Tag: Library Futurism

personal anacdotes on misc

(Edit: I totally spaced that LibUX interviewed me for their podcast and it went live this week! If you have 30 minutes, go take a listen!)
Dear Internet,
Wednesday is job hunt day and right now I’m up to slightly over 20 positions I need to apply for in the next week or so. I’m now breaking them down by deadline rather than when they were posted so I don’t miss the cut off. There have been a few cases where I’ve applied for positions past their prime and got interviews, but I like to be on top of things. On being thorough: once a librarian, always a librarian, and all of that rot.

This past Monday I had interview with an institution and I’m feeling pretty sure the interview did not go well, which sucks because this may be the interview that breaks my streak on going from phone to in person interviews. (This I realised was very true. There has not been a phone interview that did not end up in an in person interview. Getting the job, obviously, was a whole different matter.)
What went wrong? Several things, I believe, did not bode well. I also worried I wasn’t clear on my points, which TheExHusband (who works from home and thus heard my side of the conversation) thinks I’m being too hard on myself and that I sounded fine. Despite this, the one thing that I wasn’t keen on was the scripted questions. Three of which were so close to the other, I inadvertently answered them all in one go and had to reformulate my answer for questions two and three. I was also not thrilled to see they didn’t have back-up questions when it became evident several of the questions were repetitive.
Recommendation for search committees: I get you’re have constricted time for phone interviews but please, from a candidate’s point of view, consider having back up questions in case a main question does not apply or has already been answered in another form. Also the candidate is interviewing you as well, so please allot time for that to happen.
(I’m also super glad I did research on the school and prepped typical and often potential questions with answers before the interview so I wasn’t fumbling. I was also a girl scout.)
(I made the decision during this cycle of job applications my final question for the search committee is going to be, “Do you have any questions about my resume, web sites, or the case?” What’s happening is I feel I’m getting jerked around going into the in-person interview when I know they’ve been hammering and combing through my sites before the second interview and they’ve already made the decision I’m not the incumbent before the second interview even takes place. You’ll be hard pressed to dissuade me from that thought since I’ve had two job offers rescinded due to their probing of the sites AFTER extending the position. So let’s just get the elephant out in the open shall we?)
This position was one of my top choices due to the school’s reputation, the location, it’s alumni (yep!), and what the job would entail. If I don’t get called back for the second interview, I’ll be super bummed but life goes on and all that jazz.
(Thank you to everyone who is being super supportive of me during these job hunt cycles and telling me a place will be lucky to have me. Your support really keeps me pushing forward!)

If you have been to lisa.rabey.net  before, you may notice I’ve changed the design of the site. As I’m spending more time in keeping the content current, I choose this particular theme because I wanted something clean and easy to use but with a touch of pizazz. I adore the Commodore 64 and TI-99 4/a old computer and gaming images because they juxtapose what it stands for (computers) and what is perceived of my profession (books)  so rightly gives where my interests and skills lay and it seemed apropos. Get it? (Sometimes when I think I’m being clever it could be construed I take it a bit too far.) In addition to the theme, I also liked that it had my beloved right sidebar and the font was easy on the eyes. All in all, I’m really digging the new look.

I’m constantly tweaking my resume as I need to clean up or add new things. In recent interviews I’ve been talking a lot about the courses I’ve been taking at Team Treehouse like Front End Web Development / Full Stack JavaScript and I also recently started a class at Library Juice Academy on Introduction to GIS and GeoWeb technologies, so instead of just talking about them I wanted to illustrate them on ye olde resume.
(The LJA course is a month long while the TeamTreehouse classes are collectively 50-70 hours to be completed (not required but as a challenge) before the cohort starts in May. THEN it’ll be 50-70 hours of work over 12 weeks. Phew.)
(Recently I talked about GIS as a futures of libraries subject so when the opportunity came to take a course, I jumped on it. Hack Library School predicted it as an upcoming trend / requirement in 2012 for those wanting to get into Digital Humanities or continue the tech track so it’s not necessarily a super new thing. While HLS saw this coming, I didn’t see any positions requiring and preferring GIS skills until the last year. I know when I hunted in 2010 and partially in 2014, it was pretty rare where now it’s not. It’s also becoming a standard class in library schools.)
Where were we? The resume!  I updated the digital version and carried on to the site (I’ve also got one with redacted contact information available if you are in desire of downloading such things). As I’ve been talking about the classes I’m taking, new interests, and shifting and emphasizing on previous job duties, it seemed wise to make everything across the web and digital spheres cohesive. MY CV is now five pages long. (TheExHusband commented wasn’t that too long and I quipped making it two pages was nay impossible even if I cut it down to the bare bones. Oh. Youths.)

In addition to all of this, I recently took on a job of building a site for a friend with about 100 hours of projected work, give or take about 25 hours. The client and I thought it would be a simple knock up with a few pages here and there but as I interviewed her more on what she and her partner wanted, the more complex the site became. I’m close to the website owner’s husband, and they as a family have been wonderful to me, so I easily said yes about the job. The payment is going to be in chocolate (you’ve read that correctly) with half due now and half due on delivery.
I know a lot of you are grumbling that I’m possibly screwing myself by doing it for exposure BUT this will allow me to use current skills and learn new ones and while I have experience in knocking websites up it’s not something I do for a job but would like to (hence the Team Treehouse classes). If it were anyone else, I’d require minimal per hour free (by designer standards). I’m pretty comfortable with this arrangement. (To be fair, they have asked me to track hours so hopefully some cash may be coming down the pipeline in the future, even if it is a token amount.)

I know I’ve talked about professional development in the past and when I sat down to organize my education, I knew I was pushing myself too thin to do full stack (front and back end development) and GIS with taking on other areas of interest. I’m currently in the weeding process to not overextend myself but it’s hard when I genuinely have a lot of interests. What needs to happen is figure out a better cohesiveness of my career and those concentrations while using the secondary interests for pleasure. It has to be the right combination of in the now skills with enough cutting edge interests to make you seem forward thinking.

In the realm of forward thinking, the draft post I have on the future of libraries part ii will more than likely be broken out to individual posts for each topic. The first piece in the series with the summary of a few futurisms clocked in at nearly 2000 words and this piece, just an update on my life, is closing in on 1500 words. I’m verbose and if you read my personal blog, you know I do not take umbrage on being succinct.
I obviously have a lot to say.

How To: Become a Library Future(ist) – part i

Dear Internet,
How do you become a library futurist?
Easy. You let others do the research for you.
This is, scout’s promise, not a dig at anyone.
Total pinky swear.
Let me explain.
“What is the future for libraries?” is one of the most popular question I’m asked in interviews. I have a couple of pat answers which are gleaned from the conversations I see on Twitter and mailing lists — but those are getting tired and repetitive.
My secondary answer comes in the form of, “I don’t know. Each library is different, has different needs, and plans for their future. It’s not always maker spaces and nerd nights. The future of libraries, therefore, is flexible. Libraries can be anything they want to be.”
Or something along those lines.
But that answer is also getting tired (and is also a cop out).
What really is the future of libraries?
First, it seems many ideas of what the future holds is related to technology. so let’s start with that first. TechCrunch, Wired, TheVerge, and ReadWrite are the main sites you’ll want to RSS or visit on a near daily basis. You’re going to see overlap between these four (and similiar) sites so don’t be afraid to narrow down to only one or two blogs to keep current.
Why?  I once posited reading tech sites had a better return value of keeping up with the profession over reading professional literature (and much cheaper):

While plowing through mailing list emails one day, a conversation erupted on the “value” of professional journals and magazines, meaning that what is the point of spending several hundreds of dollars for a personal subscription to LibraryJournal when a print subscription to Wired, which some consider more relevant for librarinating, is only $10?

Second, on top of tech sites and blogs, you’re going to want to look at places for special interests you have such as UX, Digital Humanities, or social media. Why? Academic articles take roughly 6 – 18 months from submission to publication. By that point, there are already several incarnations of whatever passing on by, which makes the article dated as hell. This is not to say you shouldn’t read those professional publications but you want to make sure you have complementary content in the mix.
In addition to the usual library land publications (too numerous to list and I’m sure you have your favorites), I’m fond of the list of journals found at Researching Librarian.
So you’ve got the sites / blogs / magazines, there is a lot of content — how do you determine what exactly is going to be the future for libraries?
Easy. Look for patterns of subjects across those sites and how they will work within the library ecosystem. Within a couple of weeks, I pulled enough content (which also coincided with chatter across Twitter, Facebook, and mailing lists) to come up with a solid list of nearly a dozen things we’re going to see in the coming future of libraries.

  • Security / Tor / Encryption  Who? The two people who come to mind in library land in this area is Alison Macrina (founder of The Library Freedom Project) and Ian Clark (radical librarian, politico, and curator of  surveillance.infoism.co.uk). What? TLFP’s goal is to “…make real the promise of intellectual freedom in libraries. By teaching librarians about surveillance threats, privacy rights and responsibilities, and digital tools to stop surveillance, we hope to create a privacy-centric paradigm shift in libraries and the local communities they serve.” This work is especially crucial  to keep libraries on point with ALA’s Code of Ethics, specifically article iii, “We protect each library user’s right to privacy and confidentiality with respect to information sought or received and resources consulted, borrowed, acquired or transmitted.” Clark is especially passionate about privacy (in all forms), surveillance, and inclusion in a post-Snowden world. Why does this matter? Macrina’s, and Clark’s, goals is to hold library associations accountable for their statements in regards to intellectual freedoms as well as educating libraries and patrons on those rights. As more people continue access information on public networks, the ability to protect that information is huge.
  • Library as co-working spaces Who? Me! What? If you’re unfamiliar with co-working spaces, it’s a shared space for those who may typically work from home or on the road and need a singular location to work. For a small membership fee a month, the co-working space provides food/drink, wifi, unlimited printing, boardrooms, parking, and a whole lot of other perks. (I found that using a co-working space tends to be significantly cheaper than using coffee shops or other areas for work.) Why does this matter? Co-working spaces have become de riguer for 21st century work force. If you were paying attention, many of these things are things already provided at libraries, so what’s the difference? For a nominal fee every month, users can get expanded services (unlimited printing, better wifi, locker location, snacks/drinks) with free services already available such as access to databases and the stacks. Most public libraries I’ve seen already have the infrastructure in place to handle this addition so the investment could be minimal AND it’ll (eventually) pay for itself with the nominal fees being charged AND if you get them in them in the library, you’re going to see an increase in circulation and programming PLUS it’ll be on trend with what communities will be looking for from their libraries.
  • Geospatial / Geolocation Technologies Who? Academic libraries. This seems to be either a popular requirement in positions or its own position. What is it? In the broadest sense, geospatial technology is mapping of the earth’s features using GPS and running analysis against the data. Why does this matter? In many of the positions that have the title of “geospatial librarian,” they tend to work with the earth sciences departments and analyze / provide references to maps and other components, which makes sense. But for (most) other libraries, the use of geospatial technology is to map out the library’s stacks and other accouterments to make it easier for patrons for find materials down to where on the shelf or in the physical space where the item is located. Nearly every interview I’ve had that had this “preferred” requirement, they wanted this project completed within a year. Ha. Ha. Ha. As libraries continue to grow their technology, expect them to require GIS related education (of course they will) as a way, they think, to remain relevant.

Here’s the thing: one of my original pat answers in interviews, “Each library is different, has different needs, and plans for their future.“, remains true. You’re going to find all type of libraries, regardless of size, trying to cram the future to fit them, even if it has nothing to do with their community or purpose, to remain relevant.
Come back later when I have more thoughts on library futurism such as copyright, social media, digital preservation, internet of things, and a whole lot more.
 
 

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