By - Saturday, October 29, 2011 - 11:56am
I meant to write this almost two months ago, but if you are a regular, Gentle Reader, you know that I’ve been a little busy. I won’t bore you with the list of Big Life Changes again.
SO. Anyway, a little over six months in, and I’m declaring LISvendor.info to be a fabulous success. Granted, my definition of “success” was “someone other than me adds to it” and “I don’t get sued.” I’m pleased to report that people are slowly starting to use it and I haven’t had even a whiff of a cease and desist order. The latter is possibly because no one’s added anything truly juicy to it, but the important part is “Sarah Glassmeyer – Lawsuit Free Since 1975!”
(Although I must note that I have no real assets and a pantload of student loan debt, so anyone getting a judgment from me is gonna have to get in line behind Sally Mae and Bank of America. Good luck with that. Say what you will about the student loan debt crisis, but it does give one a certain sense of freedom. But I digress…)
One of the things that prompted me to remind y’all of the existence of LISvendor.info was a recent blog post by Barbara Fister called “Occupy Knowledge: It’s Ours After All.” Go on, go read it…I’ll wait. You back? Okay. So as you’ve seen, she presents a really interesting parallel between Occupy Wall Street movement and the scholarly publishing world. And like the OWS protestors, she creates a version a protest sign listing out the price increases her library has seen in journal subscriptions. (If you didn’t read her post, SPOILER ALERT: American Chemical Society journals have risen from $29,705 in 2010 to $41,741 in 2012.) Fister also encourages others to do the same, either by tweeting or facebooking it.
You could also post it on LISvendor.info…that is one of the reasons I created it.
Although I’m declaring LISVendor.info to be a fabulous success, it could be better. A lot better. I would love to see more people contribute to it. And not just “secret pricing information” either…for example, I love how the proposed AALL Consumer Advocacy Caucus is using it to organize and share information.
A few weeks ago I saw a report of a study on the roots of collaboration in humans. The pull quote:
When it benefits them, chimpanzees willingly work together. Otherwise, they can’t be bothered…For humans, collaboration is rewarding for its own sake, a behavioral split that may underlie key differences between human and chimpanzee societies.
Having participated in a couple collaborative projects now, I can’t say that this is true. I’m not sure that people will work together on something without an immediate reward. I really believe that contributions to LISVendor will ultimately be very beneficial to all, but I must admit that any benefits will not be realized immediately. It will be a slow building process before the collected knowledge reaches the usefulness tipping point. So, long story short, if you can think of ways to encourage participation in this, please let me know.
Finally, some housekeeping notes…initially I wanted to keep this wiki as open and anonymous as possible because I thought people wouldn’t contribute otherwise. Unfortunately, the spammers keep swooping in and wrecking the joint. (A big thanks to Nicole Engard and Amy Buckland for helping me to clean them out.) I’ve since reluctantly added an email to register requirement and then earlier this week a captcha, Hopefully that will cut down on the spamming. (And hopefully people will learn to not be ashamed to ask their doctor for cialis and stop relying on sketchy people on the Internet for their drugs and spamming innocent library wikis becomes impractical. HEY. A GIRL CAN DREAM.) Amy has been deputized as a admin on the wiki and if anyone else would like admin privileges, let me know…I will be happy to add you. I really didn’t want this to be “my thing.” I’m happy to pay for hosting and stare stupidly at the mediawiki php and attempt to fix problems, but this is something that the community needs to take ownership of for it to be successful even more fabulously successful.
Photo credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/sunsetgirl_creations/
By - Thursday, October 13, 2011 - 7:01pm
In an alternative universe, I’m a Gov Docs librarian at a large state school turning young minds onto the joy of statistics and 1950s government created comic books about how to deal with nuclear war fallout and communists. But this is this universe. And I’m me. And the closest I get to come to that is that I get to present to a bunch of government document librarians at the 2011 Depository Library Council Meeting and Federal Depository Library Conference.
That is a mouthful.
As I will promise during my part of the presentation, my slides are available here and the resource list can be found here. And I’m always happy to answer questions about – well, anything really – but definitely and specifically about the things I cover here.
This is my first presentation since I joined CALI and I am a little nervous about coming off as a vendor shill. Especially because I will be discussing some of our products during my presentation, but let me just assure you of a few points. (1) I would have talked about them anyway. (2) You don’t have to really buy anything from CALI to use them. Everything is CC licensed and you are totally free to take and adapt the content. So not only am I not saying, “Please buy this.” but instead I’m saying, “PLEASE STEAL THIS IDEA AND RUN WITH IT.”
Another question is “why am I doing this talk?”
There are a couple of good reasons for gov docs librarians to think about being more creative in their outreach. First of all, I know that gov docs are totally weird and interesting and full of buried gems and you know that but most patrons hear “government documents” and they have a similar Pavlovian response to when they hear “tax forms” or “DMV visits.” So you need to do a little extra marketing.
Likewise, and this is especially true in the higher educational setting, other librarians finally get students used to how libraries work and then we throw them a curve ball with SuDoc numbers and different circulation rules and probably some weird formats to boot. I remember when my sister – who holds a PhD and it otherwise familiar with the whole library research thing – recounted her visit to the gov docs department at her grad school. It can be summed up thusly: “WHAT THE HELL WAS THAT? There were slashes and colons and nothing was where I thought it would be.” So you need to do a little extra patron education.
And finally, you should reach out and be more creative because you can. Now, don’t get me wrong, I am not one to do the “let’s play with technology just because it’s there and we can.” Well, behind the scenes I’ll do that, but I don’t like forcing my alpha tests on patrons. What I do mean is that technology has become much more accessible and patrons expect to be able to use it in library settings. And again, I am the first to beat the drum of “don’t forget that not everyone has access to tech” – don’t forget, y’all, that I did live in central Kentucky for three and half years – but that doesn’t mean we can’t also cater to those that do want to use it. Especially since many government publications are now being published in an electronic format that makes it much easier to play with.
The next part of my talk covers wikis and WordPress. I mainly just talk about them as a back up in case you don’t have editing privileges on your website. Alternatively, if you have a subscription to a service like LibGuides, that will also work. Wikis are great if you have no tech skills beyond that which is needed to run a word processing software and don’t have access to a server to host it. You can lock them down from editing and make them even password protected for privacy. Some wiki companies that I’ve used and had success with are: PBWorks, Wikispaces and Wetpaint. If you have the ability to host your wiki, wikimedia (the software used to run wikipedia) is a good bet, but I must admit that I have a bit of a love/hate relationship with it.
Oh, this would probably be a good time to mention that – aside from hosting costs if you decide to go that route and need to buy it – pretty much everything I talk about is totally free. Times are tough, yo.
WordPress was originally developed to be a blogging platform. It’s open source and has a vibrant development community (many of whom have an educational bent) and that means that there are tons of little tips and tricks available to bend it to your will. They come in the form of themes, plugins and widgets and using them is really pretty easy. I’m talking push a button that says “install” easy. You can either use free hosting from WordPress.com (which admittedly won’t let you go completely buckwild with the adapting, but it is very easy to use) or download the software from WordPress.org and host it yourself. Also note that if you work for a university, it is entirely possible that you have access to what is essentially a mixture of these two called WordPress Multisite. (CALI’s Classcaster Blog hosting [which if you are at a CALI member school you are totally free to use] is a WordPress Multisite system.) Check with your campus IT department for detail.
The third stop on my tour of reaching out creatively is mobile technology. A lot has been made of this in recent years and for good reason…almost everyone has a cell phone now, if not a smart phone. And along with those, you should also consider tablet computers like iPads to be part of the mobile bunch. I promise you won’t have to make an app. I wouldn’t even know how to tell you to do that. But I can tell you a couple of things….(1) you may have to think about making a mobile version of your site. There is a WordPress plugin that automagically can tell if the viewer is on a smartphone and adapts the page accordingly. Or you can pester your webdesign team to create a basic mobile ready site and have prominent link to it on your webpage. (2) Exploit the strengths of these devices…they have cameras usually and there are free apps out there that you can use. And finally, (3) always remember to be device agnostic. Meaning, if you do go down the app creation path, try to make them iPhone, Android and even Blackberry compatible. And don’t use flash on your websites, as iPhone and iPad users can’t view that.
Now it’s time to bring it on home.
Okay, we have a website. One you created especially using a wiki, wordpress or LibGuides or one already in place like a research guide on your library website or a government agency webpage. And we know that a lot of patrons have smartphones or tablets. An easy way to get the website on the phone or tablet is via something called a QR code. (I don’t wanna brag or anything, but I blogged about these things two years ago. Sarah Glassmeyer, FUTURIST. heh. Anywaaaay….) QR stands for Quick Response and they’re basically like a barcode on sterioids. They can contain information like URLs, phone numbers, email address, virtual business cards, etc. Basically, you take a picture of them with your phone or tablet and then magic happens and the next thing you know you’re looking at a website or have an email ready to compose. QR codes are free to create and there are dozens of free reader apps out there for patrons to download so that they can read them.
I really think Gov Docs libraries would be a perfect location for using QR codes. Some ideas:
- Post them around with your reference contact information (phone, email or text reference – and don’t have text reference? Get a google voice number and you can send and receive texts from it via email. Living in the future is awesome, ain’t it?)
- Put them on a book dummy at the end of a resource if it goes from print to electronic and have it direct to the site of the electronic version. Commerical vendors are making their databases more mobile friendly, so you could also link to the electronic version.
- Send it to a subject specific resource guide or training video. (YouTube videos adapt to mobile versions automatically)
- You could even just have it leading to the agency website (or app if they have one) at the beginning of each agency’s materials.
- Library tours. CALI is working with our membership to create podcast library tours called…LibTours. They are resource based and as we cater to the law library market, not all of them are useful to gov docs librarians, but a couple are (such as the CFR one). Please feel free to use or adapt this idea.
Really, the possibilities are limitless.
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, July 26, 2011 - 10:22am
(I’m a much better writer than public speaker, so here’s the text of my planned opening remarks delivered during AALL2011 Program H4: The Role of Law Libraries in Advancing Law.gov: Open Sourcing America’s Operating System.)
Hi. I’m Sarah. I’m am not supposed to be here today.
One of my favorite filmakers is a man named Kevin Smith. He was part of the big indie filmaking wave of the 1990s and his first film was a low budget movie called “Clerks.” It took place in a convenience store, not unlike 7/11s that Mr. Malamud suggested law libraries might turn into to last month at Harvard.
If you’ve not seen it, it’s a comedy. The main character – Dante – gets called into work on his day off and you know, hijinks ensue. Through it all, he has a catch phrase…”I’m not supposed to be here today.” I sympathize. I really am not supposed to be here today. I’m a last minute sub for this presentation and I could never fill Erika Wayne’s shoes, but I’ll try.
But that’s actually not why I bring up Clerks and the whole “I am not supposed to be here today” thing. I get the feeling that – when I talk to some other librarians about law.gov (and perhaps this is a feeling shared by some of you here today) that they think “I am not supposed to be here today.” This is not my job. Why are we even talking about this at AALL?
Some actual comments:
- It’s pointless to even worry about it until the state and federal governments step up
- I can barely get my day job done. I don’t have time or money to work on law.gov
- law.gov will never be able to compete with Lexis and Westlaw (so again, why bother)
- will firms even need librarians/research specialists any more if law.gov becomes a reality
- The next time Malaumd tells me to scan something, I’m scanning a picture of my butt and faxing it to public.resource.org
(Okay, that last one might have been me.)
(I was having a bad day.)
(I really do respect Carl Malamud and all the work he has done and continues to do.)
(Really)
It’s absolutely true that library staff and budgets are stretched to the breaking point. And law.gov will never be a complete substitute for commecial providers. But before getting bogged down in the can’ts and won’ts and why things won’t work, I think it’s necessary to step back a moment and realize what law.gov is.
I think when I first heard the concept law.gov I thought it meant that the government would put up all the codes, cases, regs up online with a nice pretty interface that people could easily search. I maybe be moving to Chicago, but deep down I’ll always be a hillbilly from Southern Ohio and I have a strong feeling that this is the Godddman United States of America in the 21st century for god’s sake…there’s no reason that citizens should not be able to access the law via the Internet.
However, the more and more I got into it, I realized that it wasn’t that simple. law.gov isn’t just law.gov and the work that Mr. Malamud does at public.resource.org. I actually like to refer to it as “Open Law” just so there’s no confusion. it’s authentication, and nccusl, and state surveys and preservation and digitizing collections.. It’s really about the government to release the raw data and information – which we already own, after all – so that others can make it into something useful.
So law.gov is actually a whole host of things and it actually gets a little overwhelming. One starts to think that yes, this is an impossible task
I mean, don’t get me wrong..it’s going to happen. To deny this fact is to be a heliocentrist in the time of Galileo. It may take a little longer without the assistance of libraries adding to the corpus by digtizing their older holdings or might not be as stable because no one was able to convince a certain state legislature about the proper procedures to take when mounting their laws online. but rest assured, it is going to happen.
And this is a good thing. I’m into it because of the rah rah this is ‘murica goddammit reasons, but other people will tell you that by releasing this data non-profits and smaller information distributors can innovate and come up with exciting new projects and new ways to do research. And there may in fact be an economic bonus to the legal industry and libraries if primary law is made more open. Here’s the thing. I don’t care why you get involved, but please get involved.
Okay, so I don’t get all bogged down in language, as I tell my students, here’s the take home message from my opening statement.
1) open law is coming
2) librarians need to be involved because we care about the stuff that everyone else thinks we’re crazy to care about.
3) and remember when I was saying how overwhelming the issues surrounding open law are? well that’s a good thing. Because that means that there are thousands of ways to be involved.. but there’s one thing to note: there’s no real leader. So if you’re waiting for AALL or SLA or the government or Harvard or someone like Carl to say “here’s the plan, gang. you do this and you do this and it will get done.” That’s not going to happen. You have to just sort of jump in.
4) And yes, “just jumping in” is not an easy task.And it’ll be messy and probably not a perfect first (or second or third) attempt. So if you’ve thought about it and decided that either this issue isn’t important to you for either personal or professional reasons or you really don’t have the time or resources…okay. That’s fine. You know, I’d rather shoot myself in the face before spending any amount of time talking about RDA. We all have different things that light our fire. But nothing is gained and no one is helped by simply pointing out that something is not going to work. I think I saw a tweet saying something similar in an earlier session during this AALL…dont’ say “that’s stupid” but instead “here’s what would work.”
So, basically, I encourage (and beg) you to see where your talents can be applied in the open law movement and join in. And if you can’t, well…stop your bitching about it.
An addendum about Kevin Smith, the film maker I mentioned at the beginning of my remarks. He’s actually getting out of the movie business. He likes to make little 2-3 million dollar movies and once you roll in the marketing budgets that studios require the economics just became stupid.
He’s currently promoting what he declares to be his second to last film by travelling around the country in a bus and doing one off meet and greets and showing the movie in independent theaters. Not an easy task. And when he came to Chicago, I jumped at the chance to go see the movie and hear him speak.
He told a story about being at south by southwest in the mid to late 1990s and he was on a panel with Quentin Tarantino, and Robert Roderiquez and some other of the big indy directors. Tarantino asked the audience “how many of you want to be film directors?” and of course almost everyone raised their hand . And then he asked, “how many of you want to be film distributors?” and no one raised their hand. And Quentin said that people need to get into the distribution business because if film and film distribution is taken over by impersonal corporations instead of by the people that love it and respect it as an art form, then the art will be driven out of the industry..it’ll purely be about profits. And that is sort of what happened to Kevin Smith and why he’s no longer going to direct fillm but look into alternate ways of distributing film and other ways of expressing his creativity.
Now, it’s not a perfect parallel between the film industry of the 1990s and the current legal information landscape, but it’s close enough. And as you’ll see, I think we might have to start to get comfortable with the idea of “good enough” and so I bring it up as a way of suggesting that we need to brace ourselves..we (as librarians) may have to get into the content creation and distribution business whether we like it or not and whether or not we feel like it’s our job. There will be no more “I’m not supposed to be here todays.”
Thank you.
Photo credit: http://kevin-smith.wikia.com/wiki/Dante_Hicks
By - Monday, July 18, 2011 - 9:16am
Last year during the Westlaw iPod debacle, someone made a comment on a blog to the effect that it was high time librarians started acting as consumer advocates. I was really surprised by this…I never thought of myself or my actions in the consumer advocacy vein. For me it was about pedagogy; I thought it was weird to be recommending a particular electronic research service to a student while sipping out of a coffee mug with that same electronic research service’s name splashed on it, so I didn’t accept vendor swag.
Flash forward a year. I’ve educated myself more on the ins and outs of the business of information dispersal (although am still by no means an expert) and really see the need for more consumer advocacy. Furthermore, I think that librarians are a perfect group of people to be doing this. It’s why I joined and support the efforts of the proposed consumer advocacy caucus forming in AALL, do what I can to support groups like Library Renewal and otherwise make a pest of myself on this blog and elsewhere.
Through it all, I’ve been really wanting for AALL, SLA and other library organizations to step up and be a organizing force and leader in these efforts. However, it seems like there’s been a reluctance on their parts to really get active and even make declarative statements one way or another. I must say, I am not unsympathetic to their needs – large organizations have duties to protect their assets and have to be cautious. When words like “anti-trust violations” start to get thrown around, the people organizations hire to be risk adverse get risk adverse and choose not to take action.
Well, I got my wish, in a way, and AALL has made a declarative statement on consumer advocacy. I have to say, though, I am dismayed at the proposed AALL Antitrust Policy. For links to the policy and an explanation from Consumer Advocacy Caucus, please see Consumer Advocacy Caucus Blog. In particular, I want to draw your attention to the list of examples on page five (5) of the document. It reads:
The followlng topics are some examples of the subjects which should not be discussed at
Association meetings, either virtual or live:
1. Do not discuss current or future prices (be very careful of discussions of past prices).
2. Do not discuss what is a fair profit level.
3. Do not discuss standardizing or stabilizing prices or pricing procedures.
4. Do not discuss cash discounts or credit terms.
5. Do not discuss controlling sales or production or allocating markets or customers. (This
applies to services as well as products.)
6. Do not complain to a competitor that its prices constitute unfair trade practices and do not
refuse to dealwith a company or individual because of pricing or distribution practices.
7. Do not discuss anticipated wage rates.
I mean, maybe I’m just a terrible dinner date, but this is pretty much the only thing I like to talk about during breaks at AALL meetings! (And the policy specifically mentions that these should not occur at formal or informal gathering of members, so I don’t think I’m over-reading it. If I am, perhaps the language should be tightened up so that people aren’t unnecessarily worried about violating the policy.) If this proposed policy passes, I know I for one am going to have to seriously consider whether or not I can continue as an AALL member. It’s not even a matter of opinions and what AALL should be doing…I am seriously not sure I can physically comply with it.
It’s not too late and this policy has not been enacted yet. If you have an opinion on this – one way or another (you can’t complain if you don’t vote!)- , I urge you to contact the AALL Executive Board and let them know.
(I am also not an anti-trust expert, but this article sheds more light on economic boycotts.)
Photo credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/9619972@N08/
By - Thursday, June 23, 2011 - 9:11am
I love being a librarian.
Some of it is because of the big picture/honorable professional stuff that I frequently blog about here. But honestly, I really love the day to day: staffing a ref desk, hunting down a hard to find piece of information, working with law students…Not only do I never wake up in the morning dreading going into work, but I often am really looking forward to it.
So it is with very mixed emotions that I announce that very soon I will no longer be a librarian.
At least not the kind that works in a library.
If I’m timing this right, John Mayer, the executive director of the Center for Computer Assisted Legal Instruction (CALI) has just announced that starting August 15, I will be the new Director of Content Development for CALI. This is definitely an unexpected and unplanned development in my career, but one that I couldn’t be more excited and thrilled about. It’s not every day that you’re offered a job that will give you the opportunity to change the world and, knowing some of the projects that CALI is working on and the possibilities of what it can do, well….I really think we can make a difference. Definitely in the way future lawyers are educated, but also in how regular citizens have access to justice and legal materials.
When John offered me the job, he was almost like a combination of Morpheus in The Matrix and The Godfather.
My new boss, John Mayer, at CALIcon Vegas
I realized that I could continue on my safe library career path, enjoying my job and wishing some things in the legal information landscape would be different OR I could take a bit of a leap of faith, alter my plans and spend my time actually making the products I think are needed instead of waiting for them to happen. As you’ve probably noticed, Gentle Reader, I really like quotes. One of my all time favorites is from Ghandi: “Be the change you want to see in the world.” I really think this position will allow me to do that. And, in the end, that was an offer I couldn’t refuse.
Although I am not going to be working in a library, I still will always consider myself to be a librarian. I’m just literally putting my money where my mouth is when it comes to all of my talk about how libraries and librarians should work and collaborate with technologists and other related fields. It’s definitely going to be a different environment and the new freedoms I’ll have to create and explore are a little breathtaking. The CALI crew are also just a lot of fun to be around. As I told John after I accepted the offer, I feel a little bit like I’m running away and joining the circus.
So, this is a big step. It’s exciting and scary and, yes, even makes me just a little sad. I’m sure there’s a German word that encapsulates all of these emotions. But you know, I have always believed that life is meant to be lived to fullest and that you should try new things and take big risks – otherwise you’re just taking up space and counting down the clock until you die. And that’s such a sad waste of a life. I dunno…maybe I was the only kid that was actually listening when they read that Robert Frost poem at graduation.
This isn’t just a big professional step, but a personal one too. I’ll be moving to Chicago, which is slightly different from Valparaiso, Indiana. You know, just a little. So I’m also very excited about the opportunities for adventure that living there is going to provide. I’m a bit of a country mouse, so I am a little nervous, but in my house hunting adventures I have already learned the secret to driving in Chicago: Don’t think about your insurance premiums and just gun it. Which I guess is sort of the theme here.
So. Lots of changes happening in the next month. My last day at Valparaiso is going to be July 29 and I would be remiss if I didn’t also include a big THANK YOU to all of my colleagues here who have been so much fun and valuable to work with. I am so sad about leaving them and this beautiful place.
But…now on to a new adventure.
CALI, hve, LibPunk, meta, open access, the future
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 - Wednesday, April 20, 2011 - 9:42pm
I heard the most wonderful idea recently: Change happens in the gerund.
For the non-English majors out there, a gerund is basically a verb that ends in -ing. It’s usually combined with a form of the verb “to be”, which makes it a present participle. Present participles are used to indicate an action that is incomplete.
So to say that change happens in the gerund means that things don’t change, they are changing. Have been changing. Will be changing. It’s not enough to say that, for example, “libraries have changed” or “patrons have changed” or even that “libraries/patrons will change.” It’s better to say that “libraries are changing” and while you’re at it, acknowledge the fact that this is a process with no beginning and no end.
Not everything changes, of course. For example, dead things don’t change. And, um…that’s about it, really.
Fortunately, the industries that I am most connected to – libraries, education, law and technology – are not dead. As a matter of fact, all of them are currently in a period of massive change. So much change, in fact, that it seems like maybe all this change is new and pretty soon things will settle down and we can all relax.
Nope. Not gonna happen.
Sorry.
When you accept the idea that change happens in the gerund, you realize that you should never see change as a problem because if you do, you are setting yourself up for a life of disappointment. Why? Problems can be solved. Change as a problem can never be “solved” because there will always be more change happening. However, if you think of change as merely “a difficulty” or “a challenge”, then you are mentally braced for the work ahead without deluding yourself into thinking that you will ever be finished.
The goal post will keep moving. The issues you resolve will cease to be important and new issues – some of which you can’t even fathom at this point – will arise. You will never be “done.”
Change happens in the gerund.
Photo credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/spursfan_ace/
By - Sunday, April 17, 2011 - 11:45am
Hello faithful RSS subscribers!
The Special Libraries Association is running a group blog this year called “Future Ready 365” which features a new blog post a day on the future of information professionals. My contribution, “The Bomb Under the Table,” appears today. Check it out! And maybe add the Future Ready 365 blog to your reader too…t’s got lots of great contributions.
Photo credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/eworm/
