At nearly the same time, I noticed on the LISJobs Forums that Rachel Singer Gordon was looking for “Career disruption resources.” She specifically cited this Career Disruption Assistance Program from SLA (which looks like it’s just for DC Chapter members). The program offers mentoring and reduced dues for people who’ve been laid off. It made me wonder how many organizations in our profession are doing the same thing.

I don’t want to pick on ALA (especially since I don’t think they’re the only organization ignoring this), but I do pay dues to them and all I’ve heard from them with regards to the fiscal crisis is about their own finances and the finances of libraries. The ALA-APA has always seemed to me to be undersupported and underpromoted, to the point where I don’t even feel like I understand their role vis à vis ALA. The simple fact is, if a dues-paying member is out of a job, the chances are good that they will not continue to be members for long if they don’t feel supported by their professional organization. Were I unemployed, I’d be pretty offended to be asked to pay the same amount that fully-employed library support staff do. At least students only have to pay a student rate, but for how long will they be willing to do that much if they can’t find a job after six months, a year, two years? I hope that we’ll see the ALA addressing this crisis in terms of not only libraries, but librarians and library workers, and what we can do as individuals to protect our jobs, cope with layoffs and find new jobs in this tough economy.

Does someone really need to understand the back-end of a system to capitalize on it? I don’t believe that’s true. Most people don’t know how to build a car; they don’t understand all of its internal mechanisms. Yet we still drive cars. We just know where to go when we need help. I have no clue how to debug things in Drupal. I’ve never made any attempt to understand the internal mechanisms of it. Does that mean I shouldn’t have used it the three times I have for classes? No way! I can install it and I can use it for the purposes I’ve had for it. I can’t do a lot of the fancy things a lot of people do with Drupal, but it worked fine for what I needed it to do. All my limited knowledge means is that when I have a problem, I need to look up the answer or rely on the community of Drupal users and developers for help. I did just that and thanks to the community, I was able to fix any problems I’ve had.

Yeah, I’d like to know how to fix every little thing in Drupal and create my own modules, but I’d also like to know how to fix my car. Priorities. In my position, it’s much more important that I know a lot about instruction and a decent amount about instructional technologies. Programming is not a necessary skill-set (not that I wouldn’t like to have mad coding skillz). If I’m going to engage in professional development, it will be to learn more about information literacy instruction and assessment, not to take a class on PHP or JavaScript. I’ve even done stuff with PHP and JavaScript, but it just involved messing around with stuff that already existed. I’d break it, figure out what I did and how it impacted things, and then fix it. Eventually I’d usually get it to do what I needed it to do. Yes, I’d love to have a better understanding, but it’s not a priority with my job and there just aren’t enough hours in the day for me to learn everything I’d like.

Should library schools require technology classes? Without a doubt! I don’t think anyone should come out of library school without basic web design skills, a basic understanding of library technologies and Internet technologies, the ability to assess technologies, the ability to be fearless with trying out new technologies, and probably a whole host of other things I’m not thinking of right now with pregnancy brain. But does everyone need to come out knowing how to code? No! While technology is a part of every job, not every librarian needs to know how the back-end of the catalog works or needs to know how to debug a Drupal module. Instruction is a critical part of most of our jobs as librarians too (be it formal instruction, reference assistance, or staff training), but not everyone is required to take classes on instruction. And probably most people don’t need to know as much about instruction as I (and other people in similar positions) do.

People can do so many different things with a degree in Library and Information Science. I think it’s important for everyone to have a certain baseline of technology skills, but beyond that, it’s really dependent on what sort of job you want. The technology skill-sets you need to be a head of instruction vs. a systems librarian vs. a web developer vs. a reference librarian vs. an archivist are very different. I think for any library school student, it’s a good idea to hedge your bets and not just train yourself for a single job. It’s important to take tech classes, but if you know you don’t want to have a job where you’ll need to program, you shouldn’t have to. Focusing only on technology and not at all on public service-type classes is an even bigger mistake, since anyone developing tech for libraries needs to understand user behavior and how to train librarians on how to use the technologies.

Dorothea already wrote a lot of really brilliant things about teaching tech in library school, so there’s really no point in my going into more depth when she already said it all. Like most things she writes, I agree with 99% of it.

But my mind is on all of those people who are already out of library school and didn’t have the opportunity to take tech classes (or perhaps just chose not to because they didn’t think it would be important). Those are the people I write my column for. And the reality is that there are many libraries where no one has good programming skills (mine included) or the money to hire/rent talent. There are also many libraries where no one has an MLS at all, so the issue of tech in LIS education is irrelevant to them. I started writing my column because I saw too many articles that only highlighted things that could be done for a lot of $$$ or with serious programming talent on staff. I wanted to highlight the things that people could accomplish at almost any library so long as they are willing to experiment, maybe break things once, twice (or twenty times), and rely on documentation and the robust user communities that are a part of most of the tools I highlight. I like to show the range of what can be done with any technology, from things that require significant programming to the very simple nearly-out-of-the-box job. That way, they know what’s possible with the software at both ends of the spectrum.

I want small libraries to realize that they can have a decent website without necessarily knowing HTML or having a web designer on staff. I’ve learned over time that most librarians have no idea what they’re capable of doing with tech. I certainly didn’t think I was capable of doing anything with Drupal until I tried it out and realized that it wasn’t as beastly as I’d imagined (though the whole taxonomy/node stuff really took me a while to understand properly). I want to encourage people to try things out and to realize that they’re capable of so much more than they think they are. So, while I’d love for every library to have someone on staff with mad tech skillz, it’s important for people to realize that they still can do a lot of great stuff with tech even if they don’t have tons of money or programming talent.

I found this definition of the word expert in the Wikipedia:

An expert is someone widely recognized as a reliable source of technique or skill whose faculty for judging or deciding rightly, justly, or wisely is accorded authority and status by their peers or the public in a specific well distinguished domain. An expert, more generally, is a person with extensive knowledge or ability in a particular area of study. Experts are called in for advice on their respective subject, but they do not always agree on the particulars of a field of study. An expert can be, by virtue of training, education, profession, publication or experience, believed to have special knowledge of a subject beyond that of the average person, sufficient that others may officially (and legally) rely upon the individual’s opinion. Historically, an expert was referred to as a sage. The individual was usually a profound philosopher distinguished for wisdom and sound judgment.

I have a lot of friends who are knowledgeable about various topics who I would certainly trust if I needed advice in that area. Some are considered experts and some are not. The only difference I can really see between those who are and aren’t experts is how they have positioned themselves. The ones who are considered experts often speak at conferences or write articles or teach classes on their chosen subject. Because of this, their name becomes associated with that subject, making them an “expert”. It’s like me and wikis or Greg Schwartz and podcasting or Rachel Singer Gordon and career stuff. We created some stuff, wrote some stuff, talked about some stuff, and suddenly, we were authorities on the subject. And, for some of us who are now considered experts, it’s a title we’re rather uncomfortable with.

Tto me, the definition of an expert should be someone who has knowledge on a certain topic (or set of topics) and is willing to share that knowledge with others. There are likely lots of people out there who know as much, if not more, about a topic than an expert, but they don’t feel the inclination to share their knowledge publicly. This may mean that an expert is frequently no more an authority on a subject than any other person with similar knowledge; it just means that they’re more likely to be willing to share that knowledge (maybe for free, maybe for money).

No matter how much Web 2.0 pushes the notion that the amateur has a lot to offer, I still find that many people would rather ask questions of someone publicly seen as an expert. For example, I wrote a column for American Libraries (published last month) where I talked about using Wordpress as a content management system for a library website. I highlighted several library websites in the column including the Troy Public Library. Instead of emailing the people at the Troy Public Library to ask them about their site, one librarian emailed me to ask me all about their website and how he could do something like that. I certainly don’t know more about how the Troy PL achieved their website than they do. I get lots of people writing and asking me about things completely outside of my areas of knowledge like computer reservation systems for public libraries or careers for youth service librarians. Why someone would feel more comfortable asking an academic librarian about these things than, say, a listserv full of people who have varied experience in these areas is beyond me. I’m always happy to help with something I feel comfortable offering advice on, but sometimes I get questions that seem much better-suited for “the hive.”

Relying solely on the opinions of experts can also be dangerous. When I was a child and family therapist, I worked with a lot of clients whose parents pretty much saw the word of their psychiatrist as the word of God. They would never question a doctor. I mean, if they have an MD, clearly they must be right, right? I went to the psych evaluation of one of my clients where the psychiatrist asked the child if he fell asleep in school. The child said “yes.” He then said that the child was narcoleptic. Luckily I was there to bring up the fact that the child can’t sleep at night and falls asleep in class because of his insomnia, or he’d have been put on a serious medication needlessly (that probably also would have made the insomnia worse). I’m glad many people these days don’t just accept everything that’s told to them by a doctor — second opinions (or third, or fourth) are very valuable to help patients make the best decisions for their own health. We should question the advice of these experts.

I think the idea of experts and amateurs creates a false dichotomy; as if only the very few are capable of attaining a certain level of knowledge of a subject. I worry that it may make some people feel like they aren’t capable of learning a lot about a certain subject and that they will always have to rely on others for answers. A lot of people underestimate their ability to do things with technology; I see it in my class and enjoy watching students prove themselves wrong on that count. I do not have more talent for learning how to use wikis, blogs and other social software tools than most other semi-tech-savvy people in this profession and I’d hate to think that the whole expert/amateur thing would lead anyone to think that they aren’t capable of doing something on their own.

And I’m sure some “experts” want people to feel incapable. In some fields, experts make a lot of money telling other people how to live their lives, how to make money, etc. Even those of us in the profession who are considered experts benefit in some way, though most of us certainly can’t quit our day job. If everyone felt that they could learn to manage money on their own, they wouldn’t buy Suze Orman’s books or watch her TV show. Then again, none of us really wants to learn everything on our own, so people would probably still read books by “experts” even if they didn’t consider those people any smarter than a lot of the other people who know stuff about that subject.

I’m glad there are people who write books about baby stuff and childbirth that I can read. However, I also don’t take what any of them say to be the gospel. Instead of relying on one expert, I read a lot of books, articles, etc., which tend to offer a lot of conflicting advice (cribs with drop-sides are bad/cribs with drop-sides are fine, cord blood storage is a waste of money/cord blood storage is important insurance for your child, co-sleeping is good/co-sleeping is bad, etc.). I query the hive. In the end, I make the decision myself based on the opinions of doctors, midwives, mothers, writers, friends, and my own gut. Experts sometimes pass off opinion as fact — like the book my colleague read that encouraged women to moderately drink and smoke during pregnancy and strongly discouraged circumcision — and even if they don’t, there will be some bias to what they write. My book was biased towards lightweight virtual reference solutions like instant messaging, and I’d hope anyone considering implementing virtual reference at their library would read more than just my book when planning for it.

I know it would be a lot easier to just ask an expert, get an answer and go with it, but that’s exactly what we teach our patrons not to do. We teach them to be critical of information — to utilize multiple sources and to see where the author is getting their information from. People often ask me which wiki software they should use and I feel very reluctant to give them that sort of an answer. I think people should make that decision on their own, based on research they’ve done. Just because I like MediaWiki doesn’t mean it’ll work for your project and I’m only willing to give people a list of popular software options, not to give them a definitive answer. There’s nothing wrong with seeking out the opinion or advice of people you trust, but it’s important to realize that their advice is just that and isn’t necessarily the best option.

It’s nice to see people becoming more critical of information generally, and it should be interesting to see how this impacts the notion of “experts vs. amateurs” in the future.

Here’s my schedule so far. Adam and I are staying at the Marriott right by the Convention Center, which is a nice change from last year when we were a zillion miles from the Convention Center in DC. I’m covering the exhibit hall again for American Libraries so that means lots of time chatting up vendors and eating free twizzlers and peanut butter cups.

Thursday, June 26, 2008
Arriving Thursday afternoon
Dinner with the hubby

Friday, June 27, 2008
12:00 PM – 3:00 PM: Mover and Shaker Lunch
4:00 PM – 6:00 PM: Jim Rettig Advisory Committee Meeting
6:00 PM – 8:00 PM: Web Junction Member Reception or perhaps dinner

Saturday, June 28, 2008
Spending the day covering the exhibits for American Libraries with my intrepid editorial assistant/husband.
12:00 PM – 2:00 PM: EBSCO Academic Libraries Lunch
7:00 PM: Dinner with a friend
11:00 PM: Facebook Librarians After Hours @ Pop the Cork Wine Bar (if I’m conscious)

Sunday, June 29, 2008
8:00 AM – 10:00 AM: Readex Breakfast (I’m giving a talk called Academic Work is Social: User Generated Content in Support of Research and Learning)
Lunch: No plans, but will probably eat lunch early-ish so I can get to the TTT nice and early.
1:30 PM – 3:00 PM: LITA Top Technology Trends
4:00 PM – 5:30 PM: Bookcart Drill Team Championships (covering this for American Libraries)
5:30 PM – 8:00 PM: OCLC Blog Salon
Afterwards: ???

Monday, June 30, 2008
Morning: Check out of hotel
10:00 AM – 12:00 PM: ACRL National Conference Committee, Virtual Conference Subcommittee Meeting
Lunch: No plans
Spend a bit of time at the exhibit hall
Leave for LAX for red-eye to NY.

I’ve had pretty low expectations of my conference experiences the past few times and they’ve actually ended up being pretty darn great. Here’s hoping for more of that since my expectations are rather low this time around as well.

Hope to see you there!

Tomorrow morning, Adam and I are leaving for a vacation in the Adirondacks. This is the first time in AGES that our vacations haven’t either centered around a talk I’m giving or a trip to visit family. This is an honest-to-goodness no obligations, do-as-little-as-possible, email-and-feed-free vacation. And after the year we’ve had, we both really need it.

After that, I’ll be getting back for the second week of our distance learners’ Residency (the first time I ever get to meet the students I’ve worked with for two years previous) and then will be leaving on the 26th for ALA Annual in Anaheim. I’ll be covering the exhibit hall again for American Libraries and am on two committees so I expect to be pretty busy. But I’ll definitely be part of the LITA Top Tech Trends panel on Sunday afternoon and wouldn’t miss the blogger salon for anything. Hope to see you there!

With all that going on, you can expect this blog to be pretty quiet for a while.