A Day in the Life of a Librarian

Here’s a glimpse into the day in the life of a reference and teen services librarian at a suburban library district.

8:15 am: Get into work a few minutes early since traffic didn’t snarl up nor did I hit construction. Spent the first 15 minutes of my Monday planning out what I hoped to accomplish for the week.

8:30 am: Edit, format, and print a list of remade classics/fairy tales to put into the teen reader advisory binders I have been updating.

9:00 am: Reviewed my budget allocation for collection development and then began marking up Booklist for titles I wanted to purchase. This issue had a focus on science fiction and dystopian novels, which I made note of to copy for my own files for future RA. The library opens at 9 am, but I’m off desk for now. I notice a typo in one of the award lists I put together and printed a couple of weeks ago. I make the change, and I put printing them again on my agenda for later. I’ll keep the mistake laden ones in the event the perfect ones run out later; I’d rather hand write the correction later on than waste all of the paper.

9:30 am: My boss trained me on purchasing through Baker & Taylor.

11:00 am: I fiddled around in B&T, looking at the site’s features since I’d never used it before.

11:15 am: I head up to the public service area and begin to refill the teen displays (this month’s display is mysteries, and we have another display of new titles that’s always up). I also put books back onto the face-out displays at the end of almost every row of books on the shelves. I went to the reference desk and saw I had a few extra minutes, so I went back to the teen section and just did a little straightening up.

11:30 am: First shift on the reference desk. I helped a patron find a book on drawing mythical creatures, then a book on origami. I helped another patron find a book about Cisco systems, and I placed holds on a couple of titles for a patron who called the library. Then a patron from a system outside ours asked for help locating materials on government grants for home improvement, and I pulled aside a few titles for her. Another patron brought me a lost library card, and when I called the patron, I got no answer and no machine. Boo. I helped a regular patron spell “honest.” As a librarian, I am also a de facto spell checker — seriously! I’ve never spelled so much for other people, and my spelling skills leave a bit to be desired.

12:30 pm: Lunch! I sadly forgot my meal today in the midst of Monday morning madness at home, so I enjoyed a diet coke and got through about 30 pages of Life As We Knew It by Susan Beth Pfeffer.

1:15 pm: I’m back on the desk. This time, I juggle starting a book order for teen fiction, as well. This time, I helped a woman find out all of the bike paths throughout Illinois and directed her to the department of transportation’s website and capital office — the state has a fantastic resource with maps of every bike path. I helped a patron on the phone who was using our genealogy database (with which I’m unfamiliar) and wanted to locate newspapers within it. There was some luck, but I directed her to the library of congress’s digital newspaper project (the joy of having worked on that project leads me to show it off whenever I can!). I had an older patron ask for help with her email, but I wasn’t able to help too much since she had no idea what she did wrong, and a search through her email was inconclusive. She was grateful anyway because I sat down with her and tried to help her to the best of my ability. And the patron with the missing library card came back for it!

2:30 pm: I have some more practice on Inter Library Loan and put a request in for a title that a patron called in with earlier. Fielded a number of computer related requests, including adding money to patron printing accounts and helping an out-of-town patron grab a few minutes of computer access.

3:00 pm: My shift on desk is over. I head down to my cube and put my nose to the grindstone on putting together a purchase order of teen fiction. Since I so intelligently passed on VOYA before writing down titles of interest, I pulled it up within the system and read through reviews again.

3:45 pm: I’ve been emailing back and forth with my boss about a ton of questions relating to teen services, so now I’m taking a few minutes to reread and get my mind wrapped around a couple of projects.

4:30 pm: After reading reviews, I’ve put together a list of about 45 books for one library and 30 for another to purchase. Many are from our state award lists, but many are ones that either we needed for a series we had, had great reviews in the journals, or sounded like they’d be of interest to our patrons. I had a couple of patron requests, too. I printed the lists and made sure there was a good mix of material, noting that I should make a concerted effort to locate more boy-friendly books in the next few months (are there none out there recently?!). I spent the previous hour looking for boy books, including investing some time with good Googling, GuysRead.com and then the Guy Lit Wire blog. Frustrating!

4:45 pm: As in starting my day, I spend the last 10-15 minutes reflecting on what I got done, followed by what I hoped to accomplish tomorrow. Today was thick with purchasing teen fiction, and tomorrow will be thick will purchasing for the adult 800s area — I recently weeded quite a bit there, and I need to beef up our general writing area before schools gets back in session. I also plan on breaking down a budget into monthly allocations, as well as working a bit more on some RA and reprinting the handouts with the mistake (sigh!).

5:00 pm: I head home.

6:00 pm: I came home to an ARC of “Beautiful Creatures,” sent from the Little Brown publishers. Woo hoo!

Libraries as the third place

Ever had those moments when you think about your collective experience and education and you see how it all fits together so perfectly? I had a moment like that when I was in my final semester of school. That moment made me understand how important and vital a role that the public library can and should play in a community. Don’t get me wrong, as I’d obviously had that thought before or else I’d never have entered the field, but it was a culmination of all my reading and projects that made me really want to advocate the idea that libraries are a third place in the American culture and landscape.

As our social scripts and ideas are challenged and transformed thanks to the economy or to the fact we no longer have the one-income one-mortgage standard by which to judge our life’s success, we really do need to find that third place. That third place becomes the opportunity to learn, grow, and understand one another, while simultaneously serving as a place to let loose and be our public selves.

Let’s step back from the larger idea for a second and build up to it.

In undergrad, I took a course in public history and memory. While we did our fair share of listening to and participating in lectures and reading, the crux of the course was the creation of a digital exhibit. We broke into teams and chose from a number of cultural institutions in eastern Iowa where we had the opportunity to explore a collection and build our story. I had the opportunity to work with a partner at the State Historical Society of Iowa (SHSI) in Iowa City. We were told early on that the SHSI had an interesting collection of historical home photos. Since eastern Iowa is home to so many beautiful original Victorian homes, this was an exciting prospect. When we met with the curator at the SHSI, we were further told that the photos seemed to be showcasing the porches of these homes.

That’s when the idea clicked.

My partner and I explored the idea of how, as a culture in America, we’ve moved from having grand, welcoming porches to a society of back porches. There’s been a shift from the porch as a welcome mat to neighbors and the community to the back patio, hidden away behind fences. Of course, this coincides with other societal changes, including the automobile invasion and suburbia. The link a couple lines up takes you to the project and showcases our digital exhibit — how we’ve shifted, what it means, and what impact it has on our American culture.

Fast forward a year and a half later, and I have the opportunity to pick out a book to read and give a report on in my Knowledge Management course. Although there were many interesting choices from which to choose, I went with Ray Oldenburg’s The Great Good Place. Sparing the slideshow, the book focuses on how we have no third place in America. We have a problem of acreage, schedules and privacy that thrive as we have only two real “places” we see daily: work and home. When we seek relaxation, we tend to find ourselves indulging in places of consumption — restaurants, shopping, malls, and so forth — where we find our stress decreases because these are informal places outside the settings of home and work.

However, the problem is that in order to be truly happy and fulfilled, we should have a tripod of life experiences: the domestic, the productive, and the social. We get the first at home, the second at work, and the third — well, as much as we tell ourselves that shopping is a social activity because we may indulge in it with friends, it’s not social — is absent.

The third place, Oldenburg argues, is a neutral space that is a leveller bringing together people from all walks of life. The goals of the third place are accessibility, accommodation, and conversation. They’re places of low profile that invite playfulness and become a home away from home. The third place brings a level of novelty into our daily lives because of the loose structure and fluidity which are catalysts for collective creativity. Likewise, the third place brings perspective, as it allows for a reality check for all — where else can the plumber and the high-power attorney interact on an equal ground about topics without the status of their profession intermingling in the process? Oldenburg adds, too, that the third place is a spiritual tonic allowing people joy, vivacity and relief, as well as friends by the set: people with whom we can interact in a different way than we do our co-workers or with those we know intimately enough to invite into our homes (the sacred and private space).

Where else can we discuss hyperlocal issues openly without a pre-schedule forum, associate with community members, and have “fun with the lid kept on?” The third space is an outpost into the public domain. It quells loneliness simply by being a space where people interact without needing to make a purchase or make a million dollar proposal.

The third place, Oldenburg says, would also help us redefine our idea of streets and public places. Americans tend to associate dirty things with the words public and street when the truth is, those should be where we derive our pleasure and our fulfillment.

Besides some of the issues I had with Oldenburg’s overromanticism of Europe and blatant misogynist comments, the book is definitely worth the read. Anyone who has wondered about why we do things the way we do them would appreciate a fresh and, I think, optimistic vision of what America could become with the right collective mindset. And I think, too, we’re making these strides: we’ve got a third space in digital outlets, in the physical reemergence of pedestrian malls inside of major cities (look at places like Denver), and, where I really think we have untapped potential, the public library.

In the same class, I chose to explore the idea of a knowledge ecology and how it relates to the public library. Though it sounds complicated or unimaginable, it’s quite literally something we have set up already — the knowledge ecology suggests that rather than libraries being where people come to get information [which would only be one level of interaction], the library is where anyone and everyone can come, engage in information transfer, participate in programming, offer their own ideas and insights into library-driven events, and so forth. Rather than the library being “close stacked,” with the librarians at the helms of giving, the public library becomes entirely “open stacked,” with the librarian simply serving the role of trained facilitator. They get the conversation started, keep it going, throw out new ideas, and constantly seek feedback and ideas from the community. The community does quite the same as the librarian - it offers ideas, needs, wants, questions, and resources. Without engaging entirely with the community, the library serves more of the library’s needs rather than the community’s needs. Public libraries should strive to provide and facilitate services uniquely tailored to the people and place in which it’s at, regardless of what may be hot and happenin’ in the literature.

And by doing that, the library becomes a third place.

The more we reach out, the more we talk with the community (rather than TO the community), and the more we engage wholly in the place we are, the more we are able to become the quintessential third place. Look at the small colleges, as well as the major universities, that are moving to user-centered information commons — they’re becoming the third space. And public libraries can do it, too. Except besides focusing on the college student, it focuses on the entire community.

The bones are here. The ideas are here. The people with drive are here. Now it’s just a matter of getting that out there. I think in a recession particularly, the opportunity to remind people about how valuable the library is beyond just its features of free computers and internet can and will make a lasting impression. We want to be places people want to come, engage, and participate. I think there are opportunities to crowdsource projects in the library, and I think people would jump. Librarians should not feel confined behind the desk or the computer. They aren’t merely information centers. They connect.

Librarians should be in the community, seeing what their patrons are doing and seeking, and the library should emulate or expand upon those things. We need to be community servants beyond just the 8 hours at our place of employment. Getting our faces out there can only remind people that there are advocates for them, inviting them into a safe, fun, level, and evocative space . . . and for free [or darn near it].

Let’s get ourselves back into the middle of the community. Let’s become the third place. Now’s the time to become the community front porch. And we’re making strides toward it.

There’s much more that can be said to this effect, but, suffice to say, I think it’s vital we become not just the front porch but that we engage the community in the library’s ecosystem. In an ecosystem, nothing is central. Instead, an ecosystem cultivates and breathes through shared interactions and reactions. If we set it up as the front porch of a community, we become part of the breath of the community and we become that third space people desperately need to have in order to have a fulfilled, joyful, and amicable life.

If you’re so interested in reading my knowledge ecology paper, feel free to check it out here (.pdf download). It’s short, but by parsing out ideas from the special library/corporate world, public libraries have great opportunities to continue growing uniquely public experiences.

Future of student news

This morning, I got this great article, courtesy of The Kept-Up Academic Librarian. If you don’t click, the jist of the story is that Rutgers’s independent student newspaper, The Daily Targum, is in the midst of a university debate — there is a referendum up to allow students the option to opt out of the $10/semester fee for the publication. Of course, this option could harm the paper significantly, as revenue will fall (and as a former small college newspaper editor, I am aware of how every $10 helps) and circulation statistics will fall, impacting advertisers. This then furthers the cycle of funding.

Although I sympathize with the student editors and writers on this issue, it brings up a lot of thoughts. First and foremost, it’s worth reading the petitition that the staff began here. What stands out to me in this petition is the following line:

“The future of an independent and daily campus newspaper lies solely in the hands of our president.”

This is wrong on so many levels. The truth is that the student fee-funded future of the newspaper lies solely in the hands of the president. The future of the independent newspaper lies solely in the hands of those who pour their blood, sweat, and tears into the paper on its regular basis (I believe The Targum is a six day a week paper). Yes, this is a terrible time for newspapers, as we’ve seen paper after paper filing for bankruptcy, but here’s the time that those in charge need to begin rethinking their service, delivery, and marketing strategies. Although I am dear to the print publication and see it as an important aspect of culture and history, I’m also highly acute to the fact that services like Twitter and newspapers that make all of their content available freely online are bringing the news in more timely, unique, and individualized manners.

Cornell College’s newspaper, the one in which I was charged with the task of co-editing, moved into the online sector my sophomore year of college (2004-2005). To this day, the digital edition is not entirely accessible, as it is a one man operation and hosted (FOR FREE) on an alumni’s web space. He has taken the responsibility to uploading it on a biweekly basis as his because he enjoys it and he sees the value in putting the news online, even if it is only minimal in content. Putting the entire paper online would definitely be possible, though it would run the paper some money in hosting and perhaps a little more in the time it takes for the web editor to upload it. Or maybe it would require that the editors of the paper actually learn how to publish for an online newspaper, rather than continue to hone their skills in products that are meant for print publication.

Other student newspapers, though, are completely online on a daily basis, and they are available freely! Updates are made throughout the day, and news is fresh, timely, and student centered. Of course, these are larger operations, such as the University of Texas’s Daily Texan, but it happens. While students pay a blanket student activity fee, it covers the cost of the operation. Students who want to work for the paper assumedly get a small stipend and/or credit for their work, and they get experience in producing news and content for a digital world.

Although it’s been a couple of years since I attended the Associated Collegiate Press (ACP) conference, I’m fairly confident that discussions there are centering around social media as the new model for delivering content and marketing. If libraries are doing it, most certainly the media itself is thinking about it. Personally, I get my news updates from two awesome newspaper Twitter accounts — Colonial Tribune (for my hometown news) and the Statesman (for my local news). I get the overview, and if the story merits more attention, I click the link they provide or I take the time to go to their well-developed websites to find more in-depth coverage. Moreover, the more journalism job descriptions I read, the more they are seeking candidates who know how to use these new tools or people interested in trying them out. The two years I did attend the ACP conference (spring and fall of 2006) each session and each speaker emphasized the need to know how to go digital because the jobs of our collective futures would not be in papers. We needed to think differently.

And now, three years later, the Daily Targum stands on the ground that the future of the newspaper lies solely in the hands of the president of Rutgers University.

The truth is, the future lies in their hands. A little research and networking, as well as a spirit of experimentation would be the lifeblood to save this paper. First, student editors and writers need to remove the idea from their mindsets that newspapers are print publications. Surprisingly, advertisers will still advertise, even in different service models, provided you can work with them on acquiring visitor demographics, which can be done easily through freely available tools like Google Analytics. As more students exist digitally (and by that I mean, their information is out there and they live out there in any number of different sites and services) it’s the responsibility of the news staff to think about how to find their audience and figure out what their audience is interested in actually reading. If there’s a big news event, it should be covered. But do students want yet another opinion on the awful cafeteria food? Likely not.

Watch what students/faculty/alumni/locals are doing and work to develop news and stories around things they’re doing or are interested in. Since the digital footprints are easier and easier to follow, do it! Move to new service models, such as Twittering, Blogging, or Wiki’ing on areas of interest. How about going to a student event and capturing digital video to entice people to come (or to entice people to go to your website!). Bonus points for archiving it digitally, too. Keep your online content fresh and regularly updated. Maintain ties with alumni who are invested in the survival of independent student news, as well as those who were once involved in the newspaper. Talk with advertisers about how much wider the potential audience is for digital content, and convince them that by going digital, they automatically increase their revenue through click throughs — in print, students have to type in a web address or Google it. Online, they can click. And let’s face it: we’re lazy and would much rather click than we would type. Additionally, advertising can be done through non-traditional means, too, as no longer are student newspapers bound by their geography.

Of course, this all requires work on the part of student news editors to think outside of the box. They have to think beyond what they are (or aren’t) taught in college classrooms or by former student editors. It requires substantial time investment but very little monetary investment. It might require moving away from the six day a week production full-scale production to three or four day production. But it would require regular updating, consistent movement, and a keen eye and ear for student interest. It would force upon students regular research and regular networking with other students and with professionals in the field.

Most importantly, it requires an end to the thought that one person or entity is responsible for the demise of the newspaper. The demise is in the traditional method of delivering content and services and in apathy. To gain real experience in the field, which is the cry of those circulating this petititon, then it’s time for these students to do their research, talk with their peers both on campus and on other campuses, and it’s time for them to consider taking risks in new methods of being “with the newspaper.” If — and this is highly, highly unlikely — all 3,690 Rutgers undergraduate students said they would absolutely not pay $10 for a newspaper, the paper is out only $36,900. That money can easily be attained through a little creative thinking, a willingness to take risks, stopping or abating the six day a week PRINT publication, and — at worst — a cut in the amount those working on the paper probably make (it’s pennies, I know, and as students it’s millions, but those dedicated to the causes which they claim to be will work for nothing).

But to throw a major bone to the students who likely do work tirelessly on the Daily Targum, this entire thing is quite a ridiculous proposal by the school. It’d be nearly impossible to monitor who does and does not receive the paper on a daily basis or to ensure those cheapskates not paying $10/semester do not access the paper online or pick one up left on a dining hall table. The proposition is perposterious. Likewise, in the grand scheme of the cost of college, the $10 fee is so small, most would likely still pay it. And if this passes, it’ll be interesting to see what other services the school will put up as optional fees — and for most students, I suspect there would be a great rally around optional fees that continue to float funds into the already huge budgets of university athletics that they either are not involved in, do not care about, nor wish to continue sponsoring. I suspect if that were the case, though, athletic directors would pull from their alumni base and show how they are somehow an asset to an entire student body in ways that a student newspaper could EVER be (and if you don’t sense my sarcasm there, I’ll be clear in stating I am 100% into the value a student paper that is forward thinking brings to any college/university campus).

I hope this issue is actually a service to the paper. It gets them press, and it gets them thinking about how to ensure their goals and purpose as a paper remain. I hope it causes them to think about the culturally and historically important role they and the newspaper play in a community, particularly such a niche community such that a university campus is.  As the second oldest student newspaper in the country, I think they have. Here’s an opportunity to stop thinking the future of independent student news lies in the hands of a heartless, money-hungry administrator but instead lies in future-thinking student leaders.