I’ll be back to post soon.  Have just been lost in the land of Web 2.0/digging in to my new job.

1. A late night giant slice of watermelon.  Feeling an exquisite rebellion in eating such a thing while reading a library book.

2. Emailing with a new friend while we sit next to each other in our summer class.

3. In the middle of chastising the cat for pulling blooms from my flower arrangement, I realize she has revealed a bright yellow rose that was hidden under a shield of daisies.

Inspired by the original Three Beautiful Things and a lack of time to blog, Brave New Librarian will take on a new format for the coming weeks. I’ll try to post more often by listing three things/events/exchanges/recollections/moments that slow me down, remind me that life is beautiful, and make me feel blessed.

To begin:

1. A new graphic novel arrives through the magic of interlibrary loan.

2. An unexpected kiss in the afternoon sunlight and a bouquet of flowers waiting on my porch.

3. A chunky little boy writing on himself with green sidewalk chalk looking all business.

My Artists’ Books course started this week and it rocks! For some reason the fact that we SLIS graduate students can take a few classes outside of the department is not highly advertised. Apparently one just has to prove the relevance of the class to the library science degree and I think it has to be a 300 or 400 level course. I highly recommend taking advantage of this opportunity to balance traditional library coursework (like metadata, databases, and cataloging) with something that stirs the other side of your brain. With only two courses left to complete, the chance to switch gears and make books is a big breath of fresh air for me.

On another note, I’ve accepted a Web 2.0 Content Producer position, which I’ll begin full-time in August. I’m thrilled to be exploring the potentials of 2.0 technologies in relation to education and young adult and children’s literature. I’m so excited to venture further into the world of YA and children’s books– mmm, they’re like candy! If anyone has recommendations in this genre, please post a comment or send me an email.

I just revisited the movie Rain Man and loved the following quote by Raymond Babbitt (Dustin Hoffman) to Charlie Babbitt (Tom Cruise) upon leaving the mental institution:

Of course, I don’t have my books. Of course, there’s no bookshelves. I’m definitely out of books. I’m gonna be book-less.

Between the making and the reading, this is definitely going to be a book-filled summer!

Definitely.

Do books or quotes or songs ever find you in just the right moment?

I love when the universe sends tidbits of gentle advice my way like leaves drifting down from treetops to land at my feet.

Today, this:

Have patience with everything unresolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves as if they were locked rooms or books written in a foreign language. Don’t search for answers, which could not be given to you now, because you would not be able to live them. And the point is, to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps then, someday far in the future, you gradually, without even noticing it, will live your way into the answer. – R. M. Rilke

I have a secret.

Being a librarian is not my primary dream. I know that it really is an aspiration for some, and it’s a noble one. For me, becoming a librarian is a means to support what I really love to do, which is to:

watch solder melt into the perfect seam,
shape supple copper and bronze,
sand sterling silver to a satin finish,
sculpt my ideas in the medium that taught me patience.

I am most content when my hands are rough. I am a tool person. I am anxious most of the time, but never when I am sanding, riveting, annealing, chasing, forging, soldering, raising, sinking, buffing, casting, piercing, oxidizing, drawing, or polishing.

Librarianship is my plan to pursue my true calling, my honest passion. This profession will hopefully help to put food on this artist’s table. Or at least, that was my plan…

I’ve realized lately that the 40-hour/week job I commit to absolutely cannot be devoid of creativity. It is not enough for me to create in my spare time, I have to have the opportunity to engage my artistic side at work. I need to be able to write or design or plan or build.

I have a whole lot to contribute to the library world, and I dearly want the opportunity to do so. I think libraries need artists and all types of people with other kinds of passions and talents. Skills translate, abilities transfer. A demonstrated passion for something is a valuable, marketable trait.

But forty hours of repetitive library work and I will put rocks in my pockets and wade into a river.

The professional development conference I’ve been working on (with the help of great board members) is a little over a month away. The speakers are lined up, we have an agenda and a menu, and the brochures have been printed and mailed out. I’m excited that we’re offering a student rate for library school people. I’m hoping for a great turnout and a stellar day of programming. At this point it’s kind of up to the forces that be and library directors.

I realize that with slim budgets, there isn’t always money for support staff to take part in professional development opportunities. Some of my association’s members have informed me that they use personal days or vacation time to attend our conference (which is very, very undeniably related to their work– it may be an enjoyable day, but it isn’t quite on par with vacation).

So, if you are a library director, if you know a library director, or you plan to be a library director, I am asking you to remember that support staff also benefit greatly from professional development opportunities. They benefit in the same ways that professional staff do. They gain new knowledge about technology, are exposed to new approaches to customer service, and get updated on new library trends, etc. Also, there’s the chance to get re-energized about library work and to network with other library workers. Everything gained at a conference is going to translate back to job performance/satisfaction in some little or big way, and it doesn’t really matter how the person is classified. There might not be money to reimburse support staff for professional development costs, but you can offer your support, encouragement, and an awareness of these opportunities (be they conferences, webinars, podcasts, free classes, etc.).

I think it is really important to reward the staff members who seek out opportunities to improve their skills and knowledge and strive to develop what they can offer in the workplace. So if you are a library director and some of your support staff tell you they want to attend a conference, encourage them to do so (and then ask them about it!).  I think it is important to encourage staff members to learn and try new things and to share with them opportunities to do so. (I like when my boss has given me the chance to learn new software, for example. I get reinvested in my work and gain skills that help me do my job better and improve my resume/library repertoire).

Support library support staff, this is their profession too.

The snow melting outside is the most delicious sound, more delicious and satiating than the sounds of even the most decadent breakfast being cooked. For me, the undoing of winter is a kind of emotional and spiritual nourishment. I begin these pre-spring days with a new awareness. I realize just how hunched my shoulders have been against the cold and I work to consciously relax those long-tensed muscles. It occurs to me that I’ve had to adapt to walking on ice, literally. Ice permits no sauntering, no strolling, and no skipping at all. Just to walk on a bare sidewalk without fear of falling is a new luxury.

This long snowy winter has led me into a physical survival mode and an energy-conserving approach to each day. Hibernation doesn’t do wonders for my mental acuity, nor for blog inspiration. As the snow turns back to water, though, I can feel my thoughts getting a bit sharper.

Today I’m thinking about library school and this two-year degree I’m about to complete. I’m thinking about getting a job and feeling anxiety, not only my own anxiety, but also the anxiety of my classmates and last year’s MLS graduates who are still looking for jobs. In every conversation I’ve had recently about beginning the job search I’ve been told, “I don’t envy you one bit,” or, “I’m sure glad I’m not out there right now.” I have also realized that to increase my chances of getting a job, I must expand my notion of the types of jobs I’ll apply for.

We came to library school to a degree that would help us get better jobs, right? Now we’re about to attain the degree and it feels like there is more of a guarantee of being jobless than being gainfully employed. And, I’ve worked hard in library school. It’s not that the classes themselves are hard; it’s cramming into two years all the things you’re not getting in the classes that’s hard. To compensate for the in-class theory-time, we must put in equal hours outside of library school getting relevant, real-world work experience.

(Will someone please decide if the MLS is a professional or an academic degree? LIS students suffer in the midst of this debate.)

After all our busy days and late nights and weekends of homework and group projects and practicum hours and balancing school with full-time jobs and families, we now have to worry that we won’t be employable? We now have to consider part-time jobs, jobs with no benefits, jobs in small faraway towns, and jobs we don’t really want or are overqualified for?

Who flooded the market with LIS graduates? Who spread the rumor about a graying profession? Why did I believe them? Can I just blame the economy?

Why do we need to fight so hard to prove we need a degree to do what we do? I think it’s just one of many hoops to jump through, perhaps an investment, but not a guarantee. It’s an expensive hoop and a time-consuming one too. It’s surely not the last one we’ll approach. Kudos to the hoop-jumping librarians.

The good news? Spring is on its way, and it’s a much more optimistic and hopeful season than winter. Even in a wintry and frigid job market, we future librarians keep on persevering and continue to hope for the chance to do work that we enjoy. We’re demonstrating a loyalty to the profession based on the work it entails, and not solely the promise of a steady paycheck. It’s a nice thought, actually.

This week I checked out Hillary Rodham Clinton’s website to unearth her technology-related plans for the United States. On her Innovation Agenda page,

I found the following:

• #2 “Ensure that e-science initiatives are adequately funded. E-science has transformative potential, and we must accelerate the pace of discovery and investment to ensure that America leads the emerging field. E-science is research that links Internet-based tools, global collaboration, supercomputers, high-speed networks, and software for simulation and visualization. The potential of e-science is great. For example, researchers could one day model climate change by constructing scale simulations of the Earth’s systems. The NSF commits approximately 3% of its budget, or $200 million annually, to the support of e-science through its Office of Cyberinfrastructure.”
• #4 “Direct the federal agencies to award prizes in order to accomplish specific innovation goals. The federal agencies should regularly use prizes to encourage innovation when there is a clearly defined goal and when there are multiple technological paths for achieving that goal. Prizes can attract non-traditional participants and stimulate the development of useful but under-funded technology. Hillary Clinton proposes to make prizes a part of the budgets at the research agencies.”
• #7 “Support initiatives to establish leadership in broadband. Under the Bush administration, the country that invented the Internet has slipped to 25th in the global rankings for broadband deployment. In order to accelerate the deployment of sophisticated networks, Hillary Clinton proposes that the federal government provide tax incentives to encourage broadband deployment in underserved areas. She also proposes financial support for state and local broadband initiatives. Various municipal broadband initiatives are underway around the country to accelerate the deployment of high speed networks. The initiatives are useful for education, commerce, technology development, and the efficient provision of municipal services.”
• #2 “Boost support for multidisciplinary research in areas such as the intersection of bio, info, and nanotechnologies. This is an area of potentially unique competitive advantage for the United States. Few countries have the depth and breadth of our excellence across different scientific and technological fields.”

These excerpts from Hill’s 9-point “Innovation Agenda” are her answers to keeping up with the technological Joneses, namely China. So, she proposes funding for e-science initiatives, prizes from federal agencies for achieving innovation goals, increased broadband deployment, and increased support for “bio, info, and nanotechnologies.”

I’m admittedly writing from a biased viewpoint and I acknowledge that my interpretation of Hillary’s technology-related plans probably doesn’t come from a completely neutral place… To me, these plans sound really hollow. I’m just not convinced by the smattering of tech. jargon (cyberinfrastructure, e-science, nanotechnologies). These are just words. These don’t sound like concrete or tangible plans to me, nor do they come across as innovative ideas. Unless you consider giving prizes an innovative idea.

And what kinds of prizes?? Cash money? Scratch and sniff stickers? Trips to Hawaii? A Bill Clinton bobblehead?

Hill does do a nice job of placing huge 2.0 icons for Facebook, Flickr, etc. on her website. Especially interesting, yet not at all surprising, is the inclusion of Eons, “the online community for boomers.” I give her credit for trying to keep up with the Joneses; the boomer generation of Joneses and their tech. savvy offspring.

As a member of the latter, I’m sorry Hill, you’re just not quite there yet.