Category Archives: libraries and librarians

Reflecting on ACRL

By IRIS Posted on by

This time around, ACRL was a better experience than last time, thanks in a large part to those of you who introduced yourselves to me, and to several of my LSW friends who spent a great evening together on Saturday. As I sat in the closing keynote (with IRA GLASS, people!!! Now that’s how to close out a conference!), Ira’s performance reinforced what I love about this profession, what made the sessions that worked work, and what had been missing from the sessions that failed to live up to my expectations.

He sat on that stage, surrounded by drapery, potted trees, two giant screens, an ACRL logo-bedecked podium, and stage lights. He sat there in a hoodie behind a tangle of cords, a mixing board, two high-powered CD players, and a large microphone. And in the midst of all this, there in that stark contrast of the majestic and the mundane, he explained that facts and their presentation can either be surprising and joyful, or they can be confining and boring. Story telling depends on suspense and on the story-teller’s ability to couple facts with ideas. Plot isn’t enough to hold our interest. Plots become stories when the story-teller can zoom out, so to speak, and show the broader landscape that gives these factual details their context. Story is all about how facts — so local, so specific — apply to something larger, something more meaningful.

Most of the sessions I attended were chock-full of facts. Several had organized those facts into a cohesive plot. Only a couple, though, managed to make those facts interesting and broadly applicable. Only a couple managed to zoom out and perform that first level of abstraction that would lodge in their listeners’ minds, prime them for that level of anticipation and surprise that makes learning enjoyable.

Even beyond explicating my own enjoyment and my own learning at this particular conference (or lack thereof), I hope I can work a healthy respect for surprise, suspense, joy — story – into my teaching. Research is the quintessential environment for coupling facts and ideas, and it can be presented in ways that either stifle interest or expand it, ways that either bore or surprise. If my students learn nothing more than that what they find can interest people, I will consider that they have learned something important (and that they should come back to me to learn how to actually go about mimicking the research habits of scholars in their fields).

Ira may have covered this in the 20 minutes after I had to leave to catch my flight home, but I think the musical pauses he works into his show (and which he worked into his performance at ACRL) are also key elements of story telling. If his structure is plot, plot, plot, plot, idea, plot, plot, idea, then I think the pauses exist to give people space to comprehend. It’s the serious version of comic timing, and it’s just as important to the overall effect. And if there’s one thing that I learned from watching both Ira and Sherman Alexie (another incredible speaker that I truly enjoyed listening to at this conference), it is that these pauses are carefully planned. There is nothing accidental about them, just as there’s nothing accidental about the ideas that these story-tellers present to give their plots meaning.

I am very bad at pausing.

Little by little I will become a better teacher and presenter. And in a strange way, both the successful presentations at this conference and the presentations that failed to deliver served to illustrate just where I want to concentrate my efforts this coming term.

Basking in the Reflected Glow

By IRIS Posted on by

I was busy recruiting ACRL attendees for the Library Society of the World this past week, which involved several conversations about how it got started (a funny story that can be told with more or less snark depending on the situation… I love snark-flexible stories). My favorite part to tell, though, is the “you are here” part. If you decide to take up with this crew, you’ll find yourself surrounded by smart, thoughtful, innovative, energetic, inspiring, and just plain wonderful library people.

There have always been anecdotes of useful conversations and interesting ideas to share when trying to explain why I think the group does good work, but as the group and individuals within it continue to work hard to improve the profession, it’s getting easier and easier to point to things that non-LSW members will have heard of and say “Look at this, and this, and this. See? These people really are cool!” Take, for example, yesterday’s announcement of the Library Journal’s list of Movers and Shakers. That list includes so many people that I know from LSW: Dorothea Salo, Jenica Rogers-Urbanek, Jason Griffey, Karen Coombs, Michael Porter, Rachel Walden, Dave Pattern, Lauren Pressley. Then there are a few other people listed that I know but am not quite sure if they’ve declared themselves LSW members (one of the fun things about the LSW is that there is no comprehensive roster of members): Chad Boeninger, Melissa Rethlefsen, Sarah Houghton-Jan, and the “Dutch Boys” (Erik Boekesteijn, Jaap van de Geer, and Geert van den Boogaard). That’s a quarter of the LJ list, folks. That’s nothing to sneeze at!

On top of that, there are all the other cool things that LSW members play huge roles in, like LCOW, Library Camp Kansas, the ALA unconference, the Lib2.0 Unconference (in Australia, since this is “of the world,” remember), BIGWIG programming, setting up all kinds of conversation spaces online (the LSW Meebo room, the LSW forum, the LSW LinkedIn group, the LSW FriendFeed room)… the list goes on and on and on. And now, the LSW is coming up with a way to recognize all the amazing things that its members do day in and day out. If you haven’t seen it yet, check out the Shover & Maker award site which appears to be gearing up for something big.

What started as a joke has become an actual force in the library world, and I, for one, am honored to bask in the glow of these truly inspiring people

Settling in for ACRL in Seattle

By IRIS Posted on by

I love Seattle. This is only my second time here, but it’s just such a pretty city. And seriously, the entire down-town area smells of coffee, which strikes me as the perfect smell for a city.

I’m sitting here listening to announcements before the opening keynote and hoping that this conference will strike that tricky balance of being both fun and informative. My last ACRL (which was also my first) wasn’t such a great experience, so I’m on a mission to make this one different. Last time I think I chose my sessions poorly, and I had no idea how to meet up with people, so I ended up feeling like the most anonymous person in a sea of potential friends. This time I hope to choose better sessions to attend, and I’m hoping that I’ll manage to connect with some great people and re-connect with previous acquaintances. Part of this depends on you! If you’re here and see me (mostly recognizable by my olive green back-pack, which complements my jeans nicely) please introduce yourself! As a hint, I’ll probably be near a power outlet, and yes, I’m happy to share my extension cord with you.

So here goes. Keynote, then dinner, then hanging out, then back to the hotel (which is right across the street from the Seattle Public Library!). Here’s hoping for a useful, engaging, and fun conference. See you there!

What is an Unconference Anyway?

By IRIS Posted on by

Yesterday an enlightening thing happened in the comments on a blog post by Steve Lawson (a post which is positively ancient in blog years, by the way). Up until yesterday, I’d rather naively thought that even though the terms “unconference” and “library camp” are still in their toddlerhood, people generally had a common understanding of what those terms mean. In my head, this common definition went something like this: An informal, free or low cost, loosely structured gathering at which people share knowledge with each other. I would hear “unconference” and have an image of people gathering at the beginning of the day to figure out what they wanted to learn that day and which of them could lead sessions on those agreed-on topics.

Now I see that people may not, in fact, have a common understanding of the term “unconference.” The comments on Steve’s post point to at least three different interpretations: Unconferences are loosely structured conferences, Unconferences are grassroots gatherings, and Unconferences are a genre rather than a format. Here’s what I mean…

  • Unconferences as loosely structured conferences
    If you think of a conference, you know that there are all kinds of logistics that go into pulling one of those things off, most of which depend to a large degree on how many people you want to attend. Everything from spaces to staffing to the number of speakers to the relative rock-start status of your speakers to the rigidity of the schedule has to be geared toward attracting and handling your target audience. If you plan for 100 people and only 40 show up, that’s a huge waste of capital. Bring this mindset to an unconference and you end up with less worry about rock-star speakers (though a few recent unconferences have had Big Names give keynote addresses), but most of the same issues remain your primary concern. The major thing that changes, then, is that the unconference organizers spend little to no time planning out sessions topics, leaving that up to the attendees.
  • Unconferences as grassroots gatherings
    Other people, while still having to deal with logistics, consciously force those logistics into the background of the event. They still need space and people, obviously, but if they plan for 100 and 40 show up, those 40 might not even notice that you had enough room for more than twice their number. Those 40 would gather, decide what they want to learn and which of them can facilitate that learning, and then learn it, usually for free (with the space and other necessities paid for by donors or sponsors).
  • Unconferences as a genre rather than a format
    Still others (myself included) think of unconferences as a genre of gathering which may or may not include a keynote address, may or may not charge a small fee, and may or may not have an over-arching theme. This genre places the emphasis on attendee-driven content, but other than that, it no more dictates the size or cost or logistical complexity than does the parent term “conference.” As Steve says, an unconference “can be whatever the attendees decide it is” (citation).

Luckily, the solution to all the muddled assumptions is transparency. So if I see an unconference coming up, and I see that it will charge me a small fee and what that fee will go towards, I can make my own decisions about the value of that unconference in my life. If I see that it will be of the loosely-structured-conference variety, and I’m ok with that, that’s great. If I see that it’ll be a completely unstructured day of serendipitous learning with other librarians, and I’m ok with that, that’s great too. After all, not all conferences are like ALA Annual, so why must all unconferences be as diametrically opposed to Annual as possible?

Referrals: a Pledge

By IRIS Posted on by

I do a lot of referring. People stop into my office and I tell them to stop into another librarian’s office for better help. People come up to the reference desk and I do what I can to get them started and then refer them off to the liaison that’ll be able to go deeper. People ask me about renewing books, or getting a job in the library, or ordering books, or fixing computers, or registering for classes, or getting access to materials that we don’t have here, or any number of other questions that I can’t answer well by myself.

Sometimes these referrals are specific: “You need to talk to so-and-so, and here’s her contact information and what you can expect from her.” Sometimes they’re more vague: “You need to go talk to somebody in this special collection at the University of Minnesota.” And up until recently, I didn’t stop to think about the differences between those two types of referrals. Both get the people with a questions to somebody who can hopefully answer their questions, right?

Maybe.

I was recently on the receiving end of a non-library-related referral that left me with a bad taste in my mouth. It left me wishing that there had been somebody I could have turned to for a more personal, specific referral, a referral to somebody that they knew would take me seriously and work through my questions carefully. But I was out of my element and didn’t have a nice network of people who know people who know people, so I just went where I was told and hoped for the best. What a waste of time.

I think I’ll work at making my own referrals as specific as possible from now on. If I don’t know the name of the librarian at another institution that can answer this question, I’ll find that out. I’ll call ahead. I’ll pave the way. I won’t just send lost but optimistic students into unknown territory without any assurance that the person on the other end will at least take their questions seriously.