Despite my two years of experience as a professional librarian, I have doubts about what a librarian should be and questions about who I am as a librarian. The fact that librarians do so many different things and yet can be all called “a librarian” doesn’t help dispel my confusion. What do librarians share other than the fact that they all work at a library building and somehow contribute to a library’s daily operation and they all went through the MLS program at one point? What a cataloger does is so different from the daily work of an instruction librarian just as the work of a web services librarian doesn’t overlap at all with the everyday work of an inter-library loan librarian. What ties these individuals together as one group – a group of librarians?

Fire hose turned on the fire by Oregon State University Archives on Flickr.

I know this is a trite answer. But it seems to me that the family resemblance of all librarians, to borrow Wittgenstein’s term, is not so much the nature of individual librarians’ work as a shared belief and faith: the belief that information and knowledge is to be treasured and someone must work to deliver and preserve this information and knowledge accumulated throughout human history to the public, the faith that access to information and knowledge is a basic human right and it should be equally provided to anyone who desires to learn. If someone asks what I do and asks again what that means when I reply that I am a librarian, this is the answer that I should give rather than enumerating all the mundane things like setting up e-resources for a trial, filling out the paperwork for my grant project, updating web pages, and going to lots of meetings.

The problem is that this belief and the faith that are at the core of librarianship are often lost to a librarian’s view who has to battle with bureaucracy, red tapes, indifference, and often the lack of understanding, support, and recognition, in order to get seemingly the most mundane things done. But at heart, librarians are ideologues and dreamers, ideologues who do their legwork, dreamers who do act upon their dreams, sometimes to the degree that leads to the loss of the sight of their collective identity.

I always loved librarianship because of its practicality. But making the practicality coexist with the belief, the faith, and the ideology of librarianship side by side is not an easy task at all.

I have turned to librarians on Twitter for advice and have received 17 amazingly wise and helpful answers ranging from the suggestion of a new author to read and the recommendation of a hearty portion of ice cream and chocolate to the quite sound advice that I could be digging the ditches instead (quite true!). I am sharing them here for other librarians suffering from burnout like mine.

@lspags
depends on source of burnout;often reading profl lit recharges, other stuff (leadership lit 4 me) to reconnect. &convos w/ peeps.

@flexnib
change jobs/roles so that you’re not doing the same thing over & over (why I became a manager instead of continuing w reference)

@acbtanya
part of it’s realizing burnout happens to all. accept it & put energy elsewhere, you’ll end up w/ new perspective

@lisapisa77
think about what u can let go of that isn’t interesting or v. important. Keep working on at least 1 thing that is exciting to u.

@willkurt
remember there is always another larger, more interesting problem to tackle, and don’t be distracted by the mundane

@yo_bj
@ranti Vacation? What’s that? That’s the weekend, right?

@ ranti
vacation(s), do variety of stuff, go walk and eat a bowl of ice cream.

@r_anstett
examining the WHY I am doing something helps make the HOW I am doing it more relevant & energized

@jpannone
remember that it’s just a job. In 100 years from now, someone else will be doing it. Keep some distance & perspective.

@kongtemplation
perspective, new challenges, great colleagues and working environment

@Sara_Mooney
Find someone with a diverging viewpoint about what I do or am passionate about (metadata). Gets the juices running again.

@annehaines
Talking to library school students helps sometimes – they still remember why they want to do this

@library_chic
take the vacation time you get and use it for non-work/library stuff. have hobbies & interests outside work.

@pat2pattern
Hang around positive people. Make our home a sanctuary. Also, I take responsibility for my choices. And Cats. And Chocolate.

@mwphillips75
I remind myself that I could be digging ditches…

@jimmy1712
I always try to keep looking a different things…If I spend too long on one thing I tend to get bored and tired!

@LibrarianRy
Try to remain positive and passionate to the profession. Reading anything written by Alberto Manguel helps

This program, “What is Your Library Doing about Emerging Technologies?” has originated almost accidentally at the last ALA Annual in Chicago. The LITA Emerging Technologies Interest Group meeting attracted dozens of Emerging Technologies Librarians, many of whom were young in age (considering the median age of librarians) and also new in profession. Those librarians including me, who came to the meeting, voiced confusion and challenges in this new role/position in the library profession. Since the job title was so new, the job responsibilities were not yet clear, and there was no established procedure existing for Emerging Technologies Librarians to follow in observing, evaluating, testing, and implementing emerging technologies. Also hotly discussed topics were the fact that there was no agreed-upon clear definition of emerging technologies and the lack of a library’s clear vision and organizational effectiveness in managing emerging technologies.

The way this program was planned and its proposal was submitted was unique – at least I think it is – in that the program proposal was 100 % based upon the voice and concerns of the librarians who came to the Interest Group meeting. Many times, we find conference program topics focus on chasing after the most recent trends, the most popular topics, and the most advanced technologies of the library-land. Although these programs keep us up-to-date and give us an opportunity to peek at the shiniest new programs or technologies being implemented in the leading libraries often by the experts of the fields, we get a bitter taste in the mouth when we come back to our own beloved but less-leading library and try to somehow make the shiny new awesome programs or technologies work for us. This program was definitely not one of those programs. Someone at this year’s Emerging Technology Interest Group said that the program was “complimentary” to the widely-popular LITA Top Tech Trends program (after I said “opposite”). And I think that is a very accurate observation. We need both types of programs. One that focus on where we want to go; the other that thoroughly examines where we really are.

In organizing this program, Jacquelyn Erdman, the vice-chair of the LITA Emerging Technologies Interest Group, and I, tried to be true to its origin. Rather than soliciting several presentations on the hottest items in emerging technologies or showcasing the successful cases of emerging technologies implementations, we focused on the question of what emerging technologies mean when they are discussed in the library context and why the uses of this term could be problematic. We also wanted to cover what Emerging Technologies Librarians do in the real life and what the challenges are in both managing emerging technologies and implementing them at libraries.

This turned out to be a difficult task. Our panel has become quite large in order to ensure that the discussion would reflect the general voice of Emerging Technology Librarians; we found that the use of the term “emerging technologies” often inconsistent or even contrary to its accepted definition in other fields; many Emerging Technologies Librarians belonged to public services rather than Systems/IT/Web services as was originally assumed; the foremost challenge in managing and implementing technologies as an Emerging Technology Librarian was found to be introducing and leading changes without necessary authority in an organization that is often intolerant of risks and fears changes – which is a very sensitive topic to discuss in public.

Some of the attendees of the program criticized that the program didn’t have enough depth. That is partially correct, but it was also difficult to avoid because the intention of the program was to raise the issue that have not been discussed much before, and in order to do that it was necessary to give a broad perspective on the matter of emerging technologies in libraries. But we had some very interesting discussion in this year’s interest group meeting, and I think we will be submitting a program proposal “with depth” this time around for the next year’s Annual.

Ideally, the program would have been a big informal discussion in which both panelists and attendees sit around and very informally chat, asking difficult questions and honestly discussing the challenges and problems we face at work in managing and implementing emerging technologies. I realize now, however, this is unlikely to happen in the Annual Conference. Regardless of how much of what we intended as organizers was materialized in the actual panel discussion, the program was well-received. The room was packed, and more importantly, many librarians randomly stopped me and other panelists to remark that they enjoyed the panel discussion or that they didn’t attend but heard good things from those who did so. Both types of comments made all the program participants quite happy and we swapped stories about that among ourselves.

Although I keep thinking about a hundred different ways in which I could have improved the program in retrospect(!), I am satisfied with the fact that I was part of the program that went for something quite different from typical ALA conference programs. I also sincerely thank all the librarians who initiated this discussion about emerging technologies at the last year’s Annual and hope the program helped to clear and answer some of the confusions and questions raised in the last year’s meeting.

Lastly, thanks everyone who came to this program!
(The Twitter Archive for this program is at http://twapperkeeper.com/hashtag/emergetech?sm=6&sd=2&sy=&em=6&ed=31&ey=&o=&l=500&from_user=&text=)

I felt funny realizing that what was a burning question to me only about four months ago seemed already close to some distant memory.  The presentation was part of my efforts to make sense of the challenges and difficulties I have encountered at my work as a new solo web librarian at a small academic library.  I was feeling overwhelmed because I was fully aware of many innovative things I wanted to try, but also there was a very clear limit to what I could do in reality.  Also I was somewhat depressed by the fact that some really awesome things other libraries were doing couldn’t be done for various reasons related to limited resources, funding, staff, etc.

Does the fact that I almost forgot about the presentation mean that I came to some kind of  conclusion on that topic?  Well, probably not.  I think it would be more accurate to say that I have rather gotten used to my environment.

However, now that I look back, I think I learned something about patience in getting things done.  Trying new things requires dealing with some procedures and forming a teamwork  whether it is with some university offices or within one’s organization.  Inevitably, it takes time and efforts – sometimes in a seemingly inexplicably large sum.  Unfortunately, there is no real shortcut in dealing with all the steps whether it is bureaucracy or paperwork.  So what becomes quite important is, more often than not, persistence.

Persistence is also an important virtue and one of the most valuable weapon in a solo web-services librarian’s arsenal.  I mentioned in the presentation that almost everything technology-related becomes the responsibilities of web-services librarian in a small library. So, it is unavoidable that things that need to be done pile up while one solo web-services librarian tries to get all the technology-related things requested as well as other things s/he deems to be important done.  Some of them cannot be done in the time frame desired and/or requested.  Some of them have to go down on the priority list, so that more important things, which keep popping up anew, can be taken care of. But if there are things that need to be done whether it is next month or next season, they have to stay on the list and a solo web-services librarian needs to find time for those.  This sometimes requires persuading others and enlisting their help.

Oh, and resourcefulness. That probably would make another blog post. So I won’t talk about it here.

Another thing that I have learned since the presentation is that one library can’t do all and each library’s environment is unique.  This seems quite an obvious thing to say.  But still many times, libraries waste a lot of time trying to replicate what has been done successfully at other libraries without realizing that there are very different dynamics at work.  Particularly for small libraries, it only makes sense to focus a small number of things that they can excel at rather than spreading thin their resources and staff in many different things.

From time to time, I think I should remind myself of these new lessons I have learned, so that I won’t get unproductively frustrated or disappointed and stay positive and efficient at the same time.

The question which still remains in my mind as an unanswered question is how a solo web-services librarian should deal with necessary R&D.  Unlike at larger libraries where there are multiple programmers and a large IT staff for example, it is extremely difficult for a solo web-services librarian to engage in any productive and meaningful R&D activities because there are so many daily tasks to be handled that come before R&D.  (Also remember many of these librarians are trained first as librarians and not necessarily magical in programming and writing codes?)  On the other hand, without R&D, a solo web-services librarian is likely to be burned out and  get outdated at the same time.  Sadly, I don’t see any systematic support for R&D in small libraries.

This is probably not an issue that can be solved by a lay librarian nor at the scale of individual small libraries.  My hope is to see some larger agencies that  support continuing education/R&D for library technology staff – maybe funded by multiple libraries – and those libraries again committing themselves to allowing time for such continuing education for their technology staff.  Oh, well, wouldn’t that be nice?

For what it’s worth, here is my past presentation at OPAL. I am glad SlideShare sent me the notice. Otherwise I would have completely forgotten about all these questions.

OPAL Program Archive: http://www.opal-online.org/archivelis.htm (Sep. 17, 29009)

I think having a mentor can be of great help for new librarians.  But not all librarians necessarily need official mentors. Often new librarians can rely on their supervisors or other colleagues as their unofficial mentors.  This approach works best at a large organization where a new librarian can find experienced colleagues with similar interests to hers/his. But I also heard about situations where colleagues tend to hoard knowledge rather than sharing. Also for a new librarian who works as a solo-librarian or at a small library where each librarian specializes in a different field, participating in a mentoring program can be quite valuable.

I suspect that a mentoring relationship through emails between two librarians who do not know each other and work at different organizations would be inevitably less strong than between those who know each other well and work at the same place. On the other hand, via email, mentors and mentees can discuss any questions and issues without worrying about the local context and/or, sometimes, politics.

Everywehre Questions

(Image from Flickr: http://farm2.static.flickr.com/1098/1404539812_16fdf956d0.jpg)

I count myself lucky having found a great mentor through the first mentoring program I participated in.  I was paired with a mentor whose work is very similar in nature to mine. Common interests make it easy to start a conversation. One thing I excel at is asking questions. I may not necessarily understand answers, but I ask a lot of questions. Often I got illuminating answers, which come from my mentor’s experience. And those answers helped me understand certain things that at first glance looked strange or downright irrational to me. So if I have one recommendation for new librarians in mentoring relationship, that would be to ask lots of questions without worrying about whether they are  stupid or inappropriate. At what other times would one be free to ask such questions if not when a new librarian?

My expectation for the mentoring program was relatively simple — to find someone experienced who can give me advice about things I have difficulty in understanding, not so much about career development or skill sharing.  So I am not sure how mentoring would workfor more experienced librarians with different kinds of expectations. But one thing I try to remember as a mentee is that mentoring is a big time investment for mentors. So I try to be specific, honest, and clear as much as possible when I ask questions via e-mail.

I wonder when one graduates being a mentee and can begin to help others as a mentor. Maybe when there are less questions that strike one’s mind everyday?