There are a lot of popular assumptions people make in this profession that lead us to make classic blunders. These can be assumptions about the change process, assumptions about our colleagues, and assumptions about our patrons. We can go into developing a new service or technology with the best of intentions and fail spectacularly because of the blinders we put on due to these strongly-held assumptions. Sometimes things fail in libraries because they weren’t a good idea or fit, but sometimes the failure is caused by the approach taken to creating change. And those failures truly can be avoided.

As I work delicately and slowly at my library to build a culture of assessment, I’ve been thinking a lot about implementation failures and thought it would be nice to look at some of the classic blunders I’ve seen in both libraries and higher ed over the past seven years related to implementation. Here’s the first.

“Why don’t we try it and see what happens” is always a good way to approach new services

No, offense intended, Andy, but I have to disagree with you here (though I certainly would have agreed strongly with you when I was new to the profession). I am definitely not a risk-averse person in my work. I have experimented many times over the years with new services, service models, and technologies. Some have been successes and some failures, but I’ve always learned from the experiences. One thing I’ve learned is that while in some cases the “try it and see what happens” mantra is a very reasonable way to approach things, other times, it can be a disaster. This Fall, I did a pilot project with some colleagues to provide synchronous online workshops for students using web conferencing software. What we learned was that there wasn’t much need for general research instruction workshops, but grad students in particular were very interested in online instruction on specific topics, such as using Zotero and Mendeley. So, based on that information, we retooled for this term with more discipline-specific sessions and I continued offering my Zotero and Mendeley workshops. In that case, trying it and seeing what happened was a totally reasonable approach because whether we were wildly successful or a total flop, we could handle either eventuality.

Back in 2006, when I was the distance learning librarian at Norwich, I tried an embedded librarian pilot for our online Masters degree programs. Having been one of those students who never asked for help at her library, I wanted to make sure I was available as possible to our students as they started out in their program. I also wanted to try and put a human face on the library, which is even more critical in the online learning environment. The first term, I embedded myself in the first seminar of our two most research-intensive classes (both of which had several sections). I had an “Ask a Librarian” discussion board (that was front and center) in each classroom where I could both answer questions and proactively provide information literacy instruction at key points in the term.

The major issue was that I had to check each WebCT classroom separately to see if there were any messages from students — there was no way to get alerts when new content was posted. It took me 4-7 hours each week to monitor the boards and answer questions. This wouldn’t have been an issue if I’d been deluged with questions, but that was far from the case. Occasionally, a single class would have a lot of questions one week (if their prof asked them to check with me about their research topics), but for the most part, questions were few and far between and some classes never used the discussion board at all. And even when I (and the program administrators) strongly encouraged faculty to encourage their students to ask for help, only some chose to do so. I was basically routing traffic from the reference desk to myself and taking 4-7 hours/week to answer anywhere between 0 and 12 questions. Clearly not a great value proposition. Had I gotten a lot of questions, it would have been worth the time spent, but for so few, it clearly wasn’t.

The big problem was that the faculty and administrators thought this was a great service as did the students who used it. Even though I’d called it a pilot, no one outside of the library saw it that way. They wanted the program to expand, not go away. It was very difficult to pull out of providing this service, but it had to be done. Had I really considered the worst-case scenarios of either wild success or failure, I would have realized that this had the potential to be a HUGE problem. If a potential consequence of not being able to sustain a service means losing credibility with faculty and/or administrators, then it’s not a risk to take lightly. Building credibility with one’s faculty is a painstaking process. It often takes years to build their trust and to get them to see you as someone who can offer something useful to them and their students. You don’t want to risk that. As anyone involved in instruction can attest, it sometimes takes just one bad session to lead a faculty member to never request instruction again.

There are a lot of awesome services we could be providing at PSU, but we are constrained by our extremely small public services staff relative to our student population. In many cases, we have to worry about what it would look like to be the “victims of our success,” because we are already stretched to the point where everything we do is an essential service. I believe strongly that “try it and see what happens” is a great idea after you visualize potential outcomes and realize that none of them will be truly damaging. If we had tons of demand for online instruction, we could have handled it. That we didn’t (except in the Zotero and Mendeley classes) also wasn’t a problem. All we really were risking was our pride. But when the risk is alienating students/faculty/administrators or seriously overworking already stressed librarians, I think there needs to be a serious discussion about how to handle that eventuality and whether it’s worth risking without understanding the service population better.

I’m a huge believer in seeing service development as an iterative process. That part of perpetual beta appeals strongly to me. I believe in trying something, assessing it, and retooling based on those results. I see that as a continuous loop that should continue to happen even when you think the service/technology is mature (since populations and their needs change). However, I also think that in some cases assessment has to start before we ever offer the service. I think perpetual beta, whether in the tech world or in libraries, can sometimes be an excuse for putting out things that are truly half-baked. Putting out something (service, technology, etc.) that risks our reputation, credibility, or relationship with our service population requires more than a “let’s try it and see what happens” attitude.

The next classic blunder I’ll be tackling: the assumption that resistance to change is bad and something one needs to defeat.

It’s been extremely challenging to post here regularly (though I’m getting better about it!), not because of a lack of ideas, but because of a lack of down-time. Summer came late (like mid-July!) to Portland and we’re trying to make the most of it before the days of endless gray descend. I’m lucky that I don’t suffer from seasonal affective disorder, but I still do have to struggle to find fun things for a toddler to do while it’s cold and rainy. It’s been a joy being able to do all sorts of fun things with my little guy in the sun. Whoever calls the two’s “terrible” clearly doesn’t know my son.

I don’t think words could describe how happy I am here. My supervisor told me that most people who apply for jobs at PSU want to move to Portland, but I honestly had zero interest when I came for my interview. I knew next to nothing about Portland and I’d never wanted to live on the West Coast. But I am so glad I came. If you can get a job here (and there’s the rub because unemployment is HUGE here), Portland is an amazing place to live. Portland is a city for people who hate cities. It’s quiet, friendly, not smelly, but still with great cultural activities, food, etc. I can actually drive to work after dropping Reed off at daycare and park a block from the library. My commute is easy and mellow. There is so much to do in the area — beaches, farms, wineries, mountains, cool neighborhoods, amazing parks, great museums and the zoo. The diversity (not ethnic, but in every other way) amazes me. And it still feels a lot like Vermont with its passion for local (businesses, food, etc.) and mellow pace of life.

The biggest change has been in my work environment. While I do miss having my hand in just about every project, as I did at Norwich, I really appreciate being able to focus. At Norwich, “Head of Instruction” seemed to mean “person who does the most instruction.” Here, my job seems to have been purposely designed to avoid that, and I appreciate having time to focus on the macro-level instruction work. Building an instruction program from what previously was a group of liaisons doing their own things takes a lot of time and relationship-building. We’re lucky to have such a strong liaison program with deep relationships with academic departments, but it’ll also be nice to see ourselves as a unit, working towards common goals and supporting each other. To build a sense of cohesiveness and a learning/sharing culture, I’ve been holding brown-bag lunches and monthly instruction meetings. So far so good!

I’ve also been working on a lot of projects related to instruction. I led a team this summer to implement LibGuides (create best practices, do trainings, customize the look, etc.) and to develop learning outcomes for the library instruction program, among other things. We’re planning on doing a big push this year to create learning objects, and hopefully soon I’ll be hiring a part time (non-librarian) instructional design position to help support the liaisons with this.

Probably the biggest difference between Norwich and PSU is in communication — specifically offering feedback and criticism. At Norwich, it was challenging to get feedback from people. You’d send an email out asking for feedback on something you did and you’d be lucky if you heard from one or two people. At Portland State, it is the absolute opposite. Everyone has an opinion. It’s interesting to be in meetings where people have such strong feelings about things. At Norwich I felt like the pushy person; at PSU, I feel like the polar opposite.

I really appreciate the fact that my colleagues here are so passionate in their beliefs and so willing to offer feedback. Sure, there are moments when I feel like people are arguing over things that are really not worth the agita, but one person’s molehill is another person’s mountain. Probably the thing that has been most challenging is the fact that, because I really didn’t get much criticism of my ideas at Norwich, I got used to being able to go full-steam ahead with very little intervention. It’s been a good exercise for me over the past 4 1/2 months to get used to accepting criticism and to develop better skills in building consensus and letting go. Here are a few tips that helped me with that:

1. Remember that they are criticizing your ideas, not you – When you become personally attached to an idea and someone puts it down, it can hurt. You can feel like it’s a personal affront. Unless the person is a real jerk, they probably didn’t mean for it to hurt you personally, and I have had positive interactions with all of my colleagues, so I don’t think any of them have ever said anything designed to hurt me. I think when you see your colleagues as people dedicated to making things better and reframe what you’re hearing in that light, criticism can be painless, if not useful. #2 can also help.

2. Don’t get emotionally attached to your ideas unless you really think they’re worth it – I have lots of opinions, but only a few things that I feel extremely strongly about. So I pick my battles and do not get wedded to anything that’s not worth it. With the learning outcomes for our library instruction program, I developed a lot of the outcomes and we then refined them as a committee before taking them to all of the instruction librarians. We received a lot of criticism and suggestions at the instruction meeting and I accepted them easily and pushed back on just a few things. I just wanted a good product and didn’t get attached to the wording or any specific outcomes. And my colleagues had a lot of great, smart, helpful things to add. When you’re too attached to an idea, it can be difficult to hear and accept legitimate criticism that would make the thing better. On the other hand, sometimes an idea is actually worth being attached to.

3. Picking your battles ensures that people take what you say seriously – people who constantly have to put a wrench into things, who never have a positive word to say, who argue every point are thought of as contrarians. When one develops such a reputation, they become “the boy who cried wolf”; easy to ignore, even when they have a legitimate case. It’s so easy to blow off someone’s suggestions (even if they are great suggestions) just because the person has shown themselves to be a contrarian in the past.

4. People can be wrong – Remember that when someone criticizes your idea, it’s just one person’s opinion. It may be a good opinion and it may be crappy. It may be shared by everyone in the room or it may be shared by no one else. You need to figure that out rather than uncritically accepting every suggestion. A colleague here gave me a piece of my advice when I first started: always ask several people about anything. When I first talked to a colleague about being on the tenure track, I got the impression that there was no way I’d be able to work on my research during the workday. A second colleague I talked to made me think that the only things that count towards tenure were single-authored, peer-reviewed articles. Another told me that they fit research into their work hours without incident because they viewed it as a required part of their job, just like instruction or reference shifts. And my experience may be totally different (so far, I’ve had no trouble carving out time for research, but we’ll see what I say when I’m in the thick of things this Fall). People’s perspectives are based on their own experiences and they may have different experiences, time-management skills, job duties, etc. than you. It’s good to take criticism with grace, but like anything else, look at what they’re saying with a critical eye.

5. You can be wrong. GASP! That can’t be true! My colleagues are really smart and have a great diversity of experience and bodies of knowledge. I don’t know everything and sometimes I’m wrong about things I think I know. I really appreciate that I have a group of colleagues willing to set me straight when I need it.

It’s funny that in a more mellow library environment, I was the person voicing my opinion on everything under the sun, but here, where every little point seems to merit discussion, I’ve become much more Zen. And I have to say that I like this more relaxed me a whole lot more. Viva letting go!

At my previous place of work, we had weekly “council meetings” which was basically all of the professional librarians meeting to discuss issues, make big decisions about the library and manage the budget. It was a great experience to be involved in high-level discussions straight out of library school and really nice to feel in-the-loop about what was in the works at our library. Because I was in-the-loop it took me a while to realize that many other people at the library were not in-the-loop. Like our entire non-professional staff. There were no minutes taken for these meetings and although our library was small, communication still often did not filter down after the Council meetings. And I don’t think anyone purposely didn’t include staff in these conversations; like me, it’s hard for people to see what it’s like to be out-of-the-loop when you’re in-the-loop.

While I have no problem with degreed librarians being in charge of things, I do take issue with a system where staff do not feel like they have a voice or are not communicated with about possible changes in advance. If someone is just told “this is how it’s going to be” instead of being asked “what do you think of this idea?” how can you expect their buy-in? Even if things don’t go the way they wanted them to go, at least they got to share their opinion before a decision was made.

Library staff are often extremely knowledgeable about the library. Our Evening Circulation Supervisor at my previous job saw patterns in student library use that we simply didn’t see during the day. The insights I got from him during my evening reference shifts were vitally useful. As I said, I have no problem with professional librarians or administrators making the final decisions on things, but I think that soliciting the input of staff is vitally important as they likely have insights into their areas that no one else does.

In May, our Interim University Librarian announced that she’d be taking a job at another institution at the end of June. In faculty meetings we discussed potential replacements, met with the Provost, and heard about meetings with a potential candidate for the position (who is starting next week as our IUL). It didn’t occur to me until our “all staff meeting,” on the day of our current IUL’s going away party that this was the first time the staff were hearing about any of this (I’m assuming that faculty talked with their staff before this informally, but this was the first formal communication). While it was a time of uncertainty for library faculty, I can only imagine what it was like for staff, some of whom may have heard nothing about potential replacements, the direction the Provost wanted to go, etc. And again, I don’t think anyone was purposely keeping staff in the dark; I’m sure if a decision had actually been made before that time, it would have been communicated to everyone at the library. But I can imagine if I had no idea what was going on that I’d be a lot more anxious than if I at least knew how things were progressing.

Are library staff less committed to our profession? Plenty of non-degreed library staff are deeply invested in their work. They might see this as much as a career or a calling as someone who got an MLS does. I was always blown away by the dedication of our ILL technician at my previous job to the students and to ensuring that they got what they needed (even if it meant bending the rules a bit). I’ve seen degreed librarians with less dedication than she had.

I don’t know what the answer to these divisions in our libraries is, really. I have no problem with “Council Meetings” or “Administrative Meetings” where the big decisions are made (at least here at PSU, minutes are taken at the administrative meetings so I still feel in-the-loop even though I’m not involved). I take no issue with the MLS being a requirement for certain things. But I think sometimes we degreed librarians, we faculty librarians, etc. do sometimes forget to communicate with and solicit feedback from our staff. And I’ve been guilty of it too in the past and I’ll probably unthinkingly do it again (which is ironic since I was once a non-degreed library staff member who felt like I didn’t have a voice). It seems almost endemic in our profession; we bemoan it, but we unconsciously perpetuate it. Are there libraries where this is not an issue? How do you structure discussions, decision-making and communication? I’m sure I’m not the only one who’d like to know.

Greetings from Portland, Oregon! I’ve been wanting to post about so many things in the past two months (especially just about everything Barbara Fister has been writing over at Library Babel Fish — gosh she is insightful!), but it’s been difficult to find the time. The learning curve at my new place of work has been steep and I really hit the ground running (which I actually appreciated, having been in jobs where I spent weeks just reading policy manuals). Also, I’ve really needed to focus on ensuring that Reed’s adjustment to Oregon, daycare and everything else went smoothly. Fortunately, Reed’s really taken to the area and his new school. He love all the playgrounds, museums and activities geared towards kids. Living somewhere with more opportunities for Reed was a big part of why we wanted to leave Vermont. As for me, I’m loving Portland. The city is unlike any I’ve been to before. I love the interesting neighborhoods, each with their own unique culture. I’m loving the food trucks, farmers’ markets, and the local food culture. It’s really got everything I’ve always loved about cities without many of the things that previously made me never want to live in/near one (noise, rude people, smelliness, etc.). I’m so happy we made this move!

As for the job, gosh, what can I say? I’m amazed by how busy I already am. It’s going to be an exciting challenge, that’s for sure. I really like the people I’m working with; they’re smart, thoughtful and argue passionately for the things they believe in. I think it’s going to be more challenging than I’d anticipated to accomplish the things I need to do as the Head of Instructional Services. The culture at the library (and the University really) is very decentralized and everyone doing instruction is used to doing their own thing without oversight or coordination. Coupling that with the departure of some key people at the library and it’s going to be hard to do anything more than keeping up the status quo. But we, as a library, urgently need to change. We need to create a culture of assessment where we can demonstrate the value we provide (in terms of student success and faculty research) to campus administration. Over the past decade, the library has sustained funding cuts and little growth in personnel while the university has grown tremendously. This indicates pretty strongly that the library has not been an administrative funding priority and we need to find ways of telling our story to those administrators that will convince them of our value. It certainly indicates a strong need for my position, which everyone I talk to recognizes. Even with that recognition, it’s difficult to make cultural changes, especially at a time of upheaval at the library. I’m optimistic though; I like a good challenge.

As someone who is very interested in organizational culture, it’s exciting to work in one so different from my previous experiences. At Norwich, we had very few meetings and were more of an adhocracy where if someone had the drive and initiative to make something happen, they usually just did it. If I had an idea, I’d just pop into my Director’s office and ask her if she thought I should give it a try. In four weeks at Portland State, I’ve probably been to more meetings than I went to in my entire last year at Norwich. Everything is decided by committee or task force, and it seems like there’s a real effort to come to a consensus on things. There are many policies and procedures for how things are done, which is certainly more necessary at a large library. As a result, things move more slowly. I don’t think that’s necessarily a bad thing; we did some things at Norwich with very little forethought that probably could have been better planned out. I’ve really appreciated the thoughtful discussions we’ve engaged in on the Library Guides Taskforce already; it’s a bunch of really smart people coming at the topic from different perspectives. On the other hand, so much red tape leaves much less room for experimentation and innovation. I’ve always felt like the mark of a great administrator is to be able to get things done in any sort of organizational environment, since, more often than not, organizational culture is exceedingly difficult to change on a grand scale. Since I hope to be an administrator in the future, I’m thrilled to have the chance to try my hand at working within this very different culture.

Right now I’m engaged in a survey of our instruction program. I’m interviewing every individual involved in any aspect of library instruction from tours for high school students all the way up to discipline-specific classes for grad students. I want to have a very clear picture of what our instruction program looks like, what’s working and what isn’t, what could be improved, what people would like to see change, and how I might be able to create more of a team mentality among this diverse group of individual instructors. I’ve done four interviews so far and it’s been extremely valuable to get their perspectives, since each individual has very different views and priorities. Every instruction coordinator should do something like this when they come into the position, even if they were promoted to it from within their library.

I’ve got a ton of stuff going on right now — preparing for a keynote I’m giving in Missouri on June 7th, getting ready for the class I’m going to be teaching for SJSU this summer, and trying to figure out what I want to research so I can actually stay in my tenure-track job — so I’m not sure how often I’ll be able to post. But I have so many thoughts swirling in my head about instruction, especially the best way to provide information literacy instruction to first-year students, and blogging has always been a great way for me to process my own ideas and get valuable feedback from other members of the profession. I really miss blogging as much as I used to. I just need to find a way to fit everything into my life. I guess this is what every working parent deals with and while I feel like I have struck a much better work/life balance than I had in the past, I’m still struggling to find a sense of balance that doesn’t leave me constantly questioning my choices. When I’m with Reed, I feel like I should be focusing more on work. When I’m focusing on work, I miss Reed horribly. And time for me? That isn’t even part of the equation right now. While I’m optimistic about a lot of things in my life, I’m not optimistic that I’ll ever feel balance in my life again (at least until Reed’s in college). Is it worth it though, to have a wonderful child and a wonderful job? You bet!

I’m one of those people who has a hard time waiting for people’s birthday to give them presents. Whenever I try to surprise my husband with something, I always end up telling him about it early. I can keep other people’s secrets, but I’m terrible at keeping my own. So I’ve felt like the cork in a bottle of champagne trying to wait until it was totally official to tell my friends and colleagues my good news.

The news is that I’m moving on to a new job in a new library in a new state on the other side of the country. EEK! Starting in late April, I will be the Head of Instructional Services at Portland State University in Oregon. I’ll be working with a terrific team of liaison librarians to provide instruction to a student population that is almost 10 times the size of Norwich! There are some unique instructional challenges at PSU that really attracted me to the position, and I got the sense during the interview that the time was right for creating meaningful change in instructional services there. I couldn’t be more thrilled to be working with such a change-oriented, user-focused and dedicated group of professionals and I’m looking forward to the new challenges this position will bring. Being on the tenure track should be… interesting… but I’ve had a lot of research and article ideas percolating in my head for years that I’ll finally have the impetus to pursue.

The moving part I am looking forward to far less. While the whole family is really excited about moving to Portland (ok, Adam and I are; Reed at 22 months, doesn’t have a clue what’s coming), it’s going to be difficult to leave Vermont and the logistics of moving across the country with a toddler are just miserable. I’m even letting my husband pick out our rental home in the middle of February since someone has to stay home with the little guy. For a control freak like me, this whole moving thing is a major exercise in letting go. I know living in Portland is going to afford my son so many opportunities he simply wouldn’t have had in Vermont and it’ll be fun to live in a place with a renowned restaurant scene, lots of parks, major cultural opportunities, and 15 Targets (the closest one to us now is over 100 miles away!). Vermont is a wonderful place, but the career opportunities here are extremely limited and I knew that if I didn’t leave Vermont now, I’d have to leave at some point in the future. Better to go when Reed’s not even two than when he gets into school and gets attached to friends and his life here. Portland seems like a good place for Reed to grow up. Having a child has had a huge impact on my career trajectory and choices — how could it not?

I was extremely lucky to start my career at Norwich (especially since my dream job was to be a distance learning librarian and who gets their dream job their first time out???). I’ve gotten experience in so many aspects of librarianship (public services, distance learning, curriculum development, budgeting, supervision, collection development, working closely with faculty, outreach, systems, emerging tech, committee work, statistics gathering and analysis, project management, etc.). It’s been great to have a Director across the hall whose door is open to me anytime. It’s been refreshing to work at a place where staff are so open to change and where the biggest barrier to getting things done is often your own energy and time. I think working in a small library is perfect for a first job, because you get to do a bit of everything and really figure out where you want your career to go in the long-run. I dreaded teaching when I got into the profession; now it’s my favorite part of my work. I never thought I’d want to be an administrator; now it’s my long-term goal. At a larger institution, the distance learning librarian my never get to teach face-to-face classes; I was thrown head-first into it. And thank goodness for that! Working at a small place made me more flexible, collegial and focused on what’s best for the library/patrons rather than on the cool projects I wanted to do. I wouldn’t be the person I am today professionally if it weren’t for my experiences at Norwich. For so many reasons, moving on will be bittersweet for me.

So Portland (and Oregon) librarians, I can’t wait to connect with you! I already know of some really cool librarians in Portland and in the Oregon State University system, so I couldn’t be more excited about contributing to the profession at a local level and making friends with some fantastic librarians. Adam and I never really thought we’d live on the West Coast, and we don’t have any family out there, so the idea of moving to an unfamiliar city far away from our previous life is quite daunting. I’ve had second thoughts about such a big move a hundred times over the past month, but I feel in my gut that this is going to be the right place for us.

I’m looking forward to heading out in early April toward the beautiful Willamette River Valley. Hopefully we won’t shoot any bison, break a wagon wheel, or get typhoid along the way.

Karen Schneider published an interesting post yesterday under the pithy title The Devil Needs No Advocate. Other than the title, it’s a post that I mostly agree with and it got me thinking about where it’s useful to play the role of critic or devil’s advocate and where it’s not. Because I do think the devil needs an advocate and the role of devil’s advocate is a critically important one at any institution.

Karen writes about the Hayward Public Library that introduced a Netflix-like system for their patrons. So far, it’s been unsuccessful. Does this mean it was a bad idea? Maybe, maybe not. It might not be the right idea for their population. It might just not be marketed well yet. It might be an idea ahead of its time. It might just require some tweaks. I completely agree with Karen when she writes “excellence also requires much behind-scenes sausagemaking and experimentation. This is particularly true for new ideas. It is extremely hard to distinguish good ideas from bad ideas early in the iterative design process.” Sometimes, no matter how well you know your patrons, no matter how much research you do, no matter how much you flog an idea, it can still fail.

When I was a distance learning librarian, I tried out a number of different services that didn’t work out. They seemed like great ideas for our population, they worked well at other institutions, but they just didn’t work out when we implemented them. Sometimes they just required some tweaking and sometimes we had to abandon the idea altogether. We’re dealing with that now with offering online live library instruction sessions for our distance learners. It sounds like a great idea and the students who attend are always blown away by how much they learn, but because it’s optional, we’re getting very low attendance. Does this mean that offering live library instruction for distance learners is a bad idea? No. We just need to figure out what will make students attend. This semester, we gave all online instructors a draft email to send out to their students to encourage them to take advantage of the instruction sessions. I’ve found in the past that it makes a huge difference when a recommendation comes from an instructor rather than from the librarian. So we’ll see next week (when our sessions start) if it worked. And if it didn’t, we’ll keep trying new things and improving the service. One idea I really like from the Web 2.0 world is perpetual beta. Service implementation should always be an iterative process. You can plan and test and plan, but until you put something out there for your patrons, you’ll never know 100% how it will be received. And based on the feedback you get from your patrons, you can make it better.

Karen also points to a snarky follow-up post about the Hayward Public Library from the Annoyed Librarian (who won’t get any link-love from me, so you can just go find the link on Karen’s post) and writes this about him/her:

But none of this bothers the Annoying Librarian, because she’s all about the turd in the punch bowl, the preemptive negativism, the soul-sucking, nasty worldview in which no good deed goes unpunished and They are always against Us. It’s a convenient, lazy perch, particularly when you do it behind the lack of accountability that anonymity provides. It’s good for page views and quick laughs at the expense of whatever idea she’s excoriating at the moment. But it doesn’t make the world a better place. It doesn’t make you a better person, either.

I struggle with this statement. I completely agree with Karen that the Annoyed Librarian’s negativity is in no way productive or helpful. That’s why I don’t read him/her anymore. I don’t like toxic personal attacks. But I do honestly think that people playing the role of devil’s advocate can make the world a better place; that sometimes ideas are not good and the people excited about them are too blinded by tunnel vision to see that. Or sometimes things need to be better thought out and tweaked before implementation. I know that the devil’s advocate is often seen as a kill-joy at libraries. I remember when I first came to Norwich, full of enthusiasm and tunnel vision in equal parts. It drove me crazy that one of my colleagues always questioned every idea I had. He was so negative! Now, I’ve come to find his questioning invaluable. He often sees the potential flaws in an idea I have and anticipates roadblocks I might encounter; things I did not see myself. And now, I’ve become a devil’s advocate in so many situations at work where I see that an idea has not been well-considered. I’m the one asking the annoying questions and bringing up potential issues. And maybe that makes me negative, but I figure I make up for it by spending even more time coming up with and championing ideas.

Yes, there are people who claim to play the role of devil’s advocate, but really they are playing the role of roadblock. Do you know how you can tell the difference? Those people never champion an idea of their own or even champion anyone else’s ideas. They bring nothing constructive to the table. All they ever do is tear down, tear down, tear down. That is being a roadblock, not a devil’s advocate. A devil’s advocate goes into conversations wanting to ensure success; the roadblock just wants to make objections and prove people wrong.

Here’s a great example from my own library of what can happen when you ignore the devil’s advocates. The university’s IT people wanted to move towards having thin clients all over campus. They’d employed a couple at little-used kiosk locations and they worked fine. Next, instead of employing them in one of their own computer labs, they wanted to replace the computers in the library’s reference area and instruction classroom with thin clients. I was strongly against this, not because I have anything against thin clients, but because I know our IT people do not have the experience and skills necessary to manage something like this well. We’d been burned too many times by them in the five years I’d been at the library. I had concerns about how this might impact instruction and really didn’t want the instruction space to be a test-case for this. A bunch of us in the library had questions and concerns and they were never addressed. We simply put our faith in IT that they would address any issues that might come up.

The thin clients were installed this past summer and worked fine at the time since very few people use the library during the summer. As soon as the students came back in August and more than just a couple were on the thin clients at once, things started to go haywire. People couldn’t log into computers, computers were freezing up, we were getting weird error messages, and there was nothing we could do. For the first two months of classes (when library instruction was at its busiest), IT couldn’t figure out how to diagnose or fix the problems we were having. It made it extremely difficult to teach a class of 24 students when sometimes only 7 out of our 12 computers were even working. It also made us look bad to new students — why would they want to study and do their work at a library run this badly? This was not the first impression I wanted to make on new students. We also discovered that students would not be able to stream video on the thin clients, which is awkward considering that we’re planning on purchasing a Films Media Group streaming video package and students won’t be able to use the videos in the library. Sigh…

Sometimes it’s fine to dive into things and tweak and improve as you go along. Offering a Netflix-style model and then changing it or abandoning it is no big deal. But there are certain decisions whose effects are more far-reaching and are less mutable. IT eventually was able to fix the thin clients, but there was really no way out other than waiting for IT to fix it. There was no “well we’ll just buy all new computers” or something. As the Head of Instruction, I felt painted into a corner. There are decisions you can’t back out of, decisions that require significant investments of time and money, decisions that can damage the library’s relationship with its patrons. These are decisions where having a devil’s advocate is critical. I have lots of ideas in an average year and I want my colleagues to beat these ideas to a pulp. I want them to stand up to scrutiny. I want to know what it is that I haven’t considered. I want to be able to defend them. Sure, it sucks to have one’s ideas beaten to a pulp, but it’s necessary, because I know from experience that it’s worse to get caught with your pants down, realizing after implementing a new idea that you hadn’t considered something critical.

So no, I don’t particularly want someone at my library (or in my life) who revels in tearing down ideas, but I’m happy to have devil’s advocates who criticize, question and dissect my ideas in order to create a better product in the end. Maybe Karen and I just define devil’s advocate differently, but I think they’re essential to creating great tools and services for our patrons.

I was really excited when I saw the title of In the Library With the Lead Pipe’s post “Rising through the Ranks: On Upward Mobility in Librarianship” from last month. They always provide a comprehensive and thoughtful treatment of the issues they choose to write about. And this is an issue I think about quite a bit. When I finally had time to read it almost two weeks later, I was disappointed to find that a number of the contributors had “a strong aversion to management.” One stated “I don’t feel that I know much about upward mobility, nor that I really want to. The term just conjures up images in my mind of pants suits and power lunches, both of which I have some aversion to!” I have a difficult time understanding this point of view, because I very much want to move up in the profession and I very much like being a manager. And while I’m generally a pretty casual dresser, I actually love wearing suits.

I see management in a different way, perhaps, than do people who hate the very idea of being a manager. I see being a manager as being an advocate. I love being an advocate. I love fighting for things. As a social worker, I advocated for my clients to get the services they needed from their public schools. As a distance learning librarian, I advocated for the distance students to receive the same services and consideration any other student at the University. As Head of Instruction, I advocate for information literacy to be integrated into the curriculum. As Social Sciences Liaison, I advocate for faculty and students to get the resources they need to do their academic work. And, as a manager, I advocate for my employee to get the experiences that will help her develop professionally and be successful in her work. Management isn’t about delegating, being the heavy, and telling people what to do (though those things are sometimes necessary as part of being a manager). It’s about providing vision, advocating for, and enabling your employees to do the things they need to do to be successful. And I think that’s fun.

I surprised even myself when I realized this year that I would actually like to be a library director in the future. I have found my own library director to be an inspiration in this area. I love how she is such a strong advocate for the library in her dealings with faculty, administrators and potential donors. She’s truly a diplomat, carrying the library’s flag to meetings on-campus and off. She’s also an inspirational leader for her staff — strong and self-assured. I strive to be like that; to handle troubling situations with her grace and resourcefulness. Sure, I don’t love the idea of schmoozing donors, but I didn’t love the idea of schmoozing faculty about information literacy either and found that, most of the time, it’s actually fun to build those relationships with faculty. It’s nice to get to know people who are focused on different areas of the academic endeavor and to get out of the “library bubble.” I’ve found in my career that forcing myself to do the things I’m most uncomfortable with (which included instruction and presenting 5 years ago) leads to the greatest personal and professional growth.

The thing I struggle with at this point in my career is how do I get from where I am to where I want to be? It’s not like I want to be a library Director tomorrow, when you know where you want to go in life, it’s natural to start thinking about what it might take to get there. If I want to be a Director one day, probably staying at the same small university library for 20 years is not going to get me there. At the same time, I don’t want to be the sort of person who moves to a new library every few years in order to climb the career ladder. I have a husband and a child and, while my husband is supportive of my career, his and Reed’s happiness is far more important to me than my career. And then there’s the fact that I happen to love my work here. I feel a strong sense of mission and purpose at Norwich. I’ve built strong relationships with the faculty here over the years and am now at a point where I am really creating important and lasting change. I believe in what I’m doing to integrate information literacy into the curriculum here and I’m proud of what I’ve accomplished so far. Ths Fall, the VPAA even invited me to Chair a new information literacy committee, made up of faculty representatives from each of the Schools. This is what I’ve been working for!

I’m sure I can and will find that same passion at another academic library in the future, but I’m sure I’ll also feel the same pull at my next job to stay and see my mission through. In a job like mine where your goal (integrating information literacy into the curricula of all academic programs) is so large, you’re constantly just approaching and chipping away at the issue in different ways. You build and build and build upon success. It takes time to build the sort of relationships you need to have to build any forward momentum. People in this sort of position who leave their job after only a couple of years will probably never see the fruits of their labors.

So I wonder, am I the only person who struggles with this? Am I the only person who is ambitious careerwise, but doesn’t want to move from job to job to job every couple of years? I can’t imagine, and yet I hear so little about it. This subject should not be taboo. I’ve been influenced strongly on this as well by my Director. She told me from day one that she hopes we don’t stay here forever; that staying at the same library forever can limit one’s vision. She encourages us to explore other options when we’re ready and feels like she’s done her job when we move on to bigger and better things. I appreciate that I can be completely open with her about my ambitions when so many other people have to keep these things secret from their boss. She’s been an amazing mentor.

If you’re struggling with this issue yourself, leave a comment (it can be anonymous)! It would just be nice to know that I’m not the only one feeling these two opposite, but equally compelling impulses.

Wow, what can I say about Immersion? First of all, you have to be there to really understand what a profound experience it is. My in-laws were visiting when I got back from Immersion and I found it very difficult to explain the experience. What I told them is that it was an intensive program (like a retreat) focused on building an information literacy program (well, it is in the program track, though the teacher track is more focused on developing an approach to teaching). But it was so much more than that. It was a time of intense reflection on where we’ve been, what we’ve been doing, where we want to go, and what we need to do to get there. It was about developing the persuasive skills to realize our goals. I recognized many missteps I’d made in the past and saw my future path so much more clearly at the end of Immersion that I now feel a renewed sense of purpose. It was like a vision quest minus the peyote.

Immersion was exhausting. You barely had time to stop and think since you were constantly engaged in activities or doing “homework.” But it was also exhilarating, because you were constantly hearing things that made fireworks go off in your brain. “Oh my gosh, we could totally do that at my library!” After being back at work for 3 hours, I’d already used an idea from Immersion for changing our student orientation program. This year we’re getting 26 groups of about 30 students each coming to the library for around 40 minutes each. My cohort leader (the fabulous Tiffini Travis) gave me the idea to break the students into groups and have each group find out about certain parts of the library and then share that information with the entire class. Brilliant! Not only does it prevent us from having to give a dry, boring lecture/tour, but it gets the students engaged in learning and acting as teachers rather than passive participants. While I loved the scavenger hunts we did for the past two years, they were a ton of work and stress for me and I always felt burnt out just as the fall semester was starting. This idea was embraced by all of my colleagues. Hot damn!

Immersion was also about breaking down one of our biggest barriers: ourselves. Never underestimate the power of denial and procrastination! I think my biggest epiphany came when we were discussing a case study we’d been assigned to read. It was about Dorothy, the first instruction coordinator at her institution, and the missteps she made in her first few years on the job. I realized when I was talking about the mistakes she’d made, I was getting really annoyed. And then I realized why. I’d made many of those same mistakes. I was Dorothy! It made me see my own role in a new light and helped me realize that I’d been avoiding some of the same things (being more involved in the University outside of the library, focusing on staff development). Those realizations really informed my action plan and will inform all of my work this year as instruction coordinator. After talking to many of my fellow program-track colleagues, I realized that I was not the only one who’d had that epiphany, so it was definitely a good experience to break down our own denial.

Another epiphany came when we took a survey to determine where we fell in our leadership orientation (structural, political, human resources or symbolic). I found that I scored very high on symbolic, which didn’t surprise me at all, because I tend to be a big picture/vision person. What it made me realize was that I wasn’t focused enough on the other areas. I wasn’t focused enough on building consensus and a sense of shared purpose amongst the members of the instruction team (while my colleagues have always gone along with my ideas, I don’t feel like I ever had the sort of buy-in that makes people feel truly committed to a project). I wasn’t focused enough on the world outside of the library and getting involved in committees and activities that could provide opportunities for promoting IL. And I wasn’t focused enough on gathering and using data to make the case for information literacy instruction. So these were the areas that I ended up focusing on in my action plan, which was the final project we did in the program track of Immersion.

By the end of Day 1 back at work, I’d implemented one of the items from my action plan. I wanted to develop a library staff development program centered around instruction. In addition to scheduling monthly instruction meetings (meetings had previously not been very regular and were combined reference/instruction meetings), I also scheduled monthly brown bag lunches to share ideas surrounding pedagogy, assessment and content related to IL. We’re going to have our first brown bag this Friday where I’ll be talking about developing learning outcomes (thanks Anne Zald for the great lessons on developing appropriate outcomes!). Given that my colleagues have varying levels of training and experience in teaching (from zero to a bit, pretty much), this should be really beneficial for all of us. I also hope it will create more of a sense of cohesiveness among members of the instruction team, since in the past we’d been very focused on our own liaison areas. We’re one of the few libraries out there that’s been suffering from too few meetings rather than too many, so I think this will be a positive change.

One of the most rewarding activities we did at Immersion was a brand new one that the Immersion faculty were trying out for the first time. They had each program track cohort plan and execute an instruction session for a teacher track cohort about planning and persuasion (basically what we’d been learning all week). It was great for us, because there’s nothing that makes learning stickier than when you have to teach what you’d just learned. It also brought our cohort together more. And it was great for the teacher track because they’d been planning out how they were going to change their teaching without considering how they were going to convince stakeholders that this was a change worth making. Also, it was just nice to come together with members of the teacher track like that and hear about what they were learning.

One of the things I loved best were the variety of group and individual experiences. Sometimes we were listening to a lecture in a big room. Sometimes we were participating in small group discussions/activities. Sometimes we were doing individual work. Sometimes we were molding stuff with clay and doing skits wearing snorkeling gear. Sometimes it was just the 30 program track participants sharing their experiences. I feel like I’ve built such a wonderful network of instructors and instruction coordinators whom I know I will learn much more from in the future. I absolutely loved working with my cohort; we are all dealing with diverse and complex situations and it was really nice to discuss this stuff with people who are equally passionate about user-centered info lit instruction. I really hope to keep in touch with these inspiring professionals.

If you do instruction at your library and have the opportunity to attend Immersion, I’d highly recommend doing it. I’ve been to plenty of conferences and have come out with great ideas, but I’ve never felt so changed by anything else. It was wonderful. Thanks to Randy, Anne, Beth, Craig, Tiffini and ACRL for creating such a memorable experience for us!

Forgive this less-than-well-thought-out post. I’ve been thinking a lot about assessment lately and the librarianly love of numbers in assessment, and I’m a troubled by the way that some academic libraries tend to measure how well they are supporting the academic mission of the institution.

Librarians keep a lot of statistics and measure a lot of things. Gate count, reference transactions, instruction sessions, website hits, visits to a specific tutorial or research guide, e-resource usage, etc. We are big on numbers. I have no problem whatsoever with measuring things like this and in many cases I think it’s essential. The thing I do have a problem with are the unsupported interpretations we often make based on these numbers and the direction they’re going in.

Reference desk transactions went down. This is a bad thing! We need to try and get them back up! Really? Why? Do you know why they went down? You probably have some theories, but do you know for sure? Is it because you’re less approachable or is it because there has been an increase in instruction sessions which helped students become more independent researchers? You need to look at the larger ecosystem beyond the reference desk to figure out why this happened and whether it’s a good or bad thing.

The tutorial I created has received more hits than any other one. It must be really useful! Oh yeah? Or is the tutorial for a class that has a lot of sections? Did an instructor require that students visit it? Are the people visiting it staying for a long time or just for a few seconds? Are they getting anything out of it? You can’t say that a web hit = someone getting something out of that page.

We’re teaching more library sessions than ever before. Students will be more information literate when they graduate! Maybe. But how do you know that? Teaching more doesn’t necessarily = learning more. If the instruction you’re providing is not course-integrated and emphasized at various subsequent points in their college career, it might be going in one ear and out the other. How can we determine that what we’re teaching is actually making our students information literate?

Sidenote: Years ago, a professional colleague complained that students in her information literacy sessions were not as engaged as they were years ago and reasoned that the caliber of students at her school had declined. The question I wanted to ask at the time, but didn’t, was have you considered that maybe the way you teach doesn’t work for the current crop of students? We come to unsupported conclusions all the time — not just when trying to analyze statistics. Don’t just assume it’s “them.” Maybe it’s you.

Statistics can tell us a lot of things, but they can also be manipulated to support just about any position. Without actually knowing why something increased or decreased, we should be hesitant about making any judgments.

We often take these assumptions right up to Administration, using these numbers as evidence that we are doing a great job, deserve more funding, etc. This reveals another flawed assumption; the idea that these numbers matter to administrators outside of the library. What do university administrators care about? Retention. Student success. Accreditation. Student satisfaction with the University. Etc. They don’t care about the number of information literacy sessions the library taught unless you can somehow show how those contributed to student success (i.e. student use of quality resources in their papers increased leading to better grades). They don’t care about the number of reference transactions unless you can show that reference support helped to improve retention. Sure, they may nod their head and say “great job!” but you’re not going to really get them excited and “on board” until you tie what the library does to the University’s goals and provide data that demonstrates how what you do contributes to those goals.

I don’t have all the answers on exactly how to measure how the library contributes to the larger goals of the University, but I do know that we’re doing our students a disservice when we make assumptions about how what we do is impacting them based solely on a bunch of numbers. And if we want to promote libraries to the people who hold the purse strings, we need to focus more on demonstrating how we contribute to their “bottom line” than to our own.

I took an absolutely obscene amount of notes from Ken Haycock’s keynote, because it was just one pearl of wisdom after another (I’m only including some choice bits here). I’ve seen Ken speak once before, and he is someone I would go out of my way to hear speak because he has such deep knowledge of and experience with leadership and management. He has been in so many different leadership positions and positions where he has had to ask for resources and create change and consensus. Ken is currently the director of the School of Library and Information Science at San José State University (where I teach) and he has really turned the program into one of the most innovative in the world.

I loved this comment he made early in the talk, “if you don’t promote yourself, you’re doomed to defend yourself.” Libraries suffer from the curse of high satisfaction. We do a great job, but as a result, no one talks about us, complains about us, or asks the powers-that-be for us to get more resources. Libraries don’t get rewarded for outstanding performance or even for poor performance. Libraries tend to be bad at presenting our data in a way that is persuasive. We need to look at how to present our data to the powers-that-be to get what we want and need. It’s not just about showing that demand went up, it’s about tying it to things that are important to the powers-that-be.

Leadership is about social influence rather than hierarchy. We all need to be leaders. Leadership is about building trust, building social capital and listening to others more than speaking. I really agreed with Ken when he mentioned that he prefers informal mentoring to having a formal mentor role. You should seek out people whom you admire to be your “board of directors” and be the CEO of your own life. You don’t have to ask them to be mentors; just get their thoughts on decisions you need to make. These people may not even realize they’re your mentors. This is exactly what I’ve done in my career – I haven’t asked people to be my mentors, but there are a number of people whom I consider mentors in light of the wisdom they have offered me over the years.

I also loved when Ken said that arguing for libraries on the basis of the public good is “so last century.” We need to argue for public value – what real value to we provide our patrons?

Ken talked a lot about advocacy. Public relations is all about us (“here’s what we do!”), but advocacy is all about our users. We need to learn what our users need and then give them what they want. Advocacy is planned, deliberate, sustained effort to develop understanding and support incrementally over time. Advocacy is really about respect and connecting agendas. We can’t just come to the door of the powers-that-be with our hand out. “You can’t make a withdrawal before you make a deposit.” We need to build relationships and connect with the values of the people we want to influence. We need to be at the table when the problem of the larger organization (University, municipal authority, state, etc.) is defined and offer solutions from a library perspective. This totally meshes with my thoughts on the promotion of information literacy – that it’s so much more persuasive when it’s tied to already existing university goals and initiatives. Ken recommended a book called “Yes…” that is definitely on my to-read list now.

One interesting tip that Ken gave is about personalizing the things – that a handwritten note on a report is going to get more attention on the report than if it just comes to them via email or something. I plan to start doing this for important things I want to make sure people read and respond to.

The last talk I went to was on Staff Development: Soft Skills, Firm Results, given by three of my favorite librarians: Janie Hermann of the Princeton Public Library and Mary Carmen Chimato and Colleen Harris of NCSU. The Princeton Public Library had never done a staff development day for the entire staff, but when they moved into their new building, it became necessary because people were on different floors and were more separated physically. They began to feel out of touch. PPL doesn’t have a full-time staff training coordinator – it’s sort of an “other duties as assigned” thing for a few librarians at PPL. This sounds familiar. They decided to do a library camp. They asked people to suggest ideas for birds of a feather sessions and had people vote on the sessions they wanted. They then picked the ones that got the most votes for that day’s discussions. They also had lightning talks. I love the idea of doing a Library Camp for a staff day and I really would love to create a Library Camp in Vermont.

Mary Carmen and Colleen (who run the Access Delivery Services department at NCSU) talked more about the how to develop shared values among staff (or “organizational clarity”) and how to correct staff behavior when norms were violated. The Access Delivery Services staff had a retreat to determine fundamentally what they do, how it fits into the larger library system, group norms, and what staff want from management. They found that staff wanted more communication, more responsibility, more risk taking, more “being given projects and told to run with them”, higher expectations for them, training and development, and recognition for their achievements. This jives with what I’ve read about what workers want. People don’t just want recognition, but they want to be trusted and given responsibilities and freedom to do things on their own. Having that freedom is a key component to feeling valued, because people who are micromanaged do not feel like their bosses think they’re capable of doing things without that level of supervision.

Staff also looked at what great customer service looks like, and determined some metrics for measuring customer service. Metrics included error rates, satisfaction surveys, compliments vs. complaints, service desk demeanor, and the claims returned rate. I think it’s important that customer service is not just thought of as “being nice” because you can be the sweetest person in the world and do a really crappy job, not help the customer properly, etc. I like that they are really thinking about how customer service is measured and making sure those measures are meaningful.

They then talked about how to deal with staff who are not meeting expectations. As managers we’re going to come up against the fact that not everyone is going to be able to learn what they need to keep up with the changing work of libraries. Sometimes the issue is that they have no interest in learning and changing and sometimes the issue is about ability. Punishment is not the answer with staff issues because there is too much uncertainty and inconsistency with that. You don’t want people to feel like they’re a target.

There are two reasons for a performance problem – lack of knowledge or lack of execution. With execution issues: make sure expectations are clarified (can your staff explain what you expect?), what obstacles your staff have, that you’re giving your staff regular feedback, and that you’ve arranged appropriate consequences. These discussions should be serious and planned and have a very specific goal. Be specific about the issue and make sure you know what the problem or problems are. Tell them what the desired performance is vs. what they’re giving you. Finally, gain agreement and determine consequences – they need to know what will happen if they don’t shape up (disciplinary or discuss). End on a positive expectation of change and follow up in writing.

After this session, I had to leave for the airport. This was my first trip away from Reed since he was born, and I wanted to spend as little time away from him as possible. I got home an hour and a half before Reed went to bed, so got to spend some cuddling and play time. While I had such a fantastic time at this conference, I am much happier to be home with Adam and Reed. I feel lucky to have the opportunity to be a mother and still be able to have my professional life and enjoy networking with amazing librarians. I also feel lucky to work in a profession with such passionate, caring and helpful people. Most of the people presenting at CIL weren’t doing it to get tenure; they speak because they genuinely care about sharing information with others. What generosity! Add to that the fact that most of the people I knew at CIL were wicked fun, and this made for a brilliant conference. Good people, good sessions, decent wifi, good food… a great first conference away from my family.