In Brief: In this editorial, In the Library with the Lead Pipe Editorial Board members Erin Dorney, Emily Ford, Kim Leeder, and Micah Vandegrift discuss their upcoming panel presentation that will take place at the ACRL 2013 National Conference in Indianapolis. The panel, with the same title as this editorial, will address what we believe constitutes do-it-yourself (DIY) library culture, its presence in academia, and its implications for the future of librarianship. We conclude by asking readers to contribute your voices and ideas to the discussion by blogging, tweeting, YouTubing, and attending the event in person. Be sure to tag your remarks with #diylib and, if tweeting, mention @libraryleadpipe.

By John Manyjohns on Flickr

Introduction

Librarianship has seen a groundswell of innovative do-it-yourself (DIY) activity in recent years. Projects have popped up here and there; creative, independent efforts with the goal of solving problems, increasing effectiveness, and making positive change in the field. Take, for instance, Library Juice Press, the Library as Incubator Project, the Blended Librarian webcast, and ALA’s Library Lab. We see our own blog-turned-journal, In The Library With The Lead Pipe, as a DIY effort. DIY projects are shiny and exciting (and time-consuming), but to what end? For academic librarians this DIY culture is closely tied with professional development and scholarship, but what does it say about the future of the academic library profession?

This is a question we propose to answer in a panel session at the ACRL National Conference this month. The panel, with the same title as this editorial, will address what we believe constitutes DIY library culture, its presence in academia, and its implications for the future of librarianship. However, we wanted to “flip” the presentation, take it out of the box, and shake it around a little, so we’re sharing our content in advance of the conference in this editorial. What this means is that instead of spending our hour in Indianapolis presenting content, we can focus on conversation and interaction to explore the issue together and showcase a variety of voices and perspectives (now that sounds pretty DIY-y, doesn’t it?). Please read on, contribute your thoughts (using the tag #diylib) and, for those who will be attending ACRL National, join us to continue the conversation in person on Thursday, April 11th at 3-4 p.m. in the JW Marriott Grand Ballroom 9-10.

Kim

DIY activities are always creative by nature, but DIY culture in libraries is less about creativity and more about basic survival. A traditional library is a dead library. We know this: if libraries don’t change they will fade away, eclipsed by the free, the instant, and the easy. The mantra of twenty-first century librarianship is and must be: change, change, and more change. DIY is what we call the change that we invent rather than waiting for others to invent it.

I embrace this attitude. I finished my MLIS in 2006 and joined the field, like many of my contemporaries, with the full awareness that my brand new career might only only have another ten or twenty years of gas in the tank. I was perfectly comfortable with this uncertainty. I was optimistic, and continue to be optimistic, that I was joining a field that was actively evolving, and in whose evolution I would be lucky enough to participate and, perhaps, even influence. But I was also willing to accept the possibility that I might be making another career change in the future when librarianship disappeared or became something totally different, even unrecognizable.

As academic librarians, we have a wide array of daily tasks to accomplish. We answer questions, we collect, we teach, we budget. Beyond those daily tasks are the bigger concerns, the bigger questions: what does it mean? What are our big-picture goals? Where are we headed as a field? And when we dip our toes into those questions, we find that there are no easy answers. We also find that no one else is going to answer those questions for us, so we begin to imagine, and plan, and create, and build. We begin to recreate ourselves and to make meaning that will sustain us, and our field, long into the future.

We are DIY because we can’t be anything else, because anything else would be raising the white flag of librarianship letting the future sweep us away. We must reinvent ourselves and our libraries or we will become anachronisms, defeated by time. We will not give up. We have too much to offer.

Erin

The thing I love about the DIY movement in libraries is that you have the freedom to pick things that are important to you. You don’t have to fit the mold of what a librarian or a library “should” look like. You can reinvent yourself, the services your offer, the resources you provide to the community, and more based on your continual growth as a person and as a professional. You can be responsive to the needs of your community by moving towards the outskirts and taking action. Yes, it might mean you work on your DIY project on nights and weekends. Yes, it might mean volunteering and doing work with no monetary reward. Yes, it might mean that some of your colleagues snub their noses at your “most recent trend.” But to me, those seem to continually wind up being the projects that make me feel most passionate about being a librarian, and quite honestly have kept me engaged in this field. Ever since I graduated from library school in 2008, people have worried about the future of libraries and if we’ll be around in 20 years and if so what libraries will look like. To some, that might be scary. But I didn’t become a librarian for stability. I became a librarian because of its potential–the opportunity to be part of redefining the status quo. DIY is about reinventing yourself and reinventing librarianship in the process.

Emily

In a way, we academics have been doing the DIY thing ever since the academy was the academy. With intellectual curiosity we pose questions, design experiments, conduct research, and reflect and report on our findings. In essence, the academy has born the ultimate DIY culture. However, over hundreds of years what was at first DIY has become institutionalized, regularized, and politicized.

For those of us in tenure-related positions, our work is evaluated by our peers via promotion and tenure processes. So how is our current DIY work valued? How is it assessed and evaluated? What tensions lie between the “traditional” form of DIY and its contemporary manifestations? Will contemporary DIY simply morph into a new traditional form?

It remains unclear whether DIY library culture has indeed become mainstream or whether it will remain on the periphery. In the academy, where tradition seems to rule the proverbial roost, how can contemporary DIYers positively change their libraries and communities and successfully play the institutional and political games inherent in higher education?

Micah

When DIY is the topic, I tend to lean toward a historical view, placing everything I know about self-madeness behind the culture/mindset/ideology of DIY born out of the post-punk subculture of the early 80s. What kids like Ian Mackaye and Henry Rollins did was DIY, sure, but not the same thing we are talking about here. Their “Doing It Themselves” was born purely out of necessity; no one was going to put out their records… ever. DIY, as it became enmeshed in our cultural consciousness, began as an imperative not a luxury; a must, not a choice. In the subcultural movement that followed, “DIY” evolved to be a code of conduct, an ethic or a principle. An important one, truly, but losing some of the grit and gall of which it was spawned.

I think I have to take an oppositional view than I had originally presented to my colleagues – I think what we do is not DIY. It is a new culture of professional development, yes, one driven by what we want, and how we work, rather than what professional associations or historical guidelines tell us. But, I do not see subversion of bureaucracy. I do not see radical shifts in the work we do, especially in academic librarianship. If I take a hardline, DIY-historicist point-of-view, there is little that might qualify as DIY in librarianship. Don’t get me wrong, we are overwhelmed with self-motivation, passion, creative projects, community building and scrappy, get-it-done attitude. But what is it that we MUST do? That we do BECAUSE no one else will do it? What do we do ourselves that compels others to participate based on the “damn the man” principle?

Ingenuity and innovation in our work is essential. But, to truly adopt a do-it-yourself culture in academic librarianship I think we should stop talking about the ebook problem and build our own platform-agnostic e-reader. We should stop writing for publishers that are unwilling to adapt to our intellectual property demands. We should invest in developing publishing partnerships within our Universities and Colleges. We should teach our students to be the best god damned googlers on the planet. We should hack every software and challenge every vendor to provide an open API so we can build what we really need, not what they sell us. Or we should walk away. Currency in the future DIY Culture of Academic Librarianship will be exactly what it was in the DC punk scene: relationships with other similarly-minded peers, willing to do what it takes to accomplish the task at hand.

There’s a lot of confusion in librarianship about what constitutes DIY-ness. Can we clear that up and come to some sort of agreement as to what, how and why it matters to our current state of “work”?

Conclusion

This is a DIY panel and we want to hear it from you. Is DIY library culture a precursor to more traditional praxis? Or is DIY culture, as Micah claims, ultimately a subversion? Where is DIY culture taking our profession? What are the practical outcomes of DIY culture for professional achievement? Do you agree or disagree with some or all of what we’ve said? Tell us about it!

We want you to share your 1-minute videos, comments, and tweets before our panel at ACRL next week. Make sure you tag your responses with #diylib and be a part of something awesome!

Tweets about “#diylib”

Shadow Steps by elycefeliz

A few years ago I learned of the “Peter Principle”: the concept that in hierarchical organizations, whether public or private, individuals are promoted up to their level of incompetence, and there they remain (Peter and Hull 16). In their book of the same name, the authors observe with satirical accuracy that, regardless of career field, high-performing individuals are continuously promoted over time until they reach the point at which the challenges of their new position exceed their skills, thereby decreasing their performance, eliminating the possibility of future promotions, and reducing the effectiveness of the organization as a whole. In short, most people advance in their careers until are promoted to a level at which they cease to achieve. Peter and Hull attribute this phenomenon to the fact that promotions are generally based upon performance in the old position, while each higher-level position requires new and different skills. Strong job performance as a staff member is not a predictor of strong performance as a manager.

It’s an appalling theory, and no less disturbing because it rings true. We’ve all seen it in action. For instance, a reference or cataloging librarian may suddenly be promoted to head of their department because they performed well as a librarian; but as a department head they now need a whole new array of skills to be successful, such as effective communication, strategic planning, and people management skills. Instead of being promoted to their new role because they displayed the requisite skills to perform well as a department head (or the potential to develop them), they have been plunged into an entirely new situation without much, if any, preparation. Perhaps they are lucky enough to already possess the aptitude for their new work and savvy enough to obtain whatever training they may need; in this case they have not yet reached their level of incompetence. But it is just as likely that they will muddle through, keeping the metaphorical lights on, but never achieving much or inspiring others.

In exploring strategies for combating such a seemingly inevitable process, the answer is both the simplest and most challenging one possible: by recognizing and respecting our own professional boundaries. This sounds easy but is complicated by certain external factors that drive people to accept promotions, such as financial pressures, retirement concerns, and the appeal of a role with greater power to (ideally) effect positive changes in the workplace. The effects of the former two are obvious. With an eye on the mortgage payment or retirement account, individuals who know a promotion isn’t right for them may just take the position anyway. And who could blame them? There are bills to pay, children to send to college, and the security of the future to consider. Regardless of our aptitude for a new position it would be difficult to turn down any opportunity to ease our financial burdens. Obviously compensation models in any organization are deeply entrenched, but why do we all accept that the positions that involve the most administrative tasks should be the highest paid? Why not consider a model based upon actual job performance regardless of role, that would actually encourage everyone to excel in the jobs we are best at? These are tricky questions, considering that administrators are often paid more because they are the most experienced (in years) and the most difficult to replace, but a high-performing administrator would still be paid well in a performance-based compensation model–along with high-performing staff at all levels within the organization.

If we consider the latter factor that influences many of us in deciding whether to accept a promotion, the waters become a bit muddier. Of course it is appealing to have greater power over one’s work and, potentially, over the work of others. But with such a motivator at hand, some may accept roles that they are not prepared to fulfill effectively. Telling people what to do sounds easy enough, but true leadership is far more challenging. Despite traditional concepts of management as a top-down activity, an increasing amount of scholarship points to the greater effectiveness of collaborative, bottom-up leadership based upon the cultivation of emotional intelligence (Goleman 1995, 1998) and humility (Owens & Heckman 2012). Decisionmaking through consensus, as discussed in last January’s Lead Pipe article by Emily Ford, may play a substantial role in this. Owens & Heckman’s research in particular indicates “that to effectively lead their firms amidst growing market complexity, leaders increasingly must be able to humbly show their followers how to grow by admitting what they do not know, modeling teachability, and acknowledging the unique skills, knowledge, and contributions of those around them” (811-812). This is a far cry—and happily!—from the “what I say goes” management strategies of old.

When it comes to our ability to recognize when our skills and abilities match our job and when they don’t, emotional intelligence (which will be explored in more depth below) can play a critical role. Are we making decisions about our work and the work of others for the right reasons? Goleman notes, “it is not that we want to do away with emotion and put reason in its place, as Erasmus had it, but instead find the intelligent balance of the two” (29). Those who are able to gracefully recognize and combine such factors may have the potential to overcome the fate to which Peter would say they are otherwise destined.

Leadership is a Dirty Word

Rhetorically speaking, the term “leadership” is inherently problematic. It implies that one or a few individuals “in the lead” possess the power and can take all the credit for an organization’s accomplishments. It limits our discussions about organizational effectiveness by implying that a powerful few are the ones who “make” an organization effective. Overly emphasizing one person’s importance is a disservice to that organization and all who function within it. It’s time to update our terminology. In The Deep Blue Sea: Rethinking the Source of Leadership, Wilfred Drath asserts, “Leadership will be understood not as a possession of the leader but as an aspect of the community (the team, group, organization, association, nature, culture). Leadership will be framed as a communal capacity and a communal achievement” (xvi).

Over the years, some organizations have adopted “upside-down” organizational charts, which generally flip the display of employees and place the customer or patron at the top, with each layer of staff, from frontlines employees to the company’s executive positions, displayed below. For many organizations, it would look something like this:

While this type of organizational chart certainly could function as a marketing strategy to reassure customers of their importance, a company that fully embraces this reverse hierarchy is making other statements as well. A traditional organizational chart is defined by lines of supervision and power: a manager is a salesperson’s boss, therefore the manager is displayed above the salesperson. This ties into the ongoing, traditional ways that salary and job titles have been assigned. But when this is flipped and an organizational culture reinforces a flipped hierarchy, there is one critically important difference: rather than defining levels by power, this chart defines levels by support. Executives support the work of managers, who in turn support the work of frontlines staff, and so on. Better yet, de-emphasizing the supremacy of managers and executives may support more flexibility in the workplace that may, in turn, allow those who have risen to their level of incompetence to find a way out through a shift in position.

In the process of flipping the organizational chart, another truth comes to the forefront: managers don’t have staff. If anything, the staff has the manager! Such shifts in rhetoric, while seemingly simple or even nitpicky, can have a profound impact on the psyche of an organization. Each employee, regardless of their relative position in a traditional hierarchy, is considered one element in a collaborative team. Reinforcing the hierarchy through possessive rhetoric, such as language that implies that a manager “owns” a staff, can diminish a team’s collaborative environment. This type of language not only inflates the manager’s role in guiding and supporting the team, but reduces the visibility of those employees’ knowledge, skills, and self-determination.

Who really needs to be led, after all? Competent staff know their jobs, and if they’re not competent then the organization has other problems. Very few of us need ongoing, daily supervision. In fact, most evidence points to the fact that employees who are given ownership of their job and the freedom to accomplish job-related goals in their own ways are happier and more productive (for instance, see Seibert, Silver, & Randolph 2004). The best thing a so-called leader can do is support the team, offer guidance and inspiration to create a common vision, and otherwise stay out of the way. “Leadership is not domination,” writes Goleman, “but the art of persuading people to work toward a common goal” (1995, 149). At its best, leadership is simply about empowering and bringing out the best in an organization’s staff.  Shouldn’t that be called something else?

Emotions Rule

We’ve all heard the term “emotional intelligence” (EI), but how many librarians apply it in the workplace, or even fully understand the concept? In an article in the current issue of American Libraries, David Lee King and Michael Porter (2013) hail EI as a critical factor in cultivating positive relationships between and among library staff and customers. While it’s heartening to see the concept appearing in the pages of such a widely read publication in libraries, its cursory treatment in this article leaves much to be desired. Is EI so well-understood and widely adopted in libraries that it no longer requires definition or context (or even an attribution to the book that made it a household term, Daniel Goleman’s 1995 Emotional Intelligence?). Surely not. Yet King and Porter barely scratched the surface of the idea, providing little more than the circular reasoning that “We must work to develop our emotional intelligence because it will help us more accurately perceive emotions in ourselves and others” (81). While EI sounds like an idea everyone can easily grasp – after all, aren’t we all de facto experts on the subject of our own emotions? – it is far more than just understanding the basics of human psychology. It has to do with how we recognize and understand our emotions and those of our coworkers, and how we address those emotions in constructive ways. People respond differently to the same situation, so emotional intelligence demands sensitivity to those various responses.

Considering that King and Porter omit a definition of emotional intelligence, it’s worth revisiting the concept here. In a 1998 Harvard Business Review article, Goleman succinctly summarized the components of emotional intelligence as follows:

1. Self-awareness, defined as the ability to understand and recognize your emotions and their effect on others;
2. Self-regulation, the ability to put emotions or impulse reactions aside and respond rationally to a situation;
3. Motivation, or the drive to achieve;
4. Empathy, the ability to recognize and understand others’ emotions and to respond strategically; and
5. Social skill, the ability to connect with and relate to others.

None of this is easy, particularly during challenging interactions or difficult times. Perhaps the two greatest calls to action in this list are to “respond rationally” to situations and to “respond strategically” to others’ emotions. Together, Goleman argues, these qualities describe a leader who is likely to motivate and inspire those they work with and create a positive, higher achieving work environment. Those embracing the importance of EI in the workplace recognize that the key is not to try to leave emotions at the door, but to address and manage them constructively. This includes recognizing when decision-making may be inappropriately driven by emotions (or simple personality conflicts), and ensuring that reason prevails.

While Goleman’s research is already fifteen years old, its impact seems only to grow. A recent article in Harvard Business Review provides what is essentially an update to the EI concept. In “Leadership is a Conversation,” Groysberg and Slind (2012) note, “Smart leaders today, we have found, engage with employees in a way that resembles an ordinary person- to-person conversation more than it does a series of commands from on high. Furthermore, they initiate practices and foster cultural norms that instill a conversational sensibility throughout their organizations” (78). The shift to more global organizations, increases in the number of younger staff with different views on communication, and the spike in technological changes and social network activity have combined to effect a shift in the way employees interact on a daily basis and in the way leaders might most successfully function. Groysberg and Slind see this as taking place through what they dub the four “I”s: intimacy, interactivity, inclusion, and intentionality. The article, which includes a chart summarizing these new practices as compared to traditional ones, brings EI to the forefront yet again.

Leadership in Libraries

As organizations like any others, the same rules apply in libraries. Just as Groysberg and Slind describe the effects of changing technologies and workplace demographics, so too are these forces playing out in the staffing profiles of our libraries. King and Porter recommend a simple approach to these shifts, which serves as a starting point for discussion:

A good first step is simply to recognize its importance and maintain an awareness of our reactions as they happen. Examining the emotionalreactions of others, particularly in difficult times, is also important. Listening, understanding, having patience, empathizing, and showing strength and resilience—these are all key components (81).

By this reasoning, EI is just about being kind and rational with our colleagues. Decades of top-down administrative theory have given way to a humanist approach to the workplace, driven and formed by the core fact that we are all human and subject to human joys and passions. Shedding the belief that work requires the repression of emotions, and instead allowing those feelings to pass through the office in constructive ways, can provide needed catharsis for all involved.

The challenge for library leaders is to support such catharsis. Library work can be stressful, and every office environment has moments when not everyone gets along. When emotions flare up, the manager’s task is to acknowledge, understand, and defuse them by making appropriate changes. Small adjustments to the daily life in the office may help, such as reconsidering who reports to whom or how workflows might be eased if personalities conflict. If changes are made, they must be made openly and with the support of all parties involved. This requires some level of sensitivity and flexibility to do well, but any efforts are sure to be appreciated. In many cases, just listening and allowing staff members to vent may be all that is needed.

Embracing a new, humanist framework in the office may be liberating. Certainly it changes the model upon which Peter’s Principle is based, and holds the possibility of empowering us each to recognize when we have reached the right place in an organization that best fits our skills and interests. This is not to suggest that we should be afraid to try taking on new roles, nor that we should avoid a challenge. Continuous growth and development is an important aspect of any career. But for those who rise to their level of incompetence and are emotionally intelligent enough to recognize their unfortunate position, the opportunity to shift (possibly “backwards”) within the hierarchy to a more suitable role is invaluable. An organization that functions based on supporting roles rather than reporting structures, one that endorses the importance of emotional intelligence in its daily functions, will be flexible and wise enough to support such shifts. In the end, isn’t that the sort of organization we’d all like to work for?

Many thanks to Brett Bonfield and Jason Martin for their patience and feedback as reviewers of this article.

References

Drath, W. (2001). The Deep blue sea: Rethinking the source of leadership. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.
Goleman, D. (1998). What makes a leader? Harvard business review, 76 (6), 93-102.
———. (1995). Emotional intelligence. New York: Bantam Books.
Groysberg, B., & Slind, M. (2012). Leadership is a conversation. Harvard business review, 90(6), 76-84.
King, D. L., & Porter, M. (2013). Develop your emotional intelligence. American libraries 44(1/2), 81. Available at http://americanlibrariesmagazine.org/archives/issue/januaryfebruary-2013.
Owens, B. P., & Hekman, D. R. (2012). Modeling how to grow: An Inductive examination of humble leader behaviors, contingencies, and outcomes.”  Academy Of management journal, 55(4), 787-818.
Peter, L. J., & Hull, R. (2009). The Peter principle: Why things always go wrong. HarperBusiness: New York.
Seibert, S. E., Silver, S. R., & Randolph, W. (2004). Taking empowerment to the next level: A Multiple-level model of empowerment, performance, and satisfaction. Academy Of Management Journal, 47(3), 332-349

In brief: It’s our birthday! As In the Library with the Lead Pipe turns four, the editors reflect on its evolution into an award-winning publication. We also share our plans to expand Lead Pipe into a nonprofit organization that will further our mission to identify problems, offer constructive solutions, and create positive change in the world of libraries.

Prometheus bringing fire by darijus on Flickr

We view In the Library with the Lead Pipe as a collaboration with you, our readers. That means soliciting feedback, as we did recently with our reader poll and our article about the results of that poll, and it means encouraging readers to join us as guest authors. Our goal is to be transparent and participatory so that each article we publish is worth the time you spend reading it and the time you spend considering its implications for your professional life. In this article we’d like to review our history and put it into context because we’re gearing up for the next stage of Lead Pipe’s development. We’d like to reflect on where we’ve been, reconsider the paths we’ve traveled, and then, looking forward, we’d like to invite you to help us grow Lead Pipe for the future.

How It Started

On October 7, 2008, six energetic, creative, and inspired young librarians launched a blog they called, with a twist of board game humor, In the Library with the Lead Pipe. The first article, titled simply “Introduction,” was only six sentences long. It was the briefest article ever posted on this site, and a life-altering moment for all of us.

The seed that would become Lead Pipe was planted months earlier during a spirited lunch conversation between Kim Leeder and Brett Bonfield, who wished to create a forum where forward-thinking, passionate professionals could share their ideas and constructive criticism of our field in order to effect positive change in libraries. Kim and Brett invited four standout individuals from public, academic, and special libraries around the country to join them in the project, adding Derik Badman, Ellie Collier, Hilary Davis, and Emily Ford to the project. The founding Lead Pipe Editorial Board was born.

Four months of rigorous brainstorming ensued: we shared a vision of creating an NPR or a New Yorker of library blogs, combining the intellectual rigor of an academic publication with the readability of a magazine and the storytelling power of public radio. Together we molded a mission statement that still serves as Lead Pipe’s heart and driving force:

In the Library with the Lead Pipe is intended to help improve our communities, our libraries, and our professional organizations. Our goal is to explore new ideas and start conversations; to document our concerns and argue for solutions. Each article is peer-reviewed by at least one external and one internal reviewer.

Emphasizing peer review for each article is something that differentiated Lead Pipe originally from other blogs, and continues to help it stand out. Our policy has remained the same since we began: every article we publish (excluding our own reflective or group posts, such as this one) must be critiqued by at least one internal Lead Pipe editor and one external professional not affiliated with Lead Pipe. The requirement that each of our articles be critiqued by at least two professionals in the field has enabled us to sustain a level of quality in the writing and research we publish that would not otherwise be attainable.

Evolution

Lead Pipe has seen some important changes over the years: most notably our vision of it. We began by calling ourselves a blog, but even at the very beginning we stretched beyond a blog’s typical activities and set very high standards for our work. Recently, realizing that very few (if any) blogs have ISSNs, undergo a peer review process, are indexed in research databases, and publish long-form articles, we have come to see Lead Pipe instead as a scholarly journal. While many readers may still consider Lead Pipe a blog based on our history and format, our Editorial Board is transitioning, through the language we use and our approach to publishing, into the journal realm.

Lead Pipe’s publication schedule and Editorial Board roster have seen changes as well. Initially, each Editorial Board member served as both author and editor, and in our first months a new article was posted every week. This ambitious schedule quickly proved unsustainable. We realized that a new article every six weeks was too much to write, and we received feedback from readers indicating that they were also having trouble keeping up with our pace. In early 2009, we cut the publication schedule in half and began our current practice of publishing one new article every other Wednesday. We also recruited our first guest authors, both to expand the diversity of voices and topics represented in Lead Pipe and to further distribute the workload.

Even after making these adjustments, we were still working hard. Not only did we each write thoughtful, carefully researched, long-format articles several times a year, but we conducted intense, detailed conversations on chat and email about individual article topics, potential guest authors, and the scope and goals of the publication. Our dual roles required a substantial commitment from every member of the Lead Pipe team: burnout and turnover were inevitable. It became clear that bringing fresh voices into Lead Pipe on an ongoing basis would be critical to its success. We have grown to embrace the idea that our  team members may serve as author-editors (which most of us still do), or as one or the other. Four author-editors have joined Lead Pipe since 2008 (Micah Vandegrift, Erin Dorney, Leigh Anne Vrabel, and Eric Frierson), four have “retired” (Derik Badman, Hilary Davis, Leigh Anne Vrabel, and Eric Frierson), and one founder has shifted into an editor-only role (Ellie Collier). While seeing brilliant and beloved colleagues leave Lead Pipe to pursue other projects is a bittersweet experience, adding new minds to the team is a joyful one.

Although it is a fulfilling experience, identifying and recruiting the right people to join our Editorial Board is also a great challenge. We enjoy (and are deeply protective of) a spectacularly positive and collaborative environment. Lead Pipe has always been a consensus-based organization built on deep mutual respect: every decision made by the group is made by the group as a whole (and each member of the Editorial Board has veto power over every decision). No article has ever been posted nor editor added to Lead Pipe without the support of everyone involved. As a result, we have generally sought potential new editors from among the ranks of these who have already worked with one of our current editors successfully (and enjoyably) on a guest article—or alternatively, we might invite a potential new editor to contribute as a guest author with the hopes that a more expansive relationship might follow.

Accomplishments

In the Library with the Lead Pipe has been fortunate to gain a substantial following in our field. In addition to being indexed in EBSCO’s Library and Information Science & Technology Abstracts, we were recently recognized as Salem Press’s Best General Library Blog of 2012. In numbers, Lead Pipe looks like this:

• 287, 367 lifetime visits to our website,
• 5,740 RSS subscribers,
• 2,818 Twitter followers,
• 651 Likes on Facebook,
• 78 on Google+,
• and 1,533 comments on112 articles.

Of course, Lead Pipe‘s greatest asset is its readership. When we created the blog, we agreed early on that we wanted to engage readers and create a forum for conversation. To that end we crafted the following comment policy:

We appreciate and invite your comments and discussion about posts on In the Library with the Lead Pipe. Constructive criticism is one of our primary goals, and we applaud it in our readers. Comments that do not maintain a civil tone or that disregard the post’s topic will be deleted. We do not edit comments except by request of the poster.

As authors, the Lead Pipe team puts a great amount of time and energy into writing articles, and we have been delighted to find that readers frequently respond by sparking interesting discussion in the comments and taking ideas in new directions. One of our main tenets is that if an article offers a critique, then it must also offer constructive ideas and solutions. There is no place for whining or complaining in Lead Pipe, but there is plenty of room for critical thinking, brainstorming, and helpful discourse. In the beginning, none of us dared to hope that the comment threads would be as interesting or constructive as they have become. In Lead Pipe, reader participation and dialog is just as important and engaging as the articles we publish.

The Future (You’re Invited)

Lead Pipe is a living organism that continues to grow and change (self-proclaimed nerd editor Brett Bonfield refers here to Ranganathan’s fifth law, “The library is a growing organism”). Above all, we want the journal to live up to its slightly sinister yet playful name by always being willing to look at our field with fresh eyes and challenge the status quo in a thoughtful and constructive way. Cultivating and maintaining the attitude of a thoughtful revolutionary can be challenging over time, and we are constantly seeking new people with the right combination of passion, creativity, and collegiality to invite to our team.

These days, our Editorial Board conversations are increasingly ambitious. What else might Lead Pipe be able to do? we ask ourselves. It’s not just about the words we publish.

Lead Pipe is a labor of love. We feel like we’ve accomplished a lot, but we want to do more. We greatly enjoy thinking, researching, and writing about our field, identifying problems and proposing solutions, but there’s so much more to be done. Our field is in crisis: we see substantial challenges facing librarianship, challenges that mere words will never solve, and we want to be part of the solution. We want to act and support action in others. We have learned through our own collaboration that truly great things can happen when committed, passionate people get together, and it is our hope that we might share this energy with all the other like-minded librarians out there in the world. We want to release the ripple that is Lead Pipe out into the sea and watch it swell into a tidal wave of positive change. We want to be an organization by librarians and for librarians, one that remains anchored in the realities of the field but is also ambitious and optimistic enough to shoot for the moon.

To that end, we have begun the process of registering In the Library with the Lead Pipe as a nonprofit corporation. Our intention is to leverage our credibility and what name recognition we’ve acquired to raise money and channel it towards initiatives that will positively impact the world of librarianship. We want to do so thoughtfully and constructively, in the same way that we have built Lead Pipe over the last four years. Our organization will be deliberate and passionate, it will be built through collaboration and consensus, and it will make careful, considered decisions. Yet despite all this, it will not hesitate to attack those obstacles and assumptions that keep libraries from moving ahead. That is, and will always be, the mission and heart of Lead Pipe.

Turning Words into Action

The Lead Pipe community has been an incredibly fulfilling and constructive experience for everyone involved. Because we have individually and collectively gained so much from our participation, our wish now is to expand our community and share it with others in our field. As such, the Editorial Board has discussed and debated a range of ways to turn Lead Pipe’s talk into action. Should we plan conferences, offer mini-grants, support fellows, publish books? We could go in a million directions, and would like to go in all of them. Our initial plans, however, have solidified into three interrelated themes:

1. Bringing together librarians, information professionals, and others who are committed to supporting individual libraries or library-focused organizations for intensive brainstorming and problem-solving sessions, both in-person and online.
2. Providing scholarship, fellowship, or travel assistance for librarians, information professionals, or others who are working on behalf of libraries or library organizations, with an emphasis on participation in cross-disciplinary projects or conferences that extend the field of librarianship in new directions and/or contribute to increased diversity.
3. Funding and advising library-related initiatives that have the potential to positively impact the progress or direction of the field through nonprofit, community-based, open source, or other approaches.

While our vision of Lead Pipe as an organization begins to sharpen and we simultaneously celebrate our fourth birthday, this felt like the right moment to share our plans with you. Not just as an announcement but as an invitation to join us, to provide feedback on our goals and direction, and to (eventually, if you are so moved) donate to our cause. As we begin to establish the infrastructure that will enable us to accept donations, we’d also like to hear what platforms you think we should explore: Amazon? Braintree? Dwolla? Flattr? Google? PayPal? Stripe? WePay? Something else entirely?

We have high hopes for Lead Pipe’s potential to create real change in libraries, but that will only happen if you’re with us. What do you think of our ideas for how we might accomplish our mission? What should we focus on in our fundraising? What should Lead Pipe’s nonprofit self look like? We invite your comments below to help us shape ourselves into a forward-looking organization. Tell us what you would do—and maybe together we can create a new future for libraries.

Several weeks ago I attended my first community college commencement. Despite my staff status, I was pleased to be invited to sit among the faculty behind the stage. From this vantage point I was able to watch the ceremony and play a small role in it (faculty, please stand; faculty, please sit) while reflecting upon the conclusion of my first year as a community college librarian. I watched the joyful antics of our students, their families, and the pride in the faces of our faculty and realized truly, for the first time, that our college’s focus on student learning is not just a catch phrase. It is real, and it has helped to change the lives of nearly seven hundred people this year.

This was, to say the least, a transformative year for me. I will admit now that I felt some trepidation last summer in altering my career path from university to community college libraries. It wasn’t because I would now have to drive fifteen miles to work instead of biking two. I didn’t mind a commute. And it wasn’t because this particular community college was only two years old and has not yet been accredited by our regional association, the Northwest Commission on Colleges and Universities. I was willing to bet on the success of this new institution and was excited about participating in its creation. Instead, the cause of my concern was something that most, if not all, of you will understand intuitively. The position I was interviewing for was a spectacular opportunity in terms of challenge and responsibility, and it allowed me to leap the typical years-of-experience requirements for a director-level role. It should have been a no-brainer, but at the time I had to ask myself the question: was it a step up or down?

My name is Kim Leeder and I am a recovering snob. There, I said it.

I might mention, in my defense, that I had never even visited a community college before (Seriously? Snob). Or that I only knew a few people who had attended a community college and had not talked to them about their experiences (Why wasn’t I interested? Snob). Or that I was simply a product of a society that devalues the critical role that community colleges play in higher education, such as in the current NBC show, Community (Better, but still a snob). The truth was that my ignorance was complete: until this position was posted and a friend brought it to my attention, I had not even thought about community colleges other than as the place you go for school when you can’t succeed at a four-year institution. Shall we say it together? S-N-O-B.

Rather than continue wearing my snobbish hairshirt, I’d like to use the remainder of this article to share some of the inspiring truths I’ve learned about community colleges in the past year. Some of them may sound familiar, but I encourage you to pay attention because chances are you haven’t really listened before. For most people, something gets lost in the translation. What I’ve discovered is that when my colleagues and I try to share our enthusiasm about our work, our four-year peers just don’t really “get it.” In “What Graduate Students Want to Know About Community Colleges, Part 2,” Rob Jenkins observes, “professors at four-year institutions, and especially at research universities, do look down on faculty members at two-year colleges. It’s very easy for search committees to pigeonhole candidates with community-college experience as not worthy of serious consideration.” To their ears, our joys sound like rationalizations for our underachievements.

Community colleges are often described as uniquely American institutions, or “people’s colleges,” in that they provide an education to everyone without prejudice. As Gail O. Mellow and Cynthia Heelan write in Minding the Dream, “[They are] committed to trying to create success for all manner of students who enter [their] doors…. it might be argued that community colleges are the single point of effective education for thousands of poorly educated poor kids” (10). High school dropouts, military veterans, laid-off workers, single mothers, immigrants, others facing unique personal or social challenges: all are welcome at a community college. The success Mellow and Heelan mention can look a wide variety of ways, too, from job training and professional certificates to transfer to a four-year institution. In this article, I offer you a glimpse of the community college lifestyle as you may not have seen it before. And for my community college colleagues out there, I hope you think I’ve done it justice. Your responses are invited at the end of this article, so please weigh in.

It’s All About the Students

A wonderful thing about community colleges is the fact that they are entirely focused on students and student learning. While faculty and staff have advanced degrees and many pursue research projects and professional service activities, the whole emphasis of our work is the students, their needs, and how to support them. For faculty, this translates into teaching loads that would be considered heavy at a four-year institution, but without research and service requirements. With faculty teaching more, class sizes stay small and students get face time with their professor instead of a graduate student assistant.

For librarians, this focus on student learning means expanding our basic information literacy instruction efforts without any need to address upper-division or graduate course content. Considering the fact that many instruction librarians prize their upper-level instruction, this might sound like a deterrent to prospective community college librarians. However, based on my experience, the opposite is true: although I have taught more introductory information literacy in the past year than in prior years, I have also enjoyed it more than ever before.

The reason for this? I’d like to say that I’m just creative enough to keep it fresh. But the true answer is: it’s the students. The university English composition courses I’ve taught for in the past, for example, have been full of traditional students more focused on texting their friends about the evening’s festivities than on learning about research. The community college English composition courses I’ve taught for, although identical in every other way to their university counterparts (and created so for transfer purposes), are different. The students are different: they’re talkative and engaged. They ask questions. They challenge me to explain why they shouldn’t just use Wikipedia when it has cited references and doesn’t that make it reliable? They debate and they argue. It’s delightful.

There are a number of reasons why community college students are different. The simplest explanation is that they have had to work harder to get to college. Many of them have overcome significant obstacles to attend school, from family obligations to financial challenges. More than half are first-generation college students. As a result they are more motivated to get the benefit of the time and money they’re investing in their education than the average four-year college student. It’s also worth mentioning that community college students also differ widely from each other, so any effort to speak about their overall characteristics must be acknowledged as a generalization.

After a year of teaching information literacy in the community college environment, I now feel a little sorry for my university colleagues who are still stuck wrestling students off Facebook. Where before I felt burdened by so many lower-division instruction sessions and looked forward to the upper-level courses, my viewpoint has rotated one hundred and eighty degrees. When I can count on my class presentation turning into a real conversation about information with curious students, teaching basic information literacy becomes great fun.

Dumb and Dumber (Or Not)

Don’t be fooled by the stereotypes: community college students are the intellectual equals of their four-year counterparts. Those students who have the luck, privilege, or excessive motivation to complete a Bachelor’s degree program immediately after high school are only a subset of those who have the brains and desire to succeed in college. Many intelligent high school students choose or are forced to take other paths due to family, economic, language, or other challenges. Mellow and Heelan assert:

It is essential that America begins to understand the college experience of the majority of its students in context. That context must consider the number of students, especially minority and urban students, who don’t complete high school in their teens, the number of well-schooled and middle-class students who enter but do not complete their studies in four-year colleges, and ultimately the impact of any educational advancement at any level as the United States moves into the future…. The issue is not who is in college, but who should be in college (8-9).

For the students described by Mellow and Heelan, who comprise nearly half of all undergraduates in the United States, community colleges step in to fill the gap. Community colleges are the most democratic of all educational institutions, providing an affordable and accessible education to anyone motivated enough to pursue it. This mission means that community colleges make higher education available to those who are academically accomplished as well as those without much, if any, academic background. As Walter Benn Michaels demonstrates in The Trouble with Diversity that SAT scores, for one, correlate to annual family income, there are socioeconomic implications as well as academic ones (98). The community college mission results in a student body that tends to be wonderfully diverse in every demographic, including age, race, ethnicity, class, physical ability, veteran status, and more.

In “The Myth of Inferiority,” T. Allen Culpepper asserts that students in general are “more alike than different” regardless of what type of institution they attend. Having taught at a variety of different types of colleges and universities, he has encountered poorly prepared and academically gifted students in his classes regardless of the institution. Culpepper admits that the proportion of poorly to well-prepared students tends to differ between institutional types, but the range of student preparation and ability is a constant across the board.

This diversity of students and academic programs translates into libraries in a variety of ways. In reference it means understanding that many students come into our colleges who still need to learn basic study and computer skills as well as critical information literacy concepts. Brand new to academia, these students may not even know where to start when they have questions. The best community college librarians cultivate an open, patient demeanor to help students feel comfortable asking those “stupid” questions and learning the ropes. On the collection development side, librarians use their knowledge of their unique student body to select accessible–but not overly simplified–materials that address the wide mix of academic, professional, technical, basic skills, ESL, and community education programs that their institution may offer.

There’s No Ph.D. in Team

Possibly the most pleasant surprise to be unearthed in the move from university life to community college life is the remarkable collegiality of faculty and staff at the latter. Many faculty and staff members at community colleges hold Ph.D.s, but research degrees are considered to be more in the realm of recreational activities rather than job requirements. With the competitive element of a more “rigorous” institution allowed to fall away, faculty and staff become more relaxed, more open, and frankly more fun to work with. Individuals are judged, if they are judged at all, based on their teaching and service to the college, not external achievements. No workplace is perfect, of course, but overall at a community college you’ll find that everyone is on the same team. As described earlier in this article, community college staff and faculty are there for the students first, and this emphasis brings everyone together in wonderful ways.

When it comes to hiring, community colleges are able to prioritize not just academic credentials, but personality and “fit” in ways that four-year institutions don’t have the luxury of doing. Rather than seeking out the candidate with the most academic credentials, community college search committees look for those with the most teaching experience, the most sincere focus on the students, and the best understanding of what community colleges do. Rob Jenkins in Part 1 of his Chronicle of Higher Education duo sees a dark side to this in that sometimes a search committee made up of Master’s level faculty will hesitate to hire a candidate with a Ph.D. due to a fear of “Ph.D. snobbery.” Jenkins may be somewhat jaded himself; my own reading is that search committees may be concerned, with good reason, that an individual who has attained a Ph.D. may have a research agenda that is incompatible with the teaching focus of a community college. Indeed, Arthur M. Cohen and Florence B. Brawer agree in The American Community College, as they note, “most doctorate holders have been prepared as researchers, not teachers, and…they expect fewer teaching hours and higher salaries” (86). This circumstance in hiring can be reframed as an emphasis on collegiality that allows community college hiring committees to select the most talented and sympathetic candidates without regard for their level of educational attainment beyond the Master’s. As Jenkins explains, “the truth is, at most two-year colleges, your most impressive credential will be your teaching experience, not your degree.”

This holds true for librarians as well. While the Master’s-Ph.D. tension doesn’t generally translate to librarianship, the student focus is universal. Those interviewing for librarian positions at community colleges should not be surprised if hiring committees are less interested in their publications and research plans than in their on-the-ground work with students, their expressed understanding of the community college mission, and their approachable energy and enthusiasm. The heart of the issue is: tell us about your work with students, your great ideas for making the library better for them, and how you’ll partner well with faculty. That’s what matters most at a community college library.

Conclusion

If you look down on community colleges, consciously or unconsciously, you may be surprised to learn that community colleges don’t look up at you. Faculty, staff, and students are proud of their colleges and their accomplishments. An Associate’s degree may seem like a small thing to some, but when an individual has overcome all odds to complete a two-year degree, you can bet they’ll be proud – in fact, just as proud as the faculty and staff will be of them. My particular institution doesn’t even have sports teams, but we wear our logo items with pride, knowing that we’re contributing to and supporting something bigger than ourselves.

One of the best things about community colleges is that they make an impact. This was evident at my college’s commencement: the stories of our students’ achievements and the obstacles they had overcome made me feel that I was truly doing work that was helping to make other people’s lives better. According to most estimates, about half of all community college students require some developmental coursework to prepare them for undergraduate study. Without community colleges to provide such students with a bridge to further study or careers, they would have very little opportunity to advance. Mark Blankenship, in “Is Community College Really College?,” notes, “community colleges are not only enrolling students, but also helping them to become upwardly mobile for the first time.” Community colleges offer every citizen the opportunity to become more informed and to improve their life, in whatever ways they define that improvement, through education. It is completely egalitarian and completely inspiring.

Rob Jenkins (Part 1) ends his article with the question, “What’s it like working at a community college?” If you think it’s somehow a career compromise, think again. Jenkins answers this way:

[A]ll I can say is: I wouldn’t trade careers with anybody. I enjoy the work that I do, I like my students and colleagues, I believe that I’ve been able to make a difference in people’s lives, I’ve found it relatively easy to maintain an acceptable balance between work and life, and I’ve been able to make a decent living. What more can anyone ask from a career?

After my first year as a community college librarian, I find Jenkins understated. Perhaps the shine will fade and the honeymoon will come to an end, but for me the shift from university to community college has been enlightening, inspiring, and fun. My institution boasts warm, collaborative staff and faculty, interesting and committed students, and a creative, agile environment that is more focused on student success than institutional bureaucracy. If the other community colleges in this nation are even half as wonderful as places to work, the rest of you are just plain missing out.

Warm thanks to Ellie Collier, Erin Dorney, Micah Vandegrift, and Eric Phetteplace for their thoughtful feedback that helped to shape this article.

by Andrea Campi on Flickr

It’s official: we’ve entered the holiday season. Thanksgiving (and Black Friday) are safely behind us and the party invitations are beginning to roll in. It’s the time of year when we work perhaps a little less hard, reconnect with friends and family, indulge in good food and drink, and wait for the new year to arrive. Believe it or not, 2012 is just around the corner with its champagne and midnight countdowns. We are invited to reflect on what the past year has brought us: the good, the bad, and occasionally, the ugly. We share our stories of the year.

This post is my story of 2011. I hope you’ll consider sharing yours in the comments below.

Introduction

In 2011 I left my beloved reference librarian position at a large, established university library in favor of a directorship at a brand-new community college library. I should have known what to expect when the outgoing library director asked, “Have you ever worked in a startup before?” I had some sense of what starting a new library might mean, and I was aware that the place I was interviewing had only existed – both as library and as institution – for two brief years. I had worked in several different libraries in the past, including two university libraries, a public library branch and even a small college library, but all had been established long before I arrived. I knew a “startup” would be something else entirely, though I didn’t know exactly what. I expected it to be an adventure, and one I was ready to tackle.

Being aware of the facts of the situation and understanding what it would mean to live and breathe them on a daily basis, however, were two wildly different things. After the previous director referred to my new library as a “startup,” I did some literature and web searching to learn more about startup libraries, their issues and challenges. To my surprise, I found… nothing. I tried variations of search terms related to building a new academic library, but still… nothing. I did find a few things that were peripherally helpful, but didn’t apply specifically to academic libraries. For instance, ALA’s Fact Sheet, “Setting Up a Library: A Resource Guide,” has a section on academic libraries but the actual content doesn’t offer guidance to those creating a new library. Public libraries have the Public Library Start-Up Guide, and the Special Libraries Association offers a resource list with some items of interest. Sure, all libraries have qualities in common, but the details vary widely. Where was my startup guide?

It looked like I was on my own. I knew I would, at least in the beginning, be able to draw on the one-person library community, as I would at first be the only librarian in a place with one other full-time staff member. But my situation was unique, as my discussions with the college administration made clear, because my charge was to grow the library collection, services, staff, and space. I wasn’t coming on board at a typical one-person library; I was there to create and build a whole new organization. The opportunity I had accepted was something rare and special, and it came without training wheels.

The Institution

I live in the Treasure Valley of southwestern Idaho, a region inhabited by roughly half a million people who, until recently, never had a community college of their own. In 2007 voters approved a measure to create the new College of Western Idaho (CWI) and the first courses were offered in 2009. By the time I arrived in 2011, enrollment had leaped to approximately 5,500 FTE, outgrowing all predictions and stretching the existing staff, faculty, and services to the maximum. It is clear that there was a great need for a community college in my area, and it is equally clear that the faculty and staff of this new institution have a serious but thrilling responsibility to take CWI from startup to full-fledged college. A major focus is gaining accreditation from the Northwest Commission on Colleges and Universities, a lengthy, intensive process that has only just begun.

The library of which I am now director can best be described as a “one-room schoolhouse.” With only 4,000 print books and 17 computers, it fills what is essentially a large classroom in our main academic building. Upon my arrival it possessed a single-page website that emphasized databases offered by our accreditation partner, the College of Southern Idaho, and our state consortium. While that list of resources is considerable, its online presentation concealed the depth of resources offered. Furthermore, databases required either a login from the partner institution or a generic password students had to request by phone or email. To top it off, I am the first individual with an MLS to be employed here. The prior director, who clearly worked hard to build what infrastructure we have, retired shortly before I arrived, leaving few notes or records to get me started.

At present my library is neither impressive nor sufficient to support the needs of the college. This fact is vividly apparent to me, the students, the faculty, the college administration, and our accreditors. Turning the situation around by drawing on all my creativity and resourcefulness to build a library that CWI and I can be proud of is my great challenge. In my first four months on the job I have been stretched as a person and a professional, in ways I never anticipated. I have found joy in this work, and have trudged through a variety of challenges. And yet the adventure has just begun.

The Joys

I have often said that I love being a librarian because it is the first job I’ve ever had where I never get bored. Prior to my switch to CWI, I worked for four years as a reference and instruction librarian at a mid-sized university library. This was my first professional position and I enjoyed learning the ins and outs of my job, building relationships across campus, and becoming an expert in my liaison areas. By the end of year four, however, the days sometimes slid by a little more slowly. I started to wonder whether there was more to being a librarian than continuing along the same (albeit pleasant) path. Without realizing it at first, I was ready for more. I was itching for new responsibilities.

I got my wish. Without any previous administrative experience I was suddenly the expert and decisionmaker on everything library. In my first few weeks at CWI Library I was variously asked for advice on copyright and course packets, requested to write a five-year strategic plan, offered the opportunity to hire students, temps, and a new librarian, invited to teach Communications students about research, and faced with making sense out of a stack of invoices. I had to figure out how to unravel a dysfunctional ILS, come up with a plan to address our time-consuming password problem, and advise college leadership on what a community college library for 5,000 students should look like. From coasting through a job that had become predictable and comfortable, I had launched into a world where my brain was whirring so energetically that it almost seemed possible that smoke might begin emanating from my ears. When friends asked how I liked my new job, I emphasized the joy of being in a role where I was again learning new things every day, if not every hour.

Along the same lines, perhaps the best thing about directing a small library – and a new library on top of that – is the fact that you have to be an all-around everything librarian and manager. You have to be ready and willing to embrace every aspect of the job, from cataloging to collection development to reference to budgeting and planning. There’s no room for specialization, and no time for it. While this is certainly not a situation that would appeal to everyone, for me it was as natural and as joyful as coming home. Not only do I have variety in my work, I have V-A-R-I-E-T-Y in all caps and with a few exclamation points thrown in at the end. (!!!). The days fly by like speeding jets and I have to remind myself to take breaks and to leave at a reasonable hour in the evening.

While any small library offers the pleasures of variety and generalization, what they don’t all offer is the joy of building something brand new. There is not much that is more motivational than knowing you’re part of creating something of value, something glowing and important that will serve the educational needs of future generations. The word “legacy” comes up with some frequency among the staff and faculty at CWI, as we are all cognizant of the responsibility and privilege inherent in building a new college. I have never worked with a more passionate, energetic, or dedicated group of people.

Last but certainly not least is the joy of self-determination; switching roles from that of a cog in the machine to that of presiding mechanic. Administration comes with a ream of heavy responsibilities, as others had warned me, but no one had ever told me how much fun it is to run a library. If my generation is known for its administrative-aversiveness, as I believe it is, then listen up all my fellow X’ers: Don’t knock it ’til you try it! I’ve always daydreamed about someday starting my own business, but was never sure what business it should be. “If only one could start a new library the way people start a business,” I used to think. I figured that no one gets that chance in libraries, since any organization needing a library had one already. Happily, I was wrong.

The Challenges

Making the switch to a small, startup library isn’t all rainbows and kittens, of course. While the work has its notable pleasures, I am also working harder than I ever have in my life. The pluses I described above each have their delta partners, though (rainbows again) I believe that they are all are manageable challenges and, ultimately, climbable obstacles. Still, it took about three months before I could sleep through a night without waking in the wee hours to make “to do” lists, and I continue to frequently lose sleep while mentally wrestling with some problem I need to solve at work.

Admittedly, my greatest challenge as a new director is my lack of expertise. I have only been a librarian since 2006, and my knowledge is primarily public service-related. It is no small thing to suddenly be responsible for an entire library, and particularly one that needs to be grown in every direction. How does a new librarian learn enough quickly to take charge of budgeting, hiring, managing, whole-library collection development, selecting a new ILS, negotiating database and journal contracts, and etc. etc.? The buck stops, as they say, with me, and there is no one to whom I can or should defer.

It is, sometimes, entirely overwhelming. Longtime small-library directors out there, I salute you. (And if you happen to have a support group, I would love an invitation).

Learning how to prioritize those substantial and growing “to do” lists has been another great challenge, made greater when it requires balancing tasks against each other that seem equally critical. What is more urgently needed: building the collection or facility planning? Getting a usable ILS or figuring out how to install EZProxy so students can actually log into resources from off-campus? Budget planning or hiring a new librarian? There’s so much to do that taking one step forward on each project every week seems like a great accomplishment.

To make things more complicated, space is an ongoing problem both in our library and in the college at large. My library’s two full-time staff, two part-time staff, and three work-study students all share office/staff/kitchen space that would more reasonably house two people. We work in very close quarters and are constantly (and unintentionally) interrupting and distracting each other from the tasks at hand. It can be challenging to get things done, though we are fortunate to have a wonderfully collegial team that makes the situation more bearable.

One thing I didn’t anticipate in making the leap to a small library was the isolating effect of moving to a place with a very small staff. I had become accustomed to having a large, varied team of colleagues in my university library jobs, and losing the creative energy of that dynamic and the support it provided on a daily basis has been difficult. I am lucky to have developed a wonderful network of colleagues both locally and nationally, but I do miss the daily interaction and banter that I once enjoyed.

I can’t conclude this section of the post without mentioning work/life balance. I’ll admit it, I’ve bragged a bit in the past, in previous jobs, about how well I have managed to maintain equilibrium between my personal and professional lives. Call it kharma or just desserts, but my balance has tipped dramatically since my job title switched from “librarian” to “director.” I once became impatient with people who didn’t answer their email within a day, but now I struggle to keep up with my own inbox. I skip lunch, work late, hit the gym, and get home shortly before bedtime. I am wagging my own metaphorical finger at myself, vowing regularly to “work on it.” I will get better at this.

Conclusion: Lessons Learned (and Learning)

At a dinner party recently, I ran into an acquaintance, a faculty member who chairs her academic department. She politely asked how I liked my new job, and I gave my usual answer about how much I love it, though I am working harder than ever before. Knowing she also had administrative duties, I added, “and I hope at some point I’ll be able to sleep through the night again.” To my surprise she entirely empathized, saying that it took her a long time before she got over the same late-night worrying and list-making that I had described.

“It’s not just me then?” I asked, relieved.

“Not at all,” she responded quickly. “It took me a long time before I could accept that I simply can’t get everything done.”

My first thought was, Oh yes I can, but I pushed it aside long enough to recognize the wisdom in her words. She didn’t mean she wouldn’t try, but sometimes things would slip through the cracks or get finished after the deadline. And that was okay. In fact, it was entirely human.

I’m a get-it-done personality type: when I see things that need to be accomplished my natural response is to put my head down and push through without stopping until I’m finished. That approach just won’t work here, as I have never before faced a challenge as substantial, complex, and long-term as building a library. This will require an approach more akin to that of a distance runner and less that of a sprinter, and after running three marathons I’d like to think I’m psychologically prepared for the shift in perspective. I will need good pacing, regular breaks, and ongoing training. But perhaps most important of all, I will need to be patient and persistent to arrive at this finish line in one piece and smiling.

As 2012 arrives, I’ll still be running.

Many thanks to Ellie Collier, Karen Downing, and Emily Ford for their valuable feedback that helped shape this post.

Photo by Marion Siegel (we think)

Introduction

Over the past few months, several of us at Lead Pipe have been watching the Occupy Wall Street movement with interest. How does one protest something that seems to be part of the foundation of a culture? And when a foundational institution benefits only a small subset of its members, how does one not protest? None of us at In the Library with the Lead Pipe have ever seen, in the course of our lifetimes, such an amorphous yet focused, long-term, geographically distributed picket line in our own country. It is an inspiration to all those who feel that “business as usual” isn’t working for them. (Not to mention the movement’s endlessly clever picket signs.)

In the spirit of Occupy Wall Street, we at Lead Pipe have been reflecting on some occupations of our own. We each asked ourselves, what should we be occupying to make a statement about a social, cultural, or economic problem in our field? What should cause librarians to strap on our walking shoes, raise picket signs, and craft pithy slogans? What would our occupation do, look like, and chant (literally or metaphorically)? What, in short, should we as librarians be protesting in our own culture?

Occupy the Research and Practice Divide

As a member of the Association of College and Research Libraries (ACRL), I get print copies of both College and Research Libraries, the association’s research journal, and College and Research Libraries News, its monthly magazine. Usually, the research journal is tossed into a growing pile of to-reads and I take the magazine with me on the bus. I’ve found that the most useful articles that impact my day-to-day work come from C&RL News (see this gem on lending textbooks at UT San Antonio – an important project, cost considerations, and results – and something I could see replicating on our campus).

There’s a running joke with my colleagues at work that resurfaces with each new issue of College and Research Libraries; upon its arrival, we snort, “I won’t read anything by or for librarians!” We get a laugh out of it, but there’s truth there. Most stuff written in LIS research journals is difficult to read in the context of a busy work day, and as I become more familiar with the research process through my Ph.D. program, I’m coming to realize that a lot of it lacks credibility. The first assignment I was given (along with the rest of my Ph.D. cohort) was to identify a “good” research study and bring it to class – at which point, each of our selections was torn to shreds from a research perspective.

On one hand, I have practitioner colleagues complaining about the irrelevance of LIS research literature; on the other, I have LIS faculty members lamenting the poor quality of the bulk of it.

I’m occupying LIS research literature. I’m indignant that its impact on practice is minimal, and I don’t believe it is only practitioners’ lack of application or researchers’ lack of skill – it’s a gap that both sides need to help fill. For practitioners, this may come in the form of a shift from relying on anecdotal information in making decisions about services and collections; for researchers, it could be a focus on how the results of a study are communicated.

For example, the website for Project Information Literacy (PIL) has research findings, but also presents short video clips summarizing the project and its implications. Already the results of the study are shaping decisions at my library as we design our physical spaces and services.

This philosophy – of producing actionable writing – is at the core of the editorial decisions of this blog. To that end, please share your experiences translating research into practice at your library in the comments below.

-Eric

Occupy Yourself: How to Be A Change Agent All By Your Lonesome (At First)

During my library school graduation ceremony one of my professors handed me a coffee mug, gave me a hug, and declared “You’re a real change agent! Good luck to you!” Despite having taken both management and marketing classes, I had no idea what on earth she was talking about. Ergo, I simply smiled and nodded. Nine years, and many struggles and sea changes in the landscape of library science later, I get what she was going for: being a change agent, troublemaker, or dissident in the library–pick the jargon with which you are most comfortable–can be both exhilarating and lonely. Sometimes simultaneously.

It’s the nature of a public service career. At some point, even if you don’t interact much with library patrons , you are going to get discouraged. Very discouraged. Quite possibly it’s already happened. Maybe the thought of Amazon going into publishing has pushed you over the edge, or perhaps Library Journal’s 2011 Placements and Salaries Survey was the final straw. Or maybe you’ve just finally reached the end of your patience with the glacial pace of library change compared to the faster-than-light speed of social and technological changes. Whatever the cause may be, you know you have to do something. But what? What can you, one library worker, do to transform your institution?

Occupy yourself.

Change always begins with you, and not just because Ghandi ostensibly said so.¹ Unless you hold an official leadership position within your organization, you probably don’t have much formal power, and even if you do have a measure of influence, its upper limit ends where the next level of management begins.² Therefore, the only thing you have 100% complete control of during your workday is how you choose to conduct yourself. And while this may seem unfair at times, it is also an opportunity to distinguish yourself as a librarian by modeling a different standard.³

No matter what type of library you work in, there are things you can do and ways you can conduct yourself so as to be a force for positive change. If you’re committed to your institution for the long haul, here are some suggestions for staying mentally strong and healthy while you fight the good fight.

Own Your Power

You are far more powerful than you think you are.

If that sentence prompted eye-rolling, derisive snorting, or helpless wailing, you may have already given away your personal power without realizing it.⁴ According to life coach Shann Vander Leek, people give away their power when they engage in the following behaviors:

• doubting themselves
• trying to make everyone happy
• excessively seeking approval / validation
• forgetting that they know what they’re doing
• having poor boundaries
• allowing other people’s emotional chaos to control them
• failing to honor and share their truth

Be honest with yourself. Are you truly powerless at work? Or are you unwittingly contributing to the probIem?

In his two-part examination of personal power at Lifehacker, Craig Harper suggests that the desire for safety and comfort frequently trumps the desire to make positive, constructive change:

All too often our desire to live a comfortable, painless, easy and safe existence (all things driven by fear) is the very thing that kills our potential, our productivity, our ability to develop and ultimately, our spirit. It is no coincidence that we (the society) have both (1) a widespread aversion to anything that makes us uncomfortable and (2) a high percentage of people who regularly feel frustrated, unfulfilled, lost and miserable. Ironically, it is our aversion to working against resistance that stops us from growing, learning, evolving and adapting. Sometimes (in the moment) we believe it’s simply easier to just “fit in”, to compromise and to bite our tongue. While this is understandable on occasion, over the long term this kind of behaviour and thinking will set us up for unhealthy relationships, stagnation, disconnection, frustration, desperation and misery. In order to take back your power you will need to be courageous (that’s a choice by the way), you will need to be prepared to get uncomfortable (that’s where you learn, grow and adapt) and you will need to do things that may piss other people off – perhaps the ones who previously pulled your strings for their own gain.

Are you prepared to experience discomfort for the sake of positive library change? In what ways have you given away your power? Can you list one positive action you can take today to get it back?

Become a Rhetorical Ninja

Want to win hearts and minds for your grand plan to transform librarianship? Brush up on your rhetoric. You can have the best ideas in the world, but if you can’t articulate them in a way that will appeal to your opponents, you’ll accomplish nothing.

If that sounds too “nice” to be effective, you’ve probably never seen the principles of non-violent communication in action. Non-violent communication⁵, or NVC, is a way of speaking and interacting with others based on respect and compassion. Its four components–observations, feelings, needs and requests–provide a rhetorical framework for conversations that honestly air grievances without making your opponent feel attacked or disrespected.

Let’s say, for example, you feel your library’s food and drink policy is hopelessly behind the times. Framing your complaint in the NVC model makes you sound professional and rational.⁶ Observe:

1. Observation: “Chief, I’ve noticed that the new food/drink policy restricts coffee to the ground floor of the library.” (clear statement of what you want to change)
2. Feelings: “I feel frustrated about this because it puts staff in the role of substitute parents rather than librarians.” (emotional honesty with clear reasoning)
3. Needs: “We need to concentrate on helping people find good information, not changing their food habits.” (stating your requirements for a successful outcome)
4. Requests: “Can we look into modifying the policy to permit beverages with lids?” (statement of what you want / solution to the problem)⁷

Using NVC doesn’t guarantee you will always get what you want, but if your current communication strategies aren’t working, what do you have to lose? Experiment with the framework, and, as much as you can, preserve your own natural speech patterns. To learn more, click here to read the first chapter of Marshall Rosenberg’s Nonviolent Communication: A Language of Compassion.

Pick Your Battles

I’m thinking about stitching this phrase in comic sans and hanging it over my desk, just to remind myself that not everything in librarianship is a life-or-death issue. In fact, you could argue that–for most of us, at any rate–hardly anything in librarianship is a true life-or-death issue. Unless your workday routinely involves blood or fire, you are in a relatively privileged position, salary under-performance notwithstanding.

This is not the same thing, however, as saying that nothing in librarianship is worth fighting for. There is much work to be done, and it needs done passionately, with fierce conviction. Alas, being human, you have a finite amount of fierce conviction to spend at work. Ergo, the ability to prioritize your campaigns becomes crucial to your professional success, to say nothing of your overall health and well-being. If your library has a strategic plan, half your work is done for you: examining the document carefully should give you an idea what your institution’s priorities are. If you see challenges or opportunities in those priorities, you’ve got fertile ground in which to sow the seeds of change and/or dissent. If your library does not have a plan, or is between plans, try to focus on bigger-picture issues that affect all patrons, as opposed to one-shot issues with minimal impact.

Business consultant Pat Lynch, president of Business Alignment Strategies, Inc., offers some sage advice about setting priorities for picking your battles:

Particularly in times of chaos or emergency, people seem to want ‘the’ answer to setting priorities in the form of a tool or method that they can apply to whatever situation they have to address at the moment. However, setting priorities is not something that is best done ‘in the moment,’ nor does it lend itself to a single or optimal method. While there are tools that can be used to assist, the fact remains that setting priorities requires you to develop a process that enables you to deploy your time and energy most effectively. Such a process can be planned ahead of time and followed as the need arises.

In other words, the time to figure out what you value, and will champion, in your library is now, before you’re aflame with outrage. There are a variety of worksheets and matrices you can use for goal-setting, so put your information professional skills to work and find one that suits your individual temperament. Treat yourself to a tasty beverage in a quiet spot and spend some time thinking about, as my own supervisor puts it, “which hills you want to fight and die on.”⁸ The next time something happens at work that makes you see red, you’ll have rational, objective standards for helping you decide how to spend your energy effectively.

There are other ways to occupy yourself that involve anger management, good self-care, and a host of strategies that extend beyond the scope of one short Lead Pipe protest. Nor are they prescriptive: I have offered my view of where self-occupation might start, and I invite you to offer your own strategies, theories and practical tips in the comments section below. The only thing of which I am sure is that the more we can raise our own levels of self-awareness, the better equipped we will be to make the changes we long to see in our profession.

Notes
(back to text) 1. There’s no proof that he did, which makes the sentiment no less lovely – just factually inaccurate, despite its internet popularity. A librarian’s’ self-occupation almost always involves a little myth-busting.
(back to text) 2. Even directors report to a board.
(back to text) 3. Notice that I do not say “higher” or “better.” Everyone has a different vision of librarianship. One sure way to earn respect–if not consensus– for your own vision is to extend the same courtesy to others.
(back to text) 4. Sad to say, many issues with personal power and self-esteem still affect more women than men. As a woman in a predominately female profession, I find this troubling.
(back to text) 5.While I am normally hesitant to link to Wikipedia, the essay on NVC gives an excellent explanation of the technique’s strengths and weaknesses, which compensates for my personal bias toward its use.
(back to text) 6. As opposed to, say, a whiny newbie upstart.
(back to text) 7. Bosses love solutions. If your request contains a solution, your chances of getting what you want increase. If your solution contains a flowchart or bullet points, even better.
(back to text) 8. Richard Kaplan, frequent utterance. Best boss ever. Try not to be too jealous.

-Leigh Anne

Occupy “Make-Do”

How little do you need to run a library? Wait, don’t answer that. Yet.

Librarians as a group pride ourselves on our creative resourcefulness, particularly in the current economic environment. We are experts in making do with less. Less funding, less staffing, less support from city councils, college administrations, or whoever makes budgetary decisions. Libraries lose one, three, or a dozen positions and we still cobble together a facade that hides our pains from the patrons we serve. We reallocate resources madly, juggling all of our community’s varied needs, and work overtime, stretching ourselves to the breaking point. We are so passionate about serving our patrons that we just grit our teeth and smile through it. We pat ourselves on the back for how well we can continue to provide superior services when we feel like we’re being cut off at the knees. We believe that we have succeeded when no one notices (or complains) about the changes we’ve had to make.

This is admirable, but profoundly unwise. Why would anyone give us more money when we can make do with less?

I’m not the first to suggest that there is a problem here. Last week as I was working on this post, I discovered that Andy Woodworth was thinking along the very same lines, and that his post was sparked by another kindred post by Superstarchivist Laura Botts. Botts’ post attributes the problem to “Good Librarian Syndrome” (or GLS, to give it a nice medical acronym), an aptly diagnosed condition in which “[w]e can’t help helping. And we will help you until it kills us….we will ‘do more with less’ until we have nothing left to give to anyone.”

This is truly a disease. If one of my family members was showing symptoms of GLS, I would stage an intervention immediately. Imagine if your sister were putting everyone else’s needs before her own. Would you let her no-good husband run off with her life savings? Would you let her kids walk all over her until she was a run-down, quivering wreck? Heck, no! So why should we allow our sister (and brother) librarians to act this way? We shouldn’t.

The truth is, doing more with less doesn’t help anyone. Woodworth uses a pizza metaphor to visualize the situation: when others steal slices from the library’s pizza, all our patrons get smaller pieces, and everybody leaves hungry. So the question, then, is (in his words):

…if you can do more with less, how much less do you need to maintain what you have now? And what were you doing with the “more” you had before? What would a budget restoration mean under this “doing more with less” concept?

To answer Woodworth’s last question, it means that there would be no budget restoration. None. Zero. Zip. There’s simply no reason to allocate more resources to an organization that is doing fine without. The better we make do, the more we justify the budget cuts and reductions in staff that were made by others despite our protests. We’re basically saying, “Please take more of my money away. I don’t need much.” This is not the message we intend to communicate, but it’s coming through loud and clear all across the country as library budgets are being mercilessly reduced.

Let’s heed Botts’ warning and stop the spread of this disease before it kills us all. The medication I’m prescribing is an active occupation: Occupy “Make-Do.” So I call on all those who are doing more with less to cease and desist in your feverish struggles, and expose your shortcomings to the world! I call on you to do those things that librarians never, ever want to do, the things that make our patrons angry. Have you lost staff? Then it’s time to cut hours, cancel storytimes, and end book clubs. Is collection funding down? Then cancel valued database subscriptions and sell off materials to reveal our empty shelves. Let them yell. Let them get mad. Let everyone see what “making do with less” really means.

Toss all that surplus goodness aside and get a little mean. Carry a picket sign, even if it’s only in your mind. Chant some clever slogans. Something like:

I’m in a battle for literacy; where’s my military funding? Or…

A librarian’s sanity is not worth your budget savings! Or…

You’ve pushed libraries to the edge of extinction, and now we’re pushing back. Or…

(insert slogan here)

You get the idea. If we want those in power to allocate more resources to libraries, we should make it clear how much we’re hurting, and how much cuts are hurting our patrons. We should be transparent in our suffering so that everyone can see it.

So let me rephrase my original question (it was a trick question anyway). What I really want to ask is: How much do you need to run a library? The correct answer is: as much as I can get.

-Kim

Occupy the Faculty

Washington, DC — June 18, 2012 — The American Association of University Professors (AAUP), following its Annual Conference on the State of Higher Education, has made a formal request that articles published in non-open access journals after January 1, 2015 receive no consideration in promotion and tenure decisions…

Several librarians have recently called for an occupation of scholarly communication, including Barbara Fister, John Dupuis, Andy Woodworth, and Steve Lawson. We’ve also recently seen strongly worded posts from non-librarians on this issue, including one from Peter Murray-Rust, at the University of Cambridge’s Department of Chemistry (“Closed access means people die”), and one from University of Bristol paleontologist Mike Taylor providing perspective on the profitability of Elsevier and Springer.

Personally, I don’t blame Elsevier or the American Chemical Society or any other publisher for increasing the price of their publications. This is what suppliers do: they try to maximize profits. And, though I expect better of us, I don’t blame libraries (all that much) for paying ever increasing prices, or even for agreeing to keep their vendor contracts private. Well, mostly. I realize there is a lot of pressure on libraries to provide access to the highest impact literature in every relevant field, and that conducting vendor negotiations in public is likely to lead to reduced access or higher prices, at least in the short term. Longer term, if every library conducted its negotiations in public, we would almost certainly see downward pressure on prices.

Which leads me back to AAUP. For most faculty, research is the largest consideration in promotion and tenure decisions. Teaching and service matter, but there is a reason that “publish or perish” has become a cliche. So faculty do everything they can to place their work in high impact, “A-list” journals: they volunteer as reviewers and editors, and not only provide articles for free (and sign over copyright), but they often pay to have their work considered. Then they put pressure on the library to buy the publication, regardless of the price the publisher names for it, in order to ensure the health of the journal and its accessibility to colleagues.

How do we break the cycle? I think the economics of scholarly publishing resembles the situation in the National Hokey League when wearing helmets was optional. Here is New Yorker columnist James Surowiecki’s description of the conflict and its resolution:

Back in the nineteen-seventies, an economist named Thomas Schelling, who later won the Nobel Prize, noticed something peculiar about the N.H.L. At the time, players were allowed, but not required, to wear helmets, and most players chose to go helmet-less, despite the risk of severe head trauma. But when they were asked in secret ballots most players also said that the league should require them to wear helmets. The reason for this conflict, Schelling explained, was that not wearing a helmet conferred a slight advantage on the ice; crucially, it gave the player better peripheral vision, and it also made him look fearless. The players wanted to have their heads protected, but as individuals they couldn’t afford to jeopardize their effectiveness on the ice. Making helmets compulsory eliminated the dilemma: the players could protect their heads without suffering a competitive disadvantage. Without the rule, the players’ individually rational decisions added up to a collectively irrational result. With the rule, the outcome was closer to what players really wanted.

(The original Schelling studies are available in “Hockey Helmets, Concealed Weapons, and Daylight Savings: A Study of Binary Choices with Externalitie,” and Micromotives and Macrobehavior.)

Right now, the rational decision is for faculty members to publish their work in closed source journals. The universities pay the publication fees and libraries buy the journals; there is no line on faculty members’ paychecks reflecting the costs associated with the current model. And even if there were, the financial benefits of promotion and tenure more than offset these costs. But what if you ask faculty members if they like giving up copyright control over their own research? What if you ask them if they would like to have more complete access to relevant material through simpler interfaces? If appropriate incentives were in place, there is little doubt that faculty members would overwhelmingly choose to publish their work in open access publications.

The AAUP cannot make a unilateral decision to make this happen. It is not structured that way, it does not represent enough faculty members to change things immediately, and faculty members would still have to negotiate with their individual institutions. But an AAUP endorsement, along with some model contracts and discussion points, could serve as a tipping point. As more and more universities are demonstrating, making their lectures and curricula available for free to the general public is good business. It seems unlikely that many administrations would object to their faculty members’ research assuming a more public place in scholarly discourse, nor to the likelihood of paying less to scholarly publishers. Plus it would make it easier to comply with federal mandates requiring government funded research to be publicly accessible.

When the NHL adopted rules that few players advocated publicly but the great majority privately desired, it made an important concession: it grandfathered in those players who were already in the NHL. Any player could choose to wear a helmet, but only players who played their first game after the rule change were required to do so. The transition to considering only open access articles in promotion and tenure decisions could work much the same way. It would not prohibit any faculty members from publishing their work wherever they like; for the highest ranking faculty members, for whom promotion and tenure mean nothing, their incentive structure would be largely unaffected. Nor would it affect monograph-length publications, at least for now. What it would do is level the playing field for faculty who are working toward promotion and tenure, and for journals that are competing for these scholars’ articles.

-Brett

Occupy In the Library with the Lead Pipe

Like Brett and the individuals he cites, I want to occupy scholarly communication, publishing paradigms, and “interest groups” like the American Association of Publishers, the Authors Guild, and others. But others have already argued so eloquently, that I dare not join in. Instead, I‘d like to occupy an open access, peer-reviewed, creative-commons-licensed library blog: In the Library with the Lead Pipe.

The first post at In the Library with the Lead Pipe was posted three years ago this month. In our three years we’ve had eight regular bloggers, thirty-two guest authors, and ten group posts. We started building a group vision after ALA Annual 2008 and have been what I would consider a regular and successful contributor to professional library discourse. We were nominated for the Salem Press Library Blog Awards, were named in the Librarian’s Book of Lists as one of the Top Ten Library blogs, one of LISNews’s 10 Librarian Blogs to Read in 2009 and are frequently cited in AL Direct and other professional publications. We’re grateful to our colleagues for this recognition, but we don’t measure our success by awards and citations.

Instead, we consider ourselves successful because we have occupied this space, this idea, this thing; and we’ve occupied it daily. We have occupied it actively and without bounds since it was merely a notion. The passion and energy that has gone into In the Library with the Lead Pipe is plentiful and rich. As I have said many times over: this group of colleagues is the closest, most dynamic, most functional, and one of the most fulfilling professional groups to which I’ve had the pleasure of belonging.

There have been disagreements. Strong ones and plenty of them. But they have been professional and thoughtful.

We are honest with one another and decisions are made by consensus. Each individual’s voice is heard and considered. When someone has an idea, we say “make it so!” and “how can I help with that?”

At three years old this is no time for us to get lazy or quit occupying this space. We have more growing to do, ideas to consider, and venues to occupy as In the Library with the Lead Pipe. But we can’t accomplish any of this without readers, guest authors, new ideas, new takes.

Would you like to join us in this occupation? Send us your ideas, feedback, submissions, questions. Anything. Tell us how we can involve you in our occupation. In solidarity.

-Emily

Image by Trace Meek on Flickr

I. What we talk about when we talk about collaboration

On April 7, 2011, I published “Collaborating with Faculty Part 1: A Five-Step Program,” a post that described my strategies for developing collaborative relationships with disciplinary faculty. To briefly summarize my “program,” I identified five steps to collaboration as: (1) Be confident, (2) Make the connection, (3) Reinforce the connection, (4) Build the relationship, and (5) Go collaborate. These steps are admittedly simplified, but they do serve to remind us of the importance of cultivating relationships beyond email updates or visits to department meetings. In this article, Part 2, I’ll share some of the most common and most innovative approaches to librarian-faculty collaboration that I’ve heard about or seen in the literature. As I was researching this post I created a spreadsheet of some of the notable projects I discovered in the literature of the past ten years that may be helpful to others. This is not intended to be comprehensive, and I invite you to review, comment, argue, and/or add to it, as you see fit (I’m drawing primarily from the published literature here, but descriptions of non-published projects are also welcome). It is my wish that these examples will help us reconsider our existing collaborative efforts, and will be useful for hopeful librarian collaborators in reassessing and expanding their own initiatives. Partnering with faculty on projects, instruction, and other initiatives offers a whole array of rewards such as improved services, greater student learning, and the ability to grow as a professional. Plus, working with others on campus allows us to extend our reach and achieve more of our goals than we could do alone.

However, “collaboration” is a broad term that can be difficult to define. In thinking about librarian-faculty partnerships, I find it helpful to consider them on a spectrum of possibility. There are two models I think are useful for this. The first is Pritchard’s (2010) scale to describe various levels of librarian-faculty partnerships on information literacy instruction. Pritchard makes the following distinctions between different types of support that may be offered by librarians for information literacy instruction in coursework:

1. Supplemental, which happens outside the curriculum through workshops and instruction, reflecting no cooperation between librarian and faculty member.
2. Integrated, which involves librarian support for a course without input into the curriculum.
3. Embedded, which implies co-development of course curriculum and/or assignments

While Pritchard’s criteria are specific to teaching, we can extrapolate the same concepts to address collaboration more broadly. To expand these definitions to our discussion of librarian-faculty partnerships, we can identify parallel levels at which individuals may work together, as follows:

1. Communication: In which librarians and faculty members may notify each other of their activities and work with the same students, but without actually consulting one another, such as when a faculty member alerts a librarian to an existing assignment that will send students to the library, or a librarian sends a newsletter to faculty.
2. Cooperation: In which faculty and librarians work together on a project or initiative, with one partner supporting the other’s goals, such as through typical instruction sessions (where the librarian is asked to support an existing curriculum or assignment), or through faculty workshops offered by librarians to educate faculty about library resources.
3. Collaboration: In which librarians and faculty work together in an equal partnership that requires them to align their different perspectives on a project, such as curriculum design and co-teaching or co-writing an article or grant, develop common goals, and reach a new shared understanding.

The second model I find useful was created by Black, Crest, Volland (2001), who came up with a simple flowchart that presents a comparable scale of librarian-faculty partnership. The major difference is that they view partnerships as a progression instead of a spectrum, and assert that each step along the scale leads to the next. In their minds the process begins with relationship-building (librarian and faculty getting to know each other) and faculty development (librarian teaching faculty about library resources), leads to collaborative instructional design (both parties working together to achieve course goals), and results in tailored instruction for classes.

The fact that both of these models provide similar “levels” of partnership reinforces the idea that collaboration can be achieved in a variety of ways. While all levels of partnership have intrinsic value, this post will focus primarily upon initiatives that embody the definitions of cooperation and collaboration as described above.

II. Cooperative partnerships between librarians and faculty

Cooperation requires that the librarian and faculty member work together at some level to identify and achieve a common goal. This often involves a one-way direction of effort, as one partner becomes involved to support the other’s established goals. These partnerships are more in-depth than communication partnerships as there is some combined effort between the two participants, but the two individuals generally work independently of each other. For instance, at my institution I developed a tiered instructional plan to support a series of courses in my liaison department. The plan included a breakdown of the various research assignments that were required of students in the different courses, and described my strategy for building their skills throughout the series. While I consulted the faculty member who taught these courses and ensured that she was on board with my plan, my work did not have an influence on her course content. I created the plan to support her existing curriculum, assignments, and goals.

Cooperative partnerships come in several common formats, including:

• Faculty training
• Technology assistance
• Collection development
• Information Literacy instruction

I describe each of these in more depth in the following sections.

Faculty training

Faculty workshops typically involve librarians planning and executing sessions intended to teach and/or raise awareness among faculty about the resources and services offered at the library. These sessions usually involve one or both of the following goals: (i) encouraging faculty to use the library more, e.g. marketing, and/or (ii) “training the trainer,” with the purpose of empowering faculty to pass on deeper knowledge about the library to their students, e.g. instruction. For an example of faculty workshops in action, Lucas (2011) provides a helpful case study of the faculty in-service approach at D’Youville College in Buffalo, New York. Lucas defines the in-service as “the act of collaboratively introducing new and existing faculty to the library resources and services.” The article lays out the details of what they cover in their in-service sessions.

Faculty workshops may also be targeted to specific audiences such as distance faculty, as noted by Miller et al. (2010). At the University of Maryland University College, librarians have taken a slightly different approach to the in-service model by presenting asynchronous online workshops lasting seven to twelve days that introduce distance faculty to the library. These sessions are cofacilitated by a librarian and the academic director of a given department, but content is created solely by the library. Miller et al.’s article includes detailed descriptions of the workshops that are likely to be useful for anyone considering a similar approach.

Cooperative faculty training occasionally goes beyond the typical workshop. Take, for instance the work of librarians at Jinwen University of Science and Technology (JUST) in Taiwan. They serve as a example of a library that trains faculty to serve as stand-in librarians, or “library specialists,” for a semester at a time. Yu (2009) explains how, to expand the library staff’s limited reach, they advanced a proposal to train one or two faculty representatives from each academic department as volunteer “library specialists.” These faculty members were required to attend special library skills training, as well as to serve two hours of reference a week and function as consultants for subject-specific reference questions. The faculty become stand-in librarians for the purposes of helping students, and acted as consultants to the library on collection development and subject-specific reference. This unique program enabled faculty to become intimately familiar with their library while expanding its ability to serve a growing student body.

Technology assistance

In some cases librarians leverage their tech-savvy to raise their profile on campus beyond the scope of research, for instance by assisting them in creating websites or media. Bailey, Blunt, & Magner (2011) describe how librarians can leverage technology skills, in this case video and multimedia creation, to support faculty goals, instruction, and conference presentations. This reasserts the importance of librarians on campus and may potentially build a foundation for greater partnerships. In addition to video creation, it is common for librarians to work with faculty in groups or one-on-one to assist them with new technologies such as blogs, mobile access, social media, and RSS.

Collection development

Collection development is an area in which librarian-faculty partnerships have long been common, typically at the communication level but sometimes evolving into cooperative relationships with the intention of expanding a particular part of the collection to support relevant coursework. As one example, Ratto & Lynch (2011) describes an effort at the University of Southern New Hampshire to supplement traditional textbook access with a program to provide focused course content for a Marketing course through the use of electronic textbooks. The texts were licensed and cataloged by the library in coordination with the faculty member.

Another example of cooperative relationships in collection development is the designation of specific funds either as “new faculty funds” or as internal grants. Horava (2005) described a program at The University of Ottawa to get new faculty more involved in working with librarians to expand the collection in their research areas through the use of designated funds in the amount of $2,000 per faculty member. The program met with some success in building bridges between librarians and faculty and increasing collection development in current research and teaching areas.

Information Literacy instruction

The most common cooperative efforts between librarians and faculty relate to IL instruction in a wide variety of ways. The traditional “one-shot” instruction session is a classic example of this. There are also an array of variations on the “one-shot,” from a similar “two-shot” to strategies that many refer to as “embedded” librarianship, in which a librarian is present as some level throughout the entire course. Kobzina (2010) describes a scenario at the University of California at Berkeley in which librarians embed in a prominent environmental studies course, with multiple library sessions, access to the online course site, and the ability to respond to course content on an ongoing basis. The only thing separating this effort from collaboration as defined in the introduction to this post is the fact that they don’t contribute to the creation of the course curriculum or assignments.

III. Collaborative partnerships between librarians and faculty

Before taking this discussion further, I’d like to restate my own belief that collaboration, as distinct from communication and cooperation, requires an equal partnership between librarian and faculty member. I make this assertion because collaboration, as I define it, requires both parties to acknowledge, understand, and even embrace the other’s viewpoint, with the result being a shared vision or product that is greater than the sum of its parts. This is not easy. More casual partnerships, in which participants align their goals but don’t blend them, often accomplish great things but don’t achieve the same shift in perception for those participating. I base this perspective on my own collaborative experiences with my institution’s first-year writing program faculty, which has entirely changed my perspective on teaching research to first-year students. By working together to build a shared curriculum for our co-requisite research and writing courses, we all become more fully cognizant of the differences between our two approaches and the natural ways we could bridge them. The effects of our work together have rippled outwards into the way our two units interact and understand each other’s work.

Thus, collaboration takes the initiatives described in the “Cooperation” section above and stretches them further by adding a give-and-take element to the relationship between librarian and faculty member. In collaboration we are forced to consider the other person’s perspective, compromise, and often walk away with a new understanding of the project at hand. Collaborative partnerships result in a product that reflects the contributions of both parties. These efforts may take the following forms:

• Information Literacy instruction
• Professional (writing, research, presentation, grant, etc.) projects

As I did above, I’ll now discuss each of these in more depth with some examples, though there are fewer examples of collaboration as I define it.

Information Literacy instruction

When it comes to teaching, collaboration often involves the librarian and faculty member partnering on curriculum design and development, and often extends into co-teaching. The literature of instructional collaboration is extensive, but Mounce’s (2010) literature review covering articles published in 2000-2009 is helpful in gaining a big picture perspective.

For instance, Gaspar & Wetzel (2009) describe a case study in which they participate in an Institutionalized partnership for specific programs in which librarians and writing professors collaborate on curriculum and assignment development. The beautiful thing about this example is that The George Washington University created a program requiring this collaboration and recognizing its benefits. As a result the program has central administrative support that makes it sustainable for the parties involved.

There are also models of embedded librarianship that meet the same criteria without the co-teaching element. In addition to presenting the useful model of integrated instruction that I described in Part I above, Pritchard describes an embedded experience in a nanoscience course at the University of Guelph in Ontario, Canada. Students in the course write an article for a locally published academic journal for which the librarian serves as editor-in-chief, and partners with the faculty member and students to ensure that their research and articles are up to par. This unique example of embedded librarianship involves extensive collaboration with several individuals on campus. Pritchard includes advice for collaborative-minded librarians at the end of her article, much of which echoes my Part 1 Lead Pipe post. She says:

Entering into faculty–librarian partnerships is not a simple matter of introducing oneself to teaching faculty and announcing our plans for embedding IL and AL into their courses. It involves the careful cultivation of collegial relationships, the clear and consistent communication of the specialized knowledge and expertise we bring to the curriculum development process, and a sustained commitment to staying visible, available and involved (389).

Professional projects

Another project area that requires deep collaboration is the librarian-faculty co-written article, conference co-presentation, or co-administered grant project. Cross-disciplinary professional contributions are challenging for any faculty, but the benefits to the collaborators and to the field can be substantial. Fonseca & Viator (2009) recommend that librarian faculty act more like faculty and cultivate multi-disciplinary expertise by entering into collaborative projects (writing, grant proposals) with non-library faculty, and by engaging in active service on campus, particularly in leadership roles. Fonseca & Viator’s highly readable article is a call to action for academic librarians around the nation. While it is common for librarians to serve on campus committees, I wonder how often we actually step up to the chair or president position to assert ourselves as professionals on our campuses. Local leadership by librarians not only allows the individual librarian to increase his skill set but raises the library’s profile on campus by making it clear to faculty that the library is interested and engaged in campus issues at more than an administrative level.

There are a few examples out there of librarians and faculty members co-presenting. As recently as March 2011 the ACRL Conference included a poster session by Ratto (librarian) & Lynch (Marketing professor), entitled “Collaboration unleashes e-book database potential for replacing traditional textbook options.” Their poster describes the cooperative collection development described above.

IV. Final thoughts

The variety of possible ways in which librarians and faculty can partner together, and the spectrum of what those partnerships might look like, far exceeds this post. For instance, though I did not find examples in the literature, I could envision many projects similar to those describe above that involve graduate students as future faculty. MyLead Pipe colleague Hilary Davis described a project at her institution in which her colleague worked with a graduate student association to plan workshops for their members. This program creates the opportunity not only to help graduate students build their research skills, but also to set a foundation for future collaboration when those individuals have moved on to faculty positions.

Overall I have attempted to capture a snapshot here of the wealth of opportunities at hand to remind and inspire us to extend beyond the limits of our buildings, our offices, and our daily interactions. It can be challenging  at times to find the space and the emotional energy to cultivate the relationships required for productive cooperation and collaboration. However, the benefits to students, to faculty, and to our own job satisfaction are guaranteed to make the effort worthwhile.

Notes

For information about the references cited in this post, please view my spreadsheet. You are also welcome to add to it if you know of great collaborative models that might interest our readers.

Acknowledgements

Many thanks to Brooke Ratto, Ellie Collier, Hilary Davis, and Emily Ford for their feedback that helped to shape this post.

by StefanB on Flickr

Introduction

Like many academic librarians, I spend a lot of time reaching out to and trying to build connections with faculty members in my liaison departments. I love this part of my work, but it can be extremely challenging. I bring a somewhat unusual perspective to this challenge as I happen to be married to a faculty member, which gives me the ability to see things from the faculty side as well as from my own perspective. Interestingly, the book Compatibility Breeds Success by Marvin Snider compares collaborative partnerships to marriages, so there’s a double point of relevance here.¹ According to Snider, these partnerships involve a long-term commitment, accountability for one another’s behavior, a commitment to resolving differences, a strong emotional commitment, and “are likely to have a major impact on each other even after the partnership ends.” Instead of love and family, academic participants share a goal of improved teaching, expanded publishing opportunities, or the like.

Recently I’ve broken down my approach to relationship-building with faculty into identifiable steps in order to be more deliberate about my efforts in the future. Those steps are the subject of this post. This program is a proposed set of goals I’ve built for myself, and which I share with the Lead Pipe readership in the hope that you’ll find it useful. For the record, this “program” is still in beta (so to speak), and I welcome your feedback and thoughts in the comments below. I presented a skeleton of this at ACRL’s Ideapower Unconference in Philadelphia last week.

One dictionary² defines collaboration as “Traitorous cooperation with an enemy,” which is a humorous yet apt starting point for the conversation. It seems to me that many librarians have an uneasy relationship with our faculty for a whole variety of reasons, not least of which are the different letters that follow our names. Fortunately, the anxiety that comes from our different backgrounds and job descriptions is based more in misunderstanding than substance, so we can learn to shed those feelings on the way to a new partnership. Instead, let’s redefine collaboration and set our goal as an equal partnership between one or more non-librarian faculty members and ourselves. Personally, I’m interested in the relationships that push the boundaries of the day-to-day working relationships that many of us already have with other faculty on campus.

I recently attended a presentation at the ACRL National Conference in Philadelphia entitled, Engaging Faculty, Creating Allies. I expected the presentation to inform this post and expand my ideas of what collaboration with faculty could look like. While the presentation was good, I was a little disappointed that the “engagement” of faculty described was largely through workshops or colloquia organized by librarians and to which faculty were invited (and, in some cases, paid to attend). While collaboration can happen at such events, I just don’t see that as putting us on the equal footing that is necessary for deep collaboration.  As Jean S. Caspers describes, we can look at librarian-faculty relationships as occurring along a continuum of  three stages: parallel work is the most basic sort of relationship in which we’re working alongside each other for similar goals; cooperative work involves basic coordination of efforts; and collaborative work is the deepest type of partnership (21).³ Sometimes having parallel goals is enough, but collaborative work is more likely to yield the greatest benefits for student learning or research.

That said, it’s time to discuss the five-step program. It begins with a little self-reflection.

Step 1: Be confident

In a 1977 article, H. William Axford commented on the librarian movement for faculty status, and the nervousness of some librarians about the shift. “Part of the problem,” he wrote then, “can be attributed to the nature of library education which simply does not engender in students the attitudes necessary to feel at home within the traditional values of the academy, particularly its canons of scholarship.”⁵ Not to pin the whole problem on library school, but the truth is that librarians are not initiated into our field in the same way that faculty are: by reading scholarship, identifying our own specific area(s) of specialization, presenting at conferences, and building a network of colleagues whose interests overlap our own. This is in part because library school students may go on to work at a whole variety of different organizations. And some of this happens in library school for more motivated students, but the vast majority probably do not have this set of experiences. The result is graduates who have been schooled as professionals but not as scholars. It’s a different way of looking at the world, and a different way of looking at a career. So our challenge is to adopt the scholar’s worldview once we’re actively in the field. It’s ours for the taking.

In fact, a recent study of faculty attitudes found that faculty have a very favorable view of various aspects of collaboration with librarians (rated overall as a 3.98 out of 5).⁶ An earlier study fleshed out some of the differences in how librarians and faculty see each other, pointing to an awareness problem that has led to faculty being ignorant of the scope of librarians’ work.⁷ Considering both of these studies together, it is clear that faculty are not deliberately disregarding librarian expertise, nor are they averse to collaborative opportunities. The door is open.

Step 2: Make the connection

How do we make these connections with faculty? It starts just by reaching out. We can make connections at the reference desk or on a committee, but they’re more likely to happen when we get out of our comfort zones. Getting involved in new faculty candidate interviews. Coffee dates. Going to after-hours socials, plays, exhibits, speakers, and more. Attending campus events and breaking away from the same, comfortable group to meet new people. One librarian at The University of Saskatchewan decided to methodically arrange in-person meetings with a subset of her liaison department and later surveyed them to see whether her personal attention had an effect. It did, with 92% of faculty reporting that their use of the library had increased after the meeting.⁸

As an example, I started my current position and was assigned as a liaison to several departments. For one of those departments I lacked any notable background in the field and wasn’t sure what to expect. Still, with my new librarian enthusiasm, I contacted the department chair and got myself invited to a faculty meeting. They gave me five minutes, and while they were cordial, my reception was less than enthusiastic. I left that meeting feeling that I had failed in making the connection I’d hoped for. Still I regrouped, and decided to focus my energy and time on the department’s faculty liaison to the library (let’s call her Jane). I proposed that Jane and I meet for coffee, and the two of us spent an hour awkwardly sipping hot drinks and trying to find common ground to discuss. It was a challenging conversation, but it was a start.

From the very beginning, building collaborative relationships requires boldness. There’s no hiding behind a mask of introvertedness. The hard part, typically, is making conversation with strangers. Fortunately for us, this is a learnable skill, not an inborn characteristic. Since I was a child, I’ve watched my mother conduct long, effortless conversations with just about anybody who comes near her. Over the years, I’ve discovered that what comes naturally to her—making connections with people—is not just a personality trait, but an attainable skill. The key is: ask them about themselves. Sounds obvious, right? It is, sort of.

And just to be clear, I’m not suggesting that you meet someone and then launch into twenty questions and interrogate them. The best conversations are a give-and-take between two people sharing information about themselves or their viewpoints. But of all the great things I’ve learned from my mother over the course of my lifetime, possibly the most valuable and useful on a daily basis is: people love to talk about themselves. Not in an egotistical way, but in a very straightforward and human way. We all have our unique passions, and we all love to share them. If you can steer the conversation to some of a person’s interests, hobbies, family life, or other passions, you can usually have an effortless conversation for hours. This simple strategy is something we can all adopt in our everyday lives to make friends, network with colleagues, and yes, build collaborative relationships with faculty.

Be bold, be friendly, and be inquisitive: that’s all it really takes. Don’t forget to be yourself, too, and share your own responses to questions they ask. Be a whole person, just as they are. Not everyone on campus will embrace spontaneous conversation with a librarian, but most of them will. And even if someone clearly doesn’t want to connect with you, don’t take it personally. It’s their loss.

Step 3: Reinforce the connection

At this point, the most important thing is to connect with them on their level, not yours. Don’t immediately set up a blog or LibGuide or start bundling RSS feeds unless you know they’re tech-savvy enough to appreciate it. One of the biggest downfalls I see when librarians connect with faculty is an expectation that those faculty will be as technophoric as we are. Don’t count on it. Choose a platform that they’ll use and find comfortable, regardless of how much you love Twitter. If you’re just dying to put your love of technology to work, you can harness RSS feeds or email alerts to track the topics the faculty you know have mentioned as interests. Newly released books or articles make great conversation topics, and you can drop a line when you see their work get published.

It’s also important to be multi-dimensional and not sound like a library salesperson trying to make the sale. If you went from friendly and personal in the initial meeting and now bury them in library paraphernalia, you’re going to lose the personal nature of the connection that is so critical to relationship-building. I’m not suggesting sending them photos of your kids unless they’ve asked for them, but in whatever communication you send, mention something you discussed during that first meeting. Even if it’s work-related, it reinforces the sense that you were listening (which you were, right?). Be personal and professional. Remind them that you are, indeed, a whole person.

Step 4: Build the relationship

Jane and I started meeting for lunch every semester, and I made a point of sending an invitation by email every time unless I heard from her first. As we got to know each other better our conversations got easier and we learned about each other’s jobs and families. We spent most of our time talking about the research classes she taught, and the ways that I might help, but we also talked about a whole array of other topics. Our exchanges became friendlier, more comfortable, and much more fun for both of us.

At this stage, you’re getting to know them as a person as well as a professional, too. Continue to ask questions: how are they doing? How are classes? How is their research? How is whatever they might have mentioned from their personal life? Even more importantly, listen to the answers and learn as much as you can. Take notes afterwards, for future reference, especially if you have a less-than-stellar memory. It may sound mercenary, but taking the time to remember details about someone means you care, and that’s a good thing. Hyun-Duck Chung from North Carolina State University is a great example of a librarian who embraced a business librarianship role fully by putting herself in a position to learn about her liaison department from the inside out.¹⁰ Chung notes, “Genuine excitement about a common goal can help ignite the relationship-building process, but cultivating it requires sustained engagement with individuals over time, and being open to learning from each other” (165).

Step 5: Go Collaborate

Once you can see the potential for collaboration, go ahead and talk to the individual. Be sure to describe the project you have in mind as well as the benefits to both of you. Ruth McCorkle concisely describes “four main components of research kinship: a willingness to share ideas and the ability to critique and respond to others’ ideas; the recognition of one another’s talents; the joint sharing of an idea and crafting of a hypothesis; and, the commitment of time and resources in a shared venture” (539).¹¹ Be willing to give and take, consider other directions, or change the project completely in response to their feedback and ideas. A professional collaboration is a negotiation, and you’ll have to be flexible to make it a success.

Jane and I talked about an idea I had to tier instruction for a series of courses she taught that required research papers. The same cohort of students moved through all these classes together, so I thought it would be worthwhile to introduce research skills to them gradually, building each semester on what they had learned last time. She liked the idea, so I reviewed all her syllabi and put together a proposal. She liked the proposal, made a few suggestions that I incorporated, and then we put it into action. I was happy to move from typical one-shots to a deeper way of working with her students, and Jane was delighted to see the improvements in her students’ work at the end of the series.

So the collaboration is on! After that, you just have to maintain your end of the deal: meet your deadlines, do your share of the work, and most crucial of all, keep in touch. Communicate regularly to maintain the relationship. And if something changes in your relationship and you find that you have to work with someone new, don’t be discouraged. Just start the process over again and give yourself time to get back to the same level.

Sound easy?

Further Reading

Notes

Acknowledgements

I hope those reading this post had a warm, happy Thanksgiving, surrounded by family and friends. I spent most of last week in Florida at my parents’ “snowbird” house with my immediate family, all of us having traveled at least 1,200 miles to eat, drink, and laugh together by the pool. While there I spent my downtime reading a moving memoir about homelessness entitled Breakfast at Sally’s. The irony of reading such a book at Thanksgiving did not escape me, nor did the dramatic contrast between my comfortable lifestyle and that of former publishing mogul Richard LeMieux. LeMieux’s business collapsed in 2002 and left him homeless and clinically depressed, after which his wife left him and his adult children turned their backs. About to take his own life, he was stopped from jumping off a bridge only by the barking of his beloved dog.

Breakfast at Sally’s is about LeMieux’s struggles to survive and find new meaning in life, offering a unique if somewhat darker perspective on American culture. Throughout the author’s sad experience some bright points appear, however, including the many churches and organizations such as the Salvation Army (which the homeless dub “Sally’s”) that provide free meals, clothing, and a sense of community for those on the streets. The kindness of those who dedicate their time and energy to keeping these associations running is critical in keeping LeMieux and his fellows alive and fed.

Another bright point that appears early in the story is the public library, about which LeMieux says:

The library was another sanctuary for the homeless. There was always plenty for everyone, rich and poor. Those without a roof over their heads could escape with Wolfe, Kafka, or Robert Louis Stevenson and have shelter from the heat and the cold, the rain and the pain (31).

This passage, along with repeated references to the importance of books to various homeless characters in the story, gave me pause. The small city where I live, Boise, Idaho, may have lower rates of homelessness than larger metropolitan areas around the nation (12 people out of every 10,000 are homeless in Idaho, versus 22 nationally according to the National Alliance to End Homelessness), but even in my university library we see individuals on a regular basis who appear to fit the profile. Have I ever helped them, or has my library been doing anything to help? Not beyond the definitions of what we do for any other community user, and in fact perhaps less. We may watch them out of the corners of our eyes to make sure they don’t cause any trouble, and we tolerate their presence. If they have a photo identification card we’ll let them use a public computer for an hour, and if not they can have ten minutes or so at a quick-use machine. If no students complain, they can nap in one of our lounge chairs upstairs in a quiet corner. That’s not much, particularly when you consider the situation from LeMieux’s vantage point on the streets. The obstacles between his circumstances–with no address, phone number, or job references–and a rebuilt, stable life seemed insurmountable.

Of course libraries aren’t homeless shelters or counseling centers and homelessness is complicated problem that libraries alone don’t have the power to solve. The Madison, Wisconsin, Central Library is an example of the conflicts that can arise when a library is so popular with the homeless that other patrons object. On the one hand, the library is providing a positive experience for homeless individuals. Pat Schneider, author of the above-linked article from The Cap Times, writes:

Ask [the homeless] why they hang out at the library and they’ll talk about comfort. It’s warm. It’s dry. There are public restrooms. But the library offers much more. “They’ve got books and magazines and music. I love the library,” enthuses one young woman.

[T]he crowd on the library patio turns off some, library officials admit. “I hear anecdotally of people saying they prefer to go to branches because they feel safer,” says Theodore “Tripp” Widder, president of the Madison Library Board.

If librarians and others can first recognize their own attitudinal hang-ups, understanding what makes them view welfare mothers and homeless people, for example, unfavorably, and ultimately grasping that poverty—not poor people—is the problem, that poverty can be reduced if not ended, and that the most vulnerable and dispossessed among us are citizens and neighbors who deserve compassion, support, and respect—if we can do these things in our heads and hearts, then there’s a real chance to overcome classism.

Perhaps the strongest response to the Poor People’s Policy has been within the Social Responsibilities Round Table, which created their Hunger, Homelessness & Poverty Task Force to advance the objectives of the policy. The Task Force expanded those objectives and provided more specific recommendations for libraries interested in improving their accessibility to all, while working on raising awareness and action. Still, one task force can’t do it alone. To make libraries more welcoming and supportive for the poor and the homeless, individual libraries need to adopt the Poor People’s Policy and take responsibility for those in need in their own communities.

A 2002 article by Lan Shen, “The Dilemma of Urban Library Service for the Homeless,” (Current Studies in Librarianship, v. 26 no. 1/2), breaks down existing library services for the homeless into three categories. The first is partnering with local government or nonprofit agencies to provide learning opportunities for the homeless, perhaps by providing lists of local resources or making meeting rooms available for support groups. The second category is bringing library programs or services out to homeless centers or shelters, such as storytimes for families. The third category is in-library programs and services like literacy programs, “camps” for homeless children, or referral services. Shen’s article is helpful as a starting point in beginning to think about some of the potential ways to serve the homeless in our communities. Some libraries are even finding ways to expand beyond those categories to provide out-of-the-box initiatives in their communities. The H.O.M.E. Page Café in Philadelphia is a prime example.

The H.O.M.E. Page Café

One of the most powerful initiatives in libraries to support the homeless is the H.O.M.E. Page Café at the Free Library of Philadelphia. This library coffee shop grew out of a partnership between the library and Project H.O.M.E. (Housing, Opportunities for Employment, Medical Care, Education), a local nonprofit working on homelessness and related issues. The two had initially collaborated to solve the library’s problem with their restrooms, which were popular with the homeless to the point of alienating other patrons. Project H.O.M.E. offered to fund a program in which formerly homeless individuals in supported housing were hired as restroom attendants to monitor the restrooms and keep them clean. The library watched their restroom problems dissolve, while needy individuals got back on track to supporting themselves. The program has been extremely successful and cemented the partnership between the two organizations (see “The Story of the H.O.M.E. Page Café” in Public Libraries Jan/Feb 2009, pp. 32-34).

When the Free Library of Philadelphia decided to create a coffee shop, Project H.O.M.E. proved to be an invaluable collaborator once again. They proposed a café whose primary purpose would be not revenue but job training for formerly homeless individuals living in supported housing. They obtained a grant, garnered equipment donations from Starbucks, and brought in a local bakery interested in supporting social causes. They hired employees, not based on their knowledge or experience, but their need and potential (there are a few examples in other fields, too, for instance Gould Farm in Massachusetts). The result of this partnership was a library café that helps the homeless get back on their feet while inspiring loyal patronage among socially aware customers. Through collaboration and creativity, the Free Library of Philadelphia and Project H.O.M.E. have built a model that could be constructively reproduced in cities across the nation. Hopefully, it will be.

Crossing Library Types to Serve the Homeless

The Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Library in San José, California, combines the San José Public Library and the San José State University Library in one collaborative system to better serve both communities. And they do! In an article last year in The Reference Librarian, “Addressing the Needs of the Homeless: A San José Library Partnership Approach,” Lydia N. Collins, Francis Howard, and Angie Miraflor describe how the libraries joined together not only in a shared building, but also in a combined effort to bring services to the homeless in their community. They formed a task force to identify needs, priorities, and community partners, and began a concerted outreach initiative.

Like The Free Library of Philadelphia, the Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Library partnered with local organizations in San José such as InnVision, which serves low-income people in the San José area. The library brought computer classes and storytimes to InnVision’s centers, and the two organizations plan to expand their joint offerings. Further, the library began to plan their own in-library programming to address the needs of homeless patrons, such as assistance with job applications, legal information, and English as a second language training. The library brings social workers and lawyers into the library to offer advice and guidance to the homeless during free sessions. And to top it all off, the library administration provided customer service training to librarians and staff to increase their sensitivity to homeless patrons. Collins et al report:

There are two on-going programs targeted specifically at the homeless: storytimes for families and computer classes. Both programs are conducted at homeless agencies and bring in 35 to 40 children and adults. There is also a weekly “Lawyers in the Library” program that offers free 20-minute legal consultations, and there is a continuous waiting list for this service (114).

While Collins et al. acknowledge that they need to assess current initiatives and seek new ways to support the homeless in their community, they are actively experimenting with a variety of approaches and adjusting their services and programs based on the feedback they receive. By building an environment of sensitivity and accommodation, they have embraced the Poor People’s Policy and are a model example of a multiple-library-type partnership created for the benefit of the homeless in their area. Although it is unusual for an academic and public library to share a space, that is not a barrier to cross-library collaboration on programs and other initiatives similar to those at the Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Library.

Conclusion

I certainly don’t have the answers to homelessness, but perhaps in the writing of this post I have uncovered a few answers to homelessness as it relates to libraries. The first and most obvious conclusion is that libraries that have “problems” with homeless patrons should seek out partners in the community to help them solve those problems in a way that will simultaneously assist the homeless population. No one wants to use the library restroom to bathe, nor is the library anyone’s first choice for napping. The initiatives described in this post—and I’m sure there are more that I haven’t uncovered—reveal that collaboration with organizations already working on homeless or low-income issues can often provide meaningful solutions that can even offer positive press for the library. Further, any library that serves the public would do well to adopt the Poor People’s Policy and consider new, collaborative ways to serve those in need in the local community instead of tossing them out the door.

Another conclusion we can extract from the stories provided here is the undeniable fact that libraries of any type can help homeless individuals rebuild their lives if we can eliminate classist attitudes and policies and stop judging people based on appearance (and aroma). Like the libraries described above, we can plan or host programming targeted to the needs of those on the streets. We can educate ourselves on local organizations and laws that the homeless should be aware of, and reach out to them with that information. These initiatives don’t have to be time-consuming for those of us already stretched thin; they may just require contacting local partners and offering space or other support.

Above all, it’s important for those of us working in libraries to keep in mind that, like it or not, libraries are a lifeline for those without homes. We provide safe spaces, a sense of community, and a means of communication. In Breakfast at Sally’s LeMieux describes the isolating effect of homelessness caused by living outside the daily bustle of work, home, and family. Libraries have the ability to create opportunities that empower people to reconnect with their world. As individuals we can help by putting aside our distractions, digging down into our humanity, and treating all our patrons with compassion, kindness, and generosity. It may not be in our job descriptions, but it is in our power to make a difference.

Suggestions for further reading:

Gehner, J. (2010). Libraries, Low-Income People, and Social Exclusion. Public Library Quarterly, 29(1), 39-47. doi:10.1080/01616840903562976.

LeMieux, R. (2008). Breakfast at Sally’s: One Homeless Man’s Inspirational Journey. New York: Skyhorse Pub.

Three years, twenty committees, twelve hundred instruction sessions, forty thousand monograph purchases, and half a million reference questions later, I’m at the point in this librarian job where I have enough experience to know how to get things done, and also enough to wonder, “What exactly am I doing?” The more you know, the more you know you don’t know, as they say.

I exaggerate the numbers, but the above four things do seem to encompass the majority of what I do from day to day. Of course there’s a wide variety of additional tasks that fill up my time in the office, from updating my library’s Facebook page to presenting at conferences. All these things combine into the work portion of my life. Is it a good job? Undoubtedly. Is it fulfilling? Usually. Fun? Sometimes. But I can’t help but wonder what it’s all for.

The danger of the summer lull, particularly for academic librarians — but perhaps for others, too — is that after the frenetic pace of the regular semesters, we suddenly have time to reflect. I call it a “danger” because it’s much easier to speed through life and work without asking too many questions. Questions can get you into trouble if you don’t like the answers. But then a little trouble isn’t always a bad thing.

My spring semester ended about a month ago. Immediately after finals I went on a lovely long vacation, and now I’m back at work, waking up early thanks to jet lag, and taking a little time to think and ask questions. After all, this year was my midpoint in moving towards tenure at my institution, a circumstance that required me to submit formal documents to my colleagues so that they could offer constructive feedback about my progress in this position. It seems fitting, now that I have been evaluated by others on my librarianness, that I do a little review of my own and decide what being a librarian means to me.

The Librarian Identity, or Lack Thereof

One of my favorite things about being a librarian, and an academic reference and instruction librarian in particular, is the variety: the variety of tasks and duties I’m responsible for, the variety of people I interact with, the variety of information and topics I deal with on a daily basis. The average day in the life of an academic librarian is notoriously difficult to pin down, since the list of potential tasks accomplished in a single day is seemingly endless. I enjoy knowing that every day I do something a little bit different and yet it all somehow fits under my job description.

On the other hand, it makes me wonder if my job description should be quite so broad. Not that mine is different from those of identical jobs in other places; it’s not. I greatly enjoy the many types of tasks that cross my desk on a daily basis, but I see a red flag, too, in the sheer yawning chasm of work before me. In the back of my mind is the nagging concern that my work might be oversized, unfocused, and possibly on the edge of unmanageable. Yet if I wanted to narrow it down to a few critical tasks, I’m not sure I could; too much else would be neglected or would get in the way. So I find myself asking, what’s at the core of it all? What is the real work of librarianship?

This last question brings to mind a poem by Gary Snyder, “I Went Into the Maverick Bar,” in which the main character of the poem adapts his appearance to fit in with the customers of a country bar in New Mexico. The real work of this poem, the work of coming to terms with place and identity, is far larger than any job, but if we shrink it down and tweak it slightly (with apologies to Mr. Snyder), the nature of the poem is still applicable.

Yes, I’m calling librarianship my “maverick bar.” Not literally of course, since our workplaces in no way resemble the bourbon-and-beer scene in the poem, but I have the sense sometimes that librarians are a little bit like those folks in the bar – a little displaced, not quite sure who they are or what they should be doing. Every culture has a life of its own beyond the individuals, and our library culture, too, is not quite native to where we now live. Libraries were built for a print-based culture of collecting and preserving, but that culture has shifted dramatically around us while we continue to dance, a little awkwardly, to the band.

Our search for identity is clear to me as the source of many younger librarians’ efforts over the past several decades to combat the “librarian stereotype.” Any culture that is so intent on making a sharp break from the recent past makes me suspicious.  I’m unable to accept that the inherent nature of librarianship has changed dramatically, even if it sports a nose ring and carries a smartphone. Then there are the varied, insistent, even desperate initiatives to redefine our buildings in ways that will continue to appeal to library users, campus administrations, trustees, and boards of directors. I’ll be first in line to admire these new buildings and renovations, with their polished work spaces and bright, airy environments, but these new buildings may simultaneously advance us even further on the path to identity crisis. They include less and less of any particular thing that one would identify as characteristic of a library. After all, what purpose does a bookless, wholly electronic library serve that distinguishes it from an overblown student center? In this article from the Mercury News, note the paragraph:

Libraries are the very heart of the research university, the center for scholarship. But the accumulation of information online is shifting their sense of identity.

Shifting their sense of identity to what, exactly? The article doesn’t say.

These days we’re better at knowing what we’re not (bun-wearing shushers) than putting our finger on what exactly we are and what we’re here for. Perhaps it’s this insecurity that causes librarians to try to do so many things all at once. We leap into social networks, digital repositories, and online services; we reconceive our collections; we become publishers as well as collectors; we reach out to our communities, campuses, and potential donors, stretching ourselves thin; we digitize; we redefine our jobs, and redefine them again; we rebuild, restructure, rearrange; we stand alert, ready for anything. And even when we are self-conscious enough to acknowledge our situation, we still don’t have any answers. In a blog post more than a year ago Bobbi Newman pointed to this problem, but rather than offering solutions she ends with the (admittedly potent) line, “We’ve got to change, and I mean really change.”

The urgency and the need for change is clear to all of us; what no one can seem to put their finger on is how to change. And that leads to more identity crisis and more desperate grabbing at the technologies, tools, and strategies that might work in the short-term. We’re running on the information hamster wheel; we simply can’t do everything. And rather than try to do it all, it might be better if we do, well, nothing for a while. You don’t tell someone hyperventilating in panic to run some sprints, do you? No, you give them a paper bag or some distraction, speak calmly, and encourage them to sit down, relax, and put their fear aside. Similarly, what libraries may need to do is stop, take a breather, release our fears of irrelevance and ask our patrons, campuses, administrations, donors — and yes, ourselves — what is our real work and what does it look like in 2010 and beyond?

If indeed libraries have become irrelevant in the age of the almighty Google — and I don’t think we have — wouldn’t you rather know than keep panting along on the hamster wheel, accomplishing nothing?

In Search of the Real Work

What librarians do have is a set of core values that serves as the backbone of our identity and draws together even those working in nontraditional positions. Increasing access to all types of information and all perspectives while protecting intellectual freedom and privacy; these are the values that unite us. I think every library student gets (or should get) a little rush upon first discovering the ALA Library Bill of Rights and realizing the larger issues that play a role in this field. If we boil it down, the major value expressed in this document is intellectual freedom, the full and equal access to all types of information for everyone. In my mind, this is one of the most critical roles a librarian can play. (Though I have heard some debate on this; for more, stay tuned for Ellie Collier’s post later this month).

The values that guide librarians don’t address the core tasks that cement these values to our daily lives in the field. While I would like to believe that my primary responsibilities reflect these values, I don’t knowingly achieve any goals related to intellectual freedom in my daily tasks. There is some gap between what I stand for as a librarian and what I do in practice, as all idealism shrivels a bit in the face of reality. I must please my boss, my tenure reviewers, my students, my campus administration. At a minimum, I hope my theory and practice don’t contradict each other.

I wonder, too, if there are common tasks across all librarians’ various job types, professional organizations, and institutions. I can’t think of any other career that has so many different manifestations of what work in that field might look like. I’m not sure whether to call it flexibility or lack of focus. Just think about the various titles that librarians work under: Emerging Technologies Librarian, Copyright Librarian, First-Year Services Librarian, Digital Initiatives Librarian, as well as all the ones that are more traditional and familiar. Not to mention librarians working in other information-related organizations that aren’t libraries.

A considered look backwards at the librarian’s primary roles throughout history is interesting in the effort to make meaning out of this. In “Tracing the Archetypal Academic Librarian,”  Stephen E. Bales compares academic librarian job duties during two periods of early history with those of today. After reviewing the activities that took place in libraries during the time of Assurbanipal (roughly 600s BCE) and Alexandria (200s BCE), Bales concludes that most of the primary roles of librarians have not changed over the course of several millennia: librarians from all periods of time have been involved in these tasks: identifying, selecting, acquiring, organizing, retrieving, conserving, and conducting some sort of scholarship. Bales is not the only one to note that librarianship, historically, has taken place largely behind the scenes, and this was still the case in the late eighteen hundreds.

No longer. Bales’ insights might be helpful if not for the fact that I do very few of these things as part of my daily work as an academic librarian in 2010. Not many librarians I know do much of this at all. In fact, the two things I spend a large proportion of my time on – outreach and teaching – didn’t even make the cut in Bales’ listing of major roles. Certainly in former millennia librarians had no interest in sharing their collections; documents were reserved for elite and wealthy scholars. Nor does Bales mention professional service outside of scholarship, which is a tremendous time commitment for many academic librarians. In my opinion, Bales’ historical assessment of librarian duties doesn’t really cut to the “real work” of the field today.

To gain a more modern perspective on the priorities of a librarian position, we can review evaluation documents from institutions that break out task areas into particular percentages. For instance, I happened upon a handbook from Florida International University Libraries (pdf) that prioritizes the work of an information services librarian in this manner:

35% Reference/Research Assistance

25% Information Literacy

15% Collection Development

5% Liaison

15% Non-Scheduled Activities (service, conferences, professional development)

5% Other Duties as Assigned by Department Head

While I don’t advocate trying to break down one’s work schedule according to this sort of math (think of all the grey areas), it does make it clear that answering questions and teaching are by far the top two responsibilities at this institution. That sounds about right to me. Of course, if we look closely at each of those categories we can see that they each encompass a wide range of more specific tasks. “Information Literacy,” for example, might include teaching (one-time workshops, for-credit courses, and perhaps additional sessions), assessment of current instruction, planning for future instruction, creating promotional and informational materials, etc. Although it’s just one priority area, I’m sure it could fill a full-time librarian’s work schedule all on its own.

It’s clear to most of us working in academic librarian positions – and probably all librarian positions – that the full array of responsibilities and duties our jobs encompass are simply not achievable in a regular work week. In case we thought it was just our imaginations, the University of California at Berkeley conducted a workload survey of their librarians and received 31 responses that indicated overwhelmingly that getting the work done is more than full-time commitment. It’s no surprise that Berkeley librarians largely felt obliged to work some evenings and weekends to keep up; even those in smaller institutions do the same. This makes it even more important to identify what our real work is, and to prioritize tasks in a way that empowers us to accomplish it.

Conclusions, Such as They Are

There’s not much discussion in the literature of librarianship, so far as I can tell, to answer my rather philosophical question about what our “real work” is. I have located books and articles about job duties and priorities, some of which I mentioned above, but little that attempts to dig to the core of our professional beings. Historically, I could argue that the real work revolved around collecting and preserving documents in the interests of greater knowledge. Today, although that is one piece of the work most librarians do, it has certainly been deemphasized.

The more I consider this question, too, the more I doubt that it could possibly have a rational, scientific answer. I relive that grad-school rush upon reading the Library Bill of Rights, which is about as real as anything I could point to in this field. I think about the deep, true gratification I enjoy when I manage to connect an interested, intellectual person with new information that contributes to their perspective on a topic. I think about my colleagues in academic libraries, and about my colleagues in public, school, and special libraries. Isn’t it true, in the end, that our real work is more about values than tasks?

And that greatest value of all, even beyond any document compiled by any professional association: Knowledge, with a capital “K.” I see no work in librarianship more real than the collection, protection, and dissemination of Knowledge, and the empowerment of others in means to acquire it. Although libraries historically were more about hoarding Knowledge than sharing it, our work has not otherwise changed much over the millennia. The internet, while making information more widely available, has simultaneously obscured true Knowledge and increased the importance of our real work.

This revelation doesn’t directly help me manage my workload and organize tasks, but it does help to keep me theoretically and emotionally grounded in my job. My real work is Knowledge. If I hold that goal in mind, the details of how I accomplish it on daily basis begin to fall into place. Some of my duties, like teaching, support Knowledge directly. Other tasks, like tracking reference questions, are not tied to that higher goal but are necessary for the reality of my workplace. If I want to continue in my job, I can’t just stop doing those less crucial tasks, but I can prioritize my efforts and save the best of my energy for the real work of librarianship.

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Readers: I don’t speak for every librarian, just myself. What are your thoughts about the “real work” of librarianship? Your comments below are welcome.

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Author’s Note, Or, A Confession and Suggestion for Further Reading: I’m embarrassed to say that I was unfamiliar with (or had forgotten) “The Darien Statements on the Library and Librarians” until after writing this post, but now that I have I strongly encourage anyone who is thinking about the real work of librarianship to read them. The document is an excellent, timeless vision of our field, and I nod to the wisdom of those who conceived it.

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My thanks to the entire cast of ItLwtLP as well as Eric Frierson and Rachel Slough for their invaluable feedback on drafts of this post. I have never before had so many helpful and insightful responses to any single piece of writing, and I hope the results reflect it.