Finding the work/family/fun balance and identity as a librarian/parent
By Meredith Farkas | February 22, 2010
This is a post mainly for those professionals who are passionate about their careers and are considering having children but wonder/worry what impact it might have on their life and their career. I’m going to talk about my own experience finding an identity as a working mother over the past year. Remember that your mileage may vary — there is no telling what you’re going to feel when you have a child and how that will impact your life and your feelings about work.
This was one of my biggest concerns before Adam and I decided to get pregnant, and, unfortunately, the women I talked to about being a parent didn’t fill me with confidence that I’d be able to balance work and family well. I heard from women who told me that they’d become less ambitious once they had children; women who hated leaving their child at daycare but didn’t have a choice; women who worked 9-to-5, took care of their children and never did anything else; women who could count on one hand the number of times they spent alone time with their spouse in years; and women who chose to stay home with their children. Since Adam and I both had mothers who stayed home with us, we didn’t have many exemplars of mothers who successfully and happily balanced work and family. My mother was actually horrified at first that I was going to send Reed to a daycare. I felt like I couldn’t win.
My biggest worry when I had Reed was that I would want to stay home with him forever when that simply wasn’t financially feasible. I was envious of my former colleague (who had her baby a week before I did) who decided to quit her job and stay home with her daughter. I felt like I would miss so much time with my son and wouldn’t be able to bond with him as well. While, at first, it was hard to comprehend being away from him, I am so glad that I go to work and that he goes to daycare.
A good daycare is one of the best things for a child’s social development. When I get the chance to watch Reed at daycare, I see all of the opportunities he has to learn about sharing, about interacting with other children and adults, about bonding with people other than his parents, and about social play. Just today, I saw him and a little girl trying to play with the same toy — learning how to deal with this simply isn’t something he’s going to get from being home all day, and (most) playgroups are often play mediated by mothers. I’m fortunate that Reed immediately took to being in daycare when we started him in it at 4 months — he’s an incredibly social and high-energy little boy, so being around different people perfectly suits his personality. I very quickly felt comfortable leaving Reed at daycare, because I didn’t feel like it was a second-best/no-other-choice option for childcare — I really do think he’s better off there. That’s not to say that there’s anything wrong with staying home with your child; this is just what works for us.
I also realized that I need my identity as a professional. I like going to work, interacting with adults and working on projects. I like giving talks, writing articles and taking part in professional conversations. While I think about Reed when I’m at work, I don’t wish I was home with him. Any concerns I had about my losing my ambitions after having a child went out the window shortly after going back to work. My priorities have not changed. Family was always first — I chose not to write a second book a few years ago because I didn’t want to put such a burden on my husband in taking care of the household. I’m still passionate about my work and it’s just as important to me as it was before. I think the only thing that’s changed is how I manage my time. I don’t have the luxury of coming home from work and writing a blog post or working on an article — I have a sweet little boy play with, feed, bathe and put to bed (and, frankly, I wouldn’t trade that time with him for anything, no matter how tired I am when I get home). I have to find little pieces of time here and there (naps, after Reed goes to bed, Monday mornings since I work a night reference shift, etc.) and obviously can’t do as much as I used to. But I’ve lost none of the passion I had before for technology and our profession.
With all of the (bad) advice being thrown at new mothers, it can be incredibly difficult to find your identity as a mother. I found that many mothers were all about guilt-trips and one-upsmanship. You don’t use cloth diapers? You don’t breastfeed exclusively? You feed your child baby food from a jar? You leave your child with someone else so you and your husband can spend some alone time together? I got the sense from reading books, articles, and (especially) discussion boards that my entire life should revolve around my child since one wrong choice could have terrible consequences, and that having a child would require me to be completely selfless and put my own desires at the bottom of the pile. And I bought into it for a while.
The hardest thing about the first few months after having Reed was letting go of all the expectations I put on myself because I thought that was how a mother was supposed to be. I made myself so miserable trying to be someone I’m not and trying to do things that simply weren’t working for any of us because I thought I had to. Part of it was crazy post-pregnancy hormones and postpartum depression (an issue I never talked to anyone about at the time other than my doctor and my husband), but I feel strongly that a lot of it was my unwillingness to let go of this idea that I had to martyr myself to my child’s needs. I have to wonder how much postpartum depression is caused by these unrealistic expectations people have for themselves as new mothers and what happens when their expectations don’t mesh with the reality.
If anything, I’m more selfish now than I was before having a child. I’m very protective of my time and say “no” to doing a lot of things that I would have said “yes” to a year ago. I work hard to ensure that my husband and I make our relationship a priority, even if it means leaving my precious child with his grandparents while we spend a night at a hotel (which is exactly what we’re doing this Sunday — woo hoo!). And I do things for myself or buy things for myself that make me happy. I realized after that very scary episode with postpartum depression (my first major depressive episode since I was 19) that I need to make myself happy to be a good mother to Reed. Happy mommy = happy baby. So I’ve learned how to balance taking care of me and my marriage with taking care of my little boy. And judging by how happy and mellow he is most of the time, I’d say I’m doing an o.k. job at it.
I’ll also say that having a good work/family/fun balance depends greatly on having a supportive partner (with an emphasis on the word partner). My husband is a partner in every sense of the word — we parent and take care of the house 50-50. He is so wonderful with Reed and there’s nothing I enjoy more than watching Reed climb on his dad and seeing the smiles they both have when they look into each other’s eyes. Without Adam, I can’t imagine making this all work. Thanks hon!
I wish someone had told me all these things when I was thinking about having a child. Yes, you can still be ambitious in your career — you may have to spend less time speaking at conferences and writing books, but you don’t have to give it up altogether. It’s not only ok for you to send your child to daycare, but it might actually be the best thing for him or her. You can be selfish and still be a good mother. If you decide to get an extra hour of sleep instead of making your child’s baby food yourself, he or she won’t be irrevocably scarred by eating food from a jar. That what’s most important is that your child is loved and well cared-for and so many of the other things you think are important when you read baby books or magazine articles really aren’t.
So if you’re on the fence about having a child because you feel like you might have to give up being who you are, realize that choice is up to you. You can still be the passionate, hard-working professional you are and be a great parent — the only thing you’ll absolutely have to change is how you allocate your time. I also wish that someone had told me how much fun it is to have a child. Everyone tells you it’ll change your life, you’ll never sleep again, you’ll never go out to the movies again, etc., but you never hear enough about the awesomeness of parenthood. Reed is really the most fun person I’ve ever known and I treasure every minute I spend with him. I feel so lucky to be his mom. Parenthood isn’t for everyone, but it’s a far more fun and awesome adventure than I’d ever expected.
Topics: Work, about me, career, gender, librarianship, speaking, writing | 37 Comments »
A Working Mom’s Library Day in the Life: Thursday – awesome day
By Meredith Farkas | January 29, 2010
This will be my last Day in the Life, as Reed and I got sick with RSV (and him with bronchiolitis as well) so I’m feverish, wiped out, and confined to bed. I wrote this Thursday evening before the worst of the illness had hit (and man, it hit like a ton of bricks during the night!)
Soooooooo tired this morning. Since we’d had such a bad night’s sleep last night, I let Reed sleep until he woke up on his own (Adam too). Reed woke up very stuffy, kind of crabby, and not really into eating much in the way of solid foods. I dropped him off at daycare and he seemed pretty happy there playing with his favorite toys. Ended up getting to work around 8:20. This is one of those days that I wish I actually liked coffee.
Fortunately, it’s a teaching day, so I know that’ll wake me up. I really love teaching, because it gets me working with students and faculty, it gets my energy levels up, and, well, it’s just fun most of the time. I used to be terrified of teaching, but over time I’ve not only become comfortable with it, but I really enjoy doing it.
Met with the Distance Learning Librarian (who I supervise) to catch up on what she’s been working on and the progress of some of the committees she’s a member of. She is a very self-directed and highly competent employee, so sometimes it’s easy to forget that she’s only been here since August and still needs plenty of support and advice. I talked to her about presenting on a committee we’re co-chairing at the Library Council meeting tomorrow morning since she could use more experience taking the reins in committee work.
Prepped for the International Studies senior seminar I’m teaching this afternoon. I’ve been trying to find the happy medium between over-preparing (which leads to boring) and under-preparing (which leads to screw-ups) for my instruction sessions and I think I’m getting closer to a happy medium. I’m trying a new instructional technique with this class to get the students more involved, so we’ll see if it’s a success or a major flop.
Did some collection development work as I’m woefully behind in the spending of my liaison funds.
Discussed the website redesign with the Systems Librarian and saw some graphical elements that the university webmaster had made for us. They look completely awesome and I’m so glad he was willing to work with the library on this since graphical design skills are something seriously lacking amongst the library staff.
At 1:45, the International Studies seminar showed up (15 minutes early — damn I’m glad I always start setting up early!). It’s a small class of 11 students, so an ideal one to try out new ideas with. Their assignment for the semester is to write a major research paper on some political, economic or historical topic relating to the country in which they’d studied abroad the year before, so there is a huge range of library resources that could be helpful depending on the topic. Fortunately, I had two hours with the students, so we covered a lot of ground. I’d gone in assuming that since they were seniors who’d taken plenty of history and political science classes (International Studies is an interdisciplinary major), they would already have lots of experience using resources like JSTOR, CIAO, WorldCat, etc. After asking the students a few questions at the beginning of the session, I realized how wrong I was. Only half had used JSTOR and none had used CIAO or WorldCat. Wow! So, that required a bit of readjustment in how I’d planned to teach the class. The one thing I really wanted to try with this class is to have students come up to my computer and do searches on their research topic. I guessed that students would pay more attention if it was their classmate up there, and I thought I could offer suggestions and search tips that they might be more likely to remember if they were the ones doing the searching. It also just makes more sense to do searches on their topics than on canned ones I came up with.
The class ended up being the best one I’ve ever taught. The students actually clapped for me at the end, which was a hoot. The students and the professor were even taking notes during the session, which is not something I often see. I had to do a little more demo-ing of the databases than I’d planned originally, but I still had them doing the searching most of the time. They really responded well to coming up to the computer to do their searching. I chose people to come up to do different searches based on the nature of their topic (economic, current political, historical, historical political, etc.). And it worked out nicely, because some students had the problem of having very few result and needing to broaden their search and others had the problem of too many and needing to narrow their topic. There were lots of nice examples to use as teaching moments. Not only was I giving them suggestions as they were searching, but the other students were as well. They were asking all sorts of questions about the databases. I fed off the students’ energy and definitely was more energetic and animated than I am with a class where the students don’t seem engaged. I came out of class feeling completely excited, awake and happy.
It’s experiences like this that remind me of why I love my job so much. Some days I’m mired in meetings, paperwork, creating tutorials and other activities that pretty much have me sitting in a chair all day. I like some of those activities (especially creating tutorials), but if that was all there was in my job, it wouldn’t be for me. But then there are those days when I get a lot of reference questions at the desk or I teach, where I really get to help students and faculty. That’s the stuff I love most about my job. Fortunately, as the semester gets going (it’s only week 2), I’ll have more and more interactions like these that will leave me energized and grateful to have the job I do.
Topics: Work, librarianship, librarydayinthelife | 2 Comments »
A working mom’s library day in the life: Wednesday
By Meredith Farkas | January 27, 2010
This morning I felt really sick to my stomach and dizzy, so after helping to get Reed dressed, Adam ended up taking him to daycare. I spent 20 minutes lying in bed after they’d left before I headed to work (arrived at 7:40).
I was tied to my desk this morning since I was on-call for reference until noon (which means checking email, being available on IM, and being available for anyone who needs research help). Spent most of the morning working on course guides for upcoming Asian Politics, American Politics and Intro to Political Science classes. When working on the Asian politics guide, I realized that, while we had a ton of books on China and on Islam in Asia, we didn’t have so many on Japan, India, South Korea, etc. We’ve been doing a lot of purchasing on China because of a new Chinese language major and a new concentration on Chinese history, but I don’t want to see the other areas suffer. This took me off on a tangent to find the best recent books on politics and economic policy in other areas of Asia.
My director asked me if she should count research consultations she’s doing with Sports Medicine students as reference or instruction. Good question! I asked folks on Twitter how they record statistics on individual consultations and libraries seem to be pretty divided on how they handle it. I like the idea of counting it as reference, but in a separate category of reference. Emailed Head of Reference to ask her to add that to the agenda for our next meeting.
Helped a faculty member request a journal through ILL.
Our distance learning librarian asked me if I knew how to change certain content in Drupal for our website and after digging for a while, I realized that I had no idea. I asked her to contact the librarian who built the site for us to find out how we can change this block content since we can’t actually find where it’s being generated from. Talked with her about that new online program we’re concerned about being able to support as well as library instruction, and I ended up giving her another one of my History 108 classes since she’s interested in getting more teaching experience.
Adam called to see how I was doing (so-so, still haven’t tried eating) and let me know that Reed was happily crawling around at daycare when he left. That’s good, because he was in one heck of a bad mood this morning between the gum pain of teething and the runny nose. Poor little guy!
Taught a student, via IM, how to find a specific journal article online from a citation.
Eating lunch (Nilla Wafers since I’m feeling so poorly) and catching up on feeds. Just got an email that I was accepted for the Program Track of ACRL Immersion this summer, which is conveniently located in Burlington, VT. this summer. AWESOME! It’s going to eat up my entire professional development budget for the next fiscal year, so it’ll be a bummer that that’s the only thing I’ll be able to attend from June 2010-May 2011.
Met with librarian whose class I observed last week to discuss my evaluation of her teaching. We discussed possible ways she could improve her delivery and make the class more engaging.
Posted to my SJSU class site about the Library Day in the Life project so students could get a sense of what it’s like to work in a library type or job they might be interested in.
Recorded statistics from instruction sessions I’ve taught and tutorials I’ve created over the last two months. Bad head of instruction!!!
Lots of little things. Took a walk around the library since I’ve been sitting at my desk WAY too long and caught up with several colleagues along the way. Emailed my slides from yesterday’s talk on Drupal in education to a faculty member who’d requested it. Sent the woman coordinating my travel for the conference I’m presenting at in Buffalo in May information on the flights I’d like to take. I hate flying US Air, but the flight times were the most convenient for being away from the family as little as possible.
Did a little more work on the course guides before leaving to pick up Reed from daycare. The women at daycare told me that he’d needed Tylenol during the day, so clearly he was not having the best of days. He vacillated between happy and hysterical all evening and fell asleep around 7:30, though by 9pm, it was obvious that he was not going to sleep well since he was rolling around in his crib and banging into the bars. We ended up taking him to bed with us, which was better for him, but not so good for us. No one in our house ended up getting a great night’s sleep.
Topics: Work, librarianship, librarydayinthelife | No Comments »
A Working Mom’s Library Day in the Life: Tuesday
By Meredith Farkas | January 27, 2010
My day started at 6:00 am when my husband and I got Reed fed, dressed, and ready for daycare. Adam drove him to daycare today since I was nearly out of gas and didn’t want to stop with him in the car. I’ll pick him up in the afternoon. I took a quick shower myself, skipped breakfast since I’ve been feeling nauseous the past few days, filled my water bottle, and headed to work.
Arrived at work by 7:45 and checked my email. Always amazing how much comes in after/before business hours.
Called Adam to make sure Reed got off to daycare ok (he did).
Met with our new Systems Librarian to talk about his evaluation of my teaching in the Popular Culture of Modern Europe (a senior seminar) class I taught last week. (We just started doing a peer evaluation of instruction project this semester for the first time and I’m really excited to see how it goes.) I had tried some new activities and was really happy with how it went for the most part. He really liked the primary source activity I did and though that most of the students really got into it (I chose some pretty fun primary sources for them to analyze). The weak points he noticed were the same ones I had noted that I wanted to improve upon. I also talked to him about instruction in general. He’s new to instruction and not yet confident in what he’s doing, so I talked to him about my own experiences early on with instruction (and how much I sucked) and told him that he just needs to keep doing it and find his own style of teaching.
Got a request for information literacy instruction from a faculty member in political science I’ve never worked with before. She asked me to teach in all four of her classes. AWESOME! I’ve been on a mission over the past two years to convince the faculty in the social sciences that I have something useful to offer, and finally, over the past few months, I feel like I’m at a tipping point. I’ve been offering faculty workshops on different topics and have been creating more online tutorials in areas they find valuable. Most importantly, I’ve made sure to tell them about everything I’ve been doing, and one faculty member who has become a “fan” has also been singing my praises. I’ve been getting emails from people who for years have never responded to any emails I’ve sent and I’m getting asked to do instruction for faculty I’ve never taught classes for before. It’s nice to know that the slow-and-steady strategy does sometimes work!
Got into a friendly debate on FriendFeed about Clay Shirky’s “Rant about women.” I love when you can discuss something with a group of people where you might disagree, but you’re still respectful and like each other at the end of it all. I didn’t stop work to go be on FriendFeed, but I’d peek at it every once in a while when I was working on other stuff and put my 2 cents in.
Wrote to the faculty member teaching the political science research methods course this semester to see if he’d be interested in my teaching an information literacy session for his students. He never responds to my emails that I send out to all faculty in his department, so I thought I’d try the personal route. Not sure he’ll see a need for it, but it’s worth a try.
Talked to the Head of Reference about scheduling a reference/instruction meeting for next week. I want to review with everyone how the first few peer reviews have gone and answer any questions I can for people who haven’t done it yet. Lots more to discuss in reference though.
Talked to our new Systems Librarian about teaching one of the classes I have coming up. He chose History 108, where students need to do research for a recreation of the Paris Peace Conference (where each group of students will represent one of the countries or interests there – it’s a cool assignment!). I’ve got six sections of this class coming in, so he’ll be able to observe me before doing it himself. Made a mental note to email the faculty member and let him know – he’s a really nice guy, so I’m sure he’ll welcome the opportunity to give my colleague more experience teaching.
Started to work on course guides for the upcoming political science classes. Will have to create three in a hurry plus one on Modern Russian History, so my workload just increased!
Shoved some food in my mouth before running to give a brown bag lunch presentation for the School of Graduate Studies on using Drupal in education and talked about my experiences using it at San Jose State. One faculty member is interested in using it as a community platform for students in his online program where they could communicate across classes and share resources. It sounds like an ideal use of Drupal.
Attended a library all-staff meeting where our new Systems Librarian unveiled his idea for the new front page of our website. I like the concept and with some polishing on the graphical design end, it’ll be a great improvement to our site. Must say that I’m glad it’s not me having to do that anymore – I was the webmaster for several years and, while it was nice to have that sort of control, it was a pain to try and make everyone happy. I’m not sure our Systems Librarian really knows what he’s in for!
Checked feeds, took a look at recent issues of C&RL and C&RL News. Checked out some flights for two conferences I’ll be attending in April and May. I want to minimize my time away from Reed since I’ve never actually been away from him for even a 24-hour period yet! Just thinking about being away from him for a few days makes me teary.
My class for San Jose State started today and I commented on some of the posts students have been making. Looks like a really great group of students!
Worked more on course guides for those upcoming classes. I’m particularly excited about teaching the one on Asian Politics!
At 4:30, I headed over the mountain to Reed’s daycare to pick him up. He was playing happily with toys and didn’t even notice me when I came in until I called his name. Then we headed home for play and bath-time. He’s got a little cold and is SO CLOSE to getting his first tooth, so he’s been in a not-so-great mood on-and-off. Still, we had a pretty nice evening and he got to bed at his usual time (though he woke up 5 or 6 times that night, sigh). After he went to bed (around 7pm), I answered some emails, made some comments in my Drupal classroom, and folded and put away some laundry while watching “Chuck” on our TiVo.
Topics: Work, librarianship, librarydayinthelife | 2 Comments »
A Working Mom’s Library Day in the Life: Monday
By Meredith Farkas | January 25, 2010
This week’s “days in the life” are very different from the ones I did back in July. In July, I was still in the midst of maternity leave and was working only half-time. I was taking care of a three-month-old child and often felt so overwhelmed by that responsibility that I was having trouble finding a work/life balance that preserved my sanity. Now, I really feel like I’ve found the right balance for my life and feel much more comfortable in my role as working mom.
On Mondays, I work from 1pm until 9:30pm as I have the evening reference shift. This was the first Monday that we’ve ever put Reed in daycare; until now, I’ve watched him until 12:30 and Adam had him the rest of the day. Losing a day of work-time just wasn’t working anymore for Adam, and with my Web 2.0 class starting tomorrow, I’m going to be a lot busier too. Reed is a very high-energy, social boy, so daycare really suits him and he’s always happy to be there. I went to visit Reed on my way to work and absolutely did not want to leave his daycare. I go through phases where I appreciate having productive adult time away from him and phases where I can’t stand not hugging him all day long. Lately I’ve been in the latter phase of mommyhood.
Since I took Friday off last week to spend my husband’s birthday with him, I came back to a mountain of emails. I first answered emails that I could get through quickly and flagged those that required more thoughtful attention. I’ve been bugging faculty in my liaison areas to request books for purchase and it’s finally paying off, so I passed a big bunch of paper and electronic acquisitions requests on to our Acquisitions Associate who orders books. There are certain programs still that aren’t purchasing much, and the way it’s set up in the School of Social Sciences, if psychology (or another department) doesn’t spend their money, the rest of the faculty in the other social science areas can spend it (as opposed to me spending it on psychology books). This worries me because I feel like we’re doing a poor job developing the collection in certain areas, but I can’t just take the reins on this when faculty have always controlled the book funds.
I then went next door and talked to the Distance Learning Librarian about a new online program being proposed by the school of graduate studies since we just received the proposal for it in our Inbox this weekend. We both question whether we can adequately support the program. I feel strongly that some programs should still be taught face-to-face because of the dearth of online resources in those areas. This is definitely one of them. We’ve been asked to create an estimate of how much it will cost for the library to support this program, and we know our figure will be far more than they will be willing to support. I wrote an email to the faculty member proposing the new online program asking for some clarifications on his proposal so that we can get a better idea about the program’s potential resource needs.
Went downstairs to talk to the Head of Digital Initiatives about some feedback I got from a faculty member on our WorldCat Local pilot project. We just started a pilot project using WorldCat Local as our default catalog search interface. I’m pretty curious to see how people respond to it.
I also talked to him about getting some quotes on the databases we think we’d need in order to be able to support the proposed online program. I then worked on a list of online databases to get quotes on for this new program (looked at Universities that have respected programs in this area for ideas). The list quickly became ridiculously large, so I will ask the professor proposing the program to narrow it down to what he thinks would be useful.
I took a look at new University Customer Service draft policy and saw how it compared to the reference guidelines we’re working on. Fortunately, they seem to complement each other quite well, and the University-wide policy gives me a few ideas for additions to our policy. Realized that we don’t have a signature file for our reference email account, which might be nice for providing info on the additional ways that students can get in contact with us and/or at what times we staff each. I email our Head of Reference about the idea.
Ate a quick dinner and checked my RSS feeds in Google Reader. Chatted with Adam on the phone for a few minutes and got sad when I heard Reed giggling in the background. I hate Mondays because by the time I come home, he’s already asleep. 
Worked on slides for a brown-bag lunch presentation I’m giving tomorrow on using Drupal in education for the School of Graduate Studies. I’m not 100% sure if I’ll even use the slides or if I’ll just talk and show them my Drupal classroom live online – it really depends on the audience.
Got on the reference desk and signed into the reference email accounts and Meebo. Had a question at the desk from a student looking for historical map resources. Had trouble finding exactly what he was looking for, but gave him some suggestions that might prove fruitful. Realize that we don’t have many really good historic atlases and make a note to see what I might purchase in that area.
Answered a few basic questions during the next three hours, but it was really slow, which I hate since reference questions energize me. I spent most of the time finishing a blog post I’d started at home and going through a large pile of CHOICE Cards. I have a small liaison fund that I can spend and I try to focus my purchasing on areas that are underrepresented by faculty purchasing and/or are areas where I know students are doing a lot of research. As a result, I tend to wait until the last minute to spend a lot of my money since I don’t know which areas faculty are going to do purchasing in. I’m sure our Acquisitions Associate just loves me.
At 9:15, it’s nearly time to leave. Always sad to come home and not be able to give my little guy a hug, but I’ll probably end up hanging out with him at 1am when he decides he’s hungry. Ah, the life of a working mother!
Topics: librarianship, librarydayinthelife | 3 Comments »
A rant about men (like Clay Shirky)
By Meredith Farkas | January 25, 2010
A lot of people have written about Clay Shirky’s post “A rant about women” and I’m here to give my two cents FWIW. First of all, who in their right mind entitles a post “A Rant about women”? While he made some valid points in his post, the title and his gross over-generalizations really made it difficult to see anything good in the post. Shirky describes his concern that “not enough women have what it takes to behave like arrogant self-aggrandizing jerks” like the men he sees taking his classes. He feels that people who lie, who are narcissistic, who promote themselves aggressively are the people who are going to be successful, and women just aren’t willing to do that. According to him, “there is no upper limit to the risks men are willing to take in order to succeed, and if there is an upper limit for women, they will succeed less.”
I guess I see a difference between risk-taking and compromising one’s values. I’m not a liar. I’m not a jerk (at least I don’t think I am). I won’t use people to get ahead like I’ve seen a couple of people do even in our profession. And yet I’ve had great success in my field, far beyond what seems reasonable given my limited years of experience. How did I achieve that success? By doing good work and taking risks. I’m not an aggressive person. I suck at asking for money and advocating for myself. I never overstate my qualifications. I’m just one of the many, many, many people in the profession who have good ideas and an interesting way of presenting them. The one thing that sets me apart from many of the other people out there with great ideas is that I’m not afraid to put myself out there and face possible rejection or failure. i have enough chutzpah to suggest to the head of ALA’s publishing wing that he give me a column in American Libraries since the worst thing that will happen is that he’ll say no. I write blog posts talking about how much I’d like to teach for an LIS program since the worst thing that will happen is that no one will be interested. I don’t risk incarceration or my con being discovered (as Shirky describes); I just risk my heart. And that seems to be enough.
The simple fact is, I’m not willing to compromise my values to get ahead. And if that makes me weak, if that holds me back, so be it. I’d rather go to bed at night feeling good about myself and knowing that the people I like like me too. Compromising my values would keep me up at night and would make me worry that I’d be found out (is impostor syndrome still called impostor syndrome if you are, in fact, an impostor?). There are lots of things I wouldn’t do to get ahead. I wouldn’t take a job I know I wouldn’t like but that would pay really well and would be a huge boost for my career (and, in fact, I turned down a job just like that a couple of years ago). I wouldn’t take a job in an area my husband would hate or where I wouldn’t feel safe raising my child. I would not be a happy person if I wasn’t true to who I am.
Where I agree with Shirky is that self-promotion and risk-taking are important skills that women too often lack. I barely spoke in class in college until I took a course called Women and the American Experience, which was entirely populated by other women. For once, I felt comfortable expressing myself and realized that my ideas were actually pretty good. I hate that Shirky seems to think that confidence or the ability to promote onesself are male traits. That’s B.S. I don’t think confidence is something born to men and not to women; I think it’s something that we learn (or not) along the way through our families, the education system and society. However, whether we are naturally confident self-promoting risk-takers or not, the fact is that we need to be to be successful. I know so many talented women who are afraid to put themselves in a position where they might fail or be humiliated. However, I also know a lot of men like this too. Men who are uncomfortable fighting for themselves or for their ideas. One of my colleagues has given two talks in the 2 1/2 years since getting his first professional position; both of which I arranged for him. He’s a smart cookie and a great speaker, but he just doesn’t put himself out there. This isn’t just a gender issue; it’s an issue for a lot of talented individuals out there who don’t seem to realize that they’re as awesome as they are.
Another thing that really bothers me about Shirky’s post is that he seems to reward jerky self-aggrandizing behavior. If you think there’s something wrong with the system as it is and you’re in a position of power, wouldn’t it make sense to change it? How about encouraging and trying to build up talented women in your classes so they feel more comfortable promoting themselves? I was very lucky to have a mentor like Roy Tennant, who believes in nurturing and promoting young, talented individuals in the profession. He has given me so much great advice and encouragement that I likely wouldn’t be where I am today without his wise counsel. He is a well-known and respected librarian and uses his position to promote people around him. I completely agree with danah boyd who writes -
We need men as allies, men who both encourage women to speak up and who consciously choose to spotlight women who are talented. But, more importantly, we need men (and anyone with privilege) to consciously and conscientiously account for their own privilege and biases and to actively work to highlight and embrace diverse voices of all kinds. Your interpretation of others is just as (if not more) important in creating change as their efforts to impress you. The privileged cannot expect the disenfranchised to assimilate, as tempting as that may be. And even if that were possible, it wouldn’t give us the society we want anyhow.
I’ve used my limited success to promote others who I think are awesome — both male and female. Some of these people would be great self-promoters on their own and others just aren’t comfortable in that role. Like Roy, I’m trying to create the sort of world I want to live in, where people are judged more by their talent than by their ability to promote themselves.
I think Clay Shirky’s thinking — his promotion of basically being a d-bag — is just the sort of thinking that on Wall Street got us into the global financial crisis. Because it was a system that rewards “self-promoting narcissists” who make risky decisions for short-term personal gain that created this whole mess. And while most of those same people who created that mess are still making their $500,000 (or more) bonuses and can sleep at night just fine, I couldn’t. And, frankly, I’m glad about that. I’m glad that I have a moral compass. Are those the kind of values you want to promote in your profession? In your world? I refuse to bend so much to the world around me that I become someone I can’t respect; I’d rather try to make the world bend to my values. We can change things, bit by bit.
Topics: Work, gender, librarianship, speaking, writing | 8 Comments »
Teaching Web 2.0 with Web 2.0
By Meredith Farkas | January 23, 2010
After a year off from teaching to take care of baby Reed, I’m getting back up on the horse. I’ll be teaching a class on Web 2.0 and Social Networking Software for San Jose State University’s SLIS program starting this Tuesday. As usual, I’ll be using Drupal for my online classroom (rather than Angel, which is what SLIS uses), and I’m putting the student blog posts and discussions front and center in the classroom (the blog posts are the first things you see when you visit the site). I’m a little nervous that I have nearly 3 times the number of students registered for the class that I’ve had in the past (which means 3 times more papers to grade, blog posts to read, etc.), but I’m also excited because it means that the discussions will be even richer and more interesting. I love teaching this class; I always learn as much as the students do from the experience, and it’s really rewarding to see the growth of the students over the course of the semester. Should be fun!
I made a lot of changes to the topics covered in the class in light of how much Web 2.0 technologies have changed. I’d originally wanted to teach a class on online communities, but I couldn’t find enough good readings (or a textbook) for an entire course (now that Nancy White, et al.’s new book on Digital Habitats is out, it might be easier to do). I decided instead to focus more on online community-building in the course and am spending two weeks on it. I’m also having three guest speakers who run online communities: Frances Roehm of Skokie Net, Jessamyn West of MetaFilter, and my hubby, Adam Farkas, of ODwire. I know there are a lot of other topics I could have covered (cloud computing, mobile technologies, mashups, etc.), but I’m pretty happy with this semester’s lineup and I look forward to read my students reflections and discussions on these topics.
A while back, I’d asked folks on Twitter/FriendFeed/Facebook for suggestions of good Facebook pages to use as examples in my class. I thought I’d share those in case others are interested. You can find the list here. I don’t know that they’re the best Facebook pages, but I think they will give students some interesting food for thought.
As always in my classes, people from outside the class can register in the classroom and post comments on mine and my students’ posts. So feel free to subscribe to our RSS feed and/or join the conversation!
Topics: free the information!, librarianship, library school, online education, social software, tech trends | 6 Comments »
Community-generated children’s book for charity
By Meredith Farkas | January 19, 2010
For the holidays, I bought Reed an awesome personalized book. While I still have the personalized book my dad made me when I was 3, I must admit that the storyline and illustrations are pretty lame. The one I made for Reed, Following Featherbottom, is beautifully illustrated and educational, teaching kids about geography (not that Reed is going to be ready for a geography lesson anytime soon, but someday…). For those of you do web programming, the web application for building the book is pretty darn impressive and made me feel like I’d had a good user experience before I even received the book!
I started corresponding with the creator of Following Featherbottom and he let me know about another project he just started that I thought might be of interest to librarians and user-generated content fans. It’s called Project OpenBook and its goal is to develop a community-generated book of poetry to sell for charity. People can contribute poetry or artwork and/or can rate the poems that others have contributed to help decide what goes into the book and what does not. Proceeds from the book will go to Room to Read to save a child in Nepal from slavery and pay for her education.
Please consider supporting Project OpenBook. Contribute a poem or artwork, rate a poem, donate to the cause, or buy the finished book when it’s out! I think it’s a really cool idea to get people involved in creating something special for children that will benefit a disadvantaged child tremendously.
Topics: social software, writing | 2 Comments »
Big things I’ve learned 2000-2009
By Meredith Farkas | January 3, 2010
Going into a new decade (I know technically it’s not a new decade until 2011, but don’t be such a kill-joy!) is a good time for reflection. After seeing all of the #10yearsago posts on Twitter, I started to think about where I was 10 years ago vs. where I am today. My life could not be more different. At 22, I was in graduate school in Tallahassee (for social work, which I was already having second thoughts about by then), was in a dead-end relationship (one of several I’d have before meeting Adam), and was rather rootless (I lived in 6 apartments between 2000 and 2005 before finally settling in Vermont). I felt rudderless in my life back then. I was always looking for something. I read philosophy and religion books and went to many different types of religious services basically looking for a sense of direction or purpose in my life. Funny, that when I stopped looking and started living in the present, I was a much happier person. I’ve learned so much over the past 10 years about being myself, doing things that scare me, and having a more flexible vision of my future. Now I’m married, I have a baby, I own a home, I am in a career I love, and I’ve had professional success beyond my wildest dreams. I’m happy with who I am and where I am in my life.
I think many of the most important lessons I’ve learned are important ones for all of us in our careers:
1. Leaps of faith often pay off (or better to fail or succeed at the right thing than be successful at the wrong one) – When I first considered the possibility of leaving the social work field for librarianship, I was extremely nervous about it. I’d already gotten one graduate degree that didn’t lead to a satisfying career, and I didn’t relish the idea of getting (nor could I afford to get) another one in a field that I may not end up fitting into either. But something in my gut told me I should do it; that it would be a right fit for me. I took that leap and have never regretted it. I’d gone to graduate school for social work more out of fear than anything else — I didn’t know exactly what I wanted to do after college, but I was interested in mental health issues and dove into that for lack of a better idea. Grad school was a safe space away from the scary world of work. Going to library school was the opposite of safe — leaving a professional psychotherapist position to go make $10/hr at a public library while paying for graduate school.
That leads me to the second lesson I learned — 2. the biggest growth experiences come from doing things that scare you – I spent so much time in my earlier years not doing things out of fear. In college, I wrote a lot of poetry and short stories, but I never submitted them to any of the literary magazines at Wesleyan. Because I was afraid of speaking in class, I avoided a lot of great seminars and instead took larger lecture classes that were far less interesting/satisfying. I let fear make my decisions for me. I guess now I do that too, only in the opposite way. I was so afraid to speak in public; more afraid than I can express. But because of my blog and book deal, people kept asking me to speak and I felt like I’d be a fool to say no. Anyone who saw me before my first talk at Computers in Libraries in 2006 can tell you that I was nervous beyond reason. But I gave the talk. And it wasn’t so bad. In fact, I found that I rather enjoyed the excited/nervous adrenaline rush I got from the experience. I’ve become a much better speaker than I was then, but I still get that nervous adrenaline rush before I speak, and I think it makes me a better/higher energy speaker for it. From leaning into my fear, I’ve learned that I’m so much more capable than I initially believed I was.
Recently, a colleague of mine forgot that he had scheduled an instruction session for an English 101 class at 11am and was not planning on coming in that day until 1pm. I only found out about this when the professor and her class showed up at 11am and no one was there to teach them. I had to sprint to get set up and taught a class I had done literally no preparation for and just found out about their assignment that very moment. And, ironically, it ended up being one of the best classes I’ve taught in recent memory. I was high-energy and I think the students really fed off that because they were much more engaged and involved than in most classes I teach. I realized that perhaps I’ve gotten a little too comfortable with my instruction work and that maybe I need to shake it up a bit and try new things that might be a little scary and that might blow up in my face. Because I’m at my best when that adrenaline is flowing.
3. Don’t sell yourself short – What in the world could someone who just got their library degree possibly have to teach experienced librarians about social software? What makes you think you could write an entire book and who in the world will read it? These were just a few of the negative thoughts that swirled around my head at the start of my library career. I didn’t think I possibly had anything useful to offer people, having only been a professional librarian a few short months before getting my book deal. I remember when I was going to give a keynote at UC Berkeley on what the 2.0 organization looks like, I thought I’d get laughed off the stage, since what the hell do I know, not having even been a manager? Even recently, I was asked to write a brief essay for a symposium at ALA Midwinter and wanted to back out when I saw the list of heavy hitters who would also be contributing. While I’ve heard some librarians call me a “rock star”, I still often feel like I just graduated from the kids table.
I may not have the depth of experience of someone who has worked in the profession 30 years. I may not be as tech-savvy as a John Blyberg or a Jason Griffey. I may not be as humorous as a Steve Lawson or an Andrew Pace. I may not be as brilliant and articulate as a Dorothea Salo. But I’ve learned (and am still learning) that it’s ok. I don’t need to be all those things. I don’t need to have all the answers. I bring something different to the table that also has value. People find my perspective unique and interesting, so I don’t need to be like all of those other people as long as I am myself.
I remember being on a panel last summer with a colleague whom I admire greatly. She said that she was so nervous being on a panel with “rock stars.” Funny, because she’s a rock star to me with her passion for the profession and effervescent personality. The fact is, we all have moments where we feel intimidated; even the people we admire do. We all bring something special to the table, and as long as we’re being ourselves and not trying to be Dorothea Salo, Roy Tennant or John Blyberg, we’re probably going to rock it. Because the other lesson that I learned is that 4. you’ll be much happier and more successful when you stop trying to be like other people and start just being yourself. Trying to be like someone else is a lot of work and is rarely satisfying. Embracing who you are and what you have to offer the profession/your community/the world is the best thing — both for yourself and the people who will be able to benefit from your “you-ness.”
5. Don’t get too stuck on a specific vision of your future – My husband is nothing like the kind of guy I thought I wanted to marry. I was into the “sensitive guy” type who liked literature, jazz, indie films, etc. My husband listens to Metallica, likes movies like “Escape from New York,” and hasn’t read anything remotely literary since high school. But he ended up being my soul mate, and had I been stuck on that vision of the sort of guy I wanted to be with, I would never have gone on a second date with him. I had a friend (in her 30s at the time) who was so stuck on a specific vision of what the man she would consider getting serious with should be like that she was constantly rejecting perfectly nice guys she’d date for the silliest of reasons. As a result, she was lonely, but felt that she could not compromise on these silly standards of hers.
You might think that there’s only one type of job that is right for you in the library field. You might be sure that there are other things you would hate doing, based on a hunch. Consider for a moment that you might be wrong. I thought that I absolutely did not want to do face to face instruction when I got out of grad school, and yet, once I gave it a try, I found it was one of the things I most enjoyed. Now I’m the head of instruction at my library — go figure! Open yourself up to interesting possibilities. In this job market, there may simply not be any positions in the area in which you’re interested in working. Being flexible does not mean doing something you absolutely won’t enjoy (just like being flexible doesn’t mean dating someone you absolutely aren’t interested in), but it means being open to the possibility that there could be other options out there that you’d like as much (if not more!).
6. You don’t need to keep going to school to keep learning — I remember thinking when I was in college that I’d like to go to school forever so that I could keep taking classes and learning new things. I wanted a PhD in History, not because I wanted to teach, but because I wanted to keep learning and researching and writing. While I’m not taking classes anymore, I’ve discovered that it’s easy to keep the learning going and recreate the experience of the classroom in the online world. While I may not have one specific teacher, the whole Internet has become my teacher. I’ve created my own personal learning environment (PLE) through blogs, RSS feeds, journals, books (well, not so much lately), and — most importantly — my network on Twitter, Facebook, FriendFeed and in the blogosphere. Because it’s the conversation that really makes the learning meaningful — the reflection, discussion, disagreement, sharing of experiences, and learning from others’ experiences. I am so grateful to be part of a community of brilliant, thoughtful and generous individuals who have taught me so much over the past 5 years.
I’d meant to publish this on December 31st or January 1st, but, as usual, life (or Reed pulling books off the shelf, trying to open the kitchen cabinets, or climbing me) trumped blogging. I’m glad my life is trumping blogging, because it’s an awesome life and watching Reed grow up is a fantastic reason to not be online. That’s not to say that I don’t miss blogging. I miss having an outlet for my thoughts and the time to write them out/work them out online. I miss the conversations. I miss a lot of things. But I’m coming to accept that I can’t have it all. I hope finding a better balance between work/teaching/speaking/baby/husband/friends/blogging/etc. will be one of the things I learn next year. And hopefully as Reed becomes more independent (he’s crawling, standing and cruising already!) I’ll have more time for non-Reed things.
My New Year’s wish — may the good things in all of your lives trump blogging, tweeting, etc. this year. We should all be so lucky.
Topics: about me, librarianship, speaking, writing | 14 Comments »
Edublog Award Nominations
By Meredith Farkas | November 24, 2009
In this post I’m just registering my nominations for the 2009 Edublog Awards.
My Nominations for The 2009 Edublog Awards are:
Best New Blog – In the Library with the Lead Pipe (just over 1 year old; hope that counts as new!)
Best resource sharing blog – The Distant Librarian
Best librarian / library blog – The Distant Librarian
Best elearning / corporate education blog – The Bamboo Project
I can’t think of another blogger who has more consistently brought things to my attention that I hadn’t seen before and that I found useful in my work as an academic librarian than Paul Pival. If you’re in an academic library or are interested in instructional technologies and you don’t read his blog, you should!
Topics: blogging | 3 Comments »
This is not my blogosphere
By Meredith Farkas | November 22, 2009
One of the things I always loved most about social media was the transparency it created. If a product, service, hotel, etc. was terrible, you could be sure that you’d hear about it from plenty of bloggers. On the other side of things, small companies and talented individuals were able to get noticed because of word-of-mouth marketing online. It used to be so easy to get really honest, unfiltered views of products, services, etc. on the web as people were writing reviews because they felt strongly about the product. Now the water has been muddied by PR folks and the people who feed at their swag-giving teat. Some people are writing reviews of things not because they bought a product and loved it or hated it, but because someone either paid them or gave them a freebie. And others aren’t reading to get honest reviews — they’re reading to get freebies from the manufacturer. It gives power back to the big corporations who can afford to spend the most on incentives, trips, etc. for bloggers. It’s such a sad perversion of what social media can offer.
I’m relatively new to the “mommy blogging” world. While my husband and I have a blog to keep family and friends up-to-date on Reed (which we’re terrible about actually updating), I don’t consider myself a “mommy blogger.” But I do read mommy/daddy/parenting blogs. Until this week, I was pretty well out of the loop regarding the brouhaha with compensated reviews and the chummy relationships between companies and bloggers, probably because the few blogs I read tend to be ones that don’t go for that sort of thing. Then, out of nowhere, the other day, on a blog that had never contained anything of the sort, I saw a disclaimer at the top of a post reading “This is a compensated review from BlogHer and x company.” Huh? So apparently, the bloggers were paid to try out a product (which they were also given for free) and write about it. And I should trust that review why? I noticed that there were about 60 comments on the post, so I assumed that their other readers were equally horrified by this post and were telling the writers about their disgust. Well, no. They were commenting in order to get a chance at a free sample of the product!
Little did I know how common this sort of thing was in the mommy-blogging world. Coming from a blog community where compensated reviews are anathema, I have a strong sense of disgust when I see people getting money or perks from a company whose product they are reviewing. It makes me not only not trust what they are writing about that product, but what they write about everything else becomes suspect. So it was surprising to me to see a post like this show up on an otherwise great blog without anyone batting an eyelash (other than to try and win some free stuff).
I started to look a little more into the world of mommy blogging. There are tons of bloggers out there who will write a positive review for pretty much anything they’re given for free (or are otherwise compensated for). Just do a Google search for the statement “compensated review from BlogHer” and you will find blogs that do nothing but review things in exchange for free products, gift certificates, and even trips to faraway places (I just read a bunch of blog posts from some mommy bloggers who got a free trip to visit the Smuckers headquarters and almost lost my lunch). And you’ll almost never find a negative review on any of them. What’s amazing is that some of these blogs have huge readerships. Maybe it’s for the freebies they often dole out from these companies, or maybe some mothers are still willing to trust a review from a blogger who is being compensated by the company whose product they’re reviewing. Scary thought.
I never looked much into BlogHer, though I thought it was an organization/community devoted to empowering and highlighting women in the blogopshere. I knew they had a conference, which sounded awesome. After seeing that “compensated review” statement, I checked out their site and found that they were not only about empowering women, but also connecting advertisers with female bloggers to review their products online. Maybe I just have an over-inflated sense of ethics, but this really bothers me. It feels like they’re taking advantage of their network to make money off the women who blog and read their blogs. Their Advertising kit (PDF) says “BlogHer’s unique relationship with its audience provides the ideal platform for marketers to reach and engage this valuable audience in this exciting new medium.” It’s one thing for companies to advertise on the BlogHer network, but they offer “Product Reviews and Custom Widgets – Our selected bloggers will review your products or web-site and provide a fair and balanced review which will be shared with the 15MM women in our network. A widget containing the reviews creates scale and immerses our audience in your brand through these reviews.” I’m not quite sure how promoting a company’s product for a quick buck is empowering to women.
Reading mommy blogs this past weekend, I found a lot to be disgusted by. Here’s a sampling of some choice statements from disclaimers and policies (sans names or links, as I’d rather not give these blogs any sort of promotion):
“This blog accepts various types of advertisements and is open to any suggestions. Payments are all to be made via PayPal.
Pricing are as follow:
Sponsored Post (minimum 200 words) $20.00
Product Review (send sample) $20.00
Product Giveaway (additional to the review rate) $30.00″“Products I cannot find anything positive to include in a review will not be included on this blog. Why? I’m not a negative person.”
“The compensation received may influence the advertising content, topics or posts made in this blog. That content, advertising space or post may not always be identified as paid or sponsored content.”
“I write a personal blogsite called ___, and somewhere along the way I realized that I could offer my opinions to others because I’m a visible entity on the web, who deals honestly with others. If I say it, you can trust that I mean it.”
“The owner(s) of this blog is compensated to provide opinion on products, services, websites and various other topics. Even though the owner(s) of this blog receives compensation for our posts or advertisements, we always give our honest opinions, findings, beliefs, or experiences on those topics or products.”
“If I feel that your product does not meet quality standards, I will contact you before posting any comments. I also reserve the right not to post a review if I feel in any way the product will not relate to my family nor my readers. To date, I have not received an item for review that I did not feel fit my website or readers.”
“I am married with three children in each of the core age ranges, 2, 10, and 16.”
“FULL DISCLOSURE: This is an uncompensated review. Warner Bros. sent a copy of this video game for me to review and has kindly offered to provide a giveaway prize. Thanks Warner Brothers!”
“Full Sponsorship:
- Passing out of any swag that you would like to send (not required) and business cards while at the conference
- A shirt will be made just prior to the conference with your logo placed nicely in view to wear for a full day of the event (logo must be approved by sponsor and by blogger)”“If during the testing process, we are not satisfied with your product – you will be contact to discuss matters privately. _____ does not publish negative reviews on companies and products. The purpose of this blog is to be a beneficial resource.’
Disgusted yet? I guess one could take from all of this that women are a powerful force in social media and that’s why the media is courting them so aggressively. What I take from it is that these women (certainly not all) are susceptible enough to compromise their ethics in order to get free stuff, make a few bucks, and/or get attention from big manufacturers.
I find this particularly frustrating because parents are often so anxious about finding the best and safest products for their children, and frequently rely on the social web to make purchasing decisions. I know I researched every product ad nauseum on the Web when I was pregnant with Reed. It scares me to think that people might actually make a purchasing decision based on what they read on one of these blogs.
I’m pleased to see that the FTC is starting to pay attention to the social media world. Starting December 1, 2009 –
the post of a blogger who receives cash or in-kind payment to review a product is considered an endorsement. Thus, bloggers who make an endorsement must disclose the material connections they share with the seller of the product or service.
Awesome! While I doubt this will be enforced, I’m glad the government is trying to impress on people the fact that blogs are influential media and bloggers should be held to the same ethical standards as journalists and other media personalities.
How long will it take for the IRS to get in on the game? I sincerely doubt that most of these people are claiming these freebies on their taxes. If a blogger receives a free stroller, they need to claim it on their tax return. For mommy bloggers who get products on an almost daily basis, that would end up being one heck of a tax burden (and not much fun to keep track of either).
All this “blogola” makes the blogosphere less about building community and sharing stories and more about getting freebies from companies (for the blogger and the blog readers). And while it might make bloggers feel special to get all this attention and/or compensation from big companies, these companies are using them for “word-of-mouth advertising” that costs significantly less than any sort of magazine advertising they do.
There are still some great parenting blogs out there. One I particularly value is Z Recommends, which is both a parenting and consumer advocacy blog. While they do get products to review — in an effort to provide advice about specific classes of products like sippy cups — they give away everything they receive. And most of their posts are devoted to child safety issues like BPA, lead, and other chemicals in products for children. They have broken a lot of big stories on their site and represent for me the best of investigative journalism and blogging.
As Z Recommends has shown, parenting blogs have the power to change things for the better. Just like in our little corner of the blogosphere, parenting blogs can be a space for parents to connect around shared experiences, to help people make informed decisions, and to create powerful change. And I know the parenting blogosphere isn’t all bad. I’ve seen strong communities built around the experience of having multiples, having miscarriages, and saving money/time (shoutout to Rachel!), and those blog networks are full of wonderful women and men who blog to connect, share with and support others. It’s not all disgusting, but sadly, the disgusting is so darn visible.
I just want to say how grateful I am to be part of a blog community where people contribute to share ideas, connect with others, and contribute to the profession. I know that I’m getting “the straight dope” from the library bloggers I read. Some people might be more diplomatic or politic than others, but they don’t write about or review things simply because a company asked them to. I can count on one hand the number of posts in my five years of blogging that were written by library bloggers because a company or individual gave them something. And I love that I can believe in the bloggers I follow and trust in their integrity. Thank you for being the ethical people you are.
I get lots of emails from publishers, authors, software developers, etc. asking me to review their products in exchange for a free copy. My answer is always no. Always. Because I don’t want to lose your trust over something so meaningless. These folks not trying to send me things because I’m cool or they like my writing, but because I have a good-sized audience and Google rank. Just like my negative posts about Pottery Barn were highly ranked in Google searches, a positive post about a technology or book would also end up towards the top of the Google results. I don’t see that as an opportunity to promote companies that give me stuff; I see it giving me a greater responsibility to be ethical, honest and always write things with my audience in mind. If people are going to find my writing on topics first, I need to do my best by them. I may not post as often as I should, but I promise you that I will always be an ethical blogger.
Topics: blogging | 9 Comments »
Constructive criticism
By Meredith Farkas | November 5, 2009
Let this be a lesson to you — never write a comment on a blog post while you have a baby on your lap who is simultaneously grabbing at your laptop and spitting up on your pants (yes, this really happened, I have the stained jeans to prove it). Trust me, what you write will never come out the way you wanted it to. I commented on a friend’s blog post about the Library 101 project and what I wrote came out really badly. So I hope to clear it up here, though while I may be more clear in my explanation, I may make an even bigger hash of things. Seriously, I should probably stop contributing to the web entirely until Reed is in kindergarten.
There was a big part of me that loved Library 101 (for those of you who don’t know, this is a video produced by Michael Porter and David Lee King — with a group of essays from others in the profession — designed to encourage people to keep up with new technologies). I love Michael and David’s enthusiasm and creativity — I think of them as the profession’s greatest cheerleaders. I was on a panel with them at ALA and I felt like a curmudgeon sitting there in the face of their true belief and optimism. The Library 101 video was really fun, though perhaps a bit long. I certainly appreciate the time and effort and passion that went into it and wish I had the video editing skills they have. I also love how many people in the profession love libraries and love Michael and David enough to photograph themselves for the project and how many really cool, smart people took the time to write essays for it. My contribution is less than stellar in my opinion because I dashed it off at a time when I was dealing with family illness and lack of sleep (pretty much the one constant in my life these days). I wish I could have written something better for the project. A lot of the other pieces are far better-written and more thought-provoking.
While I loved it as me, Meredith Farkas, friend and fan, I didn’t quite understand it when I tried to look at it through the lens of a library worker who is not that into technology. Or a library administrator. Would that inspire me to start learning about technology or to start a Learning 2.0-type program? Probably not. And when I commented that I didn’t understand the project, that’s what I meant. I don’t really understand who they’re doing it for. If it’s for people like me, they hit their mark. If it’s for a library administrator who doesn’t see the value of continuing technology education or a librarian who just doesn’t care about all this web 2.0 stuff, I don’t think this is going to reach those people. It just feels like preaching to the choir, because I think the people who are going to love the video are already drinking the kool-ade about the importance of continuous learning about technologies. I guess what I would have liked to see is something constructive coming from the Library 101 site — like a call to create a continuing education program like Learning 2.0 or Five Weeks to a Social Library, where the video could direct/inspire lots of people from all over the profession to share their knowledge of library technologies through creating educational content that anyone could benefit from. It just seems to be missing that “next step.”
While I’m all for criticism, and some people have leveled some very constructive criticisms of the project, I really hate how mean some people have been about Library 101. I know what it’s like to put your blood, sweat and tears into a project and then have people say mean things about it. Even when 90% of people are saying great stuff (or at least constructive stuff), it’s that 10% that you hear the most (at least I do). I’m not saying “don’t criticize people,” I’m just saying that when you do, you should think of how much effort that person put into their work and criticize in a constructive and humane way. Because the last thing we want to do is discourage creativity and risk-taking in this profession by beating people up for it.
My little guy just woke up from his nap, so I’d better run before I write something stupid again. 
Topics: hi, librarianship, our digital future, tech trends | 6 Comments »
Shades of gray
By Meredith Farkas | November 2, 2009
Ever since the news of LibLime’s enterprise version of Koha and whether or not their actions consisted a fork of the code, I’ve been thinking about how black and white some of us (me included, at times) tend to see library products and library vendors. Stephen Abram’s “position paper” on open source ILSes got me thinking about it again.
I’ve found it interesting how some vendors are vilified (sometimes fairly, sometimes not) while others get a free pass — to the point where we no longer even think of them as vendors. Open source vendor? You’re cool. Vendor who blogs and gives talks about 2.0 stuff (a la Paul Miller, Stephen Abram and Tim Spalding)? You’re cool too. Product manager, marketing dude or executive at a company like Ex Libris or EBSCO or Elsevier? Not so much. And why is that? They’re all trying to sell something to libraries, right? They all want to make money from us. But some of these people are seen as being good and having our best interests at heart while others of them are seen as being out to screw us.
Once upon a time, I was asked to speak on a panel. So was Tim Spalding. Because I was a member of this organization, I was not paid and had to pay for my travel to get to the conference. Tim got paid to come and be a part of this panel, in which he spoke about his product, LibraryThing. I mentioned it to the organizers because I thought it was odd that a vendor get paid for the opportunity to drum up free publicity for his product. The organizer said that she really hadn’t thought of Tim as a vendor. Interesting. Is Tim an awesome guy who most of us think a great deal of? Certainly. Is he a very entertaining speaker? Without question. Does he sell stuff to libraries? Yes. Does he sometimes exhibit at conferences? Yes. Does that make him a vendor? I’d say so!
And that’s not to say that vendors are bad. Most aren’t. But I really take issue with the way our profession tends to idealize some types of vendors and vilify others. I think a lot of people have started to see this black-and-white thinking as problematic in light of the whole LibLime Koha fork thing. Because suddenly you have this open source company — a company that is supposed to be good and out to benefit the larger open source community — doing something that benefits them and their customers at the expense of the community. But weren’t we just hoisting the LibLime folks on our shoulders last year? Weren’t many of us (me included) promoting them and weren’t we excited when we saw their client list growing and growing and growing? (Many of us may still be happy to see their client list grow as it’s a sign that the market share of open source software in libraries is growing.)
Folks at OCLC definitely used to get a pass in the same way the open source folks did, though that seems to be changing as public perception shifts towards viewing them as a vendor that wants to gobble up and control our data (which is also a simplification). It reminds me a lot of how some librarians felt about Google — how they went from loving Google to feeling totally betrayed by them. I guess my take is that if someone makes their money off a library without working in it, they are a vendor. Consultants are vendors. People who sell products are vendors. People who sell services, like maintaining open source systems, are vendors. And all of them will put the good of their company over the good of libraries. That doesn’t make them evil — it makes them good businesspeople.
And again, with the Stephen Abram thing. I didn’t like his paper because it lacked a level of quality and polish that I would expect from Stephen and a company like SirsiDynix. It was about at the level of professionalism of a poorly-researched blog post (hey, like this!). I take issue with anything that doesn’t cite where its information is coming from and uses phrases like “some companies”, “some software” “some argue.” There were lots of factual inaccuracies and opinion masquerading as fact (”Proprietary software has more features. Period. Proprietary software is much more user-friendly”). And what was up with the completely pointless chart on page 4? It was just an awful piece. The fact is, there are a lot of good arguments against open source and against choosing an open source ILS, but Stephen’s lack of good hard facts and citations made any point he made seem less credible.
Part of me started to wonder on Friday if someone from an open source company wrote a similar screed against proprietary systems, would it garner the same reaction from the Twittersphere/blogosphere? And I hate to say it, but I think the answer is no. If someone from Equinox went off on the weaknesses of proprietary systems in a way that was badly researched and perhaps contained some hyperbole, many folks would probably nod their head and say, “yeah, they do suck.” Some of us might send the link to our colleagues, writing that it contains a great distillation of why open source is the better option for the ILS. I’m not saying this to damn anyone or shame anyone, because I know I do it too sometimes without even thinking about the double-standard.
Maybe I’m wrong. Maybe I’ve been so sleep-deprived lately that I’ve been seeing everything through whatever the opposite of rose-tinted glasses are (green?). I guess what I’m trying to say is that we really can’t look at things as being so black and white. We can’t say open source=good, proprietary=bad. It’s not that simple. Stephen Abram is not a bad person because he wrote a crappy “position paper. OCLC isn’t necessarily evil. Open source vendors aren’t necessarily good. We shouldn’t assume that a vendor is out to take us to the cleaners and steal all our data, but neither should we assume that a vendor has our best interests at heart (no matter how cool they or their representatives are). Things are really, really gray, and require a much more critical eye than we sometimes have by default.
Updated: I just read Cindi Trainor’s The Sacred Cows of Library Technologists, which I think dovetails so nicely with my points and is far, far more eloquently written. Check it out!
Topics: assessment, librarianship, libraries, open source, our digital future, tech trends | 26 Comments »
Who should teach library instruction?
By Meredith Farkas | October 1, 2009
Don’t worry, Walt, I won’t apologize for being away and I won’t promise that I’m going to post more often (though I have a lot of ideas for posts, something has been preventing me from getting them out of my head and onto the screen).
Wayne Bivens-Tatum recently wrote a very interesting post questioning who should be teaching library instruction — librarians or faculty. This is an issue that I’ve been thinking about a great deal and while I don’t think an answer exists for every discipline or every school, I thought I’d share my own thinking on it.
We have been working on our report to our accrediting body, NEASC, since the Spring and one of the library goals that was originally written into it was for library instruction to be taught in every English 101 (AKA Freshman comp) class. Last Fall, we taught library instruction to 90% of the EN 101 classes as a result of aggressive marketing to instructors. We thought it a reasonable goal to say that we’d like library instruction to be in 100% of EN 101 courses so that the University would know that every Freshman has certain standard basic information literacy skills. It would create a baseline so that we wouldn’t have to teach the most basic aspects of library research in upper-level classes for the small number of students who didn’t have a library session in EN 101.
While this seemed innocuous enough to me and my colleagues, the English faculty asked us to strike it from the report. They objected 1) to the idea that we are the only ones who can teach information literacy and 2) to any mandate that faculty would have to have a library session as part of their class (which would interfere with academic freedom). We at the library certainly weren’t trying to say that we are the only unit teaching information literacy. Even when librarians do teach a one-shot (or even a few sessions), what students are learning in there is only a very small piece of the information literacy puzzle. The academic freedom issue is trickier and isn’t one that I have a difficult time speaking to. I assume that there must be certain standards, guidelines and requirements that instructors teaching 101 must adhere to already so that students can achieve a basic level of knowledge/skill. We always tailor our instruction sessions to what the instructor has assigned his or her students, so it’s not like anyone would be telling faculty what to teach. It’s the students who suffer because of this lack of standardization since it means that we either have to teach the same things again in upper-level classes or we skip teaching the basics in those classes and students who’d never had library instruction end up lost.
Wayne talks about a new model at Princeton in which the librarians are training the writing instructors to teach library research themselves. I can’t see that flying at many institutions where librarians are seen more as support staff than as fellow instructors with their own area of expertise. I can’t imagine most faculty here being willing to accept training from us on how to teach library resources to their students. But if they were, I certainly would be happy to let go of our instructional role in EN 101 if it meant that all students would get the same preparation.
I don’t think librarians should see the teaching of information literacy as our domain. Some faculty members are teaching information literacy and library research brilliantly in their discipline themselves and that doesn’t threaten me in the least. My Director wants us to be teaching at three levels in every discipline (for example, I teach at the 100, 300, and 400 level in the history program), but I don’t know if that is always necessary. For example, there is a criminal justice research methods class for majors. I do not teach in that class, but they still receive significant information literacy instruction from their professor. On the other hand, I have worked with a class of Junior psychology majors who had never used PSYCInfo or PSYCAbstracts. I think we (librarians AND faculty) need to worry less about what is our domain and more about ensuring that students have the skills they need to be successful in their major. It doesn’t matter who teaches it as long as it’s being taught.
But it needs to be taught well. There are some faculty members who are more knowledgeable about the library resources in their area of study than any librarian here. There are other faculty who have never used a database and still tell their students to use the New York Times in microfilm (we’ve had it online for years). The most unfortunate thing is that, in most cases, it’s the people who are very aware of our resources who request library instruction for their classes. Those who are not continue to assign their students to use only print journals and to find things we don’t even have anymore.
I struggle with how to reach those faculty members. When we get a “rogue assignment” we usually email the faculty member to either get clarification, describe the difficulty that their students are having with the assignment, or let them know that something they want their students to do is literally not possible. Sometimes that helps; sometimes we never hear back. I’ve been wanting to offer brown-bag lunch sessions on new resources in specific disciplines in an effort to get faculty up-to-speed with what we have available, but I suspect that the people I most want to reach will not be the ones who show up. I really want to provide outreach to these faculty — either to get them up-to-speed on our resources or to provide instruction in some of their classes — but I’m not sure how to reach them.
While I don’t really feel territorial about information literacy instruction, I do struggle with the knowledge that the library resources are our area of subject expertise. No matter how library-savvy the faculty member, we are always going to be more “up to date” on what we have. A history faculty member who uses our library all the time was surprised to learn in an instruction session the other day that you could create an account in JSTOR and save articles to your account. Faculty I work with frequently comment that they learned something new when I teach to their classes. I don’t know that all of us can teach it better (some of us are piss-poor instructors), but more often than not, we are going to be more knowledgeable about the library resources and their capabilities. This, of course, begs the question of whether deep knowledge of resources or teaching skills are more important, but that’s a question for another day.
Ideally, I’d like to see one of two things happen: 1) a faculty member who is very up-to-date on what is available through the library teaches his or her students about library research and information literacy or 2) a librarian teaches library research and information literacy in close partnership with the faculty member. Because what’s most important is that partnership. When a faculty member gives over sole responsibility for teaching research to the librarian, the students rarely see value in what is being taught. I’ve had faculty leave the room while I’m teaching and the students in those classes always become less engaged as soon as it happens. When the faculty member makes comments throughout the session and stays engaged in what I’m teaching, the students stay engaged, because the faculty member is indicating with his/her behavior that this is valuable and important. Ideally, I’d love to see classes team-taught, but just having the faculty member engaged in the class makes a huge difference for the students.
I must apologize for the twisted path this post has taken — it matches well my own muddled thoughts on the issue. I think so much of what the ideal is for library instruction depends on the university, the discipline, and the individual faculty members a librarian is dealing with. We can’t say “___ is the best way to do library instruction.” Even in the social sciences (my liaison area), I work very closely with one department and in another I’ve only taught one class session in two years. I don’t think there’s a perfect model that will work for every institution/department/class, but I do know that the more that we or academic faculty are territorial about our roles, the more likely it is that students will get very poor library instruction or none at all.
Like Wayne, I’m curious what your thoughts are on who should be teaching library instruction? Do you have similar power struggles at your institution? Do you have great partnerships with faculty in teaching library instruction? I’d love to hear about it. We all learn so much from hearing about the experiences of others.
And just to be totally gratuitous, here’s a picture of my biggest (and most wonderful) distraction from blogging.
Topics: instruction, librarianship, libraries | 14 Comments »
Roles and responsibilities for 2.0 technologies
By Meredith Farkas | August 30, 2009
I get asked a lot of things via email from librarians, but very few actually make it to this blog. This question was so interesting and probably better answered by the “hive” than just by little old me. I am also curious how others would respond.
I was wondering if you had any advice or links to websites or professional literature that deal with this issue. That issue is: how do libraries deal with the roles and responsibilities of 2.0 technology? Some of it crosses borders and/or job descriptions. Who is in charge or responsible for tweets on twitter, the library marketing director, the reference librarian, the library director, etc. I suspect this is something that we will just have to work out as an organization. I’m just wondering if anyone else has any wisdom they might share in this regard.
My take on this is that there probably isn’t much professional literature on this topic because how the roles and responsibilities are assigned depend very much on organizational size, organizational structure, and who is really interested in doing it. At a library with a very small staff (like the Luria Library at Santa Barbara City College) it may be an interested director who takes responsibility for these 2.0 initiatives. At libraries where the lines between tech and public service are very clearly delineated, it may be the tech folks who are in charge of the Twitter account, whereas, at a library (like mine) where tech librarians do reference shifts and public service librarians are well-trained in library technologies (and every line is extremely blurred), it may be a joint responsibility or the responsibility of the public services librarians. In some libraries (perhaps most?), people have taken this on because they’re simply the ones most into marketing and/or web 2.0 tools. In bigger libraries where there is a marketing director or an outreach librarian or a digital branch manager, that person may be in charge of these initiatives.
But I’m curious, what are your thoughts on this? Especially with regards to 2.0 tools that are created in an effort to reach out to patrons, who should be responsible? What makes the most sense? Should it be the person who has the most contact with the public? The most tech-savvy person? The person with the most authority (the Director)? This is one of those questions that has myriad answers, so I wanted to open it up to see how other libraries handle it (or how you think libraries should handle it).
Topics: libraries, our digital future, social software | 14 Comments »
It’s not about us (or more ramblings on possessiveness)
By Meredith Farkas | August 28, 2009
I know Jenica wondered if her blog post, Rambling about possessiveness, really had a point, but it was right in line with things I’ve been thinking a lot about lately. Jenica wrote about the fine line between taking ownership of a project/thing in terms of really being really invested in the success or failure of a project vs. taking ownership in a possessive sense. This is something I’ve been wondering about too, especially as we’re working on a lot of projects that will, to some extent, change the way students use the library online. When I work on a project, I get very invested in it, because I feel a passion for my work and want to make things great. But I think sometimes that passion (for me, for anyone) can border on possessiveness, and when we get to that place, we can forget who we’re actually doing these things for in the first place.
For years, we’ve used our catalog basically as it came out of the box, but we now have an awesome new Systems Librarian and a Head of Digital Initiatives who are really passionate about making the catalog more usable. I couldn’t be more excited about this. The other day, we met to talk about library annual goals and my colleagues discussed their unit’s goal for improving the catalog. They talked about customizations we as librarians might like to see, but never did they talk about finding out what our users want or need from the catalog or finding out how our users use the catalog. And my colleague who heads this unit is a very user-focused person, but “surveying the population” was not something he was saying in terms of improving the catalog. So, I brought it up, because I worry about us developing something that’s great for librarians and is sucky for the people it’s really there for. A day later, another colleague emailed everyone with some questions about the test catalog and described his preferences for searches. While his questions were certainly valuable, I had to say to myself “who cares how you like to search?” Or how I like to search? Is that how our users like to search? Can we assume that we know that? Yes, include the search options that allow us to do our job, but the catalog should be customized in order to meet the needs of our students and faculty. I think we sometimes get this tunnel vision where we start to think that it’s about us. And it really shouldn’t be, because our library wouldn’t exist without the patrons we’re here to serve. As Jenica said, the libraries aren’t ours. Then neither is the catalog/website/etc.
But even when we do usability studies or surveys, I sometimes wonder if we don’t design them in such a way that we get the results we want to see in the first place. When I did usability testing of our website four years ago, the results brought us to the same conclusions I had come to myself just by looking at it. And I wonder if in some way my own biases impacted the design and results. Maybe, maybe not. But I often get the sense that we’re sometimes doing assessments not to learn something new, but to confirm what we already think we know or how we want things to be. How often are you really surprised by the results of a survey or usability study you’ve done?
I’m happy the students are coming back this week, because it brings us back to reality. It reminds us of why we’re here. We’re here to support the academic work of students and faculty — not to create the coolest tools that only we think are cool or the best catalog for librarians. We so often take for granted that we know what our users want and need or we assume that because an article in Educause says that students are like ___ then our students must be like ___ as well. We need to get, as our University President (a military man) often says, “the ground truth.” We need to build things our users truly want and need and leave our egos and possessiveness and desire to only create something really cool at the door (which so many of us, me included, are guilty of once in a while). Because it’s not about us. It’s about them.
Topics: Work, libraries, our digital future | 7 Comments »
Help the Louisville Free Public Library!
By Meredith Farkas | August 5, 2009
I know a number of people in the Louisville area, so I’ve heard all about the horrible weather they’ve been having this year. But the flooding of the Louisville Free Public Library was the kicker. Check out some of fellow blogger Greg Schwartz’s pictures of the damage — it’s really bad. They’re estimating at least one million dollars in damage to their books, facility, computers, bookmobiles and more.
It’s times like this that I’m proud to be a librarian and am especially proud of the amazing generosity and come-togethery-ness (well it should be a word!) of my online friends. Steve Lawson has set up a Library Society of the World Fundraiser to collect money for the Louisville Free Public Library:
I have set up the email LSW.LFPL@google.com and linked it to my PayPal account. I intend to collect money at that address until September 1, at which point I’ll send a check in the name of the Library Society of the World to the LFPL Foundation. You can just send money to that email address using PayPal, or use the button [at Steve's original post]:
If you’d rather send a check, send it to the Library Society of the World Clubhouse, PO Box 7893, Colorado Springs CO 80933. Make the check payable to Steve Lawson.
Don’t worry about how much you can afford to donate. My own contribution will be small-ish, between $20 and $50.
But there are about 300 members of the LSW room on FriendFeed. There are close to 1,000 members of the LSW group on Linkedin. I would like to think we can raise at least $5,000 for LFPL by September 1. That’s only $17 per FriendFeed member, or $5 per Linkedin member.
For this to work, you have to trust me. I promise that every dime that comes through PayPal or check will go to LFPL. (PayPal takes a small cut if your donation is charged to your credit card (rather than your bank account) and if you don’t choose the option to pay those fees yourself, so it’s possible that I won’t get the full amount of your donation. I’ll only be able to donate the money I actually receive after PayPal fees.)
On September 1, I’ll total up what we have raised and send it to the library. If you would rather give money yourself instead of sending it to me, here is the address and phone number given in the Louisville Courier-Journal:
The Library Foundation
Attn: Flood
301 York St.
Louisville, KY 40203
(502) 574-1709
Whether you’re a LSW member or not, please consider finding a way to donate to the library so that they can quickly get up and running again. Even just a few dollars from each reader of this blog would really add up. Greg and colleagues, you’re in my thoughts.
Topics: libraries | 1 Comment »
Why I participated in Library Day in the Life
By Meredith Farkas | August 3, 2009
Sarah Cohen wonders what motivated people to participate in Library Day in the Life and who we are writing these for. I can’t speak for everyone else, but I wanted to share my own reasons for doing it (and since this is a bit long, I thought it better to post it here than to Sarah’s blog).
I wasn’t one of those people who first worked in a library before going to library school. I started library school about a month after I started my first job in a library, so obviously I’d made the decision to pursue this career before I had the inside scoop on what library work was like. I’d read a number of articles about digital preservation and digitization of special collections materials and thought that librarianship seemed to be an exciting profession that allowed people to pursue all sorts of interesting and diverse work and would have a tremendous impact on the preservation of born digital materials. Also, coming from a helping profession (social work), I was looking to do work where I felt like I could make a difference in people’s lives. But did I have any idea what I’d be doing as a librarian on a day-to-day basis? Not a clue! I took a huge leap of faith and luckily it paid off. I would have loved to have had a better idea of what librarians do in their jobs, but, at the time, there weren’t really many resources that offered that sort of information.
Because of my blog, I get a lot of people emailing me for advice on whether or not they should become a librarian or asking me what librarians do (or what I do as if my experience is somehow representative). I never tell someone if they should or shouldn’t go to library school, but try to dispel some of the myths about librarianship (it’s not stressful, you read books all day, etc.) and point them to resources that give them a sense of the breadth of experiences in our profession. That, I think, is what Library Day in the Life offers. It paints a picture of the diverse work we do as librarians in a very real and unromanticized sense. If you’re interested in working in public services, you can visit the blogs of librarians who work in public services and see what their days are like. If you’re interested in working with library systems, you can see what sorts of projects those librarians are working on. It doesn’t romanticize, doesn’t cheer our work — it just lays out what we do in a way that people who are interested in our profession can learn from.
So, I guess I’d say that I was writing this for the “me” of seven years ago, or for people who, like me, have not worked in the profession but think librarianship sounds like a good match for their interests and might want to participate. And while it’s valuable for future librarians, I also found it interesting myself to see what people at other libraries do during their work days. It’s fascinating to me how different the work of instruction/information literacy librarians can be at different institutions. But, again, I think it’s less for us than for those people who are searching the web in an effort to get a sense of what this profession they’re thinking of joining is really like.
When someone emails me and tells me they’re considering becoming a librarian, I will tell them that before they make any sort of decision, they should look at librarians’ library day in the life posts and see what the work of a librarian is really like. It’s an awesome resource and I applaud Bobbi Newman for starting it all.
Topics: Work, free the information!, librarianship, librarydayinthelife | 8 Comments »
Day 3 in the life of a head of instructional initiatives
By Meredith Farkas | July 31, 2009
8:00 am – Checked my email. Checked reference email accounts. Answered a few reference questions, forwarded a database error on to our Head of Digital Initiatives and a Norwich history question to our Archives.
8:30 am – Director called me into her office to let me know that she’d heard back from the office that created the orientation schedule for the cadets. Apparently, we now have 35 minutes and 40 students to split between the library and the museum (last year we had 1 hour and 15 minutes and 20-25 students) since they are giving the Academic Achievement Center a period and a half. Given space constraints, there is no way that 40 students will fit, and given the time constraints, there’s almost nothing we can do. My Director and I agreed that under these circumstances, we’d rather just not do it and would rather just get the students when they come to the library for EN101. Ironically, the civilian tours, which were a disaster last year (every civilian student coming to the library over the course of an hour and a half on no set schedule), are now going to be great, with 8 groups of 20 coming for 40 minutes each. Nice!
8:50 am – Work on clues for the scavenger hunt for the civilians. Walk around the library thinking of tasks for them to do and wrote up new clues.
9:30 am – Worked on instructional goals for FY10. I met with most of the librarians who take part in instruction a few weeks ago and we decided that the two things we’d like to focus most on this year are increasing faculty awareness of library resources and services and improving our own instructional effectiveness through assessment/analysis and peer review. Last year I did so many instruction sessions that I didn’t have time to really focus on instructional program administration, so I am promising myself that I will delegate more to our other instruction librarians.
10:15 am – finally took some psychology books that I’d weeded a few weeks ago down to the cataloger to delete and ordered a new version of a neuropsychology book for which we had the 1976 edition (ouch!).
10:35 am – Looked over new employee orientation since my new employee will be starting in a couple of weeks.
10:50 am – filled out reimbursement paperwork for ALA Annual, which I keep forgetting to do.
11:10 am – pumped and caught up on feeds
11:35 am – started cleaning off my desk. Since I’ve been working so few hours this summer, I’ve been just letting things pile up on my desk and now it looks like a disaster area. Made some headway, but got distracted by pile of LIS journals.
12:30 pm – ate lunch and put many, many journals into my colleagues’ boxes.
1:00 pm – received an email asking for the key to the office I’ve been using to pump breastmilk in (since my office is actually the most fishbowl-iest in the building). Someone in the Academic Achievement Center is taking over that office on Monday and wants to move in tomorrow. That was the final straw for me. Yesterday, my boss had told me that someone was taking over that office on Monday (!) and asked if I’d be ok with going to his office and pumping while he went somewhere else during that time. She also said that they put in an order with facilities to have blinds put on the windows of my office. I said yes, because I didn’t really see another option, but honestly, I wasn’t really ok with it. How uncomfortable to have to ask a stranger to leave his office so that I can pump breastmilk in it. Yuck! The email asking for my key was the final straw that made me realize that no, I can’t do this. It’s been one thing after another since I came back to work. First, no one had a key for the office where I’d be pumping and the glass door had not been covered (though our Office Manager had asked Facilities to do it 2 or 3 months before). Then, I got a guilt trip from someone (not library staff) that I was taking up an office to do this and was asked “well how long are you planning on doing this for?” I can see why so many working women stop breastfeeding when they go to work, because even in a pretty supportive environment like mine, there can be so many barriers, inconveniences, and uncomfortable situations. I had a few moments where I actually felt guilty for inconveniencing people… but then I got over it.
1:45 pm – decided to ask Director if I could just use paper and cover all the windows in my office. She didn’t seem crazy about the idea from an aesthetic sense, but she understands what a difficult situation this has been for me, so she said yes. Good thing too, since apparently, facilities hasn’t even ORDERED the blinds for my office!!! Sigh…
2:00 pm – Cut craft paper and taped up the windows. Finished product is ugly, but it is private.
Friendly, no?
3:00 pm – Answered some emails.
3:30 pm – Pumped in my office for the first time and caught up on RSS feeds.
4:00 pm – Worked some more on clues for scavenger hunt.
4:30 pm – Headed home. Not coming back to work until next Thursday, so this will be it for now!
Topics: Work, librarianship, libraries, librarydayinthelife | 3 Comments »
Day 2 in the life of a head of instructional initiatives
By Meredith Farkas | July 29, 2009
With many of my colleagues on vacation and no students around, this isn’t the most exciting time to be recording my time at work. I will definitely do something similar during the Fall or Spring semester when I’m knee-deep in instruction.
8:00 am – arrived at work and checked email. Started creating a basic wire frame of what one of the program-specific landing pages might look like on our newly-designed Drupal website.
9:00 Talked to Director about our Freshman orientations. Normally, we have 1 hour and 15 minutes for each group to share between the library and museum and each group is usually 20-25 students. Now schedule is saying we have that amount of time to share between the library, museum and the Academic Achievement Center and we’ll have 40 students at a time. There’s no way we can do the active learning stuff we did last year (which students loved) under those conditions. Director has a call in to the office that created the schedule to discuss. Also showed Director my wire frame and she liked the idea of a landing page for each academic program.
9:15 Talked to Head of Reference about a distance learner who seems to not be understanding the instructions she’s trying to give her. Gave her some advice on handling the situation. Also talked about reference scheduling for Fall. Looks like I’ll just have an evening shift, which is good since I’ll be so heavily involved in instruction. Made the case for our Humanities librarian/Head of Digital Initiatives to have the same since he does at least as much instruction as I do.
9:40 Talked to our Office Manager about the Freshman tours and scheduled the Multipurpose Room for our civilian tours (which usually come in larger groups).
10:00 Emailed our soon-to-be distance learning librarian about the library website redesign to get her 2 cents on it. Even though she doesn’t start until August 17th, I want her to have as much input as possible.
10:30 Emailed the drupal web designer we found with my wire frame and some basic ideas.
11:00 pumped and caught up on feeds.
11:25 Started answering on emails missed since Friday.
11:30 Met with Head of Academic Computing and one of the instructional designers at Norwich who had some useful suggestions for our web portal redesign. While we were planning to make our portal visually consistent with the course management system, student feedback has shown that they want the CMS to be visually consistent with the norwich.edu website (they want to feel a part of the University). So it probably makes more sense to make the portal visually consistent with the norwich.edu site. They also let me know that new students no longer recognize the abbreviations for their academic programs (which are not being used much anymore), which completely screws up my idea for the site nav. Sigh… Still, a useful conversation, because I didn’t know all that.
12:00 Talked to Director and colleague about the meeting and my now total bewilderment regarding what the design of the site should look like. Got some ideas from talking about it out loud.
12:15 Wrote to Administrative Dean of the school of graduate studies to ask what her preference would be in terms of the design, since she’s the one holding the purse strings.
12:25 Ate lunch. Soup is a really bad idea on a hot day when you’re trapped in an un-air conditioned office. Very sticky!
12:50 Got email from Administrative Dean. She said that not only should it look like the regular norwich.edu website, but they are going to be redesigning the CMS to look like it as well. Well ok then.
1:00 Revised wire frame in light of changed look and need to spell out program names.
1:30 sent email with revised wireframe and revised information about the look to our designer.
1:50 Answered emails from faculty about journal cancellations, book purchases, and link problems.
2:00 Heard from head of Academic Achievement Center that the schedule for Freshman orientation is incorrect and we all have the same amount of time as last year. Still haven’t heard back from the office that created the schedule though, so I’m waiting for additional confirmation. Emailed the Museum Director to coordinate the civilian tours between our two facilities.
2:30 Watched Brett Bonfield’s adorable video promoting his library’s 5K race. Nice job!
2:35 Went around to colleagues to ascertain who would be around to help with library orientation week. We have 20 separate groups coming in for our orientation/scavenger hunt, so it’s going to be hectic.
2:45 Answered email from faculty member about instruction session for Fall. Continued email collaboration with Museum Director and Archivist about the Freshman orientations. Received email back from soon-to-be Distance Learning Librarian who had some excellent feedback on the library website redesign (that’s why we hired her!).
3:15 Pumped and caught up on RSS feeds.
3:40 Answered a few more emails.
4:00 Left early since hubby is leaving tomorrow for a business trip and needs to get ready (which means I need to take the munchkin). By this time it is so hot in my office that if I actually wore makeup, it would have melted off my face, so I’m relieved to be leaving early.
Not a particularly exciting day, but at least I made some headway on some important projects and didn’t die of heatstroke.
Topics: Work, librarydayinthelife | 1 Comment »
