[Ed. note: I started writing this at the end of January of 2009 but never published it for whatever mystery reason I may have had at the time. Nearly 11 months later (eep!), a lot of what is written here is still highly relevant, so I’m cleaning it up and pubbing it.]
I wish I had some witty story about a patron to give this entry more punch but the best I can come up with is the “faculty” dude who came and started yelling at me about “throwing out those kids” who were apparently disturbing his royal highness while he was working. I was, at the time of the yelling, walking over to work with another patron who needed access on the all access computer (no Internet access but allows students to install and run software for classes. Thus, “all access” is kind of moot, I suppose.). Even though I motioned that I would be with him in a second, he kept yelling across the open area about how they were bothering and disturbing him and I HAD BETTER DO SOMETHING! Right sparky, I’ll get right on that.
After helping the student get logged into the all access computer, I looked for the librarian on duty for consultation and it turned out “those kids” were two girls who were talking quietly while working on a project together in an area designed for such a thing. The open plan area is not a quiet study area and that information is posted as such all over the place. The librarian on duty spoke quietly with the girls, his royal highness kept glaring at the librarian on duty and at me and didn’t say a peep after that. It was one of those “what the fuck, becky” kind of moments.
And I’m only two weeks into my new job.
The one thing that has been stressed since my starting this program is that you need experience, experience, experience in order to make it in the real world and winning this job has been a $deity_send in that it is giving me not only real world reference experience but experience in an academic library to boot. But here’s the thing: my classes that were to prep me for this job have really had no impact on how I handle myself at the reference desk. This sentiment was also echoed by several librarians I have interviewed over the last six months who have all told me that while lib school was great for the theory and some of the application, they really didn’t feel that they learned their jobs until they were on the jobs.
This, then, becomes the catch-22: You need some experience to get an entry level position but you must obtain an entry level position in order to get the experience. Lots of libraries like to hire in-status students, which is a boon to many of us who have had no prior experience in libraries before lib school. But this goes back to the teaching moment in that how you are trained while working in the library whether as a volunteer, intern or paid employee. These experiences can and will shape how you handle your professional career thus one must also take this factor into account when one is looking for a starting library position.
One thing I have noticed is this slightly playful but not really competition between those who work in a library and those who work in bookstores. For some reason that I cannot fathom, there seems to be some sort of unspoken rivalry between booksellers and librarians, and I’ve heard more than one librarian on various message boards bitch and complain how booksellers “try” to be like librarians by providing reader’s advisory and reference services without proper training and booksellers complain that librarians try to treat bookstores like libraries or that librarians feel like they are slumming if they come and apply for a job or work in a bookstore.
This is the part I don’t get: Bookstores are out to make money and to the corporate bookstores, the bottom line is ALL about the money. Whether or not someone gets interested in reading or enriching their life based on the books they purchased means nothing to the higher ups in corporate America – it’s just about how much the customer has spent and is there a way to get them to spend more. It’s about discounts, volume and bestsellers. It’s not about education, enrichment, support or education. This is not to say the average bookseller is not a reader, I’d roughly guesstimate that about 90% of the people I worked with were huge readers who read in a variety of genres and many of us had subject specializations. We were a very well rounded crew with a broad spectrum of education and backgrounds.
And this is not also to say that every bookstore feels this way – but having worked in $corporate_bookstore and being told time and time again that I spent too much time educating the reader rather than hand-selling them crap, I speak from experience. The other big argument that often comes up in discussion is how the bookstores are attempting to be like the library system (“help desks” that imitate reference desks, library-esque setting, comfy chairs, etc) while the library system is attempting to try to be like bookstores (cafes, overhead music systems, wider range of programming). But my question is: Why spend all this time arguing about who is trying to be like the other? All this mudslinging is ridiculous as libraries and bookstores can co-exist AND live together.
It’s like watching a never ending game of Tekken and in the end, the ones left holding the “WTF?” bag are the customers/patrons who just wanted help finding a damned book.
Month: November 2009
Haystack: The Online Archive of Colby-Sawyer College
[This was first published at AMPed.]
It’s all well and good to get super excited about technology, but without examples of these technologies in action, what’s the point of being super excited? With that being said, every Friday AMPed will be showcasing a website that takes these technologies and really makes them work, whether in design, implementation or as a mashup. These are websites that are taking their outreach and content to the next level by making their sites not only more aesthetically pleasing but also more interactive with their audience.
This week, we’re showcasing Haystack, the online archive of Colby-Sawyer College. What is great about Haystack is that not only is it aesthetically pleasing, easy to browse and navigate, but it also uses social networking tools to allow the reader to re-share the information to Delicious, Digg, Facebook and other sites. Haystack also relies fairly extensively on open source software for their backend.
We’ll let Kelli Bogan, the archivist at Colby-Sawyer, explain more:
In November of 2008, Colby-Sawyer College launched its digital library, Haystack to showcase materials from the college archives and to reconnect alumni to the institution. With seven name changes and a varied institutional history as a secondary school, women’s junior college, women’s four year college, and a co-educational four year college, Colby-Sawyer College has a unique history that often leaves older alumni feeling disconnected from the institution. Haystack lets alumni become active participants once again by allowing users to add tags and comments to photographs, historical diaries, correspondence, yearbooks, and other historical documents relating to the college and its founding family, to embed these images on social networking sites like Facebook, and to email the images to friends and family.
Haystack uses Scriblio, an open source Content Management System based on WordPress. Scriblio allows users to find materials through faceted searching and browsing which lets the user narrow their search through visual cues and to easily add or remove search constraints. Users can also see what other people have been looking at, what items have recently been commented on, and items that are similar to the one that he/she is looking at; all of these features allow the user to explore the materials in a nontraditional way.
What does the future hold for Haystack? The goal for the first year after the launch was to put as much material as possible into Haystack; at present, there are nearly 4,000 images uploaded and available. Now that the archives has a better sense of how Haystack is used by our alumni and what types of materials they are interested in seeing, our digitization focus for the next year is to scan all of the yearbooks and to continue to put as much of the Colby-Sawyer College Photograph Collection up as we can. We also have a couple of exhibits that we are experimenting with—a family tree for the founding family and a college time line. We would like these to be more than just static exhibits, but we haven’t quite figured out how to make them dynamically interesting yet.
As far as site development goes, we would like to add audio and video capabilities since, currently, these can only be incorporated into exhibits, not into item level entries. We also are working to add EAD finding aids to the site; this will allow us to make the finding aid the “parent” of each collection and users will be able to link directly from the finding aid to an image, creating another way to access and browse the collection. Finally, we would like to create an advanced search (in response to feedback we have received from users) and a way to see all of the keywords under a specific category in “Browse.” Our hope is to continually improve Haystack and to make it a site where our users are excited to visit and contribute.
Day in the life of a MLIS student. #librarydayinthelife
Back in July, a slew of librarians wrote about their experiences covering one day (or some cases, several days) of their day to day life as a librarian. And by slew, I mean dozens and judging by the PbWorks page, maybe hundreds? Not only were the blogs collected into PbWorks, but they were also tweeted and reshared on Twitter with the hashtag, #librarydayinthelife.
The point of this exercise was to illustrate how wildly different the tasks and jobs were from a plethora of librarians and library staff, clearly showing that while the MLIS degree to some extent can be pretty generic, what is expected of us really varies on the location and job title we are given. And if this little exercise doesn’t showcase that we as a profession are beyond the bun-glasses-orthopedic shoes stereotype and the flexibility of the job really IS there, then I don’t know if anything really will.
With all of that being said, I wanted to desperately put my two cents in but at the time, didn’t think my life as a grad student then would prove to be that totally useful. Since the fall semester has started (and erm, is actually almost ending), I thought that now would be a good time to contribute.
My background: I don’t think I’m a typical student in that I’m also involved with lots of extracurricular activities outside of my classwork, with some of it mostly relating to my job and some do not. I’m currently taking a full load of classes, work 20 hours a week at the graduate library reference desk, work part-time for a professor as her social media specialist (hours vary), am involved in several organizations, also sit on a committee, and am working on my archival practicum. I live about 15 miles away from school, which also throws upto 30 minutes each way of travel time. Also, my weeks tend to fluctuate: Either I have all meetings and stuff inbetween work and classes or it is empty for me to do homework in. Sometimes there is a nice balance, but not always.
Tuesday, November 17
- 07:15 – 08:15 AM: Up, mainlining coffee and getting stuff together for the day. Leave the house at about 8:15ish to stop and get my daily Slurpee and drive down Woodward to Wayne State.
- 09:00 AM – 1:00 PM: Reference desk. What I can get done during this time period varies depending on how many questions are coming at me per hour. Today was an especially busy day with averages of about 10 questions per hour, nearly double of previous weeks averages for this time frame. I do face to face and telephone reference, most of it quick or ready-reference, with the occasional extended reference thrown in. Reference questions tend to be directional (aka quick), computer help, book search, or being asked for help on writing papers. I’m also typically logged in online via gTalk and Twitter and do homework when it’s really slow.
- 01:00 – 02:00 PM: Lunch break, read homework while I ate.
- 02:00 – 3:00 PM: Meeting with a professor about an upcoming large project that is due in December. I researching a local historical society and why (or why not) they are important not only to the community but to the archival profession. After that was done, we spent the rest of the time gossiping about music and MLIS accreditation.
- 03:00 – 04:30 PM: Virtual reference committee bi-weekly meeting. One of the senior librarians put together a staff meeting committee, with me being the only grad student, to research and explore alternatives to our existing VR software, Docutek. I was tasked with looking at IM alternatives, testing Trillian Astra and looking to the power of Twitter and GoogleWave to finding out what other people are using. I reported back and based upon my research, they will be testing out LibraryH3lp.
- 04:30 – 05:30 PM: Coffee with my friend Lauren. Lauren applied for an on-campus GSA position (graduate student assistant, a position I currently hold) and we were dissecting the interview before we headed to class.
- 05:30 – 8:15 PM: Intro to archives class, held every Tuesday. We had a speaker on Records Management come in and spoke for the entire class period.
- 09:15 – 12:00 AM: Went home and did several errands on my way home. Once I got home and out of my “oppressive clothes”1, posted weekly discussion summary to Blackboard for my online class, discussed the VR meeting with my fiance and then settled on the couch for a few hours with dinner, House and The Big Bang Theory.
Wednesday, November 18
- 07:15 – 08:15 AM: Same as the day before: mainlining coffee, showering and getting dressed to head out. I get to leave a few minutes early, which is always a bonus.
- 09:00 AM – 03:30 PM: My long day for reference desk pimping. Spent most of my downtime trying to hack stuff together for lib schooled., which was failing. The relief librarians were nearly 30 minutes late (I was to leave at 3pm). Only planned on spending a few hours working on my website but ended up getting sucked into spending most of my time at the desk on it. I caught up on some email, prepped stuff for the student chapter Progressive Librarians’ Guild meeting scheduled for tonight.
- 03:30 – 05:45 PM: Planned on working on homework for the week but wanted to finish this entry. Continued to do prep work for the PLG meeting tonight. Did some quality web browsing. Caught up on more emails.
- 06:00 – 07:00 PM: Meeting with my advisor on course selection for next semester.
- 07:00 – 09:00 PM: PLG student monthly meeting. I’m the v-p and with the president having been MIA (deservedly so) due to her recent marriage, things have been a tad crazy.
- 09:00 PM – 12:00 AM: Head home, decompress from another 12+ hour day, get out of my oppressive clothes1 and sleep. Only to start over all again tomorrow.
1. Meaning I got into yoga pants and a tshirt.
Twitter Tools
[This was first published at AMPed.]
The one thing that I love about technology is the discovery of something awesome regardless if it is software, hardware or a mash-up application that enhances my overall experience. But what makes the tech even more cool is when the technology just works the way it does without any additional futzing by me.
Keeping that in mind, one of my favorite widgets for WordPress that does just this is Twitter Tools by Alex King. Twitter Tools is kind of a misnomer in that it sounds like contains a suite of options for Twitter<->WordPress functionality when it really boils down to two things:
- Turn your posts into tweets.
- Pulls existing tweets into a post.
Why is this widget important? With Twitter having grown over 1000% in the last year, everyone and everything is on Twitter from national news networks, companies and brands, to celebrities and politicos and definitely not lastly, right down to Joe and Jane Anybody. The one constant thing all of them are doing is harnessing the way Twitter works and pushing beyond its boundaries by incorporating Twitter into their other social networks and web presences and vice versa. For companies and brands, this also means that they are doing outreach to clients, potential clients, staff and more by utilizing the power of social networking and integrating it into their professional lives. Why send just a company newsletter to clients when you can also keep them abreast of new technologies, updates, interests as well as interact with them in this new social playground.
What exactly does this mean? Social networking takes a lot of time and work, but it doesn’t necessarily have to. Let’s say Jane Anybody is on Twitter, Facebook, and has a blog. Let’s say she wants to be able to push her blog onto Twitter automatically without having to login to Twitter every single time she writes a new entry. Let’s also say that Jane doesn’t want to have to futz with shrinking the URL, rewording her title if it is too long and then reminding herself to login and to post to Twitter after she is done writing her blog entry. She wants an application this will do all of this for her with one push of a button.
This is where Twitter Tools comes into play.
As mentioned, Twitter Tools is the all in one client that will automagically push new blog content to your Twitter account AND will pull content from your Twitter account, which you can then showcase your Twitter-fu in a neat sidebar widget that you can add (thanks, again, to Twitter Tools) or as a daily post, which will post automatically to your blog.
You can search for Twitter Tools directly at the WordPress Codex, download and upload to WP-Plugins/ folder on your WordPress install or even easier, you can search for Twitter Tools via the Plugins->Add New search tab on your WordPress dashboard. The second install option is even easier as WordPress will automatically download and install Twitter Tools (or any plugin available via the Codex) without having to use (or know) FTP. Just search, select and okay the download and WordPress does it all for you — which is also pretty cool.
Regardless of which way you choose to download Twitter Tools, once it’s installed, go to WordPress Dashboard->Settings->Twitter Tools. From here, once you authenticate your Twitter account and change the option on “Enable option to create a tweet when you post in your blog” to “Yes,” Twitter Tools can be pretty much left alone. From this point forward, every post created on your blog will automatically ship to Twitter, with shortened URL, when your post is published to the blog. Twitter Tools also works with post-date (in the future) and pre-date (in the past) feature via WordPress but also keep in mind that in choosing either of these options, the date stamp on your Tweet will match the date stamp on your blog entry and pre-date entries will be fed into your Twitter stream appropriately, therefore they will not show up as “new” tweets in your timeline to your followers.
Here are some other nifty things about Twitter Tools:
- You can turn Twitter Tools on/off individually in each post, which will override the default. In this case, we have changed the default to “Yes” which means that each and every post will automagically post to Twitter when it posts to your blog.
- Twitter Tools automatically installs widget functionality that you can drag into your sidebar by going to
WordPress Dashboard->Appearance->Widgets without knowing how to code. - You can also enable the ability (via the Twitter Tools configuration page) to have your tweets for the day automatically pulled from Twitter, compiled into a single post and having that post posted not only to your blog but also tweeted back to your Twitter account (like your other normal blog posts). And no, King says, this apparent cyclic function will not cause a firey ball of doom.
- For those of you who are more into doing things by hand, King also gives instructions on how to hack up and style Twitter Toolsrather than be dependent on the theme installed. This means if you would rather have X amount of tweets appear or if you would rather have them show up in a footer, or somewhere else on your blog, King provides how-to’s and explanation how these hooks will work.
- Support: One of the nice things about WordPress is the community built around it for support if you get stuck on doing something and with Twitter Tools, there is no exception. You can use the support Codex and post a question there, you can alternately Google for an answer or if it is dire emergancy and you simply cannot wait for responses, there is the WP HelpCenter, which is a pay service.
Bottom line: Twitter Tools is an easy way to get Twitter integrated into your blog and to push blog posts to your Twitter account without knowing how to code, futz with extra settings or more plugins. It works right out of the box and can be installed and set-up within a few minutes. This is definitely a “Must Have” in your WordPress toolkit.
The consequences of world domination.
Last week, to put it succinctly, was the week from hell.
I left for St. Louis to present at a conference on Wednesday, came home mid-afternoon Friday only to immediately head to the Fox Theatre with Justin to see Bob Dylan play Friday night. Saturday morning, after dropping Wednesday off at the dog boarders, we drove to Kalamazoo to see our friends Lauren and Eric get married. Sunday, after a pit stop at IKEA, we headed home where I was able to finally couch for the first time, it seemed, in weeks.
I only checked email twice on Monday. Twice! Clearly, I was tired and overworked.
Justin and I have been having a lot of conversations on what’s going to happen with me when on-campus classes are done for me in May (I’ll still be doing a few online classes for the summer session): I’ll be out of a job (the graduate program kicks students off of student assistantships after 36 credit hours and I hit 42 or 44 May 2010), Justin and I are getting married (to get health benefits – srsly), we’re moving somewhere but we’re not sure where. And then there is the honeymoon to contend with (UK? Italy? For how long?). In a short amount of time, a lot of stuff is going to be happening and I can’t plan for it because it is all dependent on whether or not I get a job offer and if so, where I’m going. And on top of that, if I don’t get a job offer, where do we move to? Justin has the luxury of telecommuting, and I know that if I can’t find a job in X time, he will support me, but I don’t want to have to do that.
It’s called having to pay $900/month in student loans, muthafucker. (“Down with your bourgeois education,” Justin says.) So then it goes back to, “What do you want to do! What do you want to do with your life!” and of course, “world domination” doesn’t necessarily pay the bills.
In all seriousness though, I stacked my interests and my work experience in the last two years to make myself as marketable as possible. I’ll have 18 months of academic librarianship under my belt, along with having presented at a conference, certification in archival work coupled with practicum experience, digital librarianship, special projects I’ve worked on with professors plus my own incredibly varied background.
I’m awesome and I know that.
One thing I keep musing on is just how far and to what extent I want to make librarianship and archival work my life — because I know me well enough to know that I will rabble rouse and want to change the world (I’ve already started that on campus here with the creation of a new student group that I did with three other students this summer), and while there are many incredibly awesome librarians and archivists out there who do similar rabble rousing things, the profession as a whole can be and is to some extent, incredibly backward and staid. As a student, looking at the work being done typically sums up one thing — that everything has to be committed to death and with that comes the death of innovation and moving forward. But as par usual, I’m digressing. As it stands, in addition to my course work and 20 hours of ref desk pimpin’, I currently am doing the following:
- President, ASIS&T,Wayne State student chapter.
- Vice President and co-founder, Progressive Librarians’ Guild, Wayne State student chapter.
- Communications chair, Graduate Employees’ Organizing Committee, Wayne State.
- Member, virtual reference committee for new technologies, Wayne State Library system.
- Digital technologies librarian liaison, various roles/responsibilities 1.
I can see my life going in a variety of directions, and I know that I’m flexible enough with my skillset that if I don’t like how one way goes, I can totally switch it to another. The problem, however, is that I’m not quite sure if I want to be a rabble rouser anymore — my own work and interests seem to get pushed to the side because when I take on something, I like to think I give it 110% of my focus – and I know it is because of this that makes me so good at what I do.
Writing, for example, has gone to the way side. Not just missing a few days or a few weeks but it’s been since MAY since I’ve posted anything to this or my LiveJournal account, which I even barely check anymore. My other domain, biblyotheke.net is to represent my “professional portfolio” and that’s not even been tweaked with since I installed Indexhibit on it a few weeks ago.
The quandary I’m having is not only how I want to live my life, but how to live my life and make it meaningful. How do I balance a husband, a future family, a career and personal interests while giving myself Lisa-time? What type of jobs should I start looking for? Should I sell out? Consult? Write the “Great American Novel”? Do I want to work 60hrs a week and push family and personal life aside (like my mom)? And if my school involvement right now is any indicator, it can end up like that.
Because I find it incredibly difficult to say “No.”
1. I have not discussed with my freelance employers what I can and cannot post about my work for them, so for now, they remain anonymous.