I have been wanting to write a post on work-life balance for a while, especially after spending a week at ACRL Assessment Immersion with a bunch of people who are deeply committed to their work and all define balance in their lives differently. Some of the people there are so active in the profession, so plugged-in, publish a ton, travel a ton, and get to meet lots of awesome librarians. Others are dedicated to work during their 40 hrs/wk there and are deeply focused on family and community. Most of us probably fall somewhere in between. And yet we are ALL amazing professionals.

I’ve noticed a tendency in our profession (and probably others) to see being immersed in the profession and spending lots of time outside of our 40 hrs/wk on professional stuff as unhealthy. And at the same time, there’s a tendency to see people who view their work as a librarian as a 9 to 5 job as not committed. To me, the only mistake you can make here is buying into what other people think and not defining balance as what works for you. It’s not about quantity, people, it’s about quality.

Colleen has written a great post about not wanting to feel like her job is her identity and become so immersed in her work that it makes her unhealthy. While I have to say that her “I am a librarian” vs. “I serve as a librarian” distinction doesn’t mean much to me (especially because I do feel like being a librarian is an important part of my identity), I applaud her efforts to find a healthy balance in her life:

Being a librarian for all my waking hours is no longer a model that works for me. … So now I am working on a certain separation of powers, if you will. When I am librarianating, I focus entirely on that, to make sure I am being the best librarian I can be. But I am also now a woman who needs 8 hours of sleep, to make sure that I am also a Rested and Healthy Colleen. I am a student, and when I do that I am Studious Colleen. I’m working on improving my Downtime Colleen self by taking at least one day a week and dedicating it to anything not school- or work-related.

There are a lot of guidelines out there for finding work/life balance, but in my opinion, besides a few (get up from your desk periodically, get enough sleep, don’t ignore the needs of your loved ones, etc.), work/life balance is very subjective. For some people, work/life balance means clocking out at 4 or 5pm and not ever checking work email from home. For others, doing work on some evenings and weekends is the norm. For others, working evenings and weekends is a frequent occurrence. Is any of this a problem? Only if it’s a problem for you.

We all have a pretty set finite amount of time each day to do what we need and want to do (those lucky people who physiologically need less sleep get a bit more than those lazy bums like me who only function well on 8-9 hrs.). Let’s think of that time as a bucket and all the things you need or want to do are glasses of water. Most people probably have a lot more water in their glasses than can fit into their bucket so we have to pick and choose how much from each glass we want to empty into the bucket. Even people who have the exact same types of glasses of water (kids, exercise, tenure, etc.) will pour different amounts in the bucket based on what is most important to them.

Before I had my son, I filled my bucket very differently. Librarianship was a huge portion of my bucket. I wrote long blog posts quite frequently, networked online a ton, traveled often to speak at conferences, and did all sorts of professional projects (Five Weeks to a Social Library, a book, the Library Success Wiki, etc.). People often commented that they were amazed by how much I did professionally and my stock response was “that’s because I have no life.” That wasn’t true. I still did fun things with my husband and friends, went on great vacations, and did a lot of reading. I never felt like anything in particular was missing or that it was unhealthy for me to spend so much time on my work. I found what I did immensely fulfilling.

I had a child full-well knowing that things would change. I knew I would have less time to spend on being professionally active and I was ok with that. The first year and a half after having my son, I did feel out of balance. Between meeting his many needs and barely sleeping for that entire first year, it was hard to find the time or energy for anything else. I also felt guilty every moment I spent outside of my 8-4:30 workday on librarianship. I should be devoting that time to my son. A lot of moms fall into that trap and feel like bad parents when they prioritize activities that don’t revolve around their child. And, at the same time, I missed being professionally active. I missed writing terribly. Over time I realized that as long as the time I did spend with my son was of quality (doing fun things and giving him my undivided attention rather than just sitting around watching TV), it was actually more important that he have a mom who feels fulfilled and happy than one who is with him every waking moment. For some parents, being fulfilled means being with their child all the time, and for some, being fulfilled means being with their child much less than I am. Again, there’s no one definition of balance. What matters is that you and your family feel good about what you’re doing. I’m lucky to have a very supportive husband who would be ok with me taking more time for work, but at 2 1/2, my son is a hell of a lot of fun, and I don’t want to miss much. I am in awe of parents of young children who travel a lot — I’ve realized I’m not built for it, emotionally. That’s why, when I speak in New Zealand at LIANZA next Fall, I’m going to have a 3 1/2 year old (and my husband) in tow. It won’t be the New Zealand trip I’d always dreamed of, but it’s the best option for my heart and we’re going to make it an awesome trip.

For me, I don’t mind doing work at home, whether it’s answering email, working on a document for a committee I’m on, or developing a presentation or an article. What I don’t like is when work issues bleed into the time I’ve dedicated to other activities. Like when I wake up in the middle of the night and obsess about a project, or I come home in a bad mood because of a meeting that went badly. I want to be fully present in whatever I’m doing, so when work prevents me from being “in the moment” with my family (or sleeping through the night), I feel the lack of balance. To me, if anything is objectively bad for people, it’s that. I don’t find that happens very often to me these days, but when I was a child and family psychotherapist, I obsessed about the poor kids I worked with constantly. The problem wasn’t so much about working crazy hours (though I did do most of my paperwork on weekends); it was that I could never be mentally away from work when I was away from work. My mind was going 24/7 and it made me physically and emotionally exhausted.

I don’t think that people seeking a perfect balance are ever going to find it. For one, that balance is constantly shifting based on what’s happening with those different cups of water you’ve poured into your bucket. If my son or husband gets sick, if I’m working under a writing deadline, or even if I’m reading a book that I just… can’t… put… down, I am going to need to shift things around. But also, few people ever have few enough cups that they can pour everything into their bucket. For me, balance is about accepting that I’ll never be able to do as much of everything I want to do as I’d like and being fully present in whatever I am doing. It’s about focusing on what I feel (not other people’s yardsticks and “should’s”) and my family’s needs. As long as I’m doing all that, I feel a balance in my messy and imperfect life.

How do you define balance in your life? Have your notions about balance changed over time or through professional and personal life changes? Do you feel like you have a work-self and a non-work-self and is it preferable to make that distinction?

This summer, I was engaged with quite a few projects (several of which I was in charge of), but was able to make time to focus on scholarship just about every Friday. Part of that, in my opinion, is this blog. This is how I engage with the profession, share my ideas, and have professional conversations with others. My writing here is certainly different than it is in the article I just turned in to a peer reviewed journal on the impact of the changing information environment and participatory technologies on pedagogy and information literacy, but it’s no less important (to me at least). And thank goodness I got that article submitted before the Fall quarter started, because I’ve been buried at work.

It’s a good kind of buried though. This is my first Fall at PSU and I’m trying to immerse myself as much as possible in our instruction program so that I can get a feel for what needs to be worked on. To that end, I’ve been trying to teach a diverse array of classes by offering to cover classes for some of my colleagues. And it’s been fun! The students at PSU are, for the most part, very motivated, probably because so many are non-traditional students and/or are paying for college themselves. I actually had a bunch of students in a class I taught last week request my PowerPoint slides (and another student was furiously writing down everything I said). It’s been fun. I’m also working on a whole bunch of projects designed to bring a culture of assessment to the library’s instruction program. I’m attending Assessment Immersion next month which has like 4 pre-assignments and a giant pile of readings. And I’m on search committees for three positions, one of which is our University Librarian, which I couldn’t be more excited about. This position is so important to our library and I’m glad to have the opportunity to help the University to select a great leader for us.

But one result of being buried (even in a good way) is that I don’t have enough time for blogging and traditional scholarship. I have about a gazillion books and articles on the next topic I want to research, but no time to read them. I’ve got about a dozen ideas for blog posts that are practically burning a hole in my brain, but no time to get my thoughts down on the screen. It’s a funny thing, because scholarship is so central to whether I get tenure (and thus stay in my job), and yet it’s the first thing that goes when I (and so many other tenure-track librarians) get busy. But what else does one drop? I can’t not serve on the search committees I’m on (well I guess I could, but that also would not be good for my tenure portfolio). I can’t stop working towards a final draft of our library instruction learning outcomes which have an administrative deadline. I can’t choose not to work at the reference desk or teach classes. I can’t drop the other things that have regular meetings and strict deadlines. So I drop the one thing in my work for which there are no specific goal-posts or deadlines (other than that final one when I turn in my tenure packet and cross my fingers).

I don’t know about the tenure track at other institutions, but the requirements for achieving tenure here are extremely vague, which can be quite nerve-wracking in that you don’t know what each committee members’ expectations might be. On the other hand, I doubt most people would want some strict pronouncement like “you must have five peer-reviewed articles accepted and give 10 presentations” because that straightjackets you to a single measure of success and doesn’t allow for alternative visions of professional and scholarly contribution. But that vagueness contributes to the issue, because I have no idea how many peer-reviewed articles I should have written, presentations I should have given, and service I should have done before the end of my first year. But I do know concretely what the expectations are for everything else I need to do.

Over the past five years or so, the requirements for librarians to get tenure at my institution have increased. One colleague told me that back in the day, if you got one peer-reviewed article published, you’d be fine. That is far from the reality now. We’ve been having conversations at the library about how to support people on the tenure track, because right now, the only benefit in terms of time that we have are 5 research days per year. Not exactly enough for the kind of scholarly productivity we’re expected to have. I was advised by our former UL to work on my research every Friday (since meetings are not usually scheduled then), but I’m now finding that isn’t possible much of the time and we’ve been told that it’s problematic for reference desk scheduling. But the rest of my week is packed with teaching and meetings. In other departments, tenure-track faculty have 1/3 less of a courseload than tenured faculty, so they have an additional 33% of their time to devote to research. It’s not so easy to make such accommodations for librarians, but I think if the library both wants to be seen as faculty “like everyone else” and wants to produce the scholarship at (or even near) the level of other departments, something has to change.

Last week at a faculty meeting we discussed making time for scholarship and it became clear that this was both a very important conversation that needs to continue and one in which clear-cut guidelines for support are not likely to appear. While everyone wants to support scholarship, the visions of what that looks like are myriad. There are people who feel like we should have clear expectations (like 20% of your time should be devoted to research), but some people feel like that’s 20% of a 40-hour work week and others feel that’s 20% of a 60-hour work week. Others feel like tenure-track librarians should have fewer reference shifts and should be asked to do reference shifts on Fridays less often. Still others seem to feel that yes, we should take time during the week for research, but that it’s up to the individual to carve out that time themselves. And the tenure-track librarians, in the middle of this, keep on keeping on with the anxious feeling of being pulled in a thousand directions. It’s certainly in the best interests of the tenured librarians for the tenure track librarians to achieve tenure and continue the strong relationships they’ve built with their liaison areas (not to mention it means fewer search committees), but does that mean they should provide explicit support to those seeking tenure?

In a service-centered profession, it can feel wrong and callous to be selfish, but it’s exactly what you need to be if you’re going to get tenure and continue providing service to your patrons. Somehow I have to find a way to choose my scholarship over things that will benefit my patrons, but honestly, I don’t know what to give up. I know I’ve taken on a lot this year, certainly too much, and that I’m going to be pretty well-buried until June, but I’m so used to making choices that are best for the library rather than making those that are best for me. At Norwich, I could do that, because my work was 100% about the library. But now, I have to think about my own career, and when tenure decisions are so strongly based on one’s research, I may sometimes need to put research above doing things that will further my goal of building a culture of assessment at the library. That is so antithetical to my vision of librarianship but clearly I need to find a balance where I can still be true to my values and get tenure.

And while thinking about all of this (actually, right in the middle of writing this, since I never get a post done in one straight shot anymore), I saw this great post in Scientific American entitled The three things I learned at the Purdue Conference for Pre-Tenure Women: on being a radical scholar. In it, the author talks about having a plan for what you want to have achieved by the time you get tenure:

This point was largely inspired by a breakout session led by Dr. Mary Dankoski. In it, Dr. Dankoski asked us if we were the type of academic who lived by Plan A: did what we were asked to do and hoped we would have a rewarding fulfilling career while also meeting the promotion and tenure expectations, or Plan B: were proactive, developed a plan and negotiated responsibilities to be sure we will have vitality, find real meaning in our work, and meet promotion expectations.

You can probably guess which type most of us were, and which type Dankoski encouraged us to become. The Plan A academic says yes to most things because she is directionless and is trying to meet expectations, whereas the Plan B academic uses her personal values and interests to define and express her scholarly worth.

Related to Turner’s point about bringing your whole self to the job, Dankoski asked what we cared most about in order to create a career plan around it. She created a great handout to force us to write a Career Development Plan. The first step was to write on the following prompt:

“It is 5 years from today. If you were wildly successful in your work and personal life, what will you have achieved?”
…

So, have a goal and make it a big one. Make a plan, ground it in your personal values. Dream big, form actionable steps towards those dreams, and put some thought into how your dreams and the mission of your institution intersect. Any time you can convince your employer that your dreams are good for them will make it easier to make them happen.

YES!!! While this doesn’t necessarily help with the “making time for scholarship” thing, nor the “institutional/collegial support for scholarship” thing, having a plan does help us to chart a course for what we want our scholarship and service to look like. For many years, I’ve been taking on things based on what I’ve been asked to do. I don’t say yes to every writing opportunity/presentation request/committee, but I’ve sort of fallen into some of my “research areas” because those are what I’ve been asked to write/talk about. I don’t have a clear vision of what I want to influence and achieve in the next 5 years. And I should. And having a clear plan will not only let me know what I should and should not say “yes” to; it will also help me to determine what I need to get done each year to reach my goal.

One thing I didn’t mention in this post is the equally (if not more) stressful issue of balancing being on the tenure track with family. That would have swelled this post to an epic size, so it’s probably best left for the future. But it is discussed at length in that blog post from Scientific American and it’s worth a read if you’re struggling with this too.

As you can see, I don’t have a lot of answers to all these issues; not for myself nor for the tenure system in libraries. So I’m very interested to hear about other people’s experiences. Do/did you have a clear plan for achieving tenure? How do/did you make time for scholarship? How does/did your institution support tenure-track librarians?

Since having my son, I have not been the best blogger in the world, but that doesn’t meant that I’m not thinking about blogging. I probably have a year’s worth of posts in my head, but always time with adorable toddler trumps blogging. I wish I could be more of a Tweeter, but I find it even more difficult to find my rhythm in that medium. I can’t just sit all day at work with Tweetdeck open because it distracts me from the work I’m doing (how do people do that and actually get anything done? I’m really curious!). Popping in and out periodically doesn’t really lead to the sort of satisfying conversations I’d like to be having. And it’s the same with Google Plus and Facebook — I just can’t find a way to use these in as satisfying a way as I did blogs.

Let’s face it: I’m a blogger. I like the asynchronicity of it. I like not missing things (my RSS reader will hold everything until I have time to take a peek). I like long-form writing (both my own and others’). I like being able to really process my thoughts about something rather than blurting out my first impression. I like easily being able to see other people’s reactions to blog posts in a single space. I know so many people who have given up blogging for Twitter and I totally understand why they like it. The immediacy. The ease of commenting. The fact that it’s a social world and not just one person’s blog. I get it and had Twitter come out two years earlier, I probably would have integrated it into my information diet and online social world much more easily. I often feel sad because I know I feel like I’m losing touch with many dear friends in our profession by not being on Twitter or Google+ or Facebook more often, but I have come to accept that multitasking just doesn’t work for me.

I hope blogging won’t go the way of MySpace, Google Wave and so much other social media. To that end, I thought I’d encourage new bloggers by sharing some advice about what I constantly remind myself of when I write blog posts and what attracts me to blogs as well.

Be authentic – As a new blogger, it can be tempting to try to be like some other successful blogger out there; to emulate their writing style, write about the topics they cover, etc. I can tell you that there is nothing more appealing to me than a blogger who is uniquely themselves in their writing. It’s so obvious when someone is being authentic. It can take time to find your voice. Look at the first few posts on my blog (way back in 2004) and you’ll see that I clearly hadn’t found it yet. It took me a while to be comfortable enough writing in my own voice, expressing my own opinions and writing on the topics I found compelling. Sometimes you don’t know really what topics you find compelling to write about until you’re doing it. We all flounder a bit at the start, but it’s critical to find your own voice. Some great examples of librarian bloggers who write authentically (and beautifully) are Barbara Fister, Char Booth, Andy Burkhardt, and Iris Jastram.

Sometimes you have to ignore your inner critic – oh, I have such a mean inner critic. Basically, my inner critic tells me that everything I write is either too controversial or completely ignorant. I can’t tell you how many times I have hit publish with a sick feeling in my stomach only to find a few hours later that I’ve received tons of comments saying “I totally agree!” or “way to go!” I am a terrible judge of the quality and appropriateness of my writing. It’s helpful to have a friend or partner to read your work when in doubt, though sometimes my husband is even more cautious than I am. I usually ignore my inner critic except when my inner critic tells me I’m disclosing too much. Whether it’s about myself, my place of work, or someone else, if I have the tiniest inkling that what I write might be inappropriate in that way, I will likely shelve it. I also try never to write in anger (this is something learned from experience) because angry posts are almost always a mistake.

I appreciate longer, more thoughtful posts – While I appreciate blogs that provide links to other useful information, my favorite bloggers seem to be working out their thoughts on the page. That’s why I originally started blogging; I was in library school and had so many swirling thoughts about our profession and technology that I needed to work them out through my writing. Even now, I often don’t know what I’m going to write about something until I start mentally working it out while I write! Posts don’t have to be long, but I’ll take a long, thoughtful post over a short post with news and no insight. And I know that not everyone feels that way. Every semester my students seem about 50-50 split on whether In the Library with the Lead Pipe is a fantastic blog or way-too-long journal articles pretending to be blog posts. To each his own. Not everyone is going to like your writing. And if you’re not a long-form writer, don’t try to be. But I personally think blogs like In the Library with the Lead Pipe and Library Babelfish offer such valuable food for thought. I usually have to save their posts until I really have time to digest them, but they’re so worth the wait.

Self-disclosure is great and also can be terrible – I love blogs where I can really get to know the bloggers. I want to know what they struggle with professionally, what they care about, what excites them about our profession. It makes me care about them (and thus, their writing) more. The best professional blogs manage to inject themselves into their posts and all of those bloggers I mentioned under authenticity do that beautifully. However, some bloggers go too far with that, whether it’s personal disclosure, disclosures about work, or about others. I might mention my son from time-to-time, but I’m not going to write blog posts that are solely about him or go on and on about the adorable things he did here. I’m not going to blog details of my trip to the Oregon wine country last weekend. I know most people reading my blog are here for library-related stuff and don’t care about all that. I’m also not going to write about work, my colleagues or my family if I have any inkling that what I write could make people here feel uncomfortable. I choose to respect their boundaries. I will not write things about people that are designed to hurt their feelings. Criticism of ideas is one thing; personal criticism is another. Blind items about people, in my opinion, are actually even worse than writing about someone directly. It’s usually obvious to some people who it is and to everyone else, it just feels like you’re trying to hurt the person you’re writing the blind item about. There were times early in my blogging career when I screwed up in what I disclosed and who I wrote about and I’m sorry to anyone whose feelings I may have inadvertently hurt. I believe strongly that you can be authentic and interesting without ever violating other people’s boundaries or personally attacking people (though people may also be hurt by criticism that was not personal and meant to be constructive — see below — and I don’t think that’s a reason not to criticize someone’s ideas so long as you do it respectfully). Some things just shouldn’t be discussed publicly, in my opinion. If you need to vent, that’s what friends and partners are for.

Accept criticism gracefully – this is another one that I was not always good at and certainly learned from experience. It can be difficult to read negative comments, especially on a post that you really put your heart into. It can sometimes feel like people are attacking you personally. I would suggest that if a comment makes you angry, defensive or sad, do not respond right away. Wait until you are calmer to respond and respond assuming that they had nothing but good intentions with what they wrote. You can disagree with them, but do it in a way that is respectful of their viewpoints as well. And also be open-minded enough to consider their point-of-view. My views on things have changed over time, sometimes inspired by a commenter who saw things a different way. One caveat: sometimes people are actually attacking you personally. The best thing you can do in that case is ignore it. The issue is with them, not you and attacking back or even responding graciously will not lead to a satisfying conclusion. Let it go.

Engage in conversations – whether it’s commenting on another blog post, writing a blog post in response to something someone else has written, or engaging with your own commenters, treating blogging like a conversation instead of a monologue is the best way to attract readers. I’ve been much better at that in the past than I have been lately, but I’m feeling inspired to engage more through blogs (even if everyone is on Twitter). This is where I want to be.

Just thinking about this stuff makes me want to blog more often. We’ll see if I can tear myself away from that adorable blonde budding comedian long enough to do it.

There are so many other important things to consider when creating a blog that people will want to read. What tips would you offer to a new blogger?

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.

I’ve never felt like a particularly optimistic person. When we were getting ready to move to Portland, I fully expected that we’d lose furniture on the way or that much of it would arrive severely damaged. It didn’t happen. I expected my son to scream and cry the entire way from my parents’ house in Florida to the airport in Portland. He was great, or at least as great as a 2-year-old can be on a cross-country trip. I’ve always identified with Eeyore who expects the worst to happen and perhaps is pleasantly surprised when it doesn’t. Like Eeyore, it’s probably just a defense mechanism against disappointment.

I know a lot of optimistic people; people who see the good in everything and never seem to let things get them down. I’ve never thought of myself as being that way. I’m not cheerful to a fault. Some things really do get me down. However, last weekend, I was visiting the Evergreen Air and Space Museum with my family and spied this quote from Winston Churchill on the wall: “A pessimist sees the difficulty in every opportunity; an optimist sees the opportunity in every difficulty.” When I read that, I realized that I am an optimist, at least in my worklife. In every crisis, I see opportunities to jump in and create change. I like when things get destabilized a bit and people are forced to leave their comfort zones. Every big change at my previous institution turned into an opportunity to try something different.

My new library is definitely in that place right now. The person with whom I interviewed who was supposed to have been my supervisor left a month before I started. The interim AUL for Public Services is a rock-solid, knowledgeable guy with a long history at PSU, but he’s interim, which is a tricky position to be in when it comes to pushing an agenda for change. Since then, there has been another major administrative shakeup, leaving the library faculty and staff uncertain about what the next few years will look like in terms of leadership. Our funding has been cut, our tenure status challenged by administration, and a number of people here seem to think that we won’t be able to proceed with much over the next few years.

Some of my colleagues have asked me if all this is making me regret coming or lose hope in actually getting things done. While it’s definitely upset the apple cart on many levels, I still feel quite excited about my job and optimistic that there’s a lot I can do to improve our instruction program. There’s a strong desire amongst my colleagues to develop goals and a sense of direction around instruction. Many would like to see opportunities to share ideas about instruction and learn from one another. Perhaps with us stretched so thinly, I won’t be able to do some of the things that require extra work of the liaisons, but I can do things that will help support their teaching, develop learning outcomes that provide a sense of coherence to our instruction program, and explore ways to provide better instructional outreach to faculty and distance learners (an area in which we are currently pretty far behind).

I’m pretty excited to see how things will shape up here over the next year. Without question, a lot is going to change (probably for better and worse), but in every shakeup, there are usually plenty of opportunities for doing new things. And not being particularly attached yet to “the way thing are done” is going to make it much easier for me to ride the shift and take advantage of its destabilizing forces. Here’s hoping!

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!

Roy Tennant wrote a terrific post recently about his work habits and personality the other day that got me thinking (see “Living the Just in Time Life”). My first thought was “wow, it’s amazing how much Roy and I like each other given how completely differently we operate.” My second thought was how important it is to know these things about oneself. Knowing your strengths and weaknesses, knowing how you work best… all of these are critical to being successful in our lives. I know people who have terrible memories and instead of writing things down, they stubbornly hold onto the idea that they can remember the things they need to do. I think sometimes, when it comes to things about yourself that probably won’t change, it’s important to accept those things and devise strategies to make them work for you.

I remember when I was a teenager and in my early 20s, every time I’d move (to high school, college, a new place, etc.) I’d think that things were going to change in major ways. I could start fresh! I could have a totally different personality in college! I could be so cool in high school! But, nothing major ever really changed. I could move across the country, go to a new school where no one new me, change jobs, etc., but I was still me. And what was good and bad about me still followed me wherever I went. Sure, I’ve changed in many ways over the years, but there are certain aspects of who I am that will never change; that I was born with. I certainly see that with my own son. At almost two, he already has his own very strong personality and it’s not one that I or his father are going to be very successful in changing (nor would we want to).

Over the past 6 years, I have come to know myself much better than ever I did in my early 20s. More importantly, I’ve come to to find strategies for dealing with my weaknesses (rather than thinking I’m going to change in some major, fundamental way) and capitalize on my strengths. I have changed in many ways — I’ve certainly become more patient, more understanding, and more of a leader during the past six years since graduating from library school — but certain things are fundamentally and immutably me:

I’m a slow thinker – I admire Roy for being able to live the “just in time life”, because it’s not me at all. I like to really think about things before making a statement. Speaking off-the-cuff is not my forte. I love blogging because it gives me the time to really consider an issue and reflect on my feelings about it. I like giving talks, because in creating the slides, I have time to think about what I want to say about each one. I don’t create a script, nor do I do much in the way of rehearsal anymore, but I’m not a person comfortable with being part of a keynote presentation only moments after I find out I’m doing it. I admire people like Marshall, Roy and Stephen who can.

I’m stubborn – and I’ve always been that way. I drove my parents nuts growing up because I was ridiculously independent and wanted to do things my way. While sometimes being stubborn bites me in the butt (and makes my husband want to throttle me), I’ve found it to be a great asset in my professional life when combined with my increasing patience. When I saw online professional development being done badly, I came up with a model for free online learning about social technologies that has inspired various other continuing education initiatives. When I see something I think needs to change, I will try to chip away at it (for years if necessary) because I believe so strongly in it. I don’t lose interest, even when I hit brick walls. And in academia, that stick-to-it-iveness is critical, because change rarely moves at the pace I’d like it to.

I’m actually finding my own stubbornness to be an asset in dealing with my son, who is also an extremely strong-willed individual. It’s his way or the highway, but because I know that mentality, I’m pretty good at working within his worldview to get him to do things. Reed’s stubbornness drives me crazy sometimes, but I know that independence is going to be a great asset to him in the long-run.

I always assume that I’m not the norm – I guess I’ve always thought I was kind of weird, so my assumption pretty much every time I write a blog post is that what I’m writing is way out in left field. Usually, I find that’s not the case, but I continue to feel most of the time that whatever my view is on something couldn’t possibly be shared by most people. This is a tremendous asset when it comes to designing services, technologies and websites for students. I never assume that students share my feelings, beliefs or wants. I always want to find out how they approach things. It’s our assumptions about our patrons that lead to unusable websites and services only a librarian could love.

I don’t deal well with stress and I don’t procrastinate – Stress is a tough one for me, but I’ve always known this about myself. When I feel the weight of a deadline on me, I start to sweat. Instead of sweating the deadlines, I’ve developed my own strategies for avoiding stress; I’m ridiculously organized and I plan ahead. And it works beautifully for me. The minute I took the job in Portland, I mapped out everything that needed to be done before we moved on April 2nd. I have a spreadsheet with the contents of every box I’ve packed. Even in high school, I usually would have papers done at least a week before they were due, so that I wouldn’t have them hanging over my head. It works for me because it prevents me from getting frazzled.

My little strategy for avoiding stress has made me a great project manager. I’m organized and am good at keeping people on track. I always expect things to go wrong so I plan for potential roadblocks and others not pulling their weight.

I’m a terrible multitasker – and accepting this has made me a better learner. I’m a one channel at a time kind of person. I can’t send emails while writing a report for work, watch TV and talk to my husband, or follow tweets while listening to a conference presentation. Inevitably one of the two things will suffer, if not both. At Computers in Libraries last year, I brought a small (paper) notebook to each session I attended instead of a laptop and got so much more out of the sessions than when I was distracted by what was on my screen. I admire people who can multitask, but I also suspect that a lot of the people who think they can probably can’t.

When you’re not a good multitasker, it’s helpful to be very organized so that you can carve out chunks of time for different responsibilities.

I’m shy – I know this may come as a surprise to most people who know me, but at my core, I am an introvert. I’m extremely outgoing with people I know, but when I’m around folks I don’t (especially in social situations), I become quite reserved. Small talk is my worst enemy. I’m far more comfortable giving a presentation in front of 300 people than engaging in small talk at a party. It’s probably the one thing I most wish I could change about myself, because there’s no good strategy other than avoidance or wallowing in the discomfort.

I always trust my gut – My gut has never steered me wrong; even when my logical brain told me to do the opposite. My gut told me to turn down a lucrative fellowship to the LIS program at the University of Maryland to stay in Florida with the guy I’d only been dating a month. That guy is now my husband. My gut told me I’d love living in the state of Vermont, a place I’d never visited in my life. I have so enjoyed my years in Vermont. My gut has also steered me away from jobs and places that on paper seemed to be the right thing to do, and it’s always turned out that I was smart not to have taken those opportunities. My gut steered me toward Portland, even though I love my work at Norwich and love Vermont. I feel in my bones that it’s going to be a good place to raise my son and that PSU is going to be an awesome place to work. Let’s hope my gut keeps up its winning streak!

There are plenty of things I’d like to change about myself. I’d love to be a social butterfly. I wish I didn’t daydream so much. I wish I could sometimes be less emotionally involved in my work. I wish I could be bright-eyed and bushy-tailed on 4 hours of sleep. I wish I liked exercising and eating broccoli. But these things are not going to change and the key, for me at least, is to accept that and find ways to be successful within my personal laundry list of strengths and limitations (and those things that count as both). Denial serves no one. Believing that one day I could be ok with “phoning it in” at work or that I’ll wake up at 6am wanting to get on the elliptical only keeps me from finding strategies to deal with who I really am. I’m doing the best I can with what I’ve got. And after so many years of wanting to be someone else, I’m truly happy with who I am and what I’ve accomplished.

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’m not sure if I’ve become more cynical or just more observant, but lately I feel like I’ve been seeing things through new eyes. We make so many assumptions in this profession, often based on the idea that we know what students need and want. Time and again, research has shown that we’re usually wrong. Some of the things we think are great might actually be great… just not for the average college student. Some things create a whole different set of problems. I’ve been thinking a lot about how so many of our efforts to make things simpler for our students only seem to make it more difficult for them to find the best resources for their papers. Are we making things better or just more complicated?

An example we’re dealing with now at our library involves WorldCat Local. Our library is going to be moving over to OCLC Web-Scale Management for our ILS (which I am really excited about!). Now that we’re going in with Web-Scale Management, we are going to be upgraded to the full version of WorldCat Local (which is called a discovery tool, but doesn’t hold a candle to something like Summon). Through agreements with vendors it is indexing and in some cases federating a variety of database content. But I have to wonder if doing this is going to make it easier or more difficult for students to find what they’re looking for. I’d say at least 75% of students doing research at Norwich have to cite scholarly works in their papers. When they search in WorldCat Local, they can’t limit their search to scholarly sources, so students have to look at each source and determine whether it is scholarly or not. How is this any easier for them than just going into Academic Search Premier, and limiting their search to scholarly journals? It’s searching more stuff at once, but it’s not giving students the tools they need to narrow down their search to quality sources. And as much as I’d like to believe that our information literacy sessions are churning out keen-eyed critical thinkers, too many students still can’t distinguish a blog post from a scholarly journal (as I discovered this semester when I assessed EN 101 students after their library session).

It gets even more complicated when you think about teaching all this. How do you explain this buffet of options to students when the majority of college students don’t want a buffet; they just want some relevant, authoritative options. I’ve experienced this when teaching students about Google Scholar. On its face, it seems like an easy sell. It has scholarly stuff and it’s the Google interface. ‘Nuff said. But then you find books from Google Books in there… most of which are not available in full-text… even though it may look like they are when you find a long preview. Oh yeah, and some of the books aren’t scholarly by a long shot. Uh oh, and did you just find a website with someone’s unpublished articles? And you found an article from the New York Times? And you found some random crappy website? Ok, so yes, there is an awful lot of awesome scholarly stuff in here, but unfortunately, just like with regular Google, you still have to wade through a lot of stuff (some scholarly, some not) to find what you’re looking for. And if we use WorldCat Local as a discovery service, I fear our students will have similarly frustrating experiences.

Project Information Literacy’s most recent report indicates that “students think library sources require less evaluation than information posted by anyone on the open-source Web.” When you have library search engines that are throwing everything from Time-Life books and USA Today articles to the Journal of Military History and Oxford University Press books at students, it’s scary to think that students are assuming the resources they are finding through the library are always of sufficient quality to use in their paper. Then again, I’ve even heard faculty say that to their students that anything from the library is of good quality. One of Project Information Literacy’s other reports suggests that students are overwhelmed by the amount of information available to them and have difficulty making sense of the results they get. Does this seem like a group in need of more or in need of simplification and a sense of context?

Another thing I’m having a crisis of faith about is screencasting. I was one of the screencasting early adopters and promoted it in presentations and on my blog. But the more screencasts I created, and the more students I worked with, the more I realized the limitations of screencasting for providing assistance to students. I read an article about screencasting a few months ago (darned if I remember who wrote it), but it confirmed what I was beginning to suspect. The author(s) gave students an assignment for which online instruction would be helpful and then had some students use a screencast and some use an HTML tutorial. What s/he found was that while students found the screencast more engaging, they weren’t as easily able to use it to complete the assignment because they couldn’t easily switch back-and-forth between the database and the screencast. This begs the question, do most students want to watch a video of how to search a database or do they want to quickly pick out the piece(s) of information they need and move on? This, other articles and my own experience tells me that the majority of students are coming to online instruction with a specific information need and want to skip, skim and scan around until they find the answer. Satisfying an information need like that with a screencast is like students coming to the reference desk with a specific information need and us spending five minutes showing them various aspects of a database that they don’t care about. I can see screencasts being good for people who just want a basic orientation or as a required component of a class in place of face-to-face instruction (I can also see quick-and-dirty custom screencasts being useful for providing reference assistance to remote students), but the majority of people who could benefit from library instructional assistance probably have a very specific information need and would likely rather skip, skim, and scan their way to the answer.

And don’t get me started on ebooks or patron-driven acquisitions! I’ll save those for future posts. I’m not saying I have all the answers — or any of them for that matter — but I do think the answers for figuring out what our patrons need come from… wait for it… our patrons. We need to understand how they do research, how they use our current resources, why some of them don’t use the library, and what they want from the library that they’re not currently getting. So often, library surveys ask about their satisfaction with our current services, not what the ideal library would look like or how we can support their research needs. They may never even have thought about those things themselves. We need an in-depth understanding of our users, through focus groups, surveys, ethnographic studies and more. And while studies like those from Project Information Literacy are fantastic, they aren’t a substitute for studying your own unique population. Development of technologies in the library world is way too vendor and librarian-centric, when the focus should be on what it is our students really and truly need.