http://www.flickr.com/photos/margolove/1810357551/

It is a very interesting time. As I gear up for another ALA conference, in the very rare spare moments I encounter I’ve been reflecting a bit on my life, my career, and inevitably… this blog.

I’ve seen the signs– blogging is dead. Well, no it’s not. But I’m certainly not the only one I know who’s taken a hiatus. I know the arguments– Friendfeed and/or Twitter have killed blogs. However, in my case that’s really not it. I remain semi-active on Twitter, but I’ve rarely spent any time at all on Friendfeed.

I have a lot going on right now. The transition from Library School student to full-fledged MLS’d librarian happened in mid-April, when I gave my final capstone presentation. I thought, “Ah-ha! Now I will blog again.”

But I did not. I spent evenings with my daughter. We went for bike rides, we read aloud together, we went to the park, and we spent many, many hours on the swing in the front yard.

And I don’t regret a minute of it.

However, by late May I began to feel antsy again and I started putting together presentations, trainings, reading a few blogs here and there, etc. But I just haven’t had the extra time to blog. As you can see from my last “post”, I had intended on live-blogging the Rocky Mountain Innovative Users Group summer workshop—but I ended up needing to come back up to Boulder after our patron network crashed for most of the day.

Which leads me to why I’m really not blogging. It turns out that moving from a position where you have little power (and therefore little responsibility) to one of great responsibility is a huge shift in many different ways.

Before, I could spend the evening on a whim staying up late coding a cool website or mashup just because I thought it would be fun. I could head off to pretty much any meeting, conference, or committee that I could drive to and afford. I could spend my time exploring and playing with ideas and writing rants about what needs to change.

But now I actually have to *do it*.

There’s no one to blame anymore if things don’t turn out well. There’s no “administration” that won’t let me implement something cool for our department. There’s no lack of ability to control the purse-strings or to delegate the tasks. Now I have to figure out how to be the one to get buy-in. I have to figure out how to take ideas from conception to reality not just in my own little office sphere—but across an entire organization.

I have to manage people. Granted—I managed work-study students at the University Libraries, and I managed all kinds of folks in the past in restaurants, sales jobs, etc. But it’s very different managing people who are mostly older than you, who are highly skilled, and who just plain have a whole lot more experience than you. Let me say this—I am ever more grateful *every day* that I had a management class in library school and that the Colorado Association of Libraries Leadership Institute has been so fantastic. It has really taught me a lot and helped me through some pretty intense challenges.

I also have spent a lot of time adjusting to my new role as professional. It’s no longer my job to do all of the nuts and bolts of coding up some new web tool or bringing online a new gadget. That’s something I have to remember. Now it’s time to trust and, when necessary, coach my staff and let them go do it. I need to keep my head in the clouds for strategic visioning and future casting. I need to participate, contribute to, and help shape policy development. I need to empower others.

I have to remind myself of this every once in a while. I almost spent this last weekend at DrupalCamp Colorado because it was “cool”. But I would have come home and played with Drupal all night, and not paid attention to caring for myself, my house, my pets, or getting ready for ALA—not to mention handling my management responsibilities for the week. I had to step back and remember, “things are different now”.

And that’s just fine. It’s tough to be stretched in many directions. However, I prefer to think that’s just a process of expanding myself. Expanding who I am and what I’m capable of. I only hope I remain malleable like silly putty—and don’t crack like old rubber band.

See you in Chicago!

These statements were results of conversations sparked during and after the “In the Foothills: A Not-Quite-Summit on the Future of Libraries” at Darien Library on March 26, 2009. I love that these conversations are taking place and now I am more inspired than ever to hold an event like this for Colorado libraries at Boulder Public before the year is over.

The Darien Statements on the Library and Librarians
Written and endorsed by John Blyberg, Kathryn Greenhill, and Cindi Trainor.

The Purpose of the Library

The purpose of the Library is to preserve the integrity of civilization.

The Library has a moral obligation to adhere to its purpose despite social, economic, environmental, or political influences. The purpose of the Library will never change.

The Library is infinite in its capacity to contain, connect and disseminate knowledge; librarians are human and ephemeral, therefore we must work together to ensure the Library’s permanence.

Individual libraries serve the mission of their parent institution or governing body, but the purpose of the Library overrides that mission when the two come into conflict.

Why we do things will not change, but how we do them will.

A clear understanding of the Library’s purpose, its role, and the role of librarians is essential to the preservation of the Library.

The Role of the Library

The Library:

* Provides the opportunity for personal enlightenment.
* Encourages the love of learning.
* Empowers people to fulfill their civic duty.
* Facilitates human connections.
* Preserves and provides materials.
* Expands capacity for creative expression.
* Inspires and perpetuates hope.

The Role of Librarians

Librarians:

* Are stewards of the Library.
* Connect people with accurate information.
* Assist people in the creation of their human and information networks.
* Select, organize and facilitate creation of content.
* Protect access to content and preserve freedom of information and expression.
* Anticipate, identify and meet the needs of the Library’s community.

The Preservation of the Library

Our methods need to rapidly change to address the profound impact of information technology on the nature of human connection and the transmission and consumption of knowledge.

If the Library is to fulfill its purpose in the future, librarians must commit to a culture of continuous operational change, accept risk and uncertainty as key properties of the profession, and uphold service to the user as our most valuable directive.

As librarians, we must:

* Promote openness, kindness, and transparency among libraries and users.
* Eliminate barriers to cooperation between the Library and any person, institution, or entity within or outside the Library.
* Choose wisely what to stop doing.
* Preserve and foster the connections between users and the Library.
* Harness distributed expertise to serve the needs of the local and global community.
* Help individuals to learn and to use new tools to create a more robust path to knowledge.
* Engage in activism on behalf of the Library if its integrity is externally threatened.
* Endorse procedures only if they guide librarians or users to excellence.
* Identify and implement the most humane and efficient methods, tools, standards and practices.
* Adopt technology that keeps data open and free, abandon technology that does not.
* Be willing and have the expertise to make frequent radical changes.
* Hire the best people and let them do their job; remove staff who cannot or will not.
* Trust each other and trust the users.

We have faith that the citizens of our communities will continue to fulfill their civic responsibility by preserving the Library.

http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/

Dave discusses the challenges we face in the field and ponders how he (and anyone) can stay optimistic. He writes,

As I go around the country I encounter too many librarians who see the vision, who embrace change, but have grown too tired and discouraged to hope again. They are quieted by the scars of past optimism.

A little further down he says,

Between the Annoyed Librarians of the world and the perceived resistance to change in the field, isn’t it all just a lost cause? How can we overcome? How can we continue to step over the ruble of past initiatives, and broken momentum, and ignore the anticipation of disappointment while once again stepping into the firing line of positive change?

His answer is encouragement. I hope you’re right, Dave. And, here’s what I’d like to share with you– your post gave me (and James, and many others) encouragement. Thank you. I hope that in some small way I can return the favor some day.

I was inspired to read someone remind us that,

As I have said before, we too often undersell the importance and raw power of what we do. We are a nobel[sic] profession. We don’t shelve books, and change toner cartridges – we maintain an infrastructure for social action. We don’t reference resources, and catalog artifacts – we teach and inspire.

Right now our city is undergoing a budget cutting process that I feel does not take into account what place the library holds in the community. We also have other departments who are trying to assert increasing influence over service provision and even website content. Too often I’ve heard us referred to as “a city department”. Yes– we are a city department, but more imporantly we’re also a part of something much larger. I’ve found it hard to resist despair over this even while biting my tongue about it publically.

I want us to advocate, I want us to not take it lying down. These words confirmed for me that my instincts are probably right. Why should we be quiet about what happens to us? Why should we wait on other department’s decisions? Why don’t we feel that we have the right to be as outspoken for ourselves as the rest of the city? This is Boulder, and this is the Wild West– our culture here is to not take things lying down. Our meetings go on forever because we have a history of vibrant citizen advocacy. We should embrace that history and acknowledge that we are a part of it.

Audacious action has worked for libraries before. I think of the Seattle Public Library closings as just one example.

So I end with the paragraphs the inspired me to write this post. Inspired to me to face the next week with optimism. Because I don’t think I can say it any better than Dave did:

So too can librarians overcome the crushing forces of mediocrity and cynicism – but we must believe that we can.

Faced with the enormities of these tasks – terrorism, economic disaster, apathy – standing up at a meeting and speaking truth to power? Simple. Faced with the real issues we must face – I can take on the added committee assignment, or backhand comment. How do I stay optimistic? I realize first the issues I face are miniscule to the good I can do. How do I get inspired to face intransigence, or laziness, or ineptitude? I look right past them at the real goal, and those who really need me.

Block me, and I will go around you. Build a wall, and I will build a door. Lock the door and I will break a window. And if I don’t have have a leader to inspire me, I will lead. If I don’t have a team that will support me, I will recruit a team from beyond the organizational boundaries – every policy has a loophole, every system has a hidden reward.

I’m gathering up my saw, screwdriver, hinges, and some wood-screws. Let’s build some doors together!

The library field is weird. No, really. I mean it.

It’s a field where some MLS programs think they should still exclusively teach theory, and some programs think that you need little more than practical applications, including computer programming.

It’s a field where you can still be the “Head of Technology” in your organization because 15 years ago you were the one person who knew how to change a printer cartridge, and a field where people like Blyberg are writing the next generation catalog after coming from the business world.

We have “librarians” who do little more than check out books to elementary school kids. And some who maybe if they’re good, (and their school understands their value), are also collaborating in developing the curriculum, in advancing info literacy, and in introducing digital literacy to their students.

We have “librarians” who do little more than copy-catalog all day, or who point to where the bathroom is. And we have “librarians” who spend their days answering fantastically challenging reference questions and their nights developing Web 2.0 learning programs for their library. We have “librarians” who run a network, some who do little more than maintain an ILS, some who develop cultural programming, and some who do ALL of these things.

We have “librarians” who are getting tenure by writing “I done good” articles and “librarians” who are creating new knowledge by drawing on the theories of other fields and pushing the envelope of what it means to be a “library” (whether they need to get tenure or not).

We have “librarians” who love their users and are fantastic at customer service and who give us a good name. And we have “librarians” (some of whom are highly esteemed in the field), who are openly contemptuous of their users.

The field is not in good shape. I don’t think adding “information” to the MLS is the answer, either. I don’t think that by further genericizing the profession by calling ourselves “Information Professionals” is any kind of an answer either.

I’m afraid we just might be making a mockery of ourselves. And we don’t have another 15 years to fix it. In 15 years the information landscape will have changed just as drastically as the web has changed us and if we don’t get serious we might just fall off the map completely.

It’s time to stop making our field generic in the I-schools, and to let our students get the specialized skill-set they need. And I don’t mean that you take a “track” that consists of three classes providing a shallow introduction to your area of specialization. I mean we need real, exceptional, challenging programs tailored to the specific specialties within our field. (Note: I don’t mean to suggest we should dispense entirely with theory, either. The theory is tremendously useful and important, it’s just not enough.)

I don’t agree with Karin (although I have tremendous respect and admiration for her work) that all librarians should learn programming. I think we need to go just the other direction. We need to get really good at what we’re responsible for, so that our organizations start cranking out the quality of service and innovation that rivals the commercial sector. I don’t want to go into business. I don’t think that the corporate model is perfect– but I do think we have to have the integrity as a field to admit that right now, they do innovation better. And for that matter, they do information better.

We better get moving, and we better get moving fast.

So, you probably know the drill by now:

Rules: Once you’ve been tagged, you are supposed to write a note with 25 random things, facts, habits, or goals about you. At the end, choose 25 people to be tagged. You have to tag the person who tagged you. If I tagged you, it’s because I want to know more about you.

(To do this, go to “notes” under tabs on your home page, paste these instructions in the body of the note, type your 25 random things, tag 25 people (in the right hand corner of the app) then click publish.

Of course, like my friend the fabulous Colleen, I chose to break the rules and just post it in my blog so I can share it around to Friendfeed (oh yeah, I should check that site once in a while, shouldn’t I?) and other digital places I once had time to visit. (Remember me, teh Internet? Oh hai!)

1. I am the Brewin’ Librarian…. but I rarely have time to brew any more. I hate to confess this, but in the last two years I’ve probably only made about four batches of beer (and one didn’t turn out well– first time in 10 years!). Also, I drink more red wine than beer these days, and except for at conferences, I don’t actually drink very often at all.

2. From the time my daughter was 2 until she was 7 I was a single dad. I didn’t really know that much about parenting or children, but I worked hard and asked a *lot* of questions and she seems to have turned out alright. =)

3. During that same time I returned to school as a “non-traditional student” and received my undergrad in political science. I did this mostly to live off of student loans so that I could keep my parenting schedule open and flexible. I was fairly unfocused at the time but was tired of sales and restaurant management and needed a change.

4. When I first went into library school, I knew I loved libraries but I wasn’t entirely sure it was the right field for me. I primarily did so to avoid paying off my massive undergrad debt (see above). However, I have since found that librarianship has brought happiness and a fulfillment to my life that is only rivaled by being a dad (although libraries are still distant second to that).

5. I am a certified ballet Dad. When my daughter was younger, she was very interested in ballet and I did everything I could to support it. I swallowed my pride and asked for scholarships, I moved my own school/work schedule around hers, and I learned more than I thought I’d ever know about an art form previously bewildering to me. On the day before her first recital, she accidentally tore off some of the sequins from the bottom of her tutu. Although I can’t sew for the life of me, I sat in a restaurant that day, sewing up a child’s lavender tutu and did a pretty damn good job of it. I consider this one of my greatest accomplishments.

6. I got my first computer at age 12, it was one of those old TRS-80s with 4k RAM that you had to program in BASIC, and run off of a cassette drive. Later, I took it apart and upgraded it to a whopping 16K RAM.

7. For years I was part of the “Elite” BBS hacker scene. I ran a series of BBS boards, founded and ran a network of BBSes that spanned 7 countries. However, I was never a “black hat” type hacker, I was only ever interested in learning what cool things I could do with a computer or network– I’ve never caused any harm. This was WAY before the Internet.

8. However, once I heard of the Internet, like every good little hacker, I promptly managed to “borrow” an unused Washington University student’s account to gain access. This was before you could purchase an account. As soon as I could purchase Internet access, I did so, mostly because I had drifted away from the hacking and BBS scene by then anyway.

9. Like most computer geeks, my diet growing up was terrible. I could probably eat pizza three times a day. Sadly, although I struggle with this, my diet still has not improved as much as I’d like it to.

10. I have memorized the lyrics to probably hundreds of songs. I seem to have a knack for it. People used to joke that I could pull out a song for any occasion. I know the lyrics because when I’m alone in my car, or with my daughter, I sing constantly. However, I *highly* doubt you’ll ever hear me singing in public. Last year at Internet Librarian, I was positively mortified at the thought of doing karaoke. Well… until I saw Stephen Abram’s video.

11. If I had my way, all schools, offices, government buildings, etc. would start their business day at 10am, not at 8. Starting the day at 8am is just uncivilized.

12. I am addicted to coffee. And no, I don’t see it as a problem. I have done the research and as far as I can tell the one Mocha I have to start each day is having very little negative effect on my health. I keep it pretty strictly at one Mocha a day. If you see me drinking a latte in the afternoon or evening, look out– I’m getting ready to party!

13. I am gaming librarian partially because I feel it is a professional obligation. In truth, while I enjoy games, I really don’t feel like I have enough time to be gaming a lot. However, I do enjoy Civilization IV to the point where I have to watch myself from being sucked in for 2 days straight.

14. I love technology, but I don’t think it’s nearly as important as being nice to each other, having clean air, providing affordable health care, etc. Perspective, people, perspective!

15. I grew up in an extremely backwards Pentecostal church that not only believed that the world was going to end in 1989 (it didn’t) but hated homosexuals, people of color, etc. To this day, I am pretty suspicious of religions.

16. Because I didn’t fit into my surroundings as a child, I spent hours and hours and hours in the library. Eventually my reading habits caused me to be kicked out of the house. I left home at age 17 and slept under the bleachers of my high school football stadium. I went to school every day and work every night because I knew education was my future. I graduated from high school with honors.

17. Although I’m an old school punk rocker from the 80s, somehow I ended up going to about 8 or 9 Grateful Dead shows before Jerry died, and I’ve been to more Phish shows than I can count. I don’t like to just be stuck in one box—musically, or otherwise.

18. I spent about 10 years of my life essentially “homeless”. During this time I was neither destitute and most of the time I was not miserable. I was exploring the possibilities of alternative lifestyles and gathering material for writing. I’ve slept in abandoned buildings, tents, caves, in trees, vacant lots, you name it. I met an amazing array of people and traveled almost all of the country during this time. I took temporary jobs in whatever town I landed in– often day labor positions– and learned about a side of America few understand.

19. Despite my amount of traveling, I have never been to “the South” other than (grudgingly) Texas and Florida.

20. I grew up during the height of the great 80s punk rock scene. I saw Black Flag, Naked Raygun, Big Black, the Circle Jerks, MDC, Operation Ivy, and a slew of other bands in tiny little clubs. I used to party with the Smashing Pumpkins when they were nobody. Still to this day I can’t resist getting into the mosh pit when a good band comes around– I just do it wearing a black suit instead of a spiked leather jacket.

21. I rode a skateboard daily from age 9 until age 25. I used to be pretty good– just on the edge of competition quality until the 90s broke open a whole new class of tricks. A couple of years ago, I pretty much gave it up. It hurts a lot when I hit the concrete now and between that and my bad knees and ankle it’s just not as much fun anymore.

22. To make up for my loss of skateboarding, when I moved to Colorado about 9 years ago I took a job at the local ski resort for the first winter before I went back to a “real” job. I learned to snowboard and in one season progressed from a total novice to a back-country junkie. I still love it, although I’ve slowed down a bit and stick mostly to ski resorts and the blue and black runs.

23. When I was 18, my Grandma (who was not a part of our crazy church and did her best to expose me to other things) took me to what is now the former Yugoslavia for my high school graduation present. Her parents had come to the U.S. in the early 1900s from there and spoke Serbo-Croatian in the home. We both wanted to see the place our family came from. It was lovely, and the people were kind. But when I spoke to the young punks and anarchists over there, they warned me that trouble was brewing. Two years later, the country was torn apart by civil war.

24. One of the most profound experiences of my life was getting off the plane in communist Yugoslavia and realizing that the people, and their way of life, were really no different. To this day, I remain stubbornly unconvinced that capitalism is always “good” and that communism is always “bad”.

25. Although I always expected to be a writer. I found that the truth is…. I hate to write. I feel like my vocabulary is poor and my ideas predictable, and I just hate making myself sit down and slogging it all out. That’s why my blog is lonely and this list took forever. =)

Tag! You’re it!

Internet Librarian was like coming home. Everyone was as techie (or more) than me. We all had our gadgets, our online presence, our favorite things to share and play with. It was great!

In contrast, all too often in libraries I’ve found there is little emphasis on, or appreciation of, technology– and while I am the first to admit that technology must have a purpose, it must make life easier, to be hostile to technology in a library today means that you are distancing yourself from our users in a way that could quite possibly threaten the existence of libraries in the future.

But I am more optimistic than that. I believe that libraries will adapt, grow, change, and empower our users to learn about and make use of information technologies in all their forms. That will (hopefully) always include books, but it will also include art, games, story-time, community gatherings, video workshops, podcasting, and….. well, we’ll see about that. =)

After Internet Librarian, it was quite a shock  two weeks later to attend the Colorado Association of Libraries conference. While IL had blogger’s table at the front and back of every room, and it seemed like everyone was carrying a mobile device of some kind (see the photo below), I saw none of this at CAL.

Thanks to Laura Crossett for the photo (http://www.flickr.com/photos/newrambler/)

I find this odd. Colorado is one of the leaders in technology adoption. In a recent opinion poll done by The USA Today/Claritas it was found that 4 out of the 25 top counties for “early adopters” are found in the front-range of Colorado. The Boulder County area is known as the “Silicon Flatirons” because of the number of tech companies located here. I don’t have to tell any library folks the importance of understanding, and reflecting, one’s community. All of us– public, academic, special, understand this as crucial to our mission.

So I have to ask…. what happened? Colorado was once a leader in library technology.

Well, it’s not all that bad…. There is a lot of support in the area for change and development in our libraries. One of our outstanding library technology leaders is Sue Staples of the High Plains Library District who has done a fantastic job of transforming her library’s online presence and encouraging technological exploration and innovation with the Colorado library community.

Steve Lawson of Colorado College and Joe Kraus of DU have gotten together a Web 2.0 & Libraries Round Table under the auspices of the Alliance.

The Colorado State Library has done a little work at exploring whether the development of an Open Source ILS project similiar the Georgia’s Pines program is viable. This was one of the projects I highlighted as part of my poster presentation at CAL 2007 on “Open Source and Libraries”.

I would also be remiss if I didn’t mention the efforts of one of my fellow CAL Leadership Institute members, Victoria Petersen, who is doing some really cool stuff not only in leading CAL’s Second Life Interest Group but just generally being fabulous down in Mancos.

And of course, he hardly needs mentioning, but who can possibly not be impressed with a library director like Jamie LaRue who not only is willing run Linux on his own machine, but was willing to try adopting open source software on his library system’s public workstations as well. Jamie is definitely an example of someone who is pitching in and lighting fires in Colorado’s library community.

These are only a few examples of the great work being done in Colorado currently (and many apologies to the MANY I left out), but I hope we see more.

So, Colorado peeps…… who else is doing the cool stuff? And where do we go from here?

THAT will be the subject of a post soon. HINT: If we have all this tech knowledge and enthusiasm around– why don’t we use it?

Boulder Public Library was the very first place I visited when I first saw this town now over 10 years ago. It sits on the bank of Boulder Creek and spans either side, with a glass walkway connecting the main part of the library itself with the community theater and art gallery. I remember pulling into Boulder, parking in the library’s parking lot, and sitting in the sun next to the creek. Like countless Boulderites, I did some yoga, admired the flatirons and felt myself at home. So, Boulder Public Library has been the place of many “firsts” for me– major shifts in my life.

Today I gave my first presentation that was not part of a class. It was on Mobile Computing and it was part of BPL’s “Learn and Play Day” for staff. Tony Tallent is doing a great job of setting the stage as the new director of BPL and since this is my hometown (and favorite) public library, I couldn’t be more pleased. I have to say I’m in the clouds right now.

One thing that struck me about the staff at BPL was how much they genuinely seemed to enjoy each other and the environment that they work in. And they should– Main library is a gorgeous building, and a center for the arts in Boulder. The other branches also have their charms– over the 10 years I’ve lived in Boulder, I’ve used all of them numerous times for nearly every reason you can think of– storytime for my daughter, books to read to her or together, research for classes or projects, reading for pleasure, book groups, film series, theater productions, I’ve downloaded audio books and checked out dozens of audio books on CD for travel and documentaries for when I feel like zoning out of the TV. I *love* this library (can you tell?). It was a honor and a pleasure to come and speak there today and I can’t think of anywhere where I’d rather have had my first official presentation memory.

Helene Blowers came to town for the keynote and as always, her talk was fantastic. She used the metaphor of “Bubbles” to inspire the staff to not only focus on those services that allow us to “break” the bubbles (our “stuff” for people to check out) but also empower our communities to come in a blow their own bubbles. She stressed the importance of providing space for self-expression and that this will engender good will in our communities. I love this…. what better place for people to get together, make art, make a podcast or a Youtube video, to meet each other, and to just…. play!

The other speaker besides myself was my colleague James Ascher, who is a rare book specialist and a scholar and gentlemen of the highest caliber. I had to leave before he came on– but judging from our many conversations, I’m sure his presentation was phenomenal.

So, the title of my presentation was “It’s not a Bandwagon, It’s a Tsunami: How Mobile Computing Changes Everything”. I’ll try to get it up on slideshare within another day or two. Since Internet Librarian, I’ve been really into Mobile Computing. I plan to go further with the research and I’m working on a proposal for the upcoming mLibraries conference next year.

Just a little of what I’ve found so far:

1. Libraries are adapting slowly to mobile computing, more slowly than the shift to Web 2.0. This is a bit strange for two reasons– one is that PDAs and Blackberrys have been fairly common for as long (or longer) than most “Web 2.0″ technologies have been prolific. The other reason is that it is the fastest growing aspect of computing. More importantly, the adoption rates of cell phones are much greater than the adoption rates of social networking tools.

2. While there are well-meaning efforts, some are successful– podcasts for the storytime or library tours. But some have long way to go. Most of the “mobile optimized” web sites I saw were fairly usable. But, almost all the OPACs I’ve explored are completely useless on my iPhone and my Palm Pilot. The text is far too small and the pages littered with far too much information to be useful.

3. There are a lot of possibilities, though. Everything from including “Find in a Library” in the product search apps to use QR codes to link directly to subject guides or recommendation pages for the section of the library you’re in. There are things we haven’t thought of yet. One staff member asked about technology that would detect your presence when you walked into the library and offer to beam information to your phone– I didn’t know about it, but Helene did. Now how cool is that?

Overall, now I’m sitting at home just finished snuggling with my daughter and tucking her into bed and I can’t help but feel hopeful for the future. I am now confident that I can hack this conference thing (yay!) but even more importantly, I love that the idea of play is moving forward in our field.

I think for too long we’ve been a society concerned with how to work with information– but what we’ve found is that once people have been given the tools (and Web 2.0 is just a part of this) that they have preferred to play. I think it’s an exciting time to see how develops– and especially how our society may develop once the effects of play transform our information behavior.

Since I am not particularly motivated to participate in the ALA at large—for reasons Emily at “In the Library with the Lead Pipe” laid out much more eloquently than I could—I am very happy to be involved on a local level. I love this state, I am immensely impressed by the personalities and organizations here, and I think there is a lot to get behind.

So, before I write up my thoughts on Internet Librarian, I’d like to take a moment to discuss a few thoughts about leadership in the library world.

Recently, I read a post at “The Medium is a Message” which stated that “Consensus Building Cripples Library Innovation”. As those of you who know me well already know, I come from a background of radical political activism—and this includes methods of non-hierarchical organization and inclusive decision-making such as decision-making by consensus.

However, activists know that decisions by consensus are part of a long tradition stemming from practices of the Quakers and other egalitarian groups, and have worked hard over the years to create ways of making decisions by consensus that don’t stifle every good new idea that comes around. For one thing, because most of these groups explicitly try not to encourage a hierarchy. We don’t allow certain “leaders” to develop such positions of authority that no one wishes to challenge them when they try to suppress new ideas or do little but champion their own.

However, because our library organizations are still largely organized in hierarchical structures and explicitly encourage the development of “experts” through tenure, position, etc. we will continue to have trouble with this problem. What are some possible solutions? Well, perhaps it is time to look more closely at how our libraries are structured. Perhaps we should be looking at more of a network model rather than a tree.

Absent this drastic (although potentially very beneficial) move, we can still do more to allow for this phenomenon to not hinder our organization’s innovation. We can train our people on how to fight. I’ve been listening to “The No Asshole Rule” and it is a great book on management and organizational culture. One of the things he discusses is that great organizations don’t discourage conflict—they encourage it. They just try to make sure that it is done right.

He talks about how at Intel, employees are taught how to argue their ideas and/or criticize them using logic and not allowing it to turn into personal attacks. Further, anyone is allowed to question anyone else in these meetings—without fear of retribution at a later time just because they might have stood up to someone higher up on the org chart. This trust makes for a very engaged and healthy organization. People are happy and feel motivated to contribute. Ask yourself—is this how it feels at your organization?

There are some other things we can learn from the way that horizontalist groups reach consensus. For one thing—not every question has to be an either/or. Perhaps you don’t like an idea. But, in being asked to defend your position, you realize (or it becomes apparent) that the idea itself is not detrimental to the group. When a vote is cast, you may stand aside. You can simply say, “well, I don’t support the idea, but I don’t have any good reason to try and block it”.

However, there’s a big problem out in Library land with this idea. I’m going to go ahead and say it. It’s called EGO.

It’s an ugly thing, people. It’s nasty, and it doesn’t serve libraries or our patrons. This is one of those dirty little secrets about being user-centered that I don’t think many of us want to say.

It is not user-centric to be focused on your own power within the organization. It’s not user-centric to be more concerned with achieving status in the ALA or tenure on your campus than with listening to your users and giving them what they want. It’s time to put our money with our mouth is. We claim to be user-centric, but in reality we often are not. We take in user’s ideas and then we decide for ourselves which of them and how to implement them. And we look down our noses at our users far too often. This is not behavior worthy of status and respect. And this old paradigm has got to die.

Those of you who know me personally know that I advocate learning a lot from the marketing world. And I know that this is hard to swallow for some in libraries. But here is something that marketers can teach us and that they do right. We don’t have to adopt all of the marketing field’s practices—and believe me I would never, never want that. But I’m willing to get out of my own way long enough to be open to what they do right. Good is good no matter where it comes from.

If Google has taught us that making search easy serves our users better, then we can stop being jealous and petty and do the same thing. There’s no reason why we can’t be working hard to make a federated search product and easy to use discovery tool work the way our patrons want it to. It’s the information we want to deliver—not a series of hoops to jump through. If there’s anything we should be observing from the rise of the Internet is that our users will become as savvy as they need to, when they need to. That may or may not happen with our assistance. It should be our job to lead the way in showing what available and being ready assist their journey of self-discovery. If our users are not savvy information consumers—then why are there so many participatory web sites out there that befuddle librarians (“information professionals”)?

We hate to admit that we’re not the only experts in town but it’s time we do so. Set up ways to listen to your users and to listen to people from all over your organization and be proud of the fact you do so. If instead you’re wasting your time on petty process and procedure you’ve lost your way. Spending hours deciding on whether it’s okay to allow your staff to have a few flex hours is beneath a librarian. Don’t be that petty. Don’t tell your users they can’t talk to you because they might ask for things that you don’t want to deliver. Don’t pooh-pooh an idea because it didn’t go through channels. The time for this hierarchical self-importance has passed.

Our users are wonderful, amazing, fantastic, fascinating human beings. As Constructivism shows us, we are all in this together, as learning partners, and we can learn from them while offering our own knowledge and that is what makes us professionals. That is what earns us dignity. That is precisely how we should be earning our status—by how well we listen, how empathetic we are, and how responsive we are to the people who depend upon us for our expertise, whether it be our staff or our users.

I’m disappointed that I won’t get a chance to hang out with Max Macias a bit more– but he’s busy with a much more important project right now. (I’m leaving my skateboard at home now, buddy). But I’m excited to spend some more time with my online friends in person and connect with more LSW members I haven’t yet met.

One of the things I’m doing for myself is a long, leisurely two-day trip down to Monterey from San Jose. I am planning on going through Big Basin Redwood State Park and hiking and just sleeping amongst the trees. I haven’t done anything like that in a very long time and I could use a little time breathing in some pure air.

Posted by http://flickr.com/people/meghannfinn/ (Thanks!)

I may go down and check out Santa Cruz, which is a town I’ve never visited, but everyone tells me I’d love. I might visit my yoga lineage’s ashram, Mount Madonna. I really don’t have a plan– just get off the plane at 11am on Saturday in San Jose and arrive sometime late afternoon Sunday in Monterey to check into my hotel.

I *love* not having a plan. Open to anything.

It is that spirit that I plan to take to Internet Librarian. I’m about to graduate in May and I get to move forward in my career as an information professional. I know I love libraries, I like Web 2.0 (but not just for its own sake), but what will come next? What will be the right fit?

I plan to spend plenty of time talking to people at IL about what their job entails, what their projects are, and try and discover what I can add to all this. At my current position, I’m mostly playing catch-up, “hey other libraries are doing this– let’s finally do this, too”.

But I don’t want to follow forever, I want to have something to contribute. I want to give and not just take.

I think a period of soul searching, a strenuous hike or walk on the beach. A step back from working all day and reading LIS all night might help clear my head enough to be back to “Zen Mind”.

Then it’s back to video games and gadgets!

However, it’s definitely not all about socialization and fun. I feel like I’ll learn more in this weekend than in most semesters of library school. (Although as an alumni, I plan to help change that).

My schedule, as always, is quite likely to change, but here is my tentative plan:

Sunday evening: I have to be online for a class but I plan to do my posting early and then head off to the “Gaming & Gadgets Petting Zoo”.

Monday, I’ll attend Howard Rheingold’s keynote. Then I plan to go to:

“Giving Your Marketing and Advocacy a Second Life” with Nancy Dow

“Digital Marketing: Successful Plans/Organizations” with Sarah Houghton-Jan and Aaron Schmidt

“Web Site Assessment With Google Analytics” with Marshall Breeding

“Cool Tools for Library Webmasters” with Frank Cervone and Darlene Fichter

“Mashing Up and Remixing the Library Website” with Karen Coombs

“Facebook & Libraries: Ethnographic Evaluation” with David Bietila, Elizabeth Edwards, and Christopher Bloechl

(Then I plan to head out for Karaoke with the LSW folks!)

Tuesday, I plan to attend:

I may or may not go to the keynote with Danny Sullivan

“Innovation” with Helene Blowers

“2.0 Learning & 1.8 Users: Bridging the Gap” with Rudy Leon and Colleen Harris

“Microformats: Big Ideas in Small Packages” with Jeff Wisniewski

“Solving the OPAC Problem” with John Blyberg and Christopher Barr

“Using RSS, Podcasts, & XML to Deliver Rich-Media Content” with Jason Clark

“Solving the Interest Problem” with Kelly Czarnecki and Cliff Landis

“Solving the Buy-In Problem” OR “Ubiquitous Computing & Libraries” with Michael Porter and Chris Peters

That night I’ll also go to the “Good Internet Librarian Practices Worldwide” thing with the Shanachie Tour guys. WooHoo!

Wednesday:

I will DEFINITELY be going to the keynote, “Social Media & Networked Technologies: Research & Insights” with the freaking awesome danah boyd.

“Strategic Framework for Library Automation” with Marshall Breeding

“Twitter & How the “Twittest” Use It for Keeping Up” with Michael Sauers, Christa Burns, Cindi Trainor, and Jezmynne Westcott

“Creating Games & Services With Digital Natives” or the “Pecha Kucha – Conversation Face-Off!”

“Information Visualization Tools” with Darlene Fichter and Jeff Wisniewski

Then I plan to attend the final keynote, “Learning & Play in a Social & Mobile World” with Elizabeth Lane Lawley

After that I must RUN back to the San Jose airport to fly home. I get into Denver at 11:30pm, so I will be dead tired on Thursday (and my introvert will be screaming inside).

However, I think it’s all worth it. This should be a fantastic experience!

It’s a bit sad, because at MPOW, no one is going. Well, not entirely true– but no one beyond a couple of fellow library school students and one employee who is about to start library school in another semester.

So, while many of the “bigwigs” of Colorado are coming to this dynamic event, my colleagues don’t take something seriously that is called an “unconference”.

Most of it is because of the pressures of tenure. Our tenure-seeking young librarians are so tightly wound and under such pressure (we have one of the most difficult tenure systems) that they rarely look beyond anything directly related to the quest for tenure. But also, they are frequently counseled to not even consider anything less than national-level participation. The result is that there is little imagination, little innovation, and little of the enthusiasm I see all over the biblioblogosphere or at conference. These poor folks have the fun sucked right out of them. I’ve talked with many of them– we enjoy a beer now and then, and many of them have great enthusiasm for the profession, but they must keep the blinders on.

I just think there’s got to be a better way. For a long time, I thought tenure was a bad idea for librarians across the board. Now, I’m a bit more open-minded on the subject, but I still think there’s got to be a system of tenure that is tailored to our profession, rather than trying to compete or considering ourselves the same as the other faculty. As Steven Bell has written, they don’t consider librarians their peers– and honestly, I think that’s fair. We don’t have PhDs and much of our research is not particularly original. Why continue a system that pressures librarians away from the passions that make the most of what we are as a profession to compete on a playing field that we will never be equally respected on?

Anyway, just some random thoughts I had….

Today I was made chair of the Communications and Outreach committee. We have some fun stuff in the works– I’d rather wait to share it right now, but for now I’m going to enjoy the company of my peers and philosophize and where libraries can and should go. Hopefully, I bring some of that back for my less fortunate colleagues.

Next weekend I leave for Internet Librarian! WooHoo!

Ah, in all seriousness… I don’t want to waste to much space on the Internets with posts that don’t really contribute much. But there is a lot going on.

I am thoroughly enjoying both my LI863: Project Management course as well as my LI846: Networking for Information Agencies. Project Management is helping already. It is surprising how hostile I am finding my library to Project Management principles. Granted, we certainly are already very much overworked. We define the bottom in terms of staffing levels of ARL libraries.

However, while Project Management presents the appearance of more work up front– the point is to increase the chances of success, and to prevent pitfalls along the way. It is also to increase efficiency. By planning well, we get a chance to properly allocate time, money, talent, and tasks. By keeping track of progress we ensure proper timing, which keeps costs down as well as stress levels. By evaluating the project, we learn from our mistakes as well as successes and gain more confidence and expertise in planning future projects.

So why the resistance?

I’m writing up three papers right now. Two of which probably aren’t of interest to anyone, but my Gov Docs class project is touching on some very interesting stuff.

I’m looking at how the privatization of government services alters the way we have access to government information via FOIA requests, etc. I’m also interested in looking into the privacy implications of allowing corporate access to what was once considered government information.

Why? Paranoid much? Tin-foil hat on too tight? Perhaps too many Philip K. Dick novels? Doctorow’s “Little Brother” got me down?

Well, yes. Always. But in this case, I just needed to find a good topic to write about for class, and since people have done the secrecy of the Bush Administration to death I thought I’d try to find something different.

Likewise, there has been much Hullabaloo (I just wanted an excuse to use that word other than talking about the old punk band) about privatization in the armed forces ala Halliburton; Kellogg, Brown & Root, Blackwater, etc.

So, I thought, privatization, eh? Where else is this happening? It’s no secret that it’s happening elsewhere.

Sure enough, it didn’t take long for me to find that Lockheed Martin, the world’s largest Defense Contractor, has also become one of the top data storage and mining contractors of the federal government.

Why does this matter?

Well, first of all. How much do we know about them? Like all corporations, much of LM’s activities are protected from FOIA requests as “trade secrets”. Whereas a government agency’s internal communication may be requested via a Freedom of Information Act request– this is not true of a corporate entity. Sure, government contractors are supposed to be accountable to information requests when they are doing business with the federal government– but that so far applies to things like finding out the details of a contract, etc. It doesn’t apply to the good stuff, the internal memos, etc. And like most corporations, LM has already taken pro-active steps to broaden the definition of what is allowed to be exempted from FOIA under the guise of “Homeland Security”.

Second, where is the oversight? Federal agencies are supposed to be watched by various other watchdog offices, including the OMB, Congressional Committees, etc. However, again– it’s pretty clear that this is not the case with LM. Sure they can be subpeoned, but the process and quality of information is different for a contractor who can still fight revealing information based on claiming “trade secret”.

Third, do we want our nation’s data in private hands? This is an extension of the question most often asked about Google and their library digitization project. People worry, what if they go under? What if it’s stolen? What might they do with it that we haven’t thought of yet? And basically, why do they want to do it?

Now, I personally don’t see any problem with Google digitizing books, because I see it as supplementary access– you can search through a book, you can know you want/or need it. You can reference a title that may take you weeks to get your hands on through Interlibrary loan, etc. And in that case– there are still hard copies of the books themselves in other hands.

This isn’t the case with some of LM’s data storage projects. In that case, data is being actually stored by, or at the very least stored in systems built by, Lockheed Martin. For example, the EPA is outsourcing their storage to LM. Who guarantees its integrity?

Fourth, what happens when someone puts all this data together?

The FBI is using a “Next Generation Identification” system built (and maintained) by LM that contains immense amounts of biometric (as in more than fingerprints) data on millions of American citizens.

The TSA used LM for its passenger list.

The DOD’s health care system is integrated through software applications purchased from LM.

The IRS has used LM’s data mining capabilities.

Okay, so the details are light right now, but I think you get my point.

While we are worried about what Google might do, there’s a whole world of data mining happening that isn’t discussed as much as perhaps it should be. Think about Credit Bureaus and the information they have on you. Think about marketing data and how it follows you through your web surfing. Seems innocent enough at first (it’s just a *cookie*), but how much have we really pondered this unless we’re members of EFF or EPIC?

I’ll update this post later with links to each of the sources. But for now– I need to write my paper to turn it in but I’d challenge you to think about this.

Then what are we going to do?

EDIT: The rudimentary results of my Lockheed research are here: http://theotherbrother.tumblr.com/

For anyone wanting to look into the Lockheed world, the Tumblelog may be a good starting point for finding federal documents related to what I wrote about. I plan to clean it up a bit more, add more detail and then continue to develop it over time.

I’m going to begin blogging with more regularity again. I plan to return to more library-related content as well… so in honor of that, I’m going to discuss something I don’t see addressed often enough. If there are a ton of blog posts or articles about this, please send them to me!

I’d like to muse a bit about the state of Library blogging. I’ve read a number of articles discussing what library folks do with their blogs: knowledge creation, networking, best practices sharing, etc. What I don’t see a lot of is personal reflection and theoretical discussion.

Often when I read disparaging comments about blogs, I think to myself, “hey that’s what I do with my blog.” I don’t write with a lot of evidence. I basically rant and blow off steam and hardly ever edit and certainly don’t try to be “professional”.

Why?

Well, partly because I’m not really interested in people taking a social medium and turning it into another exclusive intellectual playground. It really bothers me that people only value blogs for that reason because I think that there is value that can be gained from people sharing their feelings, their struggles, their unformed and undocumented thoughts in an attempt to build towards greater specificity. However, it’s chilling to speech if you feel that everything you “publish” (an over-used word in my opinion) has to meet some lofty standard that includes not hurting anyone’s feelings, not offending future or current employers, and always formatting and documenting every post as if it were an article for publication.

So, if you have a brief thought or an unformed idea that you want to explore or develop where can you share it? The original purpose of blogging was an online journal– do you always compose your journal entries?

Now, I’m not one of these people who feels that each medium should remain for only one purpose.. I think it’s fantastic that blogging is done for “professional” as well as personal reasons. I just think it’s a shame if we all start feeling like EVERY blog has to be for professional purposes. I think it’s a shame if we feel limited in our expression because we’re afraid of what people might read.

With that in mind, I’ve read a number of posts about the Biblioblogosphere that suggest that this is exactly what is going on… People are afraid to express anything controversial and are feeling pressured to “never say anything you wouldn’t say in person.”

Well, then what’s the point in having multiple mediums if they aren’t to be used in different ways? That to me is internalized censorship. I should be able to post unformed thoughts and ideas. I should feel free to pontificate and rant… why? because we all should feel free to.

Does that mean we should use our blogs to insult someone personally or to threaten them like Kathy Sierra? Hell no! But if I did. That’s my problem… I’d just be an asshole for doing so. All the reader who didn’t like it would have to do is click somewhere else. Simple as that. If you don’t like what you read in a blog post, it wasn’t forced on you, you can just read something else.

If you want to argue with it, then fine… Try and keep it to a level of useful debate. If you say to somebody, “well, I don’t think you’ve thought through the consequences of what you’re saying” then perhaps something can come from it. If you’re going to say, “that’s a dumb idea” well, something still might come from it in the sense that the author at least knows that somebody out there is not liking what’s been said. It may cause them to invesigate further (it would me).

But if you say, “you dumbshit, you should stop writing this crap.” Well, it’s a little hard to separate the message from the insult. So why bother? Is your life really so empty that arguing online in ways that aren’t constructive or purposely trolling is going to fulfill you? Actually, wow… now that I bring it up in that way… if your life really is that empty, my gosh, if arguing with me or insulting me will bring you some joy– please feel free to use me for that purpose. I feel sorry for you.

But I digress… I am all for *voluntary* civility amongst bloggers, but I don’t think that we should have to feel the need to produce an professional article every time we write and I don’t think we should be or feel stifled from merely expressing opinion. There is value in venting as much as gushing with excitement.

Remember, this medium started as a journal. I want to keep mine for that purpose. I want to reflect, recant, be wrong, be misinformed, develop my ideas, and maybe eventually learn and share and perhaps even teach something along the way. Even if nothing beyond, “Hey, don’t feel so uptight”.

I hope that somebody out there (ACLU are you listening?) is working on preventing online searches from being considered as part of job interviews. I mean, if what I post on MySpace when I’m 14 can affect my job prospects at 22 then what is the point of education? What is the point of learning from our mistakes if we never are allowed to make any?

I think beyond the library blogosphere, beyond the Internet, that this has extremely dangerous social implications. So, if you’ve EVER done anything taboo or embarassing or unwise, you should be hounded by it for the rest of your life? Is that any way to live?

MDH out