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Librarianship

From Need to Want: How to Maximize Social Impact for Libraries, Archives, and Museums

At the NDP at Three event organized by IMLS yesterday, Sayeed Choudhury on the “Open Scholarly Communications” panel suggested that libraries think about return on impact in addition to return on investment (ROI). He further elaborated on this point by proposing a possible description of such impact. His description was that when an object or resource created through scholarly communication efforts is being used by someone we don’t know and is interpreted correctly without contacting us (=libraries, archives, museums etc.), that is an impact; to push that further, if someone uses the object or the resource in a way we didn’t anticipate, that’s an impact; if it is integrated into someone’s workflow, that’s also an impact.

This emphasis on impact as a goal for libraries, archives, and museums (or non-profit organizations in general to apply broadly) resonated with me particularly because I gave a talk just a few days ago to a group of librarians at the IOLUG conference about how libraries can and should maximize their social impact in the context of innovation in the way many social entrepreneurs have been already doing for quite some time. In this post, I would like to revisit one point that I made in that talk. It is a specific interpretation of the idea of maximizing social impact as a conscious goal for libraries, archives, and museums (LAM). Hopefully, this will provide a useful heuristic for LAM institutions in mapping out the future efforts.

Considering that ROI is a measure of cost-effectiveness, I believe impact is a much better goal than ROI for LAM institutions. We often think that to collect, organize, provide equitable access to, and preserve information, knowledge, and cultural heritage is the goal of a library, an archive, and a museum. But doing that well doesn’t mean simply doing it cost-effectively. Our efforts no doubt aim at achieving better-collected, better-organized, better-accessed, and better-preserved information, knowledge, and cultural heritage. However, our ultimate end-goal is attained only when such information, knowledge, and cultural heritage is better used by our users. Not simply better accessed, but better used in the sense that the person gets to leverage such information, knowledge, and cultural heritage to succeed in whatever endeavor that s/he was making, whether it be career success, advanced education, personal fulfillment, or private business growth. In my opinion, that’s the true impact that LAM institutions should aim at. If that kind of impact were a destination, cost-effectiveness is simply one mode of transportation, preferred one maybe but not quite comparable to the destination in terms of importance.

But what does “better used” exactly mean? “Integrated into people’s workflow” is a hint; “unanticipated use” is another clue. If you are like me and need to create and design that kind of integrated or unanticipated use at your library, archive, or museum, how will you go about that? This is the same question we ask over and over again. How do you plan and implement innovation? Yes, we will go talk to our users, ask what they would like to see, meet with our stakeholders and find out their interests and concerns are, discuss ourselves what we can do to deliver things that our users want, and go from there to another wonderful project we work hard for. Then after all that, we reach a stage where we stop and wonder where that “greater social impact” went in almost all our projects. And we frantically look for numbers. How many people accessed what we created? How many downloads? What does the satisfaction survey say?

In those moments, how does the “impact” verbiage help us? How does that help us in charting our actual path to creating and maximizing our social impact more than the old-fashioned “ROI” verbiage? At least ROI is quantifiable and measurable. This, I believe, is why we need a more concrete heuristic to translate the lofty “impact” to everyday “actions” we can take. Maybe not quite as specific as to dictate what exactly those actions are at each project level but a bit more specific to enable us to frame the value we are attempting to create and deliver at our LAM institutions beyond cost-effectiveness.

I think the heuristic we need is the conversion of need to demand. What is an untapped need that people are not even aware of in the realm of information, knowledge, and cultural heritage? When we can identify any such need in a specific form and successfully convert that need to a demand, we make an impact. By “demand,” I mean the kind of user experience that people will desire and subsequently fulfill by using that object, resource, tool, service, etc., we create at our library, archive, and museum. (One good example of such desirable UX that comes to my mind is NYPL Photo Booth: https://www.nypl.org/blog/2013/08/12/snapshots-nypl.) When we create a demand out of such an untapped need, when the fulfillment of that kind of demand effectively creates, strengthens, and enriches our society in the direction of information, knowledge, evidence-based decisions, and truth being more valued, promoted, and equitably shared, I think we get to maximize our social impact.

In the last “Going Forward” panel where the information discovery was discussed, Loretta Parham pointed out that in the corporate sector, information finds consumers, not the other way. By contrast, we (by which I mean all of us working at LAM institutions) still frame our value in terms of helping and supporting users access and use our material, resources, and physical and digital objects and tools. This is a mistake in my opinion, because it is a self-limiting value proposition for libraries, archives, and museums.

What is the point of us LAM institutions, working so hard to get the public to use their resources and services? The end goal is so that we can maximize our social impact through such use. The rhetoric of “helping and supporting people to access and use our resources” does not adequately convey that. Businesses want their clients to use their goods and services, of course. But their real target is the making of profit out of those uses, aka purchases.

Similarly, but far more importantly, the real goal of libraries, archives and museums is to move the society forward, closer in the direction of knowledge, evidence-based decisions, and truth being more valued, promoted, and equitably shared. One person at a time, yes, but the ultimate goal reaching far beyond individuals. The end goal is maximizing our impact on this side of the public good.

 

Post-Election Statements and Messages that Reaffirm Diversity

These are statements and messages sent out publicly or internally to re-affirm diversity, equity, and inclusion by libraries or higher ed institutions. I have collected these – some myself and many others through my fellow librarians. Some of them were listed on my blog post, “Finding the Right Words in Post-Election Libraries and Higher Ed.” So there are some duplicates.

If you think that your organization is already so much pro-diversity that there is no need to confirm or re-affirm diversity, you can’t be farther from the everyday reality that minorities experience. Sometimes, saying isn’t much. But right now, saying it out loud can mean everything. If you support those who belong to minority groups but don’t say it out loud, how would they know it? Right now, nothing is obvious other than there is a lot of hate and violence towards minorities.

Feel free to use these as your resource to craft a similar message. Feel free to add if you have similar messages you have received or created in the comments section.

If you haven’t heard from the organization you belong to, please ask for a message reaffirming and committing to diversity, equity, and inclusion.

[UPDATE 11/15/2016: Statements from ALA and LITA have been released. I have added them below.]

I will continue to add additional statements as I find them. If you see anything missing, please add below in the comment or send it via Twitter @bohyunkim. Thanks!

From Librarians

From Library Associations

From Libraries

From Higher Ed Institutions

Drexel University

Moving On as a Community After the Election

Dear Members of the Drexel Community,

It is heartening to me to see the Drexel community come together over the last day to digest the news of the presidential election — and to do so in the spirit of support and caring that is so much a part of this University. We gathered family-style, meeting in small, informal groups in several places across campus, including the Student Center for Inclusion and Culture, our residence halls, and as colleagues over a cup of coffee. Many student leaders, particularly from our multicultural organizations, joined the conversation.

This is not a process that can be completed in just one day, of course. So I hope these conversations will continue as long as students, faculty and professional staff feel they are needed, and I want to assure you that our professional staff in Student Life, Human Resources, Faculty Affairs, as well as our colleagues in the Lindy Center for Civic Engagement, will be there for your support.

Without question, many members of our community were deeply concerned by the inflammatory rhetoric and hostility on the campaign trail that too often typified this bitter election season.

As I wrote over the summer, the best response to an uncertain and at times deeply troubling world is to remain true to our values as an academic community. In the context of a presidential election, it is vital that we understand and respect that members of our broadly diverse campus can hold similarly diverse political views. The expression of these views is a fundamental element of the free exchange of ideas and intellectual inquiry that makes Drexel such a vibrant institution.

At the same time, Drexel remains committed to ensuring a welcoming, inclusive, and respectful environment. Those tenets are more important than ever.

While we continue to follow changes on the national scene, it is the responsibility of each of us at Drexel to join together to move ahead, unified in our commitment to open dialogue, civic engagement and inclusion.

I am grateful for all you do to support Drexel as a community that welcomes and encourages all of its members.

Lane Community College

Good Morning, Colleagues,

I am in our nation’s capital today. I’d rather be at home! Like me, I am guessing that many of you were glued to the media last night to find out the results of the election. Though we know who our next President will be, this transition still presents a lot of uncertainty. It is not clear what our future president’s higher education policies will be but we will be working with our national associations to understand and influence where we can.

During times like this there is an opening for us to decide how we want to be with each other. Moods will range from joy to sadness and disbelief. It seems trite but we do need to work together, now more than ever. As educators we have a unique responsibility to create safe learning environments where every student can learn and become empowered workers and informed citizens. This imperative seems even more important today. Our college values of equity and inclusion have not changed and will not change and it is up to each of us to assure that we live out our values in every classroom and in each interaction. Preparing ourselves and our students for contentious discussions sparked by the election is work we must do.

It is quite likely that some of our faculty, staff and students may be feeling particularly vulnerable right now. Can we reach out to each other and let each other know that we all belong at Lane? During my inservice remarks I said that “we must robustly reject the calculated narrative of cynicism, division and despair. Instead of letting this leak into our narratives, together we can bet on hope not fear, respect not hate, unity not division.” At Lane we have the intellect (and proud of it) and wherewithal to do this.

I am attaching a favorite reading from Meg Wheatley which is resonating with me today and will end with Gary Snyder’s words from To The Children …..stay together learn the flowers go light.

Maryland Institute College of Art

Post-Election Community Forums and Support

Dear Campus Community,

No matter how each of us voted yesterday, most of us likely agree that the presidential campaign has been polarizing on multiple fronts. As a result, today is a difficult day for our nation and our campus community. In our nation, regardless of how one has aligned with a candidate, half of our country feels empowered and the other half sad and perhaps angry. Because such dynamics and feelings need to be addressed and supported on campus, this memo outlines immediate resources for our community of students, faculty and staff, and describes opportunities for fashioning dialogues and creative actions going forward.

Before sharing the specifics, let me say unambiguously that MICA will always stand firm in our commitment to diversity and inclusion. This morning’s Presidential Task Force on Diversity, Inclusion, Equity, and Globalization meeting discussed measures to ensure that, as a creative community, we will continue to build a culture where everyone is honored and supported for success. The impact of exhibitions such as the current Baltimore Rising show remains as critical as ever, and MICA fosters an educational environment that is welcoming of all.

In the short term our focus is to support one another. Whether you are happy or distressed with the results, there has been sufficient feedback to indicate that our campus community is struggling with how to make sense of such a divisive election process. You may find the following services helpful and are encouraged to take advantage of them:

For Students: Student Counseling maintains walk-in hours from 3:00 – 4:00 pm every day. Students are welcome to stop by the Student Counseling Center (1501 Mt. Royal Avenue) during that time or call 410-669-9200 and enter x2367 once the recording begins to schedule an appointment.
For Faculty and Staff: The Employee Assistance Program (EAP) is available to provide free, confidential support 24 hours a day. The EAP can be reached by calling 1-866-799-2728 or visiting HealthAdvocate.com/members and providing the username “Maryland Institute College of Art”.
For all MICA community members: MICA’s chaplain, the Rev, maintains standing hours every Monday and can be reached in the Reflection Room (Meyerhoff House) or by calling the Office of Diversity and Intercultural Development at 443-552-1659.

There are three events this week that can provide a shared space for dialogue; all are welcome:

The “After the Baltimore Uprising: Still Waiting for Change” community forum attached to the Baltimore Rising exhibition takes place tonight from 7:00 pm to 9:00 pm in the Lazarus Center.
An open space for all MICA community members will be hosted by the Black Student Union tonight at 10:00 pm in the Meyerhoff House Underground.
In partnership with our student NAMI group, MICA will host a “Messages of Hope” event for the entire MICA community that will allow for shared space and reflection. This event will be on Friday, November 11th, and will begin at 3:00 pm in Cohen Plaza.

In various upcoming meetings we look forward to exploring with campus members other appropriate activities that can be created to facilitate expressions and dialogues.

A separate communication is coming from Provost David Bogen to the faculty regarding classroom conversations with students regarding the election.

Northwestern University Women’s Center

Dear Northwestern students, faculty, staff and community members:

The Women’s Center is open today. Our staff members are all here and available to talk, to provide resources and tools, or to help however you might need it. Most importantly, the space itself is available for whatever you need, whether that is to gather as a group, to sit alone somewhere comfortable and quiet, or to talk to someone who will listen. We are still here, and we are here for all people as an intentionally intersectional space. You are welcome to drop by physically, make a call to our office, or send an email. Know that this space is open and available to you.

Portland Community College to the PCC Staff

As someone who spent the last several years in Washington D.C. working to advance community colleges, I feel a special poignancy today hearing so many students, colleagues, and friends wonder and worry about the future—and about their futures.

We must acknowledge that this political season has highlighted deep divisions in our society. Today I spent time with Cabinet speaking about how we can assert our shared values and take positive action as a PCC community to deepen our commitment to equity, inclusion and civic engagement.

PCC will always welcome students and colleagues who bring a rich array of perspectives and experiences. That diversity is among our greatest strengths.

Today it is imperative that we stand by faculty, staff and students who may be experiencing fear or uncertainty—affirming with our words and deeds that PCC is about equitable student success and educational opportunity for all. Never has this mission been more powerful or more essential.

I have only been here a few months, but have already learned that PCC is a remarkable and caring community. Much is happening right now in real time, and I appreciate the efforts of all. For my part, I promise to communicate often as we continue to plan for our shared future.

P.S. Today and in the days ahead, we will be holding space for people to be together in community. Here are a few of the opportunities identified so far.

Portland Community College to Students

Dear Students:

As someone who spent the last several years working in Washington D.C., I feel a special poignancy this week hearing many of you express worry and uncertainty about the future.

There is little doubt that this political season has highlighted some deep divisions in our society. Both political candidates have acknowledged as much.

At the same time, people representing the full and diverse spectrum of our country come to our nation’s community colleges in hopes of a better life. PCC is such a place – where every year thousands of students find their path and pursue their dreams. All should find opportunity here, and all should feel safe and welcome.

The rich diversity of PCC offers an amazing opportunity for dialogue across difference, and for developing skills that are the foundation of our democratic society.

Let this moment renew your passion for making a better life for yourself, your community and your country and for becoming the kind of leader you want to follow.

Rutgers University AAUP-AFT
(American Association of University Professors – American Federation of Teachers)

Resisting Donald Trump

We are shocked and horrified that Donald Trump, who ran on a racist, xenophobic, misogynist platform, is now the President of the US. In response to this new political landscape, the administrative heads of several universities have issued statements embracing their diverse student, faculty, and staff bodies and offering support and protection. (See statements from the University of California and the California State University). President Barchi has yet to address the danger to the Rutgers community and its core mission.

This afternoon, our faculty union and the Rutgers One Coalition held an emergency meeting of students, faculty, and community activists in New Brunswick. We discussed means of responding to the attacks that people may experience in the near future. Most immediately, we approved the following statement by acclamation at the 100-strong meeting:

“Rutgers One, a coalition of faculty, staff, students and community members, calls upon the Rutgers administration to join us in condemning all acts of bigotry on this campus and refuse to tolerate any attacks on immigrants, women, Arabs, Muslims, people of color, LGBTQ people and all others in our diverse community. We demand that President Barchi and his administration provide sanctuary, support, and protection to those who are already facing attacks on our campuses. We need concrete action that can ensure a safe environment for all. Further, we commit ourselves to take action against all attempts by the Trump administration to target any of our students, staff or faculty. We are united in resistance to bigotry of every kind and welcome all to join us in solidarity.”

We also resolved to take the following steps:

We will be holding weekly Friday meetings at 3pm in our Union office in New Brunswick to bring together students, faculty and staff to organize against the Trump agenda. We hope to expand these to Camden and Newark as well. (If you are willing to help organize this, please email back.)
We will be creating a list serve to coordinate our work. If you want to join this list, please reply to this email.
We are making posters and stickers which declare sanctuaries from racism, xenophobia, sexism, bigotry, religious intolerance, and attacks on unions. Once these materials are ready we will write to you so that you may post them on windows, office doors, cars etc. In the meantime, we urge you to talk to your students and colleagues of color as well as women and offer them your support and solidarity.

As you may recall, the Executive Committee issued a denunciation of Donald Trump on October 10, 2016. Now our slogan, one from the labor movement, is “Don’t mourn. Organize!” That is where we are now – all the more poignantly because of Donald Trump’s appeal to workers. Let us organize, and let us also expand our calling of education. In your classrooms, your communities, and your families, find the words and sentiments that will redeem all of us from Tuesday’s disgrace.

University of Chicago

Message from President and Provost

Early in the fall quarter, we sent a message welcoming each of you to the new academic year and affirming our strong commitment to two foundational values of the University – fostering an environment of free expression and open discourse; and ensuring that diversity and inclusion are essential features of the fabric of our campus community and our interactions beyond campus.

Recent national events have generated waves of disturbing, exclusionary and sometimes threatening behavior around the country, particularly concerning gender and minority status. As a result, many individuals are asking whether the nation and its institutions are entering a period in which supporting the values of diversity and inclusion, as well as free expression and open discourse, will be increasingly challenging. As the president and provost of the University of Chicago, we are writing to reaffirm in the strongest possible terms our unwavering commitment to these values, and to the importance of the University as a community acting on these values every day.

Fulfilling our highest aspirations with respect to these values and their mutual reinforcement will always demand ongoing attention and work on the part of all of us. The current national environment underscores the importance of this work. It means that we need to manifest these values more rather than less, demand more of ourselves as a community, and together be forthright and bold in demonstrating what our community aspires to be. We ask all of you for your help and commitment to the values of diversity and inclusion, free expression, and open discourse and what they mean for each of us working, learning, and living in this University community every day.

University of Illinois, Chicago

Dear Students, Faculty, and Staff,

The events of the past week have come with mixed emotions for many of you. We want you to know that UIC remains steadfast in its commitment to creating and sustaining a community that recognizes and values the inherent worth and dignity of every person, while fostering an environment of mutual respect among all members.

Today, we reaffirm the University’s commitment to access, equity, inclusion and nondiscrimination. Critical to this commitment is the work of several offices on campus that provide resources to help you be safe and successful. If you have questions, need someone to talk to, or a place to express yourself, you should consider contacting these offices:

Office for Access and Equity (OAE). OAE is responsible for assuring campus compliance in matters of equal opportunity, affirmative action, and nondiscrimination in the academic and work environment. OAE also offers Dispute Resolution Services (DRS) to assist with conflict in the workplace not involving unlawful discrimination matters.

UIC Counseling Center. The UIC Counseling Center is a primary resource providing comprehensive mental health services that foster personal, interpersonal, academic, and professional thriving for UIC students.
Student Legal Services. UIC’s Student Legal Services (SLS) is a full-service law office dedicated to providing legal solutions for currently enrolled students.

Office of Diversity. The Office of Diversity leads strategic efforts to advance access, equity, and inclusion as fundamental principles underpinning all aspects of university life. It initiates programs that promote an inclusive university climate, partner with campus units to formulate systems of accountability, and develop links with the local community and alumni groups.
Centers for Cultural Understanding and Social Change. The Centers for Cultural Understanding and Social Change (CCUSC) are a collaborative group of seven centers with distinct histories, missions, and locations that promote the well-being of and cultural awareness about underrepresented and underserved groups at UIC.

UIC Dialogue Initiative. The UIC Dialogue Initiative seeks to build an inclusive campus community where students, faculty, and staff feel welcomed in their identities, valued for their contributions, and feel their identities can be openly expressed.

Through whatever changes await us, as a learning community we have a special obligation to ensure that our conversations and dialogues over the next weeks and months respect our varied backgrounds and beliefs.

University of Maryland, Baltimore

To the UMB Community:

Last week, we elected a new president for our country. I think most will agree that the campaign season was long and divisive, and has left many feeling separated from their fellow citizens. In the days since the election, I’ve heard from the leaders of UMB and of the University of Maryland Medical Center and of the many programs we operate that serve our neighbors across the city and state. These leaders have relayed stories of students, faculty, staff, families, and children who feel anxious and unsettled, who feel threatened and fearful.

It should be unnecessary to reaffirm UMB’s commitment to diversity, inclusion, and respect — these values are irrevocable — but when I hear that members of our family are afraid, I must reiterate that the University will not tolerate incivility of any kind, and that the differences we celebrate as a diverse community include not just differences of race, religion, nationality, gender, and sexual identity, but also of experience, opinion, and political affiliation and ideology. If you suffer any harassment, please contact your supervisor or your student affairs dean.

In the months ahead, we will come together as a University community to talk about how the incoming administration might influence the issues we care about most: health care access and delivery; education; innovation; social justice and fair treatment for all. We will talk about the opportunities that lay ahead to shape compassionate policy and to join a national dialogue on providing humane care and services that uplift everyone in America. For anyone who despairs, we will talk about building hope.

Should you want to share how you’re feeling post-election, counselors are available. Please contact the Student Counseling Center or the Employee Assistance Program to schedule an appointment.

I look forward to continuing this conversation about how we affirm our fundamental mission to improve the human condition and serve the public good. Like the values we uphold, this mission endures — irrespective of the person or party in political power. It is our binding promise to the leaders of this state and, even more importantly, to the citizens we serve together.

University of West Georgia

Dear Colleagues,

As we head into the weekend concluding a week, really several weeks, of national and local events, I am reminded of the incredible opportunity of reflection and discourse we have as a nation and as an institution of higher learning.

This morning, we held on campus a moving ceremony honoring our Veterans–those who have served and who have given the ultimate sacrifice to uphold and protect our freedoms.  It is those freedoms that provide the opportunity to elect a President and those freedoms that provide an environment of civil discourse and opinion.  Clearly, the discourse of this election cycle has tested the boundaries.

This is an emotional time for many of our faculty, staff, and students.  I ask that as a campus community we hold true to the intended values of our nation and those who sacrificed to protect those values and the core values of our institution–caring, collaboration, inclusiveness, and wisdom.  We must acknowledge and allow the civil discourse and opinion of all within a safe environment.  That is what should set us apart.  It is part of our DNA in higher education to respect and encourage variance and diversity of belief, thought, and culture.

I call on your professionalism during these times and so appreciate your passion and care for each other and our students.

Virginia Commonwealth University to Staff

Election Message

Dear VCU and VCU Health Communities,

Yesterday, we elected new leaders for our city, commonwealth and nation. I am grateful to those of you who made your voice heard during the electoral process, including many of our students who voted for the first time. Whether or not your preferred candidate won, you were a part of history and a part of the process that moves our democracy forward. Thank you. I hope you will always continue to make your voice heard, both as voters and as well-educated leaders in our society.

As with any election, some members of our community are enthusiastic about the winners, others are not.  For many, this election cycle was notably emotional and difficult.

Now is the time, then, to demonstrate the values that make Virginia Commonwealth University such a remarkable place.  We reaffirm our commitment to working together across boundaries of discipline or scholarship, as members of one intellectual community, to achieve what’s difficult.  We reaffirm our commitment to inclusion, to ensuring that every person who comes to VCU is respected and emboldened to succeed.  We reaffirm that we will always be a place of the highest integrity, accountability, and we will offer an unyielding commitment to serving those who need us.

History changes with every election. What does not change are the commitments we share as one community that is relentlessly focused on advancing the human experience for all people.

You continue to inspire me.  And I know you will continue to be a bright light for Richmond, Virginia, our nation and our world.

Virginia Commonwealth University School of Education to Students

Election Message

Dear students,

On Tuesday we elected new leaders for our city, our commonwealth and our nation. Although leadership will be changing, I echo Dr. Rao’s message below in that our mission outlined by the Quest for Distinction to support student success, advance knowledge and strengthen our communities remains steadfast.

At the VCU School of Education, we work to create safe spaces where innovation, inclusion and collaboration can thrive. We actively work across boundaries and disciplines to address the complex challenges facing our communities, schools and families. The election of new leaders provides new opportunities for our students, faculty and staff to build bridges that help us reach our goal of making an impact in urban and high need environments.

I encourage you to engage in positive dialogues with one another as the city, commonwealth and nation adjust to the change in leadership, vision and strategy.

Virginia Commonwealth University Division of Student Affairs

Dear Students,

We are writing to you, collectively, as leaders in the Division of Student Affairs.  We acknowledge that this election season was stressful for many individuals in our VCU community, culminating with the election of the next president.  Some members of our campus community have felt disrespected, attacked and further marginalized by political rhetoric during the political process.  We want to affirm support of all of our students while also recognizing the unique experiences and concerns of individuals. We want all students to know that we are here to support you, encourage you and contribute to your success.

We now live in a space of uncertainty as we transition leadership in our nation.  Often, with this uncertainty comes a host of thoughts and feelings.  We hope that you will take advantage of some of the following services and programs we offer through our division to support your well-being, including: Office of Multicultural Student Affairs, Self-Care Space, University Counseling Services , The Wellness Resource Center, Trans Lives Matter Panel and Survivor Solidarity Support, Recreational Sports, Restorative Yoga and Mind & Body Classes.

We encourage students to express their concerns and engage in conversations that further the core values articulated in Quest, the VCU Strategic Plan. We continue to have an opportunity to make individual and collective choices about how we work to bridge differences in a manner that builds up our community.

Our staff will have a table each day next week on the VCU Compass from noon to 1:00 p.m. ­­­to receive your concerns, suggestions and just listen.  Please stop by to meet us.  We want you to know you have our full support.

Other Organizations

Finding the Right Words in Post-Election Libraries and Higher Ed

** This post was originally published in ACRL TechConnect on Nov. 15, 2016.***

This year’s election result has presented a huge challenge to all of us who work in higher education and libraries. Usually, libraries, universities, and colleges do not comment on presidential election result and we refrain from talking about politics at work. But these are not usual times that we are living in.

A black female student was shoved off the sidewalk and called the ‘N’ word at Baylor University. The Ku Klux Klan is openly holding a rally. West Virginia officials publicly made a racist comment about the first lady. Steve Bannon’s prospective appointment as the chief strategist and senior counsel to the new President is being praised by white nationalist leaders and fiercely opposed by civil rights groups at the same time. Bannon is someone who calls for an ethno-state, openly calls Martin Luther King a fraud, and laments white dispossession and the deconstruction of occidental civilization. There are people drawing a swastika at a park. The ‘Whites only’ and ‘Colored’ signs were put up over water fountains in a Florida school. A Muslim student was threatened with a lighter. Asian-American women are being assaulted. Hostile acts targeting minority students are taking place on college campuses.

Libraries and educational institutions exist because we value knowledge and science. Knowledge and science do not discriminate. They grow across all different races, ethnicities, religions, nationalities, sexual identities, and disabilities. Libraries and educational institutions exist to enable and empower people to freely explore, investigate, and harness different ideas and thoughts. They support, serve, and belong to ‘all’ who seek knowledge. No matter how naive it may sound, they are essential to the betterment of human lives, and they do so by creating strength from all our differences, not likeness. This is why diversity, equity, inclusion are non-negotiable and irrevocable values in libraries and educational institutions.

How do we reconcile these values with the president-elect who openly dismissed and expressed hostility towards them? His campaign made remarks and promises that can be interpreted as nothing but the most blatant expressions of racism, sexism, intolerance, bigotry, harassment, and violence. What will we do to address the concerns of our students, staff, and faculty about their physical safety on campus due to their differences in race, ethnicity, religion, nationality, gender, and sexual identity? How do we assure them that we will continue to uphold these values and support everyone regardless of what they look like, how they identify their gender, what their faiths are, what disabilities they may have, who they love, where they come from, what languages they speak, or where they live? How?

We say it. Explicitly. Clearly. And repeatedly.

If you think that your organization is already very much pro-diversity that there is no need to confirm or reaffirm diversity, you can’t be farther from the everyday life minorities experience. Sometimes, saying isn’t much. But right now, saying it out loud can mean everything. If you support those who belong to minority groups but don’t say it out loud, how would they know it? Right now, nothing is obvious other than there is a lot of hate and violence towards minorities.

The entire week after the election, I agonized about what to say to my small team of IT people whom I supervise at work. As a manager, I felt that it was my responsibility to address the anxiety and uncertainty that some of my staff – particularly those in minority groups – would be experiencing due to the election result. I also needed to ensure that whatever dialogue takes place regarding the differences of opinions between those who were pleased and those who were distressed with the election result, those dialogues remain civil and respectful.

Crafting an appropriate message was much more challenging than I anticipated. I felt very strongly about the need to re-affirm the unwavering support and commitment to diversity, equity, and inclusion particularly in relation to libraries and higher education, no matter how obvious it may seem. I also felt the need to establish (within the bounds of my limited authority) that we will continue to respect, value, and celebrate diversity in interacting with library users as well as other library and university staff members. Employees are held to the standard expectations of their institutions, such as diversity, equity, inclusion, tolerance, civil dialogue, and no harassment or violence towards minorities, even if their private opinions conflict with them. At the same time, I wanted to strike a measured tone and neither scare nor upset anyone, whichever side they were on in the election. As a manager, I have to acknowledge that everyone is entitled to their private opinions as long as they do not harm others.

I suspect that many of us – either a manager or not – want to say something similar about the election result. Not so much about who was and should have been as about what we are going to do now in the face of these public incidences of anger, hatred, harassment, violence, and bigotry directed at minority groups, which are coming out at an alarming pace because it affects all of us, not just minorities.

Finding the right words, however, is difficult. You have to carefully consider your role, audience, and the message you want to convey. The official public statement from a university president is going to take a tone vastly different from an informal private message a supervisor sends out to a few members of his or her team. A library director’s message to library patrons assuring the continued service for all groups of users with no discrimination will likely to be quite different from the one she sends to her library staff to assuage their anxiety and fear.

For such difficulty not to delay and stop us from what we have to and want to say to everyone we work with and care for, I am sharing the short message that I sent out to my team last Friday, 3 days after the election. (N.B. ‘CATS’ stands for ‘Computing and Technology Services’ and UMB refers to ‘University of Maryland, Baltimore.’) This is a customized message to address my own team. I am sharing this as a potential template for you to craft your own message. I would like to see more messages that reaffirm diversity, equity, and inclusion as non-negotiable values, explicitly state that we will not step backwards, and make a commitment to continued unwavering support for them.

Dear CATS,

This year’s close and divisive election left a certain level of anxiety and uncertainty in many of us. I am sure that we will hear from President Perman and the university leadership soon.

In the meantime, I want to remind you of something I believe to be very important. We are all here – just as we have been all along – to provide the most excellent service to our users regardless of what they look like, what their faiths are, where they come from, what languages they speak, where they live, and who they love. A library is a powerful place where people transform themselves through learning, critical thinking, and reflection. A library’s doors have been kept open to anyone who wants to freely explore the world of ideas and pursue knowledge. Libraries are here to empower people to create a better future. A library is a place for mutual education through respectful and open-minded dialogues. And, we, the library staff and faculty, make that happen. We get to make sure that people’s ethnicity, race, gender, disability, socio-economic backgrounds, political views, or religious beliefs do not become an obstacle to that pursuit. We have a truly awesome responsibility. And I don’t have to tell you how vital our role is as a CATS member in our library’s fulfilling that responsibility.

Whichever side we stood on in this election, let’s not forget to treat each other with respect and dignity. Let’s use this as an opportunity to renew our commitment to diversity, one of the UMB’s core values. Inclusive excellence is one of the themes of the UMB 2017-2021 Strategic Plan. Each and every one of us has a contribution to make because we are stronger for our differences.

We have much work ahead of us! I am out today, but expect lots of donuts Monday.

Have a great weekend,
Bohyun

 

Monday, I brought in donuts of many different kinds and told everyone they were ‘diversity donuts.’ Try it. I believe it was successful in easing some stress and tension that was palpable in my team after the election.

Photo from Flickr: https://www.flickr.com/photos/vnysia/4598569232

Photo from Flickr: https://www.flickr.com/photos/vnysia/4598569232

Before crafting your own message, I recommend re-reading your institution’s core values, mission and vision statements, and the most recent strategic plan. Most universities, colleges, and libraries include diversity, equity, inclusion, or something equivalent to these somewhere. Also review all public statements or internal messages that came from your institution that reaffirms diversity, equity, and inclusion. You can easily incorporate those into your own message. Make sure to clearly state your (and your institution’s) continued commitment to and unwavering support for diversity and inclusion and explicitly oppose bigotry, intolerance, harassment, and acts of violence. Encourage civil discourse and mutual respect. It is very important to reaffirm the values of diversity, equity, and inclusion ‘before’ listing any resources and help that employees or students may seek in case of harassment or assault. Without the assurance from the institution that it indeed upholds those values and will firmly stand by them, those resources and help mean little.

Below I have also listed messages, notes, and statements sent out by library directors, managers, librarians, and university presidents that reaffirm the full support for and commitment to diversity, equity, and inclusion. I hope to see more of these come out. If you have already received or sent out such a message, I invite you to share in the comments. If you have not, I suggest doing so as soon as possible. Send out a message if you are in a position where doing so is appropriate. Don’t forget to ask for a message addressing those values if you have not received any from your organization.

 

Do You Feel Inadequate? For Hard-Working Overachievers

I have not been a very diligent blog writer in the year of 2013. So on the last day of 2013, I decided to write a post. I thought about writing a post with the title of “Adieu 2013!” but then I changed my mind. So here is a more sensational title, “Do you feel inadequate?”

Inadequacy is an interesting feeling. While I often felt inadequate as a college and grad student in academia and sometimes as a librarian in the libraryland, I was also pretty convinced that I was quite smart and bright. (Don’t throw stones at me just yet; Look what I said is ‘was’!) So how do you feel smart and inadequate at the same time? The answer is actually quite simple. You feel inadequate because you are smart enough to know that there are smarter people than you. So feeling inadequate itself is not a bad thing. But being unable to set the goal for you to overcome that feeling is a problem. Being unable to be at peace with the fact that there will always be people who are more bright and talented than you is a problem.

I wish I realized this, much earlier in my life. But it should still count just the same. I do no longer believe that I am particularly bright nor that I am seriously inadequate. I am just OK. That’s really not bad at all. I think that actually, this is a great place to be – knowing that I am OK to be who I am. This may sound mundane to many. But I guarantee you that if you are one of those exceptionally bright and successful over-achievers with little experience in failure then this would be a particularly hard belief for you to subscribe to.

[ADDED: I also want to emphasize that smart or brilliant is not an innate quality. You have to work on it to become smart or brilliant. So if you do work on things you want to become smart about, you will become smart. Believe me and go for it. On the other hand, you also need to ‘actively decide’ on what boundary you will set up in pushing yourself towards smartness or brilliance because there will be certain things you want to preserve such as sanity and work-life balance. For example, are you willing to sacrifice your 2 hours at a gym everyday and spend that time instead for getting smarter? How about sleeping only 4 hours a day and use the rest of it on some project you love? It will work, but maybe that is or is not what you really want. (Also consider if it will be a long-term or a short-term thing.) And so, you will be less smart than those who take those measures. So you are just OK. But it is you who decide to be so! No hard feelings, right?]

(On the other hand, if you have had this belief that you are just OK in your entire career and have never been discontent with yourself, maybe that is a clear warning sign. Don’t be a seat-warmer and go find a challenge that excites your librarian heart!)

Back in January, 2013. I read this blog post by Miss July, “ego, thy name is librarianship”. Many librarians shared the angst of wanting to be recognized widely and quickly for their hard work and intelligence. But the thing is, a lot of times, what makes someone recognized is chance and luck more than anything. Sometimes, a project you put a lot of work into and is completely worthy of others’ acclaim will go unnoticed. At other times, something you haphazardly put together to meet a deadline may make you famous! When I was a babybrarian, one of my friends, Will, who was a few years senior to me in being a librarian, asked if I recognized someone’s name. I had zero idea who that person was. But during his LIS days, that person was beyond famous in the libraryland, I was told.

I am not saying that luck and chance are important to fame than hard work and intelligence to dismiss the famous ‘and’ brilliant ‘and’ hard-working people in the libraryland, whom I  admire. I just want to point out that hard work and brilliance is only a sufficient condition for being a good librarian and professional, not for gaining fame. If you are aiming at the former, your hard work and brilliance will be more than rewarded. If you are aiming at the latter, on the other hand, achieving that will be way trickier since it is mostly up to others. I am simply sharing this to help other bright librarians who are struggling with the work-life balance and the feeling of inadequacy in spite of hard work and many achievements.

I also want all LIS students and grads in the library job market to know that something similar applies to the hiring process. I used to believe that only the best candidate with the most achievements gets hired. (Just like the grades given on an absolute scale!) But this naive belief is simply not true. From serving on multiple search committees at academic libraries, I have learned that candidates’ applications, resume/CVs, and cover letters are evaluated on a relative, not an absolute scale. And each organization has different priorities, specific needs, and most of all, unique individuals on their search committees or as hiring officials at any given time. You need to be the right fit for a given position at a given time and at a specific place. Being that right fit requires a lot of luck and chance beyond your many achievements. I also saw many cases in which some candidates whom the search committee I belonged to rejected but who found jobs that are just as good as or even better than what we had to offer. So no need to fall into despair by a rejection letter. You just have to try a little longer until you get selected.

From Flickr Creative Commons by Mari Z

If I were wiser, perhaps I would have written “How to Overcome Your Feeling of Inadequacy in Five Easy Steps(!)” instead of “Do You Feel Inadequate?” Unfortunately, I don’t have such five easy steps. I can only say that it took very many years for me to understand that working on the stuff that seems to you most difficult and unenjoyable doesn’t make you the most brilliant and hard-working person (It is probably a rather poor investment of your time and brain and so please don’t do that.) and that being a good supporter and follower can make just as great a contribution to a project as being its leader. A good thing about becoming a mid-career professional and getting old is that you get to care less about stupid stuff like what others think about you and more about important stuff like what you can do to make yourself better at things you want to do because you think they matter. How smart I look to others or whether I can be famous becomes rather trivial compared to whether I can get this thing done or to work, I understand something correctly, and what I do makes me happy and proud. I also recommend great blog posts by Andromeda and Coral about how to overcome the feeling of inadequacy, particularly in library technology and coding. Like they recommend, go sit at the table and develop your own swagger!

The New Year’s Eve is a great moment for reflection. In Müdigkeitsgesellschaft (Fatigue Society) (Berlin: Matthes & Seitz, 2010), which I’ve read recently (not in German but in Korean translation), a Korean-German philosopher Byung-Chul Han writes that driven by the goal of maximizing production, the contemporary society no longer disciplines people and instead makes all of us into individual entrepreneurs. He calls this new society ‘achievement society’ over-saturated with positivity and affirmation. All of us are now free to exploit ourselves, and there is no limit to how far we can go in our own free self-exploitation.  Doesn’t this sound familiar and similar to the mantra of managing oneself and the celebration of creativity?

Happy New Year to you all!

Suzanne Briet’s Document Antelop in Celebration of Ada Lovelace Day

**This is part of the blog bomb that all the librarians at LibTechWomen planned and I am excited to participate. : )  Find more posts celebrating Briet today in Twitter with #briet**

Ada Lovelace from Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Ada_Lovelace_portrait.jpg)

Ada Lovelace from Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Ada_Lovelace_portrait.jpg)

 

In celebration of Ada Lovelace Day, I am posting this short blog post on a female librarian, Suzanne Briet, the author of “Qu’est-ce que la documentation? (What is Documentation?). For those who do not know Ada Lovelace, she was ‘the world’s first computer programmer, and the first person to realise that a general purpose computing machine such as Charles Babbage’s Analytical Engine could do more than just calculate large tables of numbers.’

Getting back to Briet, in her manifesto published in 1951, she argued that the antelope in the wild is not a document but the antelope in the zoo is. If you ever hear “Is the antelope a document or not?,” now you know that the antelope example comes from Briet’s manifesto.

Unfortunately, this idea of the document antelope was often wrongly attributed to Michael Buckland, a professor at the School of Information, University of California, Berkeley, who actually introduced Briet to many students in library and information science.

About Suzanne Briet’s manifesto, Michael Buckland wrote:

In her manifesto, “What is Documentation?” Briet argued that the scope of Documentation extended beyond text to evidence and she defined “document” as any material form of evidence.
(Source: http://people.ischool.berkeley.edu/~buckland/briet.html)

According to Briet, the antelope in the zoo was a document just as much as the stone in the museum or the photo of the star in the sky.

For more information, see:

Happy Ada Lovelace Day, everyone!

10 Practical Tips for Compiling Your Promotion or Tenure File

 This post was originally published in ACRL TechConnect on Sep. 23, 2013.

Flickr image by Frederic Bisson http://www.flickr.com/photos/38712296@N07/3604417507/

If you work at an academic library, you may count as faculty. Whether the faculty status comes with a tenure track or not, it usually entails a more complicated procedure for promotion than the professional staff status. At some libraries, the promotion policy and procedure is well documented, and a lot of help and guidance are given to those who are new to the process. At other libraries, on the other hand, there may be less help available and the procedure documentation can be not quite clear. I recently had the experience of compiling my promotion file. I thought that creating a promotion file would not be too difficult since I have been collecting most of my academic and professional activities. But this was not the case at all. Looking back, there are many things I would have done differently to make the process less stressful.

While this post does not really cover a technology topic that we at ACRL TechConnect usually write about, applying for promotion and/or tenure is something that many academic librarians go through. So I wanted to share some lessons that I learned from my first-time experience of crating a promotion binder as a non-tenure track faculty.

Please bear in mind that the actual process of assembling your promotion or tenure file can differ depending on your institution. At my university, everything has to be printed and filed in a binder and multiple copies of such a binder are required for the use of the tenure and promotion committee. At some places, librarians may only need to print all documentation but don’t need to actually create a binder. At other places, you may do everything online using a system such as Digital Measures, Sedona or Interfolio, and you do not have to deal with papers or binders at all. Be aware that if you do have to deal with actual photocopying, filing, and creating a binder, there will be some additional challenges.

Also my experience described here was for promotion, not tenure. If you are applying for a tenure, see these posts that may be helpful:

1. Get a copy of the promotion and tenure policy manual of your library and institution.

In my case, this was not possible since my library as well as the College of Medicine, to which the library belongs, did not have the promotion policy until very recently. But if you work at an established academic library, there will be a promotion/tenure procedure and policy manual for librarians. Some of the manual may refer to the institution’s faculty promotion and tenure policy manual as well. So get a copy of both and make sure to find out under which category librarians fall. You may count as non-tenured faculty, tenure-track faculty, or simply professionals. You may also belong to an academic department and a specific college, or you may belong to simply your library which counts as a college with a library dean.

You do not have to read the manual as soon as you start working. It will certainly not be a gripping read. But do get a copy and file it in your binder. (It is good to have a binder for promotion-related records even if you do not actually have to create a promotion binder yourself or everything can be filed electronically.)

2. Know when you become eligible for the application for promotion/tenure and what the criteria are.

Once you obtain a copy of your library’s promotion/tenure policy, take a quick look at the section that specifies how many years of work is required for you to apply for promotion or tenure and what the promotion / tenure criteria are. An example of the rankings of non-tenure track librarians at an academic library are: Instructor, Assistant, Associate, and University Librarian. This mirrors the academic faculty rankings of Instructor, Assistant, Associate, and Full Professor. But again, your institution may have a different system. Each level of promotion will have a minimum number of years required, such as 2 years for the promotion from Instructor to Assistant Librarian, and specific criteria applied to that type of promotion. This is good to know early in your career, so that you can coordinate and organize your academic and professional activities to match what your institution expects its librarians to perform as much as possible.

3. Ask those who went through the same process already.

Needless to day, the most helpful advice comes from those librarians who went through the same process. They have a wealth of knowledge to share. So don’t hesitate to ask them what the good preparatory steps are for future application. Even if you have a very general question, they will always point out what to pay attention to in advance.

Also at some libraries, the promotion and tenure committee holds an annual workshop for those who are interested in submitting an application. Even if you are not yet planning to apply and it seems way too early to even consider such a thing, it may be a good idea to attend one just to get an overview. The committee is very knowledgeable about the whole process and consists of librarians experienced in the promotion and tenure process.

4. Collect and gather documentation under the same categories that your application file requires.

The promotion file can require a lot of documentation that you may neglect to collect on a daily basis. For example, I never bothered to keep track of the committee appointment notification e-mails, and the only reason I saved the conference program booklets were because of a colleague’s advice that I got to save them for the promotion binder in the future as the proof of attendance. (It would have never dawned on me. And even then, I lost some program booklets for conferences I attended.) This is not a good thing.

Since there was no official promotion policy for my library when I started, I simply created a binder and filed anything and everything that might be relevant to the promotion file some day. However, over the last five years, this binder got extremely fat. This is also not a good practice. When I needed those documentation to actually create and organize my promotion file, it was a mess. It was good that I had at least quite a bit of documentation saved. But I had to look through all of them again because they belonged to different categories and the dates were all mixed up.

So, it is highly recommended that you should check the categories of the application file that your library/institution requires before creating a binder. Do not just throw things into a binder or a drawer if possible. Make separate binders or drawers under the same categories that your application file requires such as publication, presentation, university service, community service, professional services, etc. Also organize the documentation by year and keep the list of items in each category. Add to the list every time you file something. Pretend that you are doing this for your work, not for your promotion, to motivate yourself.

Depending on your preference and the way your institution handles the documentation for your promotion or tenure application, it may make a better sense to scan and organize everything in a digital form as long as the original document is not required. You can use citation management system such as Mendeley or Refworks to keep the copies of all your publications for example. These will easily generate the up-to-date bibliography of your publications for your CV. If your institution uses a system that keeps track of faculty’s research, grant, publication, teaching, and service activities such as Digital Measures or Sedona, those systems may suit you better as you can keep track of more types of activities than just publications. You can also keep a personal digital archive of everything that will go into your application file either on your local computer or on your Dropbox, Google Drive, or SkyDrive account. The key is to save and organize when you have something that would count towards promotion and tenure in hand “right away.”

One more thing. If you publish a book chapter, depending on the situation, you may not get the copy of the book or the final version of your book chapter as a PDF from your editor or publisher. This is no big deal until you have to ask your college to do a rush ILL for you. So take time in advance to obtain at least one hard copy or the finished PDF version of your publication particularly in the case of book chapters.

5. What do I put into my promotion file or tenure dossier?

There are common items such as personal statement, CV, publications, and services, which are specified in the promotion/tenure policy manual. But some of the things that may not belong to these categories or that make you wonder if it is worth putting into your promotion file. It really depends on what else you have it in your application file. If your application file is strong enough, you may skip things like miscellaneous talks that you gave or newsletter articles that you wrote for a regional professional organization. But ask a colleague for advice first and check if your file looks balanced in all areas.

6. Make sure to keep documentation for projects that only lived a short life.

Another thing to keep in mind is to keep track of all the projects you worked on. As time goes on, you may forget some of the work you did. If you create a website, a LibGuide, a database application, a section in the staff intranet, etc., some of those may last a long time, but others may get used only for a while and then disappear or be removed. Once disappeared projects are hard to show in your file as part of your work and achievement unless you documented the final project result when it was up and running and being used. So take the screenshots, print out the color copies of those screenshots, and keep the record of the dates during which you worked on the project and of the date on which the project result was released, implemented etc.

If you work in technology, you may have more of this type of work than academic publications. Check your library’s promotion and tenure policy manual to see if it has the category of ‘Creative Works’ or something similar under which you can add these items.

If you are assembling your binder right now, and some projects you worked on are completely gone, check the WayBack machine from the Internet Archive and see if you can find an archived copy. Not always available, but if you don’t have anything else, this may the only way to find some evidence of your work that you can document.

7. Update your CV and the list of Continuing Education activities on a regular basis.

Ideally, you will be doing this every year when you do your performance review. But it may not be required. Updating your CV is certainly not the most exciting thing to do, but it must be done. Over the last five years, I have done CV updates only when it was required for accreditation purposes (which requires the current CVs of all faculty). This was better than not having updated my CV at all for sure. But since I did not really update it with the promotion application in mind, when I needed to create one for the promotion application file, I had to redo the CV moving items and organizing them in different categories. So make sure to check your library’s or your institution’s faculty promotion/tenure policy manual. The manual includes the format of CV that the dossier needs to adopt. Use that format for your CV and update it every year. (I think that during the Christmas holidays may be a good time for this kind of task from now on for me.)

Some people keep the most up-to-date CV in their Dropbox’s public folder, and that is also a good idea if you have a website and share your CV there.

Some of the systems I have mentioned earlier – Digital Measure and Sedona – also allow you to create a custom template which you can utilize for the promotion/tenure application purpose. If the system has been in use for many years in your institution, there may be a pre-made template for promotion and tenure purposes.

8. Make sure to collect all appointment e-mails to committees and other types of services you do.

Keeping the records of all services is a tricky thing as we tend to pay little attention to the appointment e-mails to committees or other types of services that we perform for universities or professional organizations. I assumed that they were all in my inbox somewhere and did not properly organize them. As a result, I had to spend hours looking for them when I was compiling my binder.

This can be easily avoided if you keep a well-organized e-mail archive where you file e-mails as they come in. Sometimes, I found that I either lost the appointment e-mail or never received one. You can file other email correspondences as documentation for that service. But the official appointment e-mail would certainly be better in this case.

This also reminded me that I should write thank-you e-mails to the members of my committees that I chaired and to the committee chairs I worked with as a board member of ALA New Members Round Table. It is always nice to file a letter of appreciation rather than a letter of appointment. And as a committee chair or a board member, it should be something that you do without being asked. By sending these thank you e-mails, your committee members or chairs can file and use them when they need for their performance, promotion, or tenure review without requesting and waiting.

9. Check the timeline dates for the application.

Universities and colleges usually have a set of deadlines you have to meet in order for you to be considered for promotion or tenure. For example, you may have to have a meeting by a certain date with your supervisor or your library dean and get the green light to go for promotion. Your supervisor may have to file an official memorandum to the dean’s office until a certain date as a formal notification. Your department chair (if you are appointed to an academic department) may have to receive a memo about your application by a certain date. Your promotion file may have to be submitted to your academic department’s Promotion and Tenure committee by some time in advance before it gets forwarded to the Promotion and Tenure committee of the college. The list goes on and on. These deadlines are hard to keep tabs on but have to be tracked carefully not to miss them.

10. Plan ahead

I had to compile and create my promotion binder and three copies within a week’s notice, but this is a very unusual case due to special circumstances. Something like this is unlikely to happen to you, but remember that creating the whole application file will take much more time than you imagine. I could have done some of the sorting out and organizing documentation work myself in advance but delayed it because there was a web data application which I was developing for my library. Looking back, I should have at least started working on the promotion file even if things were unclear and even if I had little time to spare outside of my ongoing work projects. It would have given me a much more accurate sense of how much time I will have to spend eventually on the whole dossier.

Also remember to request evaluation letters in advance. This was the most crazy part for me because I was literally given one week to request and get letters from internal and external reviewers. Asking people of a letter in a week’s time is close to asking for the impossible particularly if the reviewers are outside of your institution and have to be contacted not by you but by a third party. I was very lucky to get all the signed PDF letters in time, but I do not recommend this kind of experience to anyone.

Plan ahead and plan well in advance. Find out whether you need letters from internal or external reviewers, how many, and what the letters need to cover. Make sure to create a list of colleagues you can request a letter from who are familiar with your work. When you request a letter, make sure to highlight the promotion or tenure criteria and what the letter needs to address, so that letter writers can quickly see what they need to focus on when they review your work. If there are any supplementary materials such as publications, book chapters, presentations, etc., make sure to forward them as well along with your CV and statement.

Lastly, if Your Application File Must be In Print…

You are lucky if you have the option to submit everything electronically or to simply submit the documentation to someone who will do the rest of work such as photocopying, filing, making binders, etc. But your institution may require the application file to be submitted in print, in multiple copies sometimes. And you may be responsible for creating those binders and copies yourself. I had to submit 4 binders, each of which exactly identical, and I was the one who had to do all the photocopying, punching holes, and filing them into a binder. I can tell you photocopying and punching holes for the documents that fill up a very thick binder and doing that multiple times was not exactly inspiring work. If this is your case as well, I recommend creating one binder as a master copy and using the professional photocopy/binding service to create copies. It would have been so much better for my sanity. In my case, the time was too short for me to create one master copy and then bring it to the outside service to make additional copies. So plan ahead and make sure you have time to use outside service. I highly recommend not using your own labor for photocopying and filing.

* * *

If you have any extra tips or experience to share about the promotion or tenure process at an academic library, please share them in the comments section. Hopefully in the future, all institutions will allow people to file their documentation electronically. There are also tools such as Interfolio (http://www.interfolio.com/) that you can use, which is particularly convenient for those who has to get external letters that directly have to go to the tenure and promotion committee.

Are there any other tools? Please share them in the comments section as well. Best of luck to all librarians going for promotion and tenure!

 

What to Do with a Professional Association (with LITA as an example)

From Flickr: http://www.flickr.com/photos/21232564@N06/2234726613/

Many of us – librarians – are members of some professional organizations. We tend to join one and pay dues every year but don’t do much about or with those organizations beyond that. But that would be probably not the best way to make use of your professional organization. In order to best utilize your organization, you need to know what it does first and see if their activities fit with your interests. So do some research to see if it is a good fit for you. Secondly, you need to figure out how the organization works, what structure it has, what is the mode of operation, etc.

  • What interest groups does it have?
  • What kind of programs does it put up at conferences?
  • What committees does it have?
  • Who belong to the organization and what do they do for the organization?
  • What is the procedure for being involved with an IG or becoming a member of a committee (and the timeline)?
  • Is there a mentoring program?
  • What are, if any, tangible benefits for being a member?
  • Is there a board?
  • What does the board do?
  • What is the relationship between the board and the members?
  • Who do I contact if I have a suggestion?

I confess that I do not know the answers to all these questions for all organizations that I am a member of. I only got to know about a few organizations a little, while I was doing things that were of interest to me. But I think that organizations need to make answers to these questions as clear and transparent as possible to current and potential members and that members should also demand that organizations do so if not.

That having been said, here are some thoughts of mine about the organization that I have been involved for a while: LITA (Library Information Technology Association), a division of ALA (American Library Association). Andromeda Yelton, who is running for the the LITA board of directors, is interviewing many librarians involved with LITA as part of her campaign. I think it is a great project for not just those who are in the LITA leadership positions but also those who are interested in LITA and want to hear from other people’s thoughts on LITA as an organization. I am recording the video interview with Andromeda tomorrow, but I thought Andromeda’s three questions would be interesting to many others as well.  So you can check out my answers here if you prefer reading a write-up to watching a video (as I do). If you are a member of ALA and are interested in LITA, hopefully this will be useful. If your primary organization is not LITA, you can think about that other organization instead and think about how your organization does compared to LITA.

How did you get involved with LITA?

I went to the 2009 ALA Annual Conference in Chicago. That was my very first ALA conference, and at that time I had zero understanding about the structure of ALA such as a division, a roundtable, a committee, an interest group (IG) etc. But while I was planning what programs to attend, LITA kept popping up. And then I happened to go to this meeting of LITA Emerging Technologies IG, and there were maybe three dozens of librarians who were very much like me, early in their career, doing technology stuff, and was somewhat confused about this new title of Emerging Technologies Librarian and the job duties of this title. We had a fantastic conversation, and I ended up volunteering to put together the resources we discussed after the program. I eventually wrote a program proposal on the topic for the next ALA Annual conference with the vice-chair of that IG at that time, Jacquelyn (Erdman) after the conference. It got accepted, and so Jacquelyn and I put together the program for the 2010 ALA Annual, “What Are Your Libraries Doing about Emerging Technologies?” which was amazingly well received. So that was my first experience of getting involved with LITA at an active level. In 2010, I also volunteered to chair the quite new Mobile Computing Interest Group because the first chair, Cody (Hanson) was steeping down. So that’s how I started being involved with LITA.

At that time, I didn’t think that I was getting involved with LITA. I was just doing things that were interesting to me. But this is just my experience. There are many different ways to be involved with LITA. For example, I have a friend who joined LITA and then e-mailed to the LITA president asking to put him on a LITA committee. He was put on a committee almost immediately and then later also became an ALA Emerging Leader sponsored by LITA. So you can do that. Not many people would think of e-mailing the LITA president with a request for a committee spot. That’s out-of-the-box thinking! Some people also start by creating an Interest Group and/or by going to the LITA Happy Hour, which is also an excellent way to be involved with LITA.

What are the strengths of LITA?

LITA is a very big group because it is a division of an even bigger organization, ALA. So there are a great number of people who deal with technology at many different levels in many different types of institutions: public libraries, academic libraries, special libraries, small libraries, large libraries, system administrators, web masters, IT department heads, metadata librarians, etc. So you are almost guaranteed to meet fascinating people whom you did not know about and they always have interesting ideas and thoughts on the current trends of library technology.

Another strength of LITA that I see is its Interest Group(IG)s. There are a great number of them, and they are highly informal and welcoming to new members. If you cannot find a LITA IG you like, you can even start one yourself with not much effort. I know that many people gravitate towards bigger programs because IG meetings don’t always post a clear agenda in advance. But that is a mistake. You are more likely to learn about things you did not expect from IG meetings than from large programs.

I also think that the simplified program proposal process for the ALA Annual conference and the LITA Forum is a huge strength of LITA. It cuts down so many levels of bureaucracy, and this only has been implemented only recently (3 years ago or so I think). You just fill out a Google Form, and you don’t have to be even associated with LITA IG or even LITA (if I am correct) as long as the proposal is relevant to library technologies. (Now wouldn’t it be dreamy if we can simplify an organization’s structure just like that too? Just thinking…) The simplified procedure attracts more qualified potential speakers, thereby enriching the programs offered from LITA at conferences.

What are the challenges for LITA?

LITA members, particularly the new members, have an amazing amount of energy. I don’t think that LITA knows how to harness this energy to the maximum benefit to itself. I understand that there are existing structural and procedural practices, but those practices may be ill-suited for gathering and implementing the creative ideas from new members. A lot of times, what confuses and intimidates new LITA members are the structure and the operation of the organization. Now that I have been active with LITA for some years, it doesn’t seem too bad to me any longer! But this is probably what happened to many who lead LITA. They are probably too familiar to notice what barriers of entry exist to new members. You get used to it. So there needs to be a strong mechanism to get input from new members inside LITA and then do something about the input. LITA really needs to do more to reach out to new members to let them know what they can use LITA for and how to do so. It has gotten better over the years but it can still be much more improved.

Also, LITA has a few high-profile programs such as Top Tech Trends. So LITA is well-known at least to ALA members. But that popularity and recognition is connected to the strength of LITA only at a very abstract level. LITA needs to change that. I was one of the two LITA-sponsored ALA Emerging Leaders in 2010-2011, and my team did a big project about what to do to give a stronger brand and identity to LITA. And I am hoping to see that some of those ideas from our team project get picked up by the LITA leadership. I am also serving on the LITA Top Tech Trends committee and working on transforming the Top Tech Trends program into a more dynamic and participatory event. So far the idea was received with enthusiasm at the committee meeting last week. So we will see.

Overall, changes have been slow, and I think LITA members are not cut out for a slow process. They deal with very fast-paced information technology every day after all. So the speed of things getting done really needs to pick up to respond to the average high energy of LITA members.

Additional thoughts – Join or Not Join

I know that many people get put off by various things when they join LITA, or any other professional organizations. They feel that the organization is not welcoming enough, don’t do much for the benefit of individual members, seem to have an awful bureaucracy, have too many unproductive committees, and even have cliques. And probably all of these are true to a degree. But those cannot be changed immediately and it won’t help you in the mean time. Besides if you are interested in library technology and an ALA member, you cannot but cross paths with LITA at some point. So you might as well make the best out of it as much as you can. And that doesn’t necessarily entail being a member.

I think it is the best if people join an organization because it is actually useful to them. If you are interested in LITA, don’t just join and wait for things to happen. Start somewhere else instead. First check out the LITA listserv, go to LITA meetings and programs, meet with people in LITA, and see if something clicks with you, your interests, and what you want to do, learn, or try. If it does, then go ahead and do those things you want to do. While doing those things, if it turns out that you cannot proceed without joining LITA, then join it. Now you have something you are doing using the organization for your benefit. Consequently the membership will be worthwhile, and the organization will also benefit from your participation. This way the connection between you and the organization will be meaningful and concrete. And down the line after doing many things that excite you, perhaps when you get to care enough about the organization itself, you can also do some work for the organization itself to improve things that you did not not like much or to create things you would have liked to see.

 

Making Your Work Hours Less Stressful and More Productive by Sitting Less

I recently read this article “Sitting Is the Smoking of Our Generation” from Harvard Business Review Blog recently. And I couldn’t agree more. Like many, I spend long hours at the desk ‘sitting’. I sometimes sit all my eight hours of work in the office chair (not even a fancy ergonomic one) working through lunch until I go home. When this happens, which is often, it really doesn’t help my productivity nor my mood. My mind fears to take a break once I am glued to the computer screen although I also know in full that it is counter-productive. My Outlook keeps beeping every five minutes with new emails. My calendar shows a series of meetings. I become a slave to the computer and the office chair everyday. So when I read this, I thought I need to take an action to break this habit for real.

As we work, we sit more than we do anything else. We’re averaging 9.3 hours a day, compared to 7.7 hours of sleeping. Sitting is so prevalent and so pervasive that we don’t even question how much we’re doing it. And, everyone else is doing it also, so it doesn’t even occur to us that it’s not okay. …… Of course, health studies conclude that people should sit less, and get up and move around. After 1 hour of sitting, the production of enzymes that burn fat declines by as much as 90%. Extended sitting slows the body’s metabolism affecting things like (good cholesterol) HDL levels in our bodies. Research shows that this lack of physical activity is directly tied to 6% of the impact for heart diseases, 7% for type 2 diabetes, and 10% for breast cancer, or colon cancer. You might already know that the death rate associated with obesity in the US is now 35 million.

So what can I do? Here are a few things I did. A while ago, I ran into this idea of a standing desk to reduce some of the hours we spend sitting. I can use a laptop at work and I have a bookshelf in my office. So I emptied two top rows of the bookshelf in the office and removed one top shelf. But the problem was I was rarely standing up to even do this. If you don’t get off the chair, there is no way you are going to use this.

For this reason, this time around, I also decided to add a timer. When I arrive in the office, I turn this on and set it to ring a bell every 60 minutes during my 8 hours of work. When the bell rings I get up and move around for a few minutes or use a standing desk even if it is only for 10 minutes. I like the sound of the meditation bell. So I use a meditation timer but you can use any timer for this, either on your work computer or on your smartphone. I set the timer program, so that it would run automatically whenever I power up the work laptop. And all I need to do is to just press the start button once a day. Easy!

Lastly, I turned off my new e-mail notification in my work e-mail. The frequent beep from my email has been always breaking my concentration and I realized that I am most productive if I can just do work without checking my emails. But like many people, I could not habituate myself to check work e-mails only two or three times a day and  people often expected my replies in an hour or less. But by turning off the notification sound, at least I was not being interrupted when I was in the middle of doing something.

These three simple things I did – a standing desk, a timer reminder, turning off the new e-mail notification beeping sound -so far have been successful in making me move a bit more and preventing me from sitting for eight hours straight and leaving the office physically miserable and mentally tired at the end of the day.

If you have any other simple tricks that work well to make you sit less and move more during your office hours, please share in the comments!

 

 

 

 

 

 

Effectively Learning How To Code: Tips and Resources

*** This post has been originally published in ACRL TechConnect on Dec. 10, 2012. ***

Librarians’ strong interest in programming is not surprising considering that programming skills are crucial and often essential to making today’s library systems and services more user-friendly and efficient for use. Not only for system-customization, computer-programming skills can also make it possible to create and provide a completely new type of service that didn’t exist before. However, programming skills are not part of most LIS curricula, and librarians often experience difficulty in picking up programming skills.

In this post, I would like to share some effective strategies to obtain coding skills and cover common mistakes and obstacles that librarians make and encounter while trying to learn how to code in the library environment based upon the presentation that I gave at Charleston Conference last month, “Geek out: Adding Coding Skills to Your Professional Repertoire.” (slides: http://www.slideshare.net/bohyunkim/geek-out-adding-coding-skills-to-your-professional-repertoire). At the end of this post, you will also find a selection of learning and community resources.

How To Obtain Coding Skills, Effectively

1. Pick a language and concentrate on it.

There are a huge number of resources available on the Web for those who want to learn how to program. Often librarians start with some knowledge in markup languages such as HTML and CSS. These markup languages determine how a block of text are marked up and presented on the computer screen. On the other hand, programming languages involve programming logic and functions. An understanding of the basic programming concepts and logic can be obtained by learning any programming language. There are many options, and some popular choices are JavaScript, PHP, Python, Ruby, Perl, etc. But there are many more.  For example, if you are interested in automating tasks in Microsoft applications such as Excel, you may want to work with Visual Basic. If you are unsure about which language to pick, search for a few online tutorials for a few languages to see what their different syntaxes and examples are like. Even if you do not understand the content completely, this will help you to pick the language to learn first.

2. Write and run the code.

Once you choose a language to learn, there are many paths that you can follow. Taking classes at a local community college or through an online school may speed up the initial process of learning, but it could be time-consuming and costly. Following online tutorials and trying each example is a good alternative that many people take. You may also pick up a few books along the way to supplement the tutorials and use them for reference purposes.

If you decide on self-study, make sure that you actually write and run the code in the examples as you follow along the books and the tutorials. Most of the examples will appear simple and straightforward. But there is a big difference between reading through a code example and being actually able to write the code on your own and to run it successfully. If you read through programming tutorials and books without actually doing the hands-on examples on your own, you won’t get much benefit out of your investment. Programming is a hands-on skill as much as an intellectual understanding.

3. Continue to think about how coding can be applied to your library.

Also important is to continue to think about how your knowledge can be applied to your library systems and environment, which is often the source of the initial motivation for many librarians who decide to learn how to program. The best way to learn how to program is to program, and the more you program the better you will become at programming. So at every chance of building something with the new programming language that you are learning, no matter how small it is, build it and test out the code to see if it works the way you intended.

4. Get used to debugging.

While many who struggle with learning how to code cite lack of time as a reason, the real cause is likely to be failing to keep up the initial interest and persist in what you decided to learn. Learning how to code can be exciting, but it can also be a huge time-sink and the biggest source of frustration from time to time. Since the computer code is written for a machine to read, not for a human being, one typo or a missing semicolon can make the program non-functional. Finding out and correcting this type of error can be time-consuming and demoralizing. But learning how to debug is half of programming. So don’t be discouraged.

5. Find a community for social learning and support.

Having someone to talk to about coding problems while you are learning can be a great help. Sign up for listservs where coding librarians or library coders frequent, such as code4lib and web4lib to get feedback when you need. Research the cause of the problem that you encounter as much as possible on your own. When you still are unsure about how to go about tackling it, post your question to the sites such as Stack Overflow for suggestions and answers from more experienced programmers. It is also a good idea to organize a study group with like-minded people and get support for both coding-related and learning-related problems. You may also find local meet-ups available in your area using sites like MeetUp.com.

Don’t be intimidated by those who seem to know much more than you in those groups (as you know much more about libraries than they do and you have things to contribute as well), but be aware of the cultural differences between the developer community and the librarian community. Unlike the librarian community that is highly accommodating for new librarians and sometimes not-well-thought-out questions, the developer community that you get to interact with may appear much less accommodating, less friendly, and less patient. However, remember that reading many lines of code, understanding what they are supposed to do, and helping someone to solve a problem occurring in those lines can be time-consuming and difficult even to a professional programmer. So it is polite to do a thorough research on the Web and with some reference resources first before asking for others’ help. Also, always post back a working solution when your problem is solved and make sure to say thank you to people who helped you. This way, you are contributing back to the community.

6. Start working on a real-life problem ‘now.’ Don’t wait!

Librarians are often motivated to learn how to code in order to solve real-life problems they encounter at their workplace. Solving a real-life problem with programming is therefore the most effective way to learn and to keep up the interest in programming. One of the greatest mistake in learning programming is putting off writing one’s own code and waiting to work on a real-life problem for the reason that one doesn’t know yet enough to do so. While it is easy to think that once you learn a bit more, it would be easier to approach a problem, this is actually a counter-productive learning strategy as far as programming is concerned because often the only way to find out what to learn is by trying to solve a problem.

7. Build on what you learned.

Another mistake to avoid in learning how to program is failing to build on what one has learned. Having solved one set of problem doesn’t mean that you will remember that programming solution you created next time when you have to solve a similar problem. Repeating what one has succeeded at and expanding on that knowledge will lead to a stronger foundation for more advanced programming knowledge. Also instead of trying to learn more than one programming language (e.g. Python, PHP, Ruby, etc.) and/or a web framework (e.g. Django, cakePHP, Ruby On Rails, etc.) at the same time, first try to become reasonably good at one. This will make it much easier to pick up another language later in the future.

8. Code regularly and be persistent.

It is important to understand that learning how to program and becoming good at it will take time. Regular coding practice is the only way to get there. Solving a problem is a good way to learn, but doing so on a regular basis as often as possible is the best way to make what you learned stick and stay in your head.

While is it easy to say practice coding regularly and try to apply it as much as possible to the library environment, actually doing so is quite difficult. There are not many well-established communities for fledgling coders in libraries that provide needed guidance and support. And while you may want to work with library systems at your workplace right away, your lack of experience may prove problematic in gaining a necessary permission to tinker with them. Also as a full-time librarian, programming is likely to be thrown to the bottom of your to-do list.

Be aware of these obstacles and try to find a way to overcome them as you go. Set small goals and use them as milestones. Be persistent and don’t be discouraged by poor documentation, syntax errors, and failures. With consistent practice and continuous learning, programming can surely be learned.

Resources

A. Resources for learning

B. Communities

 

Tips for Everyone Doing the #codeyear

***   This post has been originally posted to the ACRL TechConnect blog.  ***

Learn to Code in 2012!

If you are a librarian interested in learning how to code, 2012 is a perfect year for you to start the project. Thanks to CodeAcademy (http://codeacademy.com), free JavaScript lessons are provided every week at http://codeyear.com/. The lessons are interactive and geared towards beginners. So even if you do not have any previous experience in programming, you will be able to pick up the new skill soon enough as long as you are patient and willing to spend time on mastering each lesson every week.

A great thing about this learn-how-to-program project, called #codeyear in Twitter (#libcodeyear and #catcode in the library-land) is that there are +375,443 people (and counting up) out there who are doing exactly the same lessons as you are. The greatest thing about this #libcodeyear / #catcode project is that librarians have organized themselves around this project for the collective learning experience.  How librarian-like, don’t you think?

Now, if you are ready to dive in, here are some useful resources.  And after these Resources, I will tell you a little bit more about how to best ask help about your codes when they are not working for you.

Resources for Collective Learning

Syntax Error: Catch the most frustrating bugs!

Now what I really like about #codeyear lessons so far is that some of the lessons trip you by trivial things like a typo! So you need to find a typo and fix it to pass a certain lesson. Now you may ask “How the hell does fixing a typo count as a programming lesson?”

Let me tell you. Finding a typo is no triviality in coding. Catching a similar syntax error will save you from the most frustrating experience in coding.

The examples of seemingly innocuous syntax errors are:

  • var myFunction = funtction (){blah, blah, blah … };
  • var myNewFunction = function (]{blah, blah, blah … };
  • for(i=0,  i<10, i++;)
  • var substr=’Hello World’; alert(subst);
  • –//This is my first JavaScript

Can you figure out why these lines would not work?  Give it a try! You won’t be sorry. Post your answers in the comments section.

How to Ask Help about Your Codes      

by Matteo De Felice in Flickr (http://farm4.staticflickr.com/3577/3502347936_43b5e2a886.jpg)

I am assuming that as #codeyear, #catcode, #libcodeyear project progresses, more people are going to ask questions about problems that stump them. Some lessons already have Q&A in the CodeAcademy site. So check those out. Reading through others’ questions will give valuable insight to how codes work and where they can easily trip you.

That having been said, you may want to ask questions to the places mentioned in the Resources section above. If you do, it’s a good idea to follow some rules. This will make your question more likely to be looked at by others and way more likely to be answered correctly.

  • Before asking a question, try to research yourself. Google the question, check out the Q&A section in the CodeAcademy website, check out other online tutorials about JS (see below for some of the recommended ones).
  • If this fails, do the following:
    • Specify your problem clearly.
      (Don’t say things like “I don’t get lesson 3.5.” or “JavaScript function is too hard” unless the purpose is just to rant.)
    • Provide your codes with any parts/details that are related to the lines with a problem.
      (Bear in mind that you might think there is a problem in line 10 but the problem may lie in line 1, which you are not looking.) Highlight/color code the line you are having a problem. Make it easy for others to immediately see the problematic part.
    • Describe what you have done to troubleshoot this (even if it didn’t work.)
      : This helps the possible commenter to know what your reasoning is behind your codes and what solutions you have already tried, thereby saving their time. So this will make it more likely that someone will actually help you. To believe it or not, what seems completely obvious and clear to you can be completely alien and unfathomable to others.

Some JavaScript Resources

There are many resources that will facilitate your learning JavaScript. In addition to the lessons provided by CodeAcademy, you may also find these other tutorials helpful to get a quick overview of JavaScript syntax, usage, functions, etc. From my experience, I know that I get a better understanding when I review the same subject from more than one resource.

If you have other favorite Javascript please share in the comment section.

ACRL TechConnect blog will continue to cover #libcodeyear / #catcode related topics throughout the year!  The post up next will tell you all about some of the excuses people deploy to postpone learning how to code and what might break the mental blockage!