professional development
By - Thursday, October 6, 2011 - 10:20pm
October 7, 2011 is Ada Lovelace Day, an annual celebration of women in the STEM disciplines. It was created after a psychological study showed that women need role models to believe that they can do something. I love this day. Obviously, it’s a lot of fun to give props to people and tell them how awesome you think they are, but it’s also so so SO necessary.
Women have been involved in the sciences for years – it’s just that they haven’t always gotten credit for their contributions. (See: Franklin, Rosalind) (This is also true for many things before mid-twentieth century, not just science, of course.) Cultural expectations have also discouraged girls from thinking that they can do science and math. Everyone knows about the Barbie that happily chirped “Math is Class is Tough!” but that was almost 20 years ago. Things have changed, right? Nope. Just this year JCPenney sold a t-shirt aimed at pre-teens that proudly proclaimed, “I”m too pretty to do homework so my brother has to do it for me.”
*twitch*
(One day a defense attorney is going to try to excuse my actions because of temporary insanity. Don’t listen to them. I did that shit on purpose and enjoyed every minute of it.)
Here’s some facts, as laid out by Shankar Vedantam: Less than one in five professors of science and math at top research universities in the United States is a woman. The gender distribution of engineers at top Silicon Valley companies is similar to the gender distribution of the audience at your average strip club. Well, okay then. So on Ada Lovelace Day we try and point out women that have achieved (and are still achieving) great things in the science and technology fields in the hope that it drills down through the noise and more little girls grow up to become happy nerds.
In my little corner of the STEM world – library and information science – it’s always been easy to find women pioneers and successes. Librarianship, after all, has always traditionally been a “woman’s job.” That being said, back when I was a librarian, it was always surprising to me how often I was still the only woman in a meeting, especially when the meeting involved “techie” stuff.
Now my career has shifted slightly and I’m more involved in the tech world. It’s definitely a more masculine environment, but there are still plenty of women to admire and who deserve a kudos. Off the top of my head I can think of Courtney Minick and Cicely Wilson from Justia, Sara Frug from LII, Erika Wayne from Standford and my colleague Deb Quentel from CALI. Actually, up until early this week, I’ve been planning on doing a sort of “Women of Free Law” post for this year’s Ada Lovelace Day.
(Yes, I realize now that this title sounds like a cheesecake calendar or a playboy spread.)
I changed my mind about this post when I got an email report of a Sarah Glassmeyer fan spotted in the wild. I get the occasional fan letter, but more often than not friends and colleagues tell me about the nice things people say about me. It’s always sort of weird when this happens since I don’t really think there’s anything that special or exciting about myself but I am always very touched and flattered when it does.
It also worries me a little. While I agree with the premise of Ada Lovelace Day and that it’s great to have role models (like I said, I definitely have some) there’s a danger when you start to put people on pedestals. You start to think that your heroes have some sort of special talent that only the gifted few get that have allowed them to achieve what they have. Mere mortals like yourself couldn’t possibly do what they do…and so you don’t even try. As someone who is called a “hero” and put on pedestal (and again, thank you so much!), lemme tell you…it’s really not that hard to be a hero. If I can do it, anyone can.
So here’s my thought for Ada Lovelace Day….Be your own hero.
Figure out who you are and what you believe in. Learn to like yourself. Get involved in the things that appeal to you. Spend your days doing things that make it easier to go to sleep at night. Anytime anyone asks you “why” reply “why not.” Don’t do anything to win friends or awards or to become “famous.” Anything given to you can be taken away and besides, external validation is for pussies. Never compromise your beliefs or lose your self-respect. Be your own hero.
Photo credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/m-c/
By - Tuesday, June 21, 2011 - 8:57pm
(Part One of this two part series appears here)
I recently attended “The Future of Law Libraries: The Future is Now?” workshop hosted by the Harvard Law School Library and the Berkman Center for Internet and Society. Even though it was only one day, there were too many things discussed for me to adequately cover in this post. Fortunately, John Palfrey, host with the most and Henry N. Ess III Professor of Law and Vice Dean for Library and Information Resources at Harvard Law School live blogged the proceedings here. The event was also video recorded and tweeted – you can find those media as well as other relevant materials on the program’s website.
Although the program was about “the future”, for me the day was almost a master class in the history of American law libraries. So many greats of the profession were there, either on the program or in attendance – the names of which I’m not even going to attempt to list out of fear of missing someone, but you know who I mean. Which brings me to theme one of the day, which I tried to emphasize in my portion of the program…
I like talking to more experienced librarians. Obviously, there’s the “not taught in books” skill sharing one can get – for example, the best way to wake up a suspicious looking patron that’s sleeping or possibly dead in your reading room. But honestly, a lot of those you learn on the job from your more experienced co-workers. What I really enjoy is hearing the more social stories from them, when Great Names and Institutions have a more human face put on them. And it’s not to say that these stories aren’t professionally valuable. It’s usually within these stories that one learns about the previous issues and controversies that consumed librarians in the past.
One thing that I have found lacking in both my legal and library educations is the enculturalization that other academic disciplines get in their graduate education programs. As I unfortunately phrased it to the traditional teaching faculty participants during my Cambridge retreat, “You guys are lucky – you’re taught to be academics.” Um, that did not go over well. Score one for the famous Sarah Glassmeyer Charm.
Here’s what I mean: for example, my sister holds a Ph.D. in environmental chemistry. (She works for the government, though, not in academia.) During her graduate education, she worked closely with an advisor and a group of co-advisees. Adorably, such relationships are often referred to as academic parents and academic siblings. There’s also cousins and grandparents….and chemists, at least, are able trace back their lineage from advisor to advisee several hundred years. Every year at the big chemistry nerd conference, her advisor has a dinner for all of his current and former advisees. The total effect of this is that when they enter professional life, they have a fully formed professional and social network (the original kind – not the poke/throw sheep at each other kind) waiting for them. And it is also though this close advisor/advisee relationship that a newer graduate student can begin to learn the history of and behaviors appropriate to their specific discipline.
Contrast that to either law or library science. The law school experience is not appreciably different for those going into academia, practice or an alternate career. And MLS programs? They too have little delineation based on future careers and more often than not feel like a trial similar to getting a union card rather than an opportunity for the creation of professionals, let alone academic professionals..
So, what to do? Of course there are programs such as University of Washington and Arizona which have MLS programs with law library concentrations and I assume cover some of this, but not everyone can go there and for some of us, that horse long ago left the barn. It would be nice for there to be formal programs offered by professional organizations or libraries – such as the retreat I went to with my coworkers or this Harvard workshop day – to fill in some of these gaps. The newer librarian is also going to have to take some initiative to find these things out for themselves. But, speaking as a newer librarian, it’s hard to know what you don’t know until you realize you don’t know it.
For example, mixed in with all the names I recognized at the Future of Law Libraries event were some names I didn’t quite recognize. So I googled them. The professional biography of one made me yell, “Oh SHIT.” at my computer. PROTIP: Not all of the Great Names and Pioneers have their name on a legal research casebook nor do they have a giant neon sign over their head that says, “I’ve been doing awesome things since before you were a twinkle in your father’s eye so listen up.” I suppose I should have taken their presence at the workshop as a sign that they were someone important, but then again I was there and I’m, well…me.
I don’t know that I have a perfect solution, but I am now collaborating on a scheme that will hopefully alleviate some of the ignorance that younger librarians such as myself have about the history of our profession as well as preserve it before it’s too late. Rich Leiter had the idea of creating a StoryCorps-like collection of law librarian tales and together we will hopefully make this happen. We want to record short (~5 minute) stories about the people, places and events that have shaped the present and will shape the future of law libraries. So stay tuned to hear more about that as details emerge.
There were two other strong themes through the day: (1) Libraries can’t act alone, and (2) in the future, we’re going to look back at many present controversies and wonder what the big deal was. One of the things that I really appreciated about the day was that the speaker list wasn’t composed of all law librarians – there were technologists, teaching faculty (both from law and other disciplines) and other types of library administrators. (Although it was not as diverse as it could have been. See Greg Lambert’s critique – which I agree with – here.) The law library world cannot remain insular and hope to survive. There are projects that libraries can and should collaborate on and, frankly, some really great ideas to steal.
This is such an exciting time for legal information…the time is foreseeable that no longer will a limited number of companies control the publication legal materials. I don’t just mean primary law. A second front in the Free Law War is opening up with the open publication of secondary materials such as journals and casebooks. Henry Ford once said, “If I had asked people what they wanted, they’d have said ‘faster horses.’” The relative ease of electronic publishing means that there are people and organizations out there that are looking to find solutions beyond “faster horses” and creating something more sophisticated and creative than just an electronic copy of a traditional print resource. Libraries and librarians must choose to work with them and lend their expertise to these endeavors or be left behind.
So that’s really just a brief glimpse at what was such a personally and professionally rewarding day. I’m very grateful to John Palfrey and the organizers for inviting me to attend and participate in the event. I’m hopeful that some of the conversations that we started at Harvard will continue on into the future and I’m very excited to see what sorts of things the future will hold.
By - Tuesday, June 21, 2011 - 8:49pm
Gentle Reader, I have had an amazing few weeks.
The first part I’m almost embarrassed to write about because I am so ridiculously fortunate to have participated in it. My employer sends all new faculty members (yes, including librarians!) to a week long retreat to spend time talking about our first year experiences and what it means to be a faculty member. And I don’t mean that we talked about classroom management techniques or the daily grind of faculty life. We talked about things like the purpose and history of higher education, shaping minds vs. shaping character, and whether we felt education was a vocation. And oh yeah, and they sent us to Cambridge, England to do it.
I KNOW, RIGHT???
It wasn’t a total cakewalk…actually it was a pretty intense week. I’ve taken graduate level courses that required less reading than what we had to do to prepare for this retreat. As much work as it was, I finished the week feeling more energized and excited about the future. There really was too much covered to go over it all point by point, but for my own personal memory at least, I am going to record one bit of it here.
We started off the week by all of us going around the room and answering three questions: (1) How did you end up in academic life? (2) What do you feel is the point of your work?, and (3) Do you think your job is a vocation? The first part is easy enough to answer: my career is a total accident. I really didn’t want to practice law, but I also didn’t want to waste the time I had spent in law school. Fortunately, one afternoon I wandered into Rick Goheen’s office (at the time a librarian at University of Cincinnati College of Law, now director at the University of Toledo) – not to ask a question, but to get some candy that I knew he always kept on his desk – and noticed that he happened to have a law degree and a master of library science hanging on his wall. I thought, “well, maybe I’ll do that.”
Office art and candy: It can change lives.
Accident though it may be, I think this life in legal information has worked out pretty well. I mean, it’s only been five years, but so far so good. I find it intellectually stimulating, I’m able to work on social justice issues (which were what drew me to law school in the first place, although I don’t work on the same ones or in the same way as I would as a practicing attorney obviously) and, I don’t know….it just fits. I also love working in education. There’s something very satisfying about taking complex subjects and making them accessible and easy (well, easier) to understand.
The third question is also easy for me to answer. I really and truly believe that librarians are going to save the world. The librarian is one of the great professions, up there with doctors and lawyers and clergy and politicians (stop laughing) – professions that classically have worked for the betterment of society and humankind. We are uniquely poised in this time of information upheaval to guide others and navigate through unfamiliar territory, but do so with an appreciation for and knowledge of the past and can ensure nothing gets lost along the way. I believe access to information is a fundamental human right and librarians (with assists from some new partners) are pretty much the only thing standing in the way of large corporations and even governments from infringing on those rights. So, yes, I am proud and excited and even a little humbled to call myself a librarian and I do consider it to be a vocation. That’s why I’m so obnoxious about so many issues related to information science and commerce.
The second question is where things start to get a little dicey. To be a librarian is to be pulled in a 1000 directions at once. I’ve been struggling this past year with managing my interests and figuring out where to concentrate my energies. I really hate to do things poorly and I was in definite danger of becoming a jack of all trades and master of none. Things are sorted now, but, ironically enough, this post is not the time to talk about *my* future. There will be plenty of time for that later.
So, for the tl;dr crowd: I went to England, thought deep thoughts and have a real excitement about the future because I now have an understanding and appreciation of the past. Also, being a librarian rules. All of which was a perfect set up for attending the Future of Law Libraries workshop held at Harvard the week after I got back. You can read about it here, in part two.
Photo Credit: Enokson
By - Saturday, July 17, 2010 - 12:46pm
I am recently returned from my 5th AALL annual meeting.
There are many things I could write about with regards to this meeting…the fun of hanging out with Internet friends in meatspace, my nervousness at having my sister be a presenter, the excitement of finally getting to “meat” people that I’ve only known online, reuniting with former co-workers and old friends, the great programs I saw, my annual fear that my near pathological shyness would be interpreted as snobbery by those that don’t know me well, the exhibit hall madness, the rush-rush nature of AALL…but I’m not.
Do you know why?
Because I’m exhausted, y’all.
Which brings me to the thing that I do want to talk about.
I am on the AALL Annual Meeting Program Committee for the AALL 2011 in Philadelphia, so I tried to pay particular attention to the programming this year, seeing what I liked and soliciting advice from the librarians I met while at the conference. If you’re reading this, that means you likely read other law librarian blogs, which means you are aware of the controversy about AALL program planning that sprang up in the days preceding this year’s annual meeting. Given my membership on the AMPC, I didn’t want to get involved in that online discussion prior to meeting with the committee at AALL in Denver, but now I feel a little more free to shoot my mouth off.
CAVEAT LECTOR: I am not speaking for the AMPC in the following.
First of all, I was really excited to see that the law library blogosphere get whipped up on AALL program planning. If I thought the process was perfect or that everything with program planning was hunky-dory, I never would have applied to be on the committee. I hope now that the meeting is over and the annual meeting is fresh in everyone’s mind, more suggestions are offered as to how the meeting should be programmed. Even if you’re not a blogger, the AMPC contact information is available on the above linked site and I really hope you suggest changes if you have an opinion. There was an open committee meeting and Open Forum at AALL. No one besides committee members showed up to the committee meeting, so no outside suggestions were offered there. I wasn’t able to attend the Open Forum as I had another meeting to go to, but from what I understand a discussion of changes to the Annual Meeting programming did not happen, even though some of the bloggers were in attendance. I’m disappointed by this, but, again, there’s still time to offer an opinion! I really do want to hear it!
That being said, I must admit that I had to work to not take some of the criticisms of the AMPC personally. Especially the “advance criticism” that we were getting. By this I mean, broad statements of “what AMPC is looking for.” Or, more maddening, people saying that they would submit a certain program, but the AMPC probably wouldn’t accept it because they didn’t accept something similar a few years ago, so they’re not going to bother.
The AMPC changes every year. It’s not a faceless, secret organization determined to make AALL annual as awful as possible. It’s me. And Anne Myers. And James Senter and Ruth Bridges and Ann Matthewmen and and April Schwartz and Linda Tesar. We’re just a bunch of AALL members and, unless they’re having secret meetings without me, not once have I heard any secret agenda or list of people who automatically get programs accepted. It’s sort of stunning how little of an agenda we have besides wanting the best program that provides the most educational value for as many members as possible.
But here’s the thing: AMPC’s hands are really tied. We can’t create an awesome slate of programming unless members propose and create the sessions. This brings me to why I’m exhausted. Even though the organization is “The American Association of Law Libraries”, it’s run by and for law librarians. As I said, I wasn’t happy with programming in the past, so last year I submitted 7 program ideas and agreed to speak on 2 others. Of that, one of each got accepted. Additionally, I co-ran an unconference, attended several committee meetings, dragged myself to the AALL business meeting even though I was experiencing an ocular migraine at the time (fortunately I left before the sing-a-long), and made it to a couple of networking events where I actually forced myself to talk to new people.
I really believe that if you want AALL (either the meeting or the organization or both) to change, you have to be the one to do it. I also have a new personal rule that the statute of limitations for complaining about AALL is 5 years. That is to say, if something happened more than 5 years ago, you need to buy a ladder and get over it because I certainly don’t want to hear about it. The nature of AALL leadership is fluid enough that whoever made the decision that wrecked your plans is long gone and you need to try again. Otherwise, you are just a whiner, and there are few things more annoying than people who complain without trying to do anything to change the situation.
Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to take a nap. I’m exhausted.
By - Tuesday, June 1, 2010 - 3:50pm
June is here and that means that it’s librarian conference season. (Mothers, lock up your daughters and unsorted books…the librarians are coming to town!) For me, it also means that it’s unconference season, because I am coordinating an unconference at every conference that I’m attending. This post is an omnibus publicity post for all of them – hopefully I will see you at at least one of them!
Special Libraries Association Annual Meeting – New Orleans, June 12 – 16 2010
I’m coordinating two different types of unconferences during SLA. The first is for the Legal Division. This year, in lieu of the traditional round table discussions, Legal Division will be hosting an unconference on Wednesday, June 16 from 10:00 – 11:30 am in room 209 of the convention center. There is no overarching theme to the unconference, but we will be generally sticking to the topics of the roundtables: Tax, Corporate Law and Emerging Tech. As with all unconferences, the direction those conversations take will depend largely on the attendees. The coordinating wiki for this unconference is here. Feel free to add topic ideas.
I’m also coordinating two general unconference sessions for SLA. Right now they are just known as “Unconference Session 4″ which will take place Monday, June 14 from 4 to 6pm in room 204 of the convention center and “Unconference Session 6″, which will take place Tuesday, June 15 from 10:00 – 11:30 am. If you have burning topic ideas, please let me know either via comment here or email.
Computer Assisted Legal Instruction 2oth Annual Conference for Law School Computing, Camden, NJ, June 23 – 26, 2010
The theme for CALIcon this year is “Reboot Legal Education.” I keep reading this as “Robots in Legal Education” and have generally been making a nuisance of myself kidding the good folks at CALI about this fact. When Tom Bruce of the Legal Information Institute asked my Lawberry Camp partner Jason Eiseman and I to coconvene an unconference before CALIcon around the idea of librarian/free law partnerships, I was happy to because (a) I’m always happy to help out the Free Law movement (b) I think the librarian/legal info provider conversation needs to happen more but mainly (c) I FINALLY HAD A LEGITIMATE EXCUSE TO USE THE ROBOTS JOKE.
So, I present to you CALIcon Unconference 2010: Robots in Legal Information! Although this is being coordinated by Jason and I (with a big assist from Tom Bruce and local arrangements John Joergensen), this is not a “Lawberry Camp”. This is actually much more of a hackathon in that the conversation is going to be more guided and goal oriented. The goal is to get librarians, IT professionals and legal information providers in a room and figure out how we can use each other work together more effectively.
Robots in Legal Information will happen on Wednesday, June 23, 2010 from 12:30pm – 4:00pm (feel free to wander in late or leave early if need be) at the Rutgers-Camden School of Law
American Association of Law Libraries Annual Meeting, Denver Co, July 10 – 13 2010
There will be a Lawberry Camp happening again at AALL. It will be an all day (or most of the day) thing on Saturday, July 10. The planning site will be updated closer to the conference with sign-ups, location info, etc.
Chicago Area Law Libraries, Chicago, ILL sometime late summer
As you can see, unconference details get fuzzier the farther out in time they go…but I have been asked and will happily coordinate a law library unconference in the Chicagoland area. I have no idea where or when, but sometime post-AALL and pre-1L Legal Research. This is going to be a good opportunity for those of us going to AALL/SLA/CALIcon to share what we’ve learned at those conferences as well as for firm librarians to update us academics on what we should have taught our students before they had them all summer. Etc.
By - Monday, February 8, 2010 - 10:26pm
I have said many times – and will continue to say – that I have been very lucky in that I have had some awesome mentors over the course of my career. I know I’m lucky because I hear my peers complain that they would like to have one and although I currently have a few, I still would welcome more. I don’t know if it’s a GenX thing, but we seem to crave mentorship.
Honestly, I don’t really know how I was able to get them – for whatever reason I’ve connected with more experienced people who have reached out and helped me. Has it all been a coincidence that the right people have come into my life at the right time? Have I just been more open to asking for help and receiving guidance? I really don’t know.
What I do know? Never attempt to get a mentor by saying, “Wow. You’ve been a librarian LONGER THAN I’VE BEEN ALIVE!” That, uh, doesn’t work. PROTIP.
Since I don’t know how it happened, I can’t really offer any advice on how to get them. I’ve participated in formal mentoring programs, and those have been good for meeting people, but my deeper mentoring relationships have arisen organically. In my experience, mentors show up when you least expect it and maybe are not the people you expect…so if you’re looking for the wizened, organizationally active person who is currently running a library to show up and tell you everything you ever wanted to know about librarianship and introduce you to the “right” people, well… that’s probably not going to happen. The person that you happen to strike up a conversation with at a conference and get on like a house afire? DING DING DING! You have a potential mentor! Or mentee…
Many of my mentors are people that could easily be called peers…they are either as experienced as I am or maybe just a little more so. The reason that they are mentors is that they have either completed a step that I haven’t yet (e.g. getting a program accepted at Computers in Libraries) and are willing and able to offer advice to get me there. Or alternatively, they are are there to give me a kick in the butt when I need it – encourage me to run for an office, proofread a blog post or CV or otherwise listen to me vent about what’s on my mind and either offer advice or just an ear. Mainly through online social networks, I’ve developed a posse of people to rely upon professionally. It’s very libpunk.
(Oddly enough, my friend (AND MENTOR) Josh Neff touched upon this same subject today in a blog post that I didn’t see until I started this one. Not only do we support and love each other, but now we are STARTING TO READ EACH OTHER’S MINDS. Spooky…)
I’ve also been surprised to learn that I am already (at a little over 4 years in the profession) a mentor to some people. It’s really not that hard…I just do what I do and when people ask me advice, I give it. I also like to offer praise or constructive criticism when appropriate. (Especially praise – and I try to talk up people when possible.) As with my mentors, these all happened organically – I just happened to meet another person online or at a conference, we get along really well, and it’s sort of flowed from there. You probably have something to offer – so look around and see who you click with, either online or in person and jump on in the mentorship pool.
Because I’ve been asked about it, here is a compilation some of the best advice I’ve been offered by mentors through my life – from high school through law school to present day. Now, I want to warn you…there is some salty language in this. (I mean the F word is going to be used. Have some pearls ready to clutch. I guess I could have used some artfully placed asterisks, but we all know what the words are….) I think it’s sort of a by-product of having mainly male mentors – many of which are ex-military or otherwise not scared to use foul language. And as to why most of my mentors are or have been men? GOOD QUESTION. One of these days I’ll write response to Clay Shirky’s Rant About Women that gets more heavily into professional gender politics. But near as I can guess, it’s because I was raised on a farm around a lot of men and have mainly male friends – it’s just what I’m comfortable with.
So, in the interest of being a mentor to others…
THE ADVICE
1) Own Your Shit
Not elegant, and deceptively simple. I guess this can be best summarized as “mean what you say and say what you mean” or “walk the walk if you’re going to talk the talk.” Don’t be scared of having an opinion and expressing it – a surprisingly hard thing to do sometimes, especially if you are a newer librarian. It really boils down to having self-confidence to jump into the battle and sticking to your guns.
It reminds me of one of my favorite quotes…this appeared on my law school mentor’s wall. I spent many an office hour staring at it:
“It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood, who strives valiantly; who errs and comes short again and again; because there is not effort without error and shortcomings; but who does actually strive to do the deed; who knows the great enthusiasm, the great devotion, who spends himself in a worthy cause, who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement and who at the worst, if he fails, at least he fails while daring greatly. So that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who know neither victory nor defeat.” – Teddy Roosevelt
And if you screw up? Own up to it and apologize to the appropriate people.
2) It’s Okay to Say “No”
Librarianship is a service profession. We will bend over backward to get someone the appropriate resource, stay late to work on projects and (again, especially if you are new to the profession and trying to make some career progress) take on all sorts of projects. Saying “no” just does not come naturally.
But sometimes you should totally say no.
I had run myself into the ground last spring – we were down a librarian due to sabbatical, I had essentially taken on a second job when I began also covering Interlibrary Loans due to staff loss and I was still trying to do the same amount of organizational work I had been doing previously in order to advance my career. I was a wreck and then when what I realize now ridiculous faculty request landed on my desk, I freaked out and called a mentor. His advice, “That’s stupid. Tell him ‘No.” “But…” “No.” “He’ll…” “No.” “I can do that?” “Yes.”
It should not have been, but this was an amazing revelation to me. It had honestly never occurred to me that I could tell a faculty member “No.” Or say “no” to the offer of a professional opportunity. Or otherwise do anything that didn’t put myself and my well being (physical and mental) last.
Self care, FTW.
3) It’s Okay to Cry
I’m going through a stressful period right now with my job change and interstate move and all of the attention I got last week. By the time Friday rolled around, I was just toast. And so I lost it and started to cry. And I don’t mean that I was stoically wiping tears away, I mean I was *crying*. Ugly crying. Snotting up everything and unable to talk. I kept apologizing for it, but one of my mentors very rationally said to me (paraphrasing) “You’re sick. You’re worried that you just committed professional suicide. And some jerk on the Internet just called you the c-word. Crying is actually a pretty appropriate response right now.”
I don’t know why we’re scared to show any weaknesses. Or any real emotion in professional contexts. You can get angry when someone is deliberately mean to you. Or miffed when you didn’t win that award. Or happy and geeked out when something cool happens. I mean, flipping out and punching someone? Not okay. Taking a quiet moment in your office and fantasizing about it? Not the worst thing you could do.
On a broader level, this advice is about recognizing your own humanity and that of others. My friend (AND MENTOR) Jenica Rogers wrote a great post about something called “charitable reading.” This basically means that you should not assume the worst about others when you interact online. But why limit it to online? When dealing with others, also remember that they are human too. Maybe they spilled their coffee or missed the bus or had a fight with their partner that morning – maybe that’s why they are being obnoxious. So maybe, even if in the most charitable reading you could give someone they are still acting like a jerk, maybe you should try to grant others the same benefit of the doubt that you would want.
4) Fake it Until You Make It
One of the points of the Skirky Women Rant is that women don’t promote themselves or volunteer for opportunities that they are not 100% confident that they can accomplish. I…do not have that problem. Again, I don’t know if this is because of the masculine socialization I received on the farm, but I throw my name in the ring at the drop of the hat. I’d never completely rebuilt a website before, but did that stop me from volunteering to be an organization webmaster? Heck, no! Give a CLE on business research which I haven’t done since library school? Sure, I can do that! Buy a standard transmission Jeep even though I didn’t know how to drive stick? Well, it seemed silly to get an automatic Jeep…
So, yeah, that’s not a problem for me.
But it goes beyond just volunteering for things. I have been told – by more than one person and on several occasions – that I lack a certain gravitas. Is it because I wear stupid hats? No. Is it because I don’t mind – nay, am compelled – to put goofy pictures of myself (possibly while wearing said stupid hats) on the Internet? No. Apparently I lack gravitas because I admit that I don’t know what I’m talking about.
BUT I DON’T KNOW WHAT I’M TALKING ABOUT!!!
Seriously, y’all, I am making this life up as I go along. People ask me if I want to have children and all I can think is “Are you high? Can’t you tell that I just barely made it to work today with my hair brushed and clothes on straight?” I have no idea what I’m doing and I am very open about this fact.This is apparently a bad thing. Apparently the secret to professional success is to act and speak and write confidently.
However, there’s a certain smugness and ability to say “this is what everyone should be doing” that I just am unable to do. I don’t think professional discourse is a zero sum game where there’s a right side and a wrong side and the winner is the one who puts the most comments on a post and out argues everyone else. If I ever get around to writing anything for a print publication, I will probably try for a little more strident tone. However, my blog will remain as my lab notebook for the experiment of my life.
So, while I am not taking this particular bit of advice, I do appreciate my mentors pointing this fact out to me so I don’t spend the next few years banging my head against the wall wondering why I still don’t get respected in certain circles.
5) Fuck ‘em if They Can’t Take a Joke
One side effect of following through with the first four pieces advice is that people are not always going to love you. As a matter of fact, they are going to be quite upset with you. That’s okay. Some might say if people aren’t getting upset at you, you’re not saying or doing anything of consequence. It’s a scary thing to be disliked. But at the end of the day, you’re the one that has to live with yourself. As another one of my favorite quotes says, “Be who you are and say what you feel. Those who mind don’t matter and those who matter don’t mind.” That’s Dr. Seuss, by the way.
******
So that’s the formal knowledge I’ve been able to glean from my mentors. Use it in good health, pay it forward and all of that jazz.
By - Wednesday, January 20, 2010 - 12:51am
One of my favorite movies is Thirteen Days, which is the behind-the-scenes story of the Cuban Missile Crisis from the perspective of Kenny O’Donnell, a longtime Kennedy Family friend. As the movie depicts, the United States wasn’t quite sure how to react to threat of nuclear weapons in Cuba. A committee of the National Security Council and close presidential advisors – EXCOMM - was formed.
Robert Kennedy – Attorney General at the time – was given control of the group. He describes the committee’s mission thusly (in one of my all time favorite movie lines): We’ve got a bunch of smart guys. We lock ‘em in a room and kick ‘em in the ass until they come up with some solutions!
Oh, that RFK…always a charmer.
I don’t think I’ll be spoiling the movie to say that EXCOMM did come up with a viable solution and nuclear war and total destruction of civilization as we know it was averted. If that did spoil the movie for you, I suggest you stop reading my blog now and maybe check out some history books? Or at least a wikipedia article?
Anyhoo, what that scene shows – and what I’m a big believer in – is the power of brainstorming with other people. Don’t get me wrong, I am also a big believer in the power of social media and have found valuable interactions to be had with others through that medium. But there’s something that happens while chatting with someone – intentionally in a meeting or just while hanging out, eating a pizza – that can’t be replicated in a chat, emails or phone calls. I don’t know if humans subconsciously pick up on facial clues, hand signals or other visuals. Hell, maybe those late night History Channels specials are right and humans all share some sort of psychic bond. All I know is that I can generate ideas and plan things much faster during and after an in-person sit down than I can after instant messaging service.
This is also one of the things I love about unconferences. First, and most obviously, there is the knowledge gained by all attendees. Secondly, there’s the empowerment of people sharing their knowledge, especially if they think that they have nothing to share. But there’s also the Big Unknown – the fact that when you get a group of people in a room with no set agenda and let them talk about the things that interest them, they can bounce ideas off of each other, combine ideas and come up with things that they didn’t realize they knew.
I know this all makes me sound like some sort of dirty hippie and I assure you that I’m not. (Not that there’s anything wrong with dirty hippies….) I don’t even really like talking to people most of the time. But occasionally I pull myself out of my shell and chat with people and that’s when the magic happens.
As you may know, this weekend we held Lawberry Camp Midwinter 2010 in Boston, graciously co-hosted by the Harvard Law School Library and the Berkman Center for Internet and Society. (I would be remiss in not also thanking Local Arrangements Cool Kid Meg Kribble, without whose help Lawberry Camp would not have been possible.) I say, with all modesty, that it was a a complete success.
We had about 20 librarians from all stripes of law libraries attend. After a fascinating unkeynote address by David Weinberger, we had some great discussions ranging from infoliteracy standards for law students to an iPhone apps petting zoo to the law school bubble. (I hope some of the attendees write up some of what they’ve learned – in retrospect I wish we would have had official reporters from each section.)
There’s already been a result from the converstation…we had a giant roundtable discussion about research guides. One of the ideas bandied about was that it would great if there could be a central repository for law librarians to share research guides. I was tweeting the discussion, and John Mayer of CALI responded that Legal Education Commons is available for this. So. Yay.
Sarah and Tom Bruce - photo credit Jason Eiseman
I was very lucky in that post-lawberry camp, my adventures continued. I made my way to New Haven to hang out with my friend and Lawberry Camp co-organizer Jason Eiseman. It was really amazing to me how much fun and productive the days were. We communicate almost daily, yet once we got in the same room together we were able to really makes some plans. On one of the days, we were joined by Tom Bruce of the Cornell Legal Information Institute. We had both talked with Tom via various forms of media, and had briefly met at CALI in Boulder last year, but this was the first time that we had gotten to have an extensive chat. It was almost a min-summit between librarians and a legal information provider and the start of a conversation that we hope to continue.
By - Friday, September 18, 2009 - 5:00pm
I started my morning by putting the finishing touches on my Promotion and Tenure Dossier. I finished up my day by presenting a Webinar for CALI on Alternatives to Course Management Systems. The former means that I spent the almost every free moment in the past week organizing and compiling all of my professional activities over the past year (and reviewing previous years.) The later means that I had many moments of panic during the non-dossier compiling parts of my week where I thought to myself, “Holy cow, I cannot believe people actually want to listen to me talk about something.” Combine these two together, and I have been feeling very navel-gazy and wondering how I got where I am.
I mean, a scant three years ago, I was an evening and weekend reference librarian. I didn’t really do anything professionally outside of my daily responsibilities, except go to AALL. (And at that AALL, I went to every program I registered for, I don’t think I went to any committee meetings, and I was in bed and asleep by 11pm every night – obviously I completly missed the point of conferences!) Contrast that with the past 12 months, where I attended 8 conferences, gave 6 regional or national presentations, co-organized Lawberry Camp, taught 4 CLEs locally, wrote 3 short articles, (tried to) actively blog and my job duties are easily 3 times what they were at my FPOW.
So how did this happen? Were anyone to ask me (and no one has, so that’s why I have a blog so I can foist my thougths upon people 
), I guess I have the following three pieces of advice:
1. Find Your Passion
It’s not entirely accurate to say that at my old job I did nothing beyond my assigned duties. We were very generously granted one day a week to devote to professional activities, informally known as our “Thinkin’ Days.” (Oh, my father the farmer who does intense physical labor for a living loved hearing about “Thinking Days”, let me tell you.) I had (and still have) a great interest in legal history and spent most of my Thinking Days reading books and articles on legal responses to the abolition movement in the Ohio valley and compiling notes for something would surely be a brilliant article.
Okay..a couple of things.
- Reading about slavery and the abolition movement? Depressing as Hell.
- Paul Finkleman has been writing about this topic since before I was born and it was hard to find a unique topic to cover.
- No really, you guys? Slavery was really, really bad. You can’t imagine the horrors of it.
- In additon to the crushing depression that came out of doing this research, it felt like work. Which, coming from my solid German farm background, I didn’t realize was a problem. If it’s fun, it’s not worth doing, right?
WRONG.
When I arrived at UK Law, the reference department was myself and the Head of Public Services. So no more Thinking Days and much more “how to do more with less.” Much by accident, and because I was now on the day shift and seeing many more students, I happened to notice the prevalence of social networking sites used by them. After a push from one of my oldest and dearest friends who was on the site, I joined MySpace.
From then on, it all sort of snowballed. With my combined anthropology and information science backgrounds, I was fascinated by the changes to online culture (particularly how Web 2.0 makes it dead simple to have your own web presence and to interact with others) and how that affected the access and delivery of information. Research and exploration of this topic didn’t seem like work at all!
2. Find Your Voice
Okay, so you’ve found something that interests you. That’s great! Now, figure out what you think about it. Actually, scratch that. You don’t have to have a hard and fast opinion on somthing, but you do have to think about it. Lord knows I am the poster child for figuring it out along the way.
For me, once I realized that I had a passion for Web 2.0 in the legal world, I decided to start blogging about it. Blogging works well for me..it fit well with the rapidly changing landscape of the topic, it was something that I had engaged it previously on a personal level, and it allowed me – who was all by her lonesome in the middle of Kentucky – to share my ideas and my voice.
Depending on what your passion is, finding your voice may take the form of a scholarly article, or presentations, or becoming active organizationally or even just conversing on listservs. However you do it, you have to believe that something to share. (I intially meant to call this point “Lose Your Fear”, but as you’ll see, I have a bit of a “Find” theme going here.) So, propose presentations, submit article query letters, write a blog…swallow the “I’m not good enough” fears and put your name out there. You don’t have to swing for the fences and do a heavily footnoted and researched LLJ article right out of the gate..try a regional or organizational newsletter. Believe that you have something to say and say it. This is also one of the reasons I love unconferences and my Lawberry Camp…they’re based on the belief that everyone’s experience is worthwhile and we can all learn from each other. You don’t need a sage on the stage…everyone has something to teach others.
3. Find Your People
Speaking from experience, it’s really sucks when you find a topic that you’re fascinated by and want to talk all the time and no one wants to listen. It makes you feel a little crazy. Well, you know what? You’re not crazy. There are like-minded people out there. You just have to find them.
For me, since I was interested in technological matters, I found my people online. But, and this may be the case for you whether you look online or not, my people were initially not all law librarians – they were mostly in the non-law academic libraries. (And some of the people that I found online? Were actually just across campus. ) Time progressed and I eventually found my Cool Kids, and now I have law librarians to talk about this stuff with, which makes me ridiculously happy.
Your People may not actually be individuals that you talk to all the time and become close friends with like I have. Your People may be just an organization – either national or regional ones like AALL, SLA, or SEAALL, or subgroups within these. Within the AALL framework, although I am an academic librarian and a member of ALL-SIS, that group just doesn’t light my fire. I get much more geeked out when I’m talking to people and go to programs organized by RIPS. So, play around….try different groups, read up on alternatives to what your doing now.
Granted, I traveled a Hell of a lot this past year and I will one day write a post on tips and tricks to professional development on the cheap. (I swear, it won’t all be hotel horror stories, but that”ll be a big part of it.) But don’t feel like you can’t meet people or continue relationships because your travel budget got cut. Thanks to this crazy modern world we live in, there are electronic means for this, and you don’t have to be on Facebook to take advantage of them. (Although that does help.) And once you do find your people, the other stuff becomes easier too. They’ll introduce you to new ideas and projects will spark between you. And it all just keeps snowballing.
So, that’s how I’ve gotten where I am in the past three years. I hope it doesn’t seem presumptious to write about this.
*Other alternative titles for this post: “How to Suceed in Librarianship Without Even Trying” (Not accurate. At all.) , “How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love my Dossier” (Ditto), and “The P&T Hustle” (Probably would be a bad idea for myriad reasons.) For more, see future blog post “How to Mangle Movie Titles for Fun and No Profit.”
