you pushed your conference agenda to the very envelope so as not to miss so much as a minute of the magic.

My flight out of Chicago on Wednesday night was sufficiently late that I was able to take that Bucket List tour of CRL I had always wanted, plus visit the brand spanking new Mansueto Library at the University of Chicago, where robotic cranes pluck items out of high-density storage bins and whisk them up to a glittering reading room under a glass dome. Between the charter bus scheduled to ferry us from library to library and the thought of having to ride two subway lines to get back to the airport- not to mention the prospect of having to run the TSA gauntlet once I got to O'Hare!- I was already sweating bullets as the conference was declared closed in the early afternoon; fortunately, however, my colleague at the University of Chicago helped me avoid a full-bore panic by arranging for an early tour of the robots at Mansueto and even drove some of us to the nearest L station (thanks again, David! You are a prince among librarians).

Fortune favors the bold- sometimes it even smiles upon the foolish...

And you scramble down
And you look below,
And the world you know
Begins to grow:

The roof, the house, and your Mother at the door.
The roof, the house and the world you never thought to explore.
And you think of all of the things you've seen,
And you wish that you could live in between,
And you're back again,
Only different than before,
After the sky.

Coming home is always a mixed blessing. On the one hand it's nice to be back among friends and family, and who doesn't look forward to sleeping in their own bed after several nights in a hotel? But returning to the office can be jarring, even after just a short conference. When I was a support staff member I would invariably dread whenever my supervisor came back from a library conference, as she'd want to implement all of the new ideas she had picked up from her colleagues... usually all at once!

Now that the tables have turned and I am the one coming back to the office in a hyperstimulated state of mind, I more keenly appreciate the dilemma my previous boss must have found herself in. I try to temper my enthusiasm, but at the same time I don't want my time up in the sky to have been all for naught. Trying to share the creative energy one brings back from a conference without overly disrupting your support staff's daily workflows is a more delicate balancing act than I had imagined when I was on the receiving end, but it's the most important part of attending a library conference in the first place.

This is why we go to conferences, not only so that our experiences there change us for the better, but so that we can share our experience and effect positive changes of our own when we return. It will be a long day indeed -- if ever!-- before this transformative aspect of conference-going can be replicated by other means. Until that day arrives, I will always look forward to the next opportunity to visit the giants in the sky, and as a manager and future administrator I will be sure to advocate that this kind of professional development be properly valued for what it is.

Librarians should be going to conferences not despite declining financial fortunes and shrinking travel budgets, but precisely because of these pressures. It has never been more important for libraries and librarians to share what they know, and there is no better way to facilitate such an exchange of information and experience than by coming together in person. Our email boxes are filled to bursting, our RSS feeders overwhelmed with blog entries, and our social networks are already jammed with so much noise that it is difficult to cull any meaningful signals. Library conferences on the other hand provide an intense albeit brief period where most if not all of our mental and psychic bandwidth can be devoted to absorbing ideas and contributing to the Big Picture issues which so often elude us in our workaday lives.

We need the giants. We need the sky. Anyone who tells you otherwise is a cynic or a fool.

There are Giants in the sky!
There are big tall terrible awesome scary wonderful
Giants in the sky!