I am a huge fan of research log and research process reflection assignments. Because research is a means to an end (the paper) and because people are often doing it in a rush, there is little reflection on process. What worked? What didn’t? What can I take from this experience for the next time I have to do something similar? Because this reflection is not usually written into the curriculum, students don’t learn enough from their mistakes or even the good things they did. Having a research log helps students become better researchers in the future and, most importantly, helps them to develop a “system” that works for them.

I definitely remember the many years that I did not have a system for research and writing. Most reference librarians have probably encountered a frantic student who realizes just before his/her paper is due that s/he can’t track down some of the sources they need to cite. Yeah, that was me (though I would have been too embarrassed to come to the reference desk). I probably never followed the same path twice and wasted a lot of time doing things over again because I wasn’t organized. Looking back, I wish a nice librarian had provided an session for me on developing a system for finding, organizing, reading and synthesizing information, because I wasted a lot of time and sweat needlessly.

Now that I have a system, research and writing is much simpler. But being the geek that I am, I’m always interested in improving and refining my process. I’m very interested in how people conduct research online and do their writing these days, especially people who are tech-savvy and information literate. I thought maybe if I shared my own strategies, it might inspire other bloggers to share theirs. Research and writing are often such solitary processes so we don’t often get to see how others approach similar challenges. I want to lift the veil on my own approach. I don’t know if this will be interesting to anyone else, but I’d love to encourage others to share their own tools and strategies so we can learn from each other.

Update: I should add that when I’m not working on a specific writing project, I use delicious and Instapaper to collect items of interest I find. delicious I use for collecting things that may be useful in the future and Instapaper I use for collecting articles and blog posts that I definitely want to read in-depth when I have time (and I often save those things to delicious as well). I have frequently mined my collections in delicious for writing projects later on.

When I get an idea for research/writing project, I start with simple mindmapping. I don’t use anything fancy for that part of the process (though there are plenty of cool online mindmapping tools) — just a piece of paper or a word processing program (whatever I’m in the mood for using at that moment). I brainstorm everything about that topic that I might potentially be interested in. I then turn that mindmap into a research question/topic statement and an outline. That gives me a strong sense of what sort of research I might be looking for. I tend to cast a wide net in my research — information science-related databases, databases in related disciplines (psychology, education, computer science, business, etc.), multidisciplinary databases, Google Scholar, blogs, organizational websites, etc. Anything that looks good I grab the PDF of and throw it into a folder in Dropbox so I can access it from anywhere. If a PDF isn’t available, I print the page as a PDF (thanks PDF Creator). If it’s not an article but a cool example, I’ll make note of it (and its URL) in a separate Word file that I save in the same folder.

Usually, whatever I find has expanded my perspective on the topic, so I tend to go back and modify my outline then. I then see if I’ve found useful material on all areas I’d brainstormed. If not, I might expand the search. Sometimes I discover that certain topics simply aren’t fruitful areas of inquiry and I remove them from my outline.

So now I usually have a tremendous number of PDFs in a folder in Dropbox. I then take my iPad and load all of them up in iAnnotate. There are a lot of annotation tools for iPad and I’ve tried a few of them, but I was most pleased with iAnnotate. Your mileage may vary. (There was an awesome guide to PDF annotation tools for iPad published recently, but I can’t seem to track it down now.) iAnnotate works beautifully with downloading from and uploading to Dropbox, so it’s a perfect fit for me. When I wrote my book, Social Software in Libraries, I printed out just about everything I read. I’ve never been able to do deep reading on a computer so I ended up with an obscene amount of paper that I kept for many years and finally gave up on the fantasy that I’d ever use them again. When I got an iPad, I was hoping to find something that would allow me to read an article, highlight text, and take notes on the document itself. iAnnotate fits the bill and puts all of my reading at arm’s reach. I can read at lunch, before meetings, while waiting at the doctor’s office, in bed, etc. It has definitely boosted my productivity.

A semi-related aside: Last weekend, my son was watching the movie, Babe, and I was reading articles for a book chapter I’m currently writing. My son climbed up into my lap and and I cuddled with him while reading scholarly articles on M-learning. I stopped and thought “man, if this isn’t the picture of the tenure-track mother I don’t know what is!” Sigh…

I first quickly skim through each article and decide if it’s worth reading and annotating. If not, I remove it from iAnnotate and from Dropbox. If it is, I read and mark it up. When I’m done with all of them, I upload back to Dropbox so the annotated versions of the articles can be read anywhere.

Next stop, Mendeley. For those who don’t already know about it, Mendeley is a desktop citation management tool, similar to Zotero in functionality (I like Zotero a lot too, but found Mendeley a better fit for me). Additionally, it’s an excellent social network for scholars and can also function as a tool for discovering additional research. I usually search Mendeley for my topic(s) as well because it’s searching a library of things that other scholars thought worth adding to their own Mendeley library (similar logic to searching del.icio.us in addition to Google). Now that I’ve got the definitive list of what articles I plan to use and they’re marked up in my Dropbox folder, I import all of the files from that folder into Mendeley. There are obviously many points at which you could pull stuff into Mendeley. You could do it directly from the database/website you’re getting the article from. I just like to do it at this point because I get the annotated PDFs into Mendeley and only the ones I might need to cite.

Mendeley usually does a decent job identifying the bibliographic information from the PDF, but invariably, I have to do a little work on it. One thing I love about Mendeley is its PDF reader within the program itself (which actually has annotation features too). I pull up each PDF and check it against the citation info Mendeley created (they are displayed side-by-side). I then fix any errors in the citation. If I’m using books or websites, I add them to Mendeley as well at this point (using the Mendeley web importer for website and that with WorldCat Local for books). I then create a bibliography of all of these resources in MS Word. Using this file, I now copy and paste anything I highlighted from each article into the document under the citation for that article. I also add useful notes from books as well. I print this out and use it to flesh out my original outline. The document helps me to easily remember where I got ideas from rather than looking at 20, 30 or 60 different sources. My outline now has authors names next to each topic, reminding me of what I should look at when I’m at that point in my writing. I print the outline as well.

As I write my lit review, I use the outline, the document with all of the highlighted content, the document with the cool examples, and the articles themselves. I use both my iPad and my computer at this point. I write on my computer (in MS Word — I know there are cool writing apps that prevent you from being distracted, but I do fine with Word), but I access the articles from my iPad using the Mendeley app. The Mendeley app is great for accessing your citations and the articles themselves on the go (note: it also works on an iPhone). I use Mendeley’s Word plugin to insert citations and format the bibliography.

And that’s basically it! As far as tools, Mendeley and iAnnotate have really improved my writing and research experience, but more important than that is the fact that I have a system. I’ve discovered a way of organizing my thoughts, finding and organizing sources, and bringing the two together that works for me. We’re all different. We all have quirks that influence our strategies. My major quirk is that I write better in bed than anywhere else. Sitting up at a desk and doing a lot of writing is incredibly difficult for me, so you won’t often find me doing substantial work on an article in my office at work. I have a friend who writes best when we writes in longhand. For him, perhaps, something like LiveScribe, a handwriting app for iPad, and/or a PDF annotation tool that is focused on handwritten annotations would work well.

So I’m curious; what’s your process? What tools help you do research and write? What research or writing quirks so you have and how has that influenced the system you’ve chosen? While I have a system, it is constantly evolving (I only switched from Zotero to Mendeley this past summer) and I’m always looking for better ways to do things. Aren’t we all?

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?

The folks at American Libraries have done a beautiful job with their Drupal-based website. It’s a heck of a lot more polished than their old site and contains not only content from the magazine, but additional news stories and terrific blogs from some great thinkers in the profession. A huge improvement over their old site is the addition of RSS feeds! And the RSS feeds are granular enough that you can get just the content you want and nothing additional. If you want to follow my “Technology in Practice” column, here is the RSS feed. Some months (like last month when I wrote about Twitter) I include additional content in the online edition. The online version of my column also comes out prior to the print issue. For those who are interested in following this blog, my American Libraries column and my Slideshare presentations (my slides from presentations), you can subscribe to this RSS feed and receive the content in your aggregator of choice when new content is produced in any of those places.

My compliments to Sean Fitzpatrick at ALA for his hard work on the site. You’ve done a fantastic job!

This is a post mainly for those professionals who are passionate about their careers and are considering having children but wonder/worry what impact it might have on their life and their career. I’m going to talk about my own experience finding an identity as a working mother over the past year. Remember that your mileage may vary — there is no telling what you’re going to feel when you have a child and how that will impact your life and your feelings about work.

This was one of my biggest concerns before Adam and I decided to get pregnant, and, unfortunately, the women I talked to about being a parent didn’t fill me with confidence that I’d be able to balance work and family well. I heard from women who told me that they’d become less ambitious once they had children; women who hated leaving their child at daycare but didn’t have a choice; women who worked 9-to-5, took care of their children and never did anything else; women who could count on one hand the number of times they spent alone time with their spouse in years; and women who chose to stay home with their children. Since Adam and I both had mothers who stayed home with us, we didn’t have many exemplars of mothers who successfully and happily balanced work and family. My mother was actually horrified at first that I was going to send Reed to a daycare. I felt like I couldn’t win.

My biggest worry when I had Reed was that I would want to stay home with him forever when that simply wasn’t financially feasible. I was envious of my former colleague (who had her baby a week before I did) who decided to quit her job and stay home with her daughter. I felt like I would miss so much time with my son and wouldn’t be able to bond with him as well. While, at first, it was hard to comprehend being away from him, I am so glad that I go to work and that he goes to daycare.

A good daycare is one of the best things for a child’s social development. When I get the chance to watch Reed at daycare, I see all of the opportunities he has to learn about sharing, about interacting with other children and adults, about bonding with people other than his parents, and about social play. Just today, I saw him and a little girl trying to play with the same toy — learning how to deal with this simply isn’t something he’s going to get from being home all day, and (most) playgroups are often play mediated by mothers. I’m fortunate that Reed immediately took to being in daycare when we started him in it at 4 months — he’s an incredibly social and high-energy little boy, so being around different people perfectly suits his personality. I very quickly felt comfortable leaving Reed at daycare, because I didn’t feel like it was a second-best/no-other-choice option for childcare — I really do think he’s better off there. That’s not to say that there’s anything wrong with staying home with your child; this is just what works for us.

I also realized that I need my identity as a professional. I like going to work, interacting with adults and working on projects. I like giving talks, writing articles and taking part in professional conversations. While I think about Reed when I’m at work, I don’t wish I was home with him. Any concerns I had about my losing my ambitions after having a child went out the window shortly after going back to work. My priorities have not changed. Family was always first — I chose not to write a second book a few years ago because I didn’t want to put such a burden on my husband in taking care of the household. I’m still passionate about my work and it’s just as important to me as it was before. I think the only thing that’s changed is how I manage my time. I don’t have the luxury of coming home from work and writing a blog post or working on an article — I have a sweet little boy play with, feed, bathe and put to bed (and, frankly, I wouldn’t trade that time with him for anything, no matter how tired I am when I get home). I have to find little pieces of time here and there (naps, after Reed goes to bed, Monday mornings since I work a night reference shift, etc.) and obviously can’t do as much as I used to. But I’ve lost none of the passion I had before for technology and our profession.

With all of the (bad) advice being thrown at new mothers, it can be incredibly difficult to find your identity as a mother. I found that many mothers were all about guilt-trips and one-upsmanship. You don’t use cloth diapers? You don’t breastfeed exclusively? You feed your child baby food from a jar? You leave your child with someone else so you and your husband can spend some alone time together? I got the sense from reading books, articles, and (especially) discussion boards that my entire life should revolve around my child since one wrong choice could have terrible consequences, and that having a child would require me to be completely selfless and put my own desires at the bottom of the pile. And I bought into it for a while.

The hardest thing about the first few months after having Reed was letting go of all the expectations I put on myself because I thought that was how a mother was supposed to be. I made myself so miserable trying to be someone I’m not and trying to do things that simply weren’t working for any of us because I thought I had to. Part of it was crazy post-pregnancy hormones and postpartum depression (an issue I never talked to anyone about at the time other than my doctor and my husband), but I feel strongly that a lot of it was my unwillingness to let go of this idea that I had to martyr myself to my child’s needs. I have to wonder how much postpartum depression is caused by these unrealistic expectations people have for themselves as new mothers and what happens when their expectations don’t mesh with the reality.

If anything, I’m more selfish now than I was before having a child. I’m very protective of my time and say “no” to doing a lot of things that I would have said “yes” to a year ago. I work hard to ensure that my husband and I make our relationship a priority, even if it means leaving my precious child with his grandparents while we spend a night at a hotel (which is exactly what we’re doing this Sunday — woo hoo!). And I do things for myself or buy things for myself that make me happy. I realized after that very scary episode with postpartum depression (my first major depressive episode since I was 19) that I need to make myself happy to be a good mother to Reed. Happy mommy = happy baby. So I’ve learned how to balance taking care of me and my marriage with taking care of my little boy. And judging by how happy and mellow he is most of the time, I’d say I’m doing an o.k. job at it.

I’ll also say that having a good work/family/fun balance depends greatly on having a supportive partner (with an emphasis on the word partner). My husband is a partner in every sense of the word — we parent and take care of the house 50-50. He is so wonderful with Reed and there’s nothing I enjoy more than watching Reed climb on his dad and seeing the smiles they both have when they look into each other’s eyes. Without Adam, I can’t imagine making this all work. Thanks hon!

I wish someone had told me all these things when I was thinking about having a child. Yes, you can still be ambitious in your career — you may have to spend less time speaking at conferences and writing books, but you don’t have to give it up altogether. It’s not only ok for you to send your child to daycare, but it might actually be the best thing for him or her. You can be selfish and still be a good mother. If you decide to get an extra hour of sleep instead of making your child’s baby food yourself, he or she won’t be irrevocably scarred by eating food from a jar. That what’s most important is that your child is loved and well cared-for and so many of the other things you think are important when you read baby books or magazine articles really aren’t.

So if you’re on the fence about having a child because you feel like you might have to give up being who you are, realize that choice is up to you. You can still be the passionate, hard-working professional you are and be a great parent — the only thing you’ll absolutely have to change is how you allocate your time. I also wish that someone had told me how much fun it is to have a child. Everyone tells you it’ll change your life, you’ll never sleep again, you’ll never go out to the movies again, etc., but you never hear enough about the awesomeness of parenthood. Reed is really the most fun person I’ve ever known and I treasure every minute I spend with him. I feel so lucky to be his mom. Parenthood isn’t for everyone, but it’s a far more fun and awesome adventure than I’d ever expected.

A lot of people have written about Clay Shirky’s post “A rant about women” and I’m here to give my two cents FWIW. First of all, who in their right mind entitles a post “A Rant about women”? While he made some valid points in his post, the title and his gross over-generalizations really made it difficult to see anything good in the post. Shirky describes his concern that “not enough women have what it takes to behave like arrogant self-aggrandizing jerks” like the men he sees taking his classes. He feels that people who lie, who are narcissistic, who promote themselves aggressively are the people who are going to be successful, and women just aren’t willing to do that. According to him, “there is no upper limit to the risks men are willing to take in order to succeed, and if there is an upper limit for women, they will succeed less.”

I guess I see a difference between risk-taking and compromising one’s values. I’m not a liar. I’m not a jerk (at least I don’t think I am). I won’t use people to get ahead like I’ve seen a couple of people do even in our profession. And yet I’ve had great success in my field, far beyond what seems reasonable given my limited years of experience. How did I achieve that success? By doing good work and taking risks. I’m not an aggressive person. I suck at asking for money and advocating for myself. I never overstate my qualifications. I’m just one of the many, many, many people in the profession who have good ideas and an interesting way of presenting them. The one thing that sets me apart from many of the other people out there with great ideas is that I’m not afraid to put myself out there and face possible rejection or failure. i have enough chutzpah to suggest to the head of ALA’s publishing wing that he give me a column in American Libraries since the worst thing that will happen is that he’ll say no. I write blog posts talking about how much I’d like to teach for an LIS program since the worst thing that will happen is that no one will be interested. I don’t risk incarceration or my con being discovered (as Shirky describes); I just risk my heart. And that seems to be enough.

The simple fact is, I’m not willing to compromise my values to get ahead. And if that makes me weak, if that holds me back, so be it. I’d rather go to bed at night feeling good about myself and knowing that the people I like like me too. Compromising my values would keep me up at night and would make me worry that I’d be found out (is impostor syndrome still called impostor syndrome if you are, in fact, an impostor?). There are lots of things I wouldn’t do to get ahead. I wouldn’t take a job I know I wouldn’t like but that would pay really well and would be a huge boost for my career (and, in fact, I turned down a job just like that a couple of years ago). I wouldn’t take a job in an area my husband would hate or where I wouldn’t feel safe raising my child. I would not be a happy person if I wasn’t true to who I am.

Where I agree with Shirky is that self-promotion and risk-taking are important skills that women too often lack. I barely spoke in class in college until I took a course called Women and the American Experience, which was entirely populated by other women. For once, I felt comfortable expressing myself and realized that my ideas were actually pretty good. I hate that Shirky seems to think that confidence or the ability to promote onesself are male traits. That’s B.S. I don’t think confidence is something born to men and not to women; I think it’s something that we learn (or not) along the way through our families, the education system and society. However, whether we are naturally confident self-promoting risk-takers or not, the fact is that we need to be to be successful. I know so many talented women who are afraid to put themselves in a position where they might fail or be humiliated. However, I also know a lot of men like this too. Men who are uncomfortable fighting for themselves or for their ideas. One of my colleagues has given two talks in the 2 1/2 years since getting his first professional position; both of which I arranged for him. He’s a smart cookie and a great speaker, but he just doesn’t put himself out there. This isn’t just a gender issue; it’s an issue for a lot of talented individuals out there who don’t seem to realize that they’re as awesome as they are.

Another thing that really bothers me about Shirky’s post is that he seems to reward jerky self-aggrandizing behavior. If you think there’s something wrong with the system as it is and you’re in a position of power, wouldn’t it make sense to change it? How about encouraging and trying to build up talented women in your classes so they feel more comfortable promoting themselves? I was very lucky to have a mentor like Roy Tennant, who believes in nurturing and promoting young, talented individuals in the profession. He has given me so much great advice and encouragement that I likely wouldn’t be where I am today without his wise counsel. He is a well-known and respected librarian and uses his position to promote people around him. I completely agree with danah boyd who writes -

We need men as allies, men who both encourage women to speak up and who consciously choose to spotlight women who are talented. But, more importantly, we need men (and anyone with privilege) to consciously and conscientiously account for their own privilege and biases and to actively work to highlight and embrace diverse voices of all kinds. Your interpretation of others is just as (if not more) important in creating change as their efforts to impress you. The privileged cannot expect the disenfranchised to assimilate, as tempting as that may be. And even if that were possible, it wouldn’t give us the society we want anyhow.

I’ve used my limited success to promote others who I think are awesome — both male and female. Some of these people would be great self-promoters on their own and others just aren’t comfortable in that role. Like Roy, I’m trying to create the sort of world I want to live in, where people are judged more by their talent than by their ability to promote themselves.

I think Clay Shirky’s thinking — his promotion of basically being a d-bag — is just the sort of thinking that on Wall Street got us into the global financial crisis. Because it was a system that rewards “self-promoting narcissists” who make risky decisions for short-term personal gain that created this whole mess. And while most of those same people who created that mess are still making their $500,000 (or more) bonuses and can sleep at night just fine, I couldn’t. And, frankly, I’m glad about that. I’m glad that I have a moral compass. Are those the kind of values you want to promote in your profession? In your world? I refuse to bend so much to the world around me that I become someone I can’t respect; I’d rather try to make the world bend to my values. We can change things, bit by bit.

For the holidays, I bought Reed an awesome personalized book. While I still have the personalized book my dad made me when I was 3, I must admit that the storyline and illustrations are pretty lame. The one I made for Reed, Following Featherbottom, is beautifully illustrated and educational, teaching kids about geography (not that Reed is going to be ready for a geography lesson anytime soon, but someday…). For those of you do web programming, the web application for building the book is pretty darn impressive and made me feel like I’d had a good user experience before I even received the book!

I started corresponding with the creator of Following Featherbottom and he let me know about another project he just started that I thought might be of interest to librarians and user-generated content fans. It’s called Project OpenBook and its goal is to develop a community-generated book of poetry to sell for charity. People can contribute poetry or artwork and/or can rate the poems that others have contributed to help decide what goes into the book and what does not. Proceeds from the book will go to Room to Read to save a child in Nepal from slavery and pay for her education.

Please consider supporting Project OpenBook. Contribute a poem or artwork, rate a poem, donate to the cause, or buy the finished book when it’s out! I think it’s a really cool idea to get people involved in creating something special for children that will benefit a disadvantaged child tremendously.

Going into a new decade (I know technically it’s not a new decade until 2011, but don’t be such a kill-joy!) is a good time for reflection. After seeing all of the #10yearsago posts on Twitter, I started to think about where I was 10 years ago vs. where I am today. My life could not be more different. At 22, I was in graduate school in Tallahassee (for social work, which I was already having second thoughts about by then), was in a dead-end relationship (one of several I’d have before meeting Adam), and was rather rootless (I lived in 6 apartments between 2000 and 2005 before finally settling in Vermont). I felt rudderless in my life back then. I was always looking for something. I read philosophy and religion books and went to many different types of religious services basically looking for a sense of direction or purpose in my life. Funny, that when I stopped looking and started living in the present, I was a much happier person. I’ve learned so much over the past 10 years about being myself, doing things that scare me, and having a more flexible vision of my future. Now I’m married, I have a baby, I own a home, I am in a career I love, and I’ve had professional success beyond my wildest dreams. I’m happy with who I am and where I am in my life.

I think many of the most important lessons I’ve learned are important ones for all of us in our careers:

1. Leaps of faith often pay off (or better to fail or succeed at the right thing than be successful at the wrong one) – When I first considered the possibility of leaving the social work field for librarianship, I was extremely nervous about it. I’d already gotten one graduate degree that didn’t lead to a satisfying career, and I didn’t relish the idea of getting (nor could I afford to get) another one in a field that I may not end up fitting into either. But something in my gut told me I should do it; that it would be a right fit for me. I took that leap and have never regretted it. I’d gone to graduate school for social work more out of fear than anything else — I didn’t know exactly what I wanted to do after college, but I was interested in mental health issues and dove into that for lack of a better idea. Grad school was a safe space away from the scary world of work. Going to library school was the opposite of safe — leaving a professional psychotherapist position to go make $10/hr at a public library while paying for graduate school.

That leads me to the second lesson I learned — 2. the biggest growth experiences come from doing things that scare you – I spent so much time in my earlier years not doing things out of fear. In college, I wrote a lot of poetry and short stories, but I never submitted them to any of the literary magazines at Wesleyan. Because I was afraid of speaking in class, I avoided a lot of great seminars and instead took larger lecture classes that were far less interesting/satisfying. I let fear make my decisions for me. I guess now I do that too, only in the opposite way. I was so afraid to speak in public; more afraid than I can express. But because of my blog and book deal, people kept asking me to speak and I felt like I’d be a fool to say no. Anyone who saw me before my first talk at Computers in Libraries in 2006 can tell you that I was nervous beyond reason. But I gave the talk. And it wasn’t so bad. In fact, I found that I rather enjoyed the excited/nervous adrenaline rush I got from the experience. I’ve become a much better speaker than I was then, but I still get that nervous adrenaline rush before I speak, and I think it makes me a better/higher energy speaker for it. From leaning into my fear, I’ve learned that I’m so much more capable than I initially believed I was.

Recently, a colleague of mine forgot that he had scheduled an instruction session for an English 101 class at 11am and was not planning on coming in that day until 1pm. I only found out about this when the professor and her class showed up at 11am and no one was there to teach them. I had to sprint to get set up and taught a class I had done literally no preparation for and just found out about their assignment that very moment. And, ironically, it ended up being one of the best classes I’ve taught in recent memory. I was high-energy and I think the students really fed off that because they were much more engaged and involved than in most classes I teach. I realized that perhaps I’ve gotten a little too comfortable with my instruction work and that maybe I need to shake it up a bit and try new things that might be a little scary and that might blow up in my face. Because I’m at my best when that adrenaline is flowing.

3. Don’t sell yourself short – What in the world could someone who just got their library degree possibly have to teach experienced librarians about social software? What makes you think you could write an entire book and who in the world will read it? These were just a few of the negative thoughts that swirled around my head at the start of my library career. I didn’t think I possibly had anything useful to offer people, having only been a professional librarian a few short months before getting my book deal. I remember when I was going to give a keynote at UC Berkeley on what the 2.0 organization looks like, I thought I’d get laughed off the stage, since what the hell do I know, not having even been a manager? Even recently, I was asked to write a brief essay for a symposium at ALA Midwinter and wanted to back out when I saw the list of heavy hitters who would also be contributing. While I’ve heard some librarians call me a “rock star”, I still often feel like I just graduated from the kids table.

I may not have the depth of experience of someone who has worked in the profession 30 years. I may not be as tech-savvy as a John Blyberg or a Jason Griffey. I may not be as humorous as a Steve Lawson or an Andrew Pace. I may not be as brilliant and articulate as a Dorothea Salo. But I’ve learned (and am still learning) that it’s ok. I don’t need to be all those things. I don’t need to have all the answers. I bring something different to the table that also has value. People find my perspective unique and interesting, so I don’t need to be like all of those other people as long as I am myself.

I remember being on a panel last summer with a colleague whom I admire greatly. She said that she was so nervous being on a panel with “rock stars.” Funny, because she’s a rock star to me with her passion for the profession and effervescent personality. The fact is, we all have moments where we feel intimidated; even the people we admire do. We all bring something special to the table, and as long as we’re being ourselves and not trying to be Dorothea Salo, Roy Tennant or John Blyberg, we’re probably going to rock it. Because the other lesson that I learned is that 4. you’ll be much happier and more successful when you stop trying to be like other people and start just being yourself. Trying to be like someone else is a lot of work and is rarely satisfying. Embracing who you are and what you have to offer the profession/your community/the world is the best thing — both for yourself and the people who will be able to benefit from your “you-ness.”

5. Don’t get too stuck on a specific vision of your future – My husband is nothing like the kind of guy I thought I wanted to marry. I was into the “sensitive guy” type who liked literature, jazz, indie films, etc. My husband listens to Metallica, likes movies like “Escape from New York,” and hasn’t read anything remotely literary since high school. But he ended up being my soul mate, and had I been stuck on that vision of the sort of guy I wanted to be with, I would never have gone on a second date with him. I had a friend (in her 30s at the time) who was so stuck on a specific vision of what the man she would consider getting serious with should be like that she was constantly rejecting perfectly nice guys she’d date for the silliest of reasons. As a result, she was lonely, but felt that she could not compromise on these silly standards of hers.

You might think that there’s only one type of job that is right for you in the library field. You might be sure that there are other things you would hate doing, based on a hunch. Consider for a moment that you might be wrong. I thought that I absolutely did not want to do face to face instruction when I got out of grad school, and yet, once I gave it a try, I found it was one of the things I most enjoyed. Now I’m the head of instruction at my library — go figure! Open yourself up to interesting possibilities. In this job market, there may simply not be any positions in the area in which you’re interested in working. Being flexible does not mean doing something you absolutely won’t enjoy (just like being flexible doesn’t mean dating someone you absolutely aren’t interested in), but it means being open to the possibility that there could be other options out there that you’d like as much (if not more!).

6. You don’t need to keep going to school to keep learning — I remember thinking when I was in college that I’d like to go to school forever so that I could keep taking classes and learning new things. I wanted a PhD in History, not because I wanted to teach, but because I wanted to keep learning and researching and writing. While I’m not taking classes anymore, I’ve discovered that it’s easy to keep the learning going and recreate the experience of the classroom in the online world. While I may not have one specific teacher, the whole Internet has become my teacher. I’ve created my own personal learning environment (PLE) through blogs, RSS feeds, journals, books (well, not so much lately), and — most importantly — my network on Twitter, Facebook, FriendFeed and in the blogosphere. Because it’s the conversation that really makes the learning meaningful — the reflection, discussion, disagreement, sharing of experiences, and learning from others’ experiences. I am so grateful to be part of a community of brilliant, thoughtful and generous individuals who have taught me so much over the past 5 years.

I’d meant to publish this on December 31st or January 1st, but, as usual, life (or Reed pulling books off the shelf, trying to open the kitchen cabinets, or climbing me) trumped blogging. I’m glad my life is trumping blogging, because it’s an awesome life and watching Reed grow up is a fantastic reason to not be online. That’s not to say that I don’t miss blogging. I miss having an outlet for my thoughts and the time to write them out/work them out online. I miss the conversations. I miss a lot of things. But I’m coming to accept that I can’t have it all. I hope finding a better balance between work/teaching/speaking/baby/husband/friends/blogging/etc. will be one of the things I learn next year. And hopefully as Reed becomes more independent (he’s crawling, standing and cruising already!) I’ll have more time for non-Reed things.

My New Year’s wish — may the good things in all of your lives trump blogging, tweeting, etc. this year. We should all be so lucky.

I must admit that the last time I read a non-baby-related book was probably last Fall. And now all these great books are coming out from the LIS presses that I’m absolutely dying to read! This is torture!

The one I’m probably most excited about is Chrystie Hill’s long-awaited Inside, Outside and Online which is all about library community-building. This isn’t just about how to build community online, but how libraries can build community using everything in our real-world and virtual-world toolboxes. Chrystie is an expert on community-building and has a very thoughtful and pragmatic perspective, so I’m sure this book is going to be one I’ll use frequently in my own work.

The Accidental Library Marketer is coming out this month and is a topic near and dear to my heart. Because, really, aren’t we all accidental library marketers? I certainly didn’t know in library school how much of my time and energy as a librarian would be devoted to marketing. Kathy Dempsey is a terrific writer and, like the other “Accidental” books, I’m sure this will be full of practical advice that any librarian can use to better market the library, it’s collections and services.

Another book on library marketing, focused more on our net-gen students, is Brian Matthews’ Marketing Today’s Academic Library: A Bold New Approach to Communicating with Students. Brian has incorporated many innovative techniques in reaching out to students at Georgia Tech (and I’m sure he’s doing the same now at UC Santa Barbara — congrats on the new gig, Brian!) and I’m sure the book is full of unique ideas for marketing the library to today’s students.

At a time when I am finding fewer and fewer interesting blog posts to read, when Char Booth writes something on her blog, I know it’s going to be thought-provoking. Char, like Chrystie, had a really pragmatic and thoughtful approach to everything, so I’m always interested in her take on technology and academic library issues. So when I saw that she’d come out with a report on the technology assessment work she’d done at Ohio University, I was really excited. Informing Innovation: Tracking Student Interest in Emerging Library Technologies at Ohio University is doubly awesome because you can actually read it for free online! While assessment isn’t sexy, it’s necessary, and when I read that 50% of ARLs using social software aren’t assessing it in any way (and ARLs are big on assessment), I know we have a problem. Char’s book fills a real void in this area and contains practical ideas for how to do a similar technology assessment at your library.

Another book I found while looking for the URLs for these books is Risk and Entrepreneurship in Libraries: Seizing Opportunities for Change. This is a topic near and dear to my heart and contains some really interesting chapters by librarians who are pushing the innovation envelope. One of particular interest to me (and perhaps you) is Jeffrey Trzeciak’s “McMaster University Libraries 2.0: Transforming Traditional Organizations.” I’m not sure why I hadn’t heard about this book before, but it looks awesome!

All right, y’all! Can you stop writing such interesting books until my son is in kindergarten? Sheesh!

Friday was my very last day at work and I’m now officially on maternity leave. Our little boy is due April 7th, so hopefully I’ll have a few days to relax and catch up on sleep before baby time (sleep has become more difficult in the last few weeks of my pregnancy, but I’ve been pretty lucky, comfortwise, overall). A lot of big things started to take shape at work this week that sort of made me wish the baby could wait a month or so to come on the scene, but I completely trust my colleagues to do the things that need to be done during my absence. It’s certainly a testament to my fantastic colleagues that it was really hard for me to leave work and that I look forward to going back (though part-time for a couple of months) in mid-June.

This past week, I wrote a few posts that I think I’ll have post automatically over the next week (so I may or may not be checking and responding to comments). Other than those, I probably won’t be posting much here for a while and if you email me, please don’t be offended if you don’t hear back from me. I’m sure I’ll also become pretty out-of-touch with what’s going on in the blogosphere over the next few months while I focus on my growing family. I should be at ALA Annual though and look forward to catching up with everything and everyone I’ve missed. I never thought I’d love my career so much that going on maternity leave would evoke bittersweet feelings, and I do feel lucky that my work life and family life are so rich and fantastic. I couldn’t ask for more.

Thanks so much for reading my blog and I hope you’ll stick with it during my hiatus and as I find a balance between my professional life and family life. This blog has been a pleasure to write over the past 4 1/2 years, and I look forward to many more years of being part of this wonderful online community we’ve created through our blogs.

Now this is a great project to come from an LIS class!

LIS Publications Wiki

Welcome to the Library and Information Science (LIS) Publications wiki. This wiki gathers information about publications that LIS professionals might want to write for — whether they want to reach their colleagues or their communities. All editors, publishers, and LIS professionals are welcome to contribute to the publication profiles. To participate, just create a free account and log in.

Bravo to Laurie Putnam and her students at SJSU for putting this incredibly useful resource together!