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!

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 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.

During our childbirth class – which was sponsored by the hospital where I was going to be giving birth – we were told by our childbirth educator that circumcisions at the hospital cost approximately $500. As we were told this by a professional representing the hospital, we had no reason to believe it was not true.

After our son’s circumcision, we first received a bill for $423, which represented the pediatrician’s charge. This seemed a reasonable amount for her skilled services. Shortly thereafter, we received a bill from the hospital for $2150.80. The surgical procedure itself was billed out at $1907.67 This minor procedure required a local anesthetic and took 5 minutes, after which we spent 30 minutes alone with Reed before the nurse checked our son out and let us leave. I couldn’t fathom why it would be so expensive and assumed it must be a mistake. So last Monday, I marched over to the hospital to get the bill straightened out.

When I spoke to staff in the billing department (including their supervisor) I was told that indeed this was the charge for infant circumcision and that the charge was designed to match what other hospitals in the region charge. The supervisor said that it sounded awfully high, but that was the right price and was actually less than our major University hospital in the area. He offered to give me a 20% discount if I paid it in full right away. I said I wasn’t going to pay it period because I thought the price was absurd. I also contacted the billing departments at three hospitals in our area and found that what they’d claimed was far from the case. All of them charged significantly less for a circumcision and their charges included the physician’s fees. Including the physician’s fee, we were charged $2573.80, of which 16% was for the physician. I can’t imagine what services or facilities were provided by the hospital for this particular procedure that would warrant its fees being so much higher than that of the board certified physician.

So, armed with this information, I spoke again to that supervisor in Patient Financial Services, who said it was out of his hands since he has nothing to do with pricing, but that he would let staff in the relevant department know what I found. His response sounded rather noncommittal, so I emailed the CEO and CFO with my story. The CEO emailed back and wrote that the price sounded very high to her too and that they were looking into it and would get back to me ASAP. The next day, I received an email stating that yes, there had been an error and they’d been charging parents quadruple the price for a circumcision since January 1st. (Scary to think of how many may have made the decision not to circumcise their child solely based on the erroneous price they were quoted.) She said my bill would be adjusted and they’d be reimbursing all others who’d paid the incorrect fee almost $1500. This is when I did my happy dance around my office.

The CEO said she was grateful for my spotting this error and told me to stop by her office sometime for a free lunch voucher. This is what I asked her for instead:

Rather than a free lunch, what I’d really like is to see the folks in your financial services department be/feel empowered to question things. They are the first and often last stop when people have issues with their bill, and if they do not feel empowered to question what they see on their computer screen, patients will not receive the best service. Many patients would have been stopped in their tracks by the financial services staff’s insistence that this was the right price and would not have called other hospitals, especially when I was offered a 20% discount if I paid the bill immediately. I once worked in a public library where we were told that the system is always right; that patrons who claim they returned books that show as still being out are lying or wrong. However, this informal policy disregarded the fact that the library staff were as human as the patrons and sometimes made mistakes. Some of my colleagues wouldn’t even check to see if a book that a patron claimed to have returned was on the shelf; they’d just insist that the patron had to pay for it. I sometimes would find books on the shelf that patrons had been billed for, so I always operated under the assumption that the customer was right until proven otherwise. I think it’s the right way to operate any organization, even Patient Financial Services in a hospital. And sometimes it takes an error like this to remind staff that the computer isn’t always right.

I think it’s something we in libraries should remember. We must ensure that people at all levels in our organizations feel empowered to ask questions and advocate for the good of our patrons/customers. Patrons shouldn’t always have to go to the head honcho to get their issues resolved, because so many will give up after the first roadblock and will simply never use the library again. Hospitals often have an ombudsman who investigates and advocates on behalf of patients. Since that doesn’t exist in our profession, we need all of our front line staff to take on that role rather than blindly reciting policy to our patrons.

The word manager makes many people uncomfortable. It calls up the image of a bossman telling you what to do and forcing you to slave away at doing it. That is not effective management.

A better way to think of a manager is as a servant, like an editor or a personal assistant. Everyone wants to be effective; a manager’s job is to do everything they can to make that happen. The ideal manager is someone everyone would want to have.

Instead of the standard “org chart” with a CEO at the top and employees growing down like roots, turn the whole thing upside down. Employees are at the top — they’re the ones who actually get stuff done — and managers are underneath them, helping them to be more effective.

I really like the idea that, as a manager, I am working for my employee (well, at the moment, I am sans employee, but up until last week, I had one and hopefully will have one when I get back from maternity leave). My job is to understand his/her strengths and weaknesses and try to motivate him/her to the best of my ability. It’s not just about making sure they come into work each day or filling out performance evaluations and approving vacation time. It’s about helping them be as successful as possible in what they’re doing.

In the post, Swartz also talks about learning about your employees (what motivates them, what their strengths/weaknesses are), delegating responsibilities, prioritizing, and offering feedback. There’s a lot of really great insight in this post (which is more like an instruction manual than a simple blog post), so if you’re a manager or an aspiring manager, it’s definitely worth reading.

Sarah Houghton-Jan – it’s kind of amazing that she had not been recognized as a Mover and Shaker before this given the impact she has had on so many in the profession with her teaching (though her blog, her speaking, her work with InfoPeople, etc.). I was pleased to be part of the mob of people who nominated her this year and am glad this long overdue recognition finally happened.

Jason Griffey – I get warm fuzzies every time I think of Griffey. In addition to having such a generous heart, he has been an inspiration to me in how he has tirelessly worked to make LITA a better professional organization. While I have my moments of trying to make things better from the outside and in, I definitely do not have the patience and persistence that he does to create pockets of innovation within LITA. We all can learn a thing or two from him about pushing for change from the inside.

Dorothea Salo – When Dorothea kept proclaiming over the years that someone like her would never be recognized as a Mover and Shaker by Library Journal, we all knew better. The profession desperately needs people who constantly question the common wisdom, no matter how impolitic it may be to do so, and I admire Dorothea’s courage in always being that voice of dissent/reason. Dorothea’s blog was one of the first I ever read and she was my role model for the sort of blogger I wanted to be. I had the great pleasure to work with her on Five Weeks to a Social Library and I fervently hope to have opportunities to work with her again in the future. She’s just the sort of person you want on your team.

Chad Boeninger – It’s kind of ridiculous that Chad wasn’t named a Mover and Shaker the same year as me. That was the year after he came out with the Biz Wiki, which was the very first wiki subject guide created by a librarian. How many dozens and dozens of subject guide wikis have come from that inspiration??? He has done so much with social software in his library, but in a really practical way that I admire greatly. I always try to rope him into online learning things I do, because he shares my pragmatic view of technology as well as my excitement about the potential of social software. He’s just the sort of person who needs to be teaching. I’ve learned so much from him.

Jenica Rogers-Urbanek – There are a small number of bloggers these days whose posts I always mark “keep new” for later reading, because they always write such interesting and thoughtful content. Jenica is at the top of that list. She is another person who feels like a kindred spirit to me in terms of her views on technology and management. If you ever get the chance to hear her speak, definitely do so, because you will get a really level-headed look at whatever topic she’s covering, 100% hype-free. I am so pleased to see her get the recognition she deserves.

Karen Coombs – The girl is wicked smart. Seriously. I wish I knew even 1/10 of what she knows about library technologies — her talent and intelligence make my head spin. But somehow she manages to coherently explain these technologies to the rest of us (in her writing and her conference speaking), which is something a lot of serious techies are incapable of doing. It’s also really refreshing to see a geek girl making a name for herself in such a male-dominated area of our profession. And it couldn’t happen to a nicer person.

Lori Reed – I had the pleasure of having dinner with Lori when I was at a conference in North Carolina this Fall, and it was so nice to get to know someone whose work I’ve admired from afar for years. Lori is an inspirational trainer — she has created great programs at her library, has advocated for all-staff learning programs, and has done a lot to promote the cause of non-degreed library staff. I remember last year’s kerfuffle when someone argued that “paraprofessionals” should not be recognized as Movers and Shakers. Lori exemplifies what a Mover and Shaker is, much more so than many people who do have an MLS.

Michael Porter – If he wasn’t named a Mover and Shaker, he certainly would have been named Best Dressed Librarian or Mr. Congeniality. But there’s so much more to him than his swanky suits and his absolutely lovable personality. He’s also a great teacher, having educated so many thousands of librarians over the years about technologies. And he’s a community builder, especially on Flickr and at WebJunction. He always manages to inspire, while never seeming to take anything too seriously (especially himself).

And then there are the people I don’t know well but whose work I’ve admired greatly: Erik Boekesteijn, Jaap Van De Geer, Geert Van Den Boogaard, Lauren Pressley, Pam Sessoms, Dave Pattern, Rebecca Blakeley, and Melissa Rethlefsen.

Congratulations all of you!!!

On a less encouraging note, I’ve heard from several people who were worried about how people at work might react to their recognition. While I’m constantly amazed by how open and encouraging most people in this profession are, it’s a sad statement on our profession that people should worry about such a thing when they’ve done something good. It’s an awful way to feel — wondering and worrying about what someone might say about it and, even worse, what those who don’t say anything might think of you. In the survey that Chrystie Hill and I did of Movers and Shakers, we found that nearly half of those named Movers and Shakers were not celebrated by their institution. And those people had a significantly more negative view of their work, their colleagues, etc. than did those who were celebrated. How must that impact their sense of motivation at work? While I’ve experienced it, I still don’t understand why people wouldn’t congratulate a colleague who was honored for their work. And what kind of message do administrators send when they don’t celebrate things like this? Are they saying “be a good employee, but don’t be too good“??? If library administrators want to encourage their staff to do their best work, maybe great work should be celebrated. Any honor for the individual should be seen as an honor to the organization.

So to those organizations that are already planning parties for their Movers and Shakers or are at least giving them a hearty pat on the back to show them how much you appreciate them, good for you! I hope you continue to attract the motivated, exceptional employees you deserve.

In the beginning of my talk, I showed screenshots of library blogs that haven’t been posted to, MySpace pages that haven’t been logged into, and podcasts that haven’t had new episodes in years. And I talked about some of the reasons why these 2.0 projects may have failed:

The first reason is that frequently social software implementations are not tied to institutional goals. Research has shown that libraries have been much more successful in marketing information literacy instruction when it’s tied to University goals/General Education requirements/etc. It’s the same with 2.0 technologies. Whatever we’re doing should be tied to the library’s strategic goals and planning. If it’s not tied to the library’s goals, then how will it be seen as a priority?

Similarly, 2.0 technologies should be planned for in a strategic way, which I think has not happened at a lot of libraries. Some libraries jumped on the blogging bandwagon because they thought (or were told) that every library must have a blog. Other libraries started wikis because staff were really excited about the idea of having a wiki. Neither are good reasons to implement a technology. We first need to understand the needs of our population (be it patrons or staff) and then implement whatever technology and/or service will best meet those needs. We need to have clear goals in mind from the outset so that we can later assess if it’s successful or not. These technologies may be fun, but they’re simply tools. We don’t walk around with hammers looking for nails to smash in.

In some cases, social software is treated as one staff member’s “pet project.” The use of 2.0 technologies in the library is often one person’s initiative at their library. They will make a passionate case for a blog, wiki, or whatever and will end up handling every aspect of its implementation. When that person leaves their job or gets too busy with other job responsibilities, guess what ends up being abandoned? I heard a horror story from a library that entrusted one staff member with running their MySpace profile and when she left under not-so-friendly circumstances, she refused to give anyone at the library the login information for their profile. This is just as foolish as a library only having one person who can access the back-end of their server or ILS. What if that person gets hit by a bus?!?!? Cross-training is a critical component of building an effective organization, and the same should be the case with any 2.0 technologies a library implements. Making it one person’s sole responsibility is a great way to doom a project.

I think one of the biggest reasons for problems with 2.0 technologies is also one of the major reasons why so many libraries are using them — they’re just so easy to get started with. It takes five minutes to start a blog, a wiki, a del.icio.us account or a MySpace page. And yet, keeping 2.0 technologies going takes significantly more time and effort. Blogs need to be posted to, MySpace pages need to be updated, and wikis need content. And something that people are very excited about maintaining in the first month or two of its existence might lose its allure over time. If there isn’t a plan for how you will maintain the tech from the get-go — be it scheduling posting and moderation, updating the software, etc. — it’s very possible that it will be abandoned when staff become less enthusiastic about it or they just get busy with other things. Libraries need to plan for the implementation and continued maintenance of 2.0 tech in the same way they plan for the technologies they pay a small fortune for. Even 2.0 tech costs money in terms of staff time, so it’s important to take it just as seriously as costly tech.

Finally, I think a lot of library staff end up abandoning 2.0 projects because they simply aren’t given time to work on them. We all have lots of duties that are non-negotiable in our job — reference shifts, instruction, web updates, committee appointments, etc. — and blogs, wikis and podcasts are often seen as something “extra.” If you create a weekly podcast and are totally bogged down one week with library instruction, it’s pretty obvious what won’t get done. While administrators may initially say that implementing 2.0 tech is important to keep up with other libraries and our patrons, they may not give you any additional time to work on these things. I’ve heard that complaint from a number of people at talks I’ve given. If you already have a full workload, your Director tells you that it’s critically important that the library have a blog, but doesn’t free up any time for you to work on it, he or she is sending a really mixed message about its import.

Two attendees actually asked when they should abandon a 2.0 project that just doesn’t have the ROI they were hoping for. Here are some of my thoughts on that:

I think before you abandon a project, you should try to figure out why your 2.0 technology isn’t having the impact you’d hoped for. That way, even if you do need to abandon the project, at least you’ve learned valuable lessons about your population from the failure. We can learn a lot from trying things and failing that can help us better meet our patrons’ needs in the future.

If it’s something your patrons aren’t visiting/using, think about why that might be. Are they not aware it exists? Then try doing more marketing. Is it just not meeting their needs in its current form? See if there’s a way you can make it more useful to them. Maybe your podcast is too long or your blog posts are boring. You should survey your patrons or at least talk to some of them and figure out how you can better meet their needs. Are there barriers to use that your patrons find unacceptable? See if you can bring those down. Our distance learners didn’t use our IM reference service when we first launched it 3 years ago, because most of them didn’t use IM normally (their average age is significantly older than that of our undergrad population) and weren’t exactly going to download a client and create an account just to chat with us. When we started using MeeboMe, everything changed, because the students just had to type words into a box and click enter to chat with us. So look for possible barriers to use. Are you making it too difficult for patrons to comment on your blog or add content to your wiki? Bring those walls down.

If it’s something that’s failing because staff aren’t contributing to it, you need to try to understand what’s behind their resistance. Make sure you’ve done all you can to secure buy-in. Are staff comfortable with the technology? Are they not being given time to add content? Did you offer trainings on it? Are there any technology barriers that you can bring down — make it easier to post, make the wiki/blog/etc. the homepage on their computer, even post things for people to get them started, etc.? But honestly, if most staff members don’t recognize that there’s a need for a library wiki or library blog or whatever in the first place, or the project isn’t strongly supported by administration, it’s not going to be a good fit for your library. That doesn’t mean that it might not be a good fit in the future, but it’s not a good fit now. I’d been wanting to create subject guides using a wiki at our library for a really long time, but waited until my colleagues recognized a need for it (and our Head of Public Services saw a need for it) to actually develop one. And I made sure to offer trainings so that people could practice editing the wiki in a safe space with a knowledgeable facilitator there. Had I introduced the idea earlier or not offered trainings, it would likely have ended in failure.

These are just some thoughts off the top of my pregnancy-addled head. What tips would you give to people who have implemented 2.0 technologies in their library and just aren’t seeing much return on investment from them? What can libraries do to get off on the right foot with 2.0 technologies?

I’ve been particularly remiss in not writing about the Triangle Research Libraries Network Management Academy, which I attended in early November in beautiful Chapel Hill. It was truly an amazing professional development experience, and by the end of the week, my head was so full of ideas that I was practically chomping at the bit to get back to work (not what I usually feel when I enjoy a conference). I learned so much that will benefit me directly in my work, helping me to be a better manager, coordinator, seller of ideas, and project manager.

All of the sessions were great, but some definitely spoke to my immediate needs as a manager more than others. The sessions that I found most valuable were on Wednesday and Thursday of the week where we discussed performance management and communication (managing people) and resource planning (project planning and management). As a brand-new manager, these are two areas I really struggle with. It’s hard for me to find a balance between being hands-off and micromanaging people. While I do well with a more hands-off approach (just tell me what our goals our and I will figure out on my own how to get it done), some people require more supervision. Wendy Hamilton Hoelscher from Duke University taught us a way of approaching the supervision process that really made sense to me, and that I plan to employ from now on. Lynda Aiman-Smith, management professor at NCSU, taught us so much about planning, which will be important as I am leading a lot of projects now where I’m working with people who are not my direct reports. We talked a lot about managing people who we are not directly responsible for supervising, and it was something almost all of us have to do in our work. I feel much more confident in my ability to lead and manage as a result of this Academy.

Friday morning was also fantastic as Susan Nutter and Sarah Michalak (UL’s for NCSU and UNC respectively) came to visit and talked about being Directors. Susan Nutter is a bit of a hero to me; what she’s done at NCSU and how she’s supported innovation and talent in our profession is inspiring. She’s the kind of director I’d like to be one day. What struck me most is how much Susan’s early career experiences mirrored my own. She started her first management position after working for three years, by which time she felt like she’d been doing the same thing forever and felt very ready for this new responsibility. She admitted that she made a lot of mistakes in that first management position (which I am most assuredly doing as well) but learned a lot from the experience (which I most assuredly am). There have been times when I’ve wondered if my impatience would hinder me in my career. Seeing that someone who has risen to the top of our profession was similarly impatient gives me a lot of hope. Maybe impatience isn’t such a bad thing as long as it’s tempered with also being politic. It’s my impatience that led to the things I’ve done that led to my promotion.

But it wasn’t just the speakers who were terrific. It was also amazing to spend a week with 35 exceptional members of our profession. Engaging in a dialogue with them and hearing about their experiences and insights was such an incredible learning experience. It was nice to bounce ideas off people, to discuss the things each of us struggle with, and to realize that we’re all dealing with many of the same issues. While I did feel like the course was geared towards folks working at ARL’s, I still got a lot out of it. While we don’t have the money or man-power that an ARL has, I am very lucky in that I get to be involved in my library’s operations at all levels. All professional librarians here are involved in budget discussions and decision-making. We get to help make big decisions that impact the entire library. I don’t feel like there’s anything at my library that’s shrouded in mystery or that I can’t try to fix. So while I definitely felt more like a “have-not” at this Academy, I also feel lucky to have the opportunities that working at a small library afford me.

Would I recommend the TRLN Management Academy to others? Without hesitation! This was, without question, the best professional development experience of my career so far. If you’re a new manager or coordinator, this is a brilliant opportunity to help you find your footing. The participants at the Academy ranged from being very early-career to folks with 25 years of professional experience. It was nice to have that diversity of experiences and perspectives, as we all had so much to learn from one another. I will treasure the experience and look forward to putting much of what I learned into practice.

Management is an area I’ve been itching for more training in, especially since I am now a manager and coordinator of a very important piece of our library’s mission (instruction). In library school, I had a class on management, but it was extremely theoretical. Still, of all the classes I took, it was the one that interested me the most (no one has to twist my arm to read more Peter Drucker and Harvard Business Review articles). I just wish there had been more after it that focused on human resource management, budgeting, planning, etc. When so many people come out of libraries and go immediately into management positions (or even directorships), it’s critical that this training be received in library school. At least I was lucky to have several years to get my feet wet before diving into a management position.

I am really excited to have been chosen to take part in this intensive course where I’ll meet up-and-comers in the profession (and see some I already know) and learn about management from some really amazing instructors (PDF). I’m not sure if I’ll be blogging the Academy or not, but if I think my reflections might be of use (and I’m not too mentally/physically exhausted), I definitely will. Pregnancy has taken a lot out of me, so I try not to make a lot of promises these days about doing things that may require more energy than I have. At the very least, I’ll write a wrap-up post so people know how it went and whether or not it would be worth their while to apply for this next year. From what I’ve heard from a previous participant, this should be a really fantastic experience.

I know some people really want to be named a Mover and Shaker by Library Journal. It is a great feeling to be honored like that… or at least it should be. But I think few people who have not yet been named a Mover and Shaker really think about how it might impact them at work; what their colleagues’, supervisors’ or administrators’ reactions might be. Ever since being named a Mover and Shaker myself in 2006, I’ve heard lots of stories from other honorees who’ve had negative experiences at work after being named a Mover and Shaker (though, to be fair, I’ve also heard lots of positive stories as well). For some, the award was ignored. For others, it was specific people (like their supervisor or director) who purposely ignored it. For others, it actually negatively impacted them at work because others were jealous or thought that the honoree was taking credit for all of the library’s success. One person told me their director yelled at them about it. My experience leaned towards the negative too, though it was not nearly as bad as other people’s stories. My Director forwarded an email from the Vermont Libraries listserv about it to everyone in the library with her congratulations, but no one else said a word about it to me. I ended up feeling embarrassed about it and from then on avoided mentioning anything about my book, speaking gigs, or anything else that I did outside of work. It sucked, because I felt badly, almost guilty, about something that should have left me walking on air. And lots of other people ended up feeling the same way. How can that not have some impact on the way they feel about their job?

I discussed this phenomenon with Chrystie Hill at the Mover and Shaker lunch at ALA Annual in 2007. At the blogger salon later that week, she mentioned the idea of writing something about this for Library Journal, and I said I definitely wanted in. At Internet Librarian in October, we sketched out our ideas for a survey of Movers and Shakers — not just to look at how their places of work reacted to the honor, but questions that really get at how libraries can support and motivate innovators in their organizations. We also looked at their concerns about their library and their goals for their library and themselves. In January, we sent a link to the survey out to all of the people named Movers and Shakers between 2002 and 2007 and got a 41% response rate, which was pretty great!

The fascinating responses we received became the basis for our article “What We Need” which appears in the October 1st edition of Library Journal. Through the survey, we discovered many of the critical elements that keep Movers and Shakers motivated and loving their work. We discovered what discourages them and how much actually being recognized for the good things we do really means. I hope anyone who manages people or wants to manage people in the future takes a look at this and really considers how they might be motivating or demotivating their staff. Because if the elements discussed in this article impact Movers and Shakers so profoundly, imagine the impact these elements have on your entire staff.