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I was out sick last week and now I have to move out of my cozy office and into this place:
Tragic, huh? Please bear with me... new posts coming soon.
Follow-up
My stay in this refugee camp is supposedly temporary. We have a major HVAC (air/heating) project underway and several of us are homeless for the time being. I’m afraid I’m going to end up like that guy in Office Space, tucked away in the basement. Forgotten.
It looks like Amanda and I started a trend. The “User Experience Librarian” is catching on: Agnes Scott & Miami University (Oxford)
Who’s next?
My job is very different than what’s being posted at other libraries though. I do less with technology now, particularly 2.0 stuff, compared to when I was a reference and instruction librarian. It feels like half my day is spent writing and responding to emails—very 1.0.
I wrote some time ago about a departmental wiki and the less than stellar result. I know, I know—wikis are so passé these days. Everybody’s got a wiki, why am I wasting your time? I totally agree. New Year, time to move on.
Anyway, we’re now in a soft launch phase of a library-wide collaborative web space. (We’ve blotted out the term intranet because that’s so 1990’s.) Our Systems Department (and a wide assortment of non-systems staff) pulled together an instance of Clearspace software which we have dubbed Lib-Share. It offers a suite of tools including blogs, wikis, photo/file sharing, polls, announcements, and message boards. It also authenticates using our campus accounts—so there is no need to keep track of additional user names/passwords.
The main page looks like this:
Each department / unit has its own section and can set a variety of access privileges to the content. Some material might be limited to the department only, but the spirit of the space is openness.
We can also form groups to create a virtual working space, share documents/files, and take advantage of the various conversation/collaboration tools. Oh and it integrates nicely with Spark, our library-wide IM service:
So hopefully the original idea will be preserved—a unified space for all public service desks to share and manage their content. We’ll see how it goes.
A few weeks ago Steven Bell posted about librarian careers on the ACRL Blog. He urged us not to worry about where we are professionally- that careers are like marathons. He described the ebb and flow of the hills and valleys that we encounter and instead of getting caught up in the spotlight, encouraged us to think strategically about how we can position ourselves for the next five to ten years.
Well spoken for his generation, however my generation only cares about celebrity. Turn on CNN and you’ll probably see something about Britney Spears within ten minutes. Flip to MTV and you’ll see 16 year old princesses crying because some second-rate band won’t play at a party. Open the New York Times and you’ll read about “hip” librarians.
We’ve become a culture of instant success; Sartre’s nightmare of fashion above all else. The American Dream has shifted away from a good job, a white picket fence, two kids, and a dog--- and is now about prominence, contempo-organic living space, and 15 minutes of reality TV fame.
And the thing is… I would not want it any other way.
What the library profession needs are transformative personalities. Emeril Lagasse is a perfect example. Before he came along my diet was microwaveable, and cooking shows were horribly boring. Martha Stewart is my grandmother’s brand. Emeril brought style, flair, showmanship, along with expertise. He opened the doors for others like Bobby Flay, Jamie Oliver, and even Rachael Ray. If you look at the Food Network demographics over the past decade I’m sure you’ll see a dramatic increase in male viewers, and it’s not all just because of Giada.
Emeril transformed cooking; he made it cool, popular, and approachable. The same can be said for Howard Schultz and coffee. Before Starbucks the town I grew up in had one coffee house where lots of wanna-be pretentious artist types hung out, along with the wanna-be wanna-be’s like me. Growing up no one talked about coffee, that was something our parents drank. Now there is coffee shop on every corner and someday there will be one in every library.
Emeril and Schultz have had a tremendous impact not only on the food and beverage industry, but on our society. Why don’t librarians think like that? Why don’t we talk about experiences instead of transactions? Bell urges us to ford the river, but I say build big bridges.
Happy New Year everyone.
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