So I just got back from a very intense 5 days in Seattle. I was at the ACRL 2009 conference and my days were packed with library goodness. Some of the highlights of the first few days:

Thursday

• When I found out that Naomi Klein was sick and wouldn’t be the keynote speaker, I headed down to Left Bank Books , the coolest independent bookstore in Seattle.
• Went to the orientation for ACRL n00bs. I was overwhelmed by the amount of opportunities available to use the organization to grow leadership skills. Also overwhelmed by the number of young, talented, librarians out there.
• Had Nutella Crepe from La Creperie Voila for dinner.

Friday

• This was my first, but not last, trip to Top Pot Doghnuts. (Old Fashioned Glazed)
• Went to first panel session We’re Not Playing Around: Gaming literate librarians = Information Literate Students
  This sessions was really great because it talked about how to use game design theory as a tool to help design information literacy classes. The materials don’t appear to be posted on the ACRL virtual conference website yet, but are available on presenter Nicholas Schiller’s website.
• Went to panel session entitled Beyond Literacy: Are Reading and Writing Doomed?. This was by far the craziest session I went to. There were reference to the Borg Collective and Q Continuum. Also, not sure if I was hearing this right, but think cylon regeneration technology was mentioned as a possibility for the far future. I love dangerous ideas, and this panel session had plenty.
• Lunch at Baguette Box. (Spanish Chorizo on Baguette with Harissa Oil, Aioli, and Caramelized Onions.)
• As part of my continuing efforts to build leadership experience I went to Advancing Your Claim to Campus Leadership: Reaching the Summit One Toehold at a Time. I actually took a lot out of this session and found myself wishing that I could have applied things I learned to previous positions. But life is all about learning, so now I can take the info and apply it to current and future endeavors.
• Went to Solve It!: Challenging students through puzzles. This session makes me wish I had gone to MIT. The library there created an advertising campaign that involved complex puzzles that could only be solved using library resources. They paid extra to have them put on the puzzle page of the student paper, and then offered a prize drawing for correct answers. PURE BRILLIANCE!
• Sherman Alexie’s Keynote speech was awesome and we were first in line to get our books signed.

I am also very grateful to be back in Libraryland other wise known as the State of Ohio. When I was away in Virginia, I really missed the way in which Ohio libraries work together to provide quality services to an entire state. On the Academic side there is the OhioLINK consortium that allows pretty much any academic library to borrow from any other.  Working in a small college, I recognize how huge this service is for our students.

On the public side, there are multiple public library consortia including MORE, CLEVNET,  and The Greater Access library card. All of these help patrons access the information they are looking for in a quick, efficient manner. Also on the public side are the OPLIN databases. Every public library card holder in the state of Ohio can access quality databases (Including many fabulous EBSCO resources)  from the library and from home.

I love that my home state is so progressive when it comes to librarianship.

Patron: I’m looking for books on Mythology, can you tell me where to find them?

Me: Sure, let me walk you over.

[we walk over to proper section]

Me: Are you looking for any type of mythology?

Patron: I’m looking for Greek Mythology. I’ve been playing this game ‘God of War’ and it deals a lot with mythology.

So to recap: The patron came to the library looking for a book about Greek Mythology because his interest was piqued by a video game. I can now say with honesty that video games bring people to the library for books. I’ve seen it myself.

God of War Cosplay

Here are some of my favorites. Whenever I find myself in need of a little pick me up, I try to quote these in my head:

• I urge you to please notice when you are happy, and exclaim or murmur or think at some point, ‘If this isn’t nice, I don’t know what is.’ -Kurt Vonnegut

KV often quoted this piece of advice from his uncle. I count myself amongst the lucky people who were personally able to hear him quote it at Severance Hall a few years ago

• Go into the world and do well. But more importantly, go into the world and do good.-Minor Myers Jr (President of Illinois Wesleyan University 1989-2003)

• Be the change you wish to see in the world.-Gandhi

• The purpose of life is to live it, to taste experience to the utmost, to reach out eagerly and without fear for newer and richer experience. – Eleanor Roosevelt

• Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things you didn’t do than by the ones you did. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover. -Mark Twain

• Out of clutter, find simplicity, from discord, find harmony, in the middle of difficulty lies opportunity. – Albert Einstein

• The only people for me are the mad ones, the ones mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved, desirous of everything at the same time, the ones who never yawn or say a commonplace thing but burn, burn, burn like fabulous roman candles exploding like spiders across the stars and in the middle you see the blue centerlight pop and everybody goes ‘Awww’ -Jack Kerouac

This is a presentation I gave at the Chesapeake Public Library System Staff Day event in May 2008. It was geared towards the many staff members who had expressed doubt as to the relevancy of gaming programs in the library, and I think I was really able to get across the point that gaming is a cognitive activity that has proven benefits. (Of course, just because I made that point does not mean that it was universally accepted amongst the staff.)

Update: I forgot to mention that I posted this presentation to my blog using slideshare . With slideshare I can upload and share slide presentations in .ppt, .odp (OpenOffice), and .pdf formats. It is not currently compatible with Word 2007, but it gives easy instructions on how to make such presentations uploadable.

In this article she discusses the importance of fostering an environment where learning is valued more than effeciency and argues that although it may not yield immediate results that it promotes success over an extended period of time. 

 A very useful chart shows that in the “execution as efficiency” model leaders provide the answers and employees follow directions. New work processes are developed infrequently and implementing change is a huge undertaking. Problem solving is rarely required and judgement is not expected.

In the “execution as learning” model leaders set direction and articulate the mission and employees discover answers. Work processes keep developing and small changes, experiments and improvements, are a way of life. Problem solving is constantly needed, so valuable information is provided to guide employees’ judgement.

As I read the article I couldn’t help but think how important the learning mindset is in the library. A library that values the “execution as learining” model of management will have much more room to be innovative and present patrons with new models of service and technology. We can’t be afraid to try new things and make mistakes because that is the only way we can learn what works and what doesn’t.  In my current situation I feel exactly how the “execution-as-efficiency” model can stifle the creativity and innovative ideas of employees. Without the support and encouragement of management at all levels, it seems like employees get frustrated and stop caring. In a work environment that depends on lifelong learning, such as the library, it seems like a death wish to employ the “execution as efficiency” model, yet I’ve worked in several libraries where this attitude was a prevalent one. I can only hope that as creativity and innovation continues to grow as valuable job skills, that directors and managers will recognize the importance of a management technique that supports it.

After this, I realized that I could use the jump drive to use firefox at work. (Take that IS lockdown!) And then I started playing around with some of the other features on portable apps.  Turns out, creating a pdf document in Open Office is as simple as clicking a button. (It’s even easier than creating a pdf with my Mac.) I put a staff member to work on some of the other Open Office programs, and she discovered that open office draw is comparable to Microsoft Publisher and in her words, “I think I might even like it a little bit better than publisher.”   Even though I’m not as much of a techie as I would like to be, I get really excited when I think about Open Source Software.  The idea that it is out there for people to use, and that users can help make it better  mirrors the way I feel libraries should be approached.

I’m guessing that many of our patrons who can’t afford Microsoft Office don’t even know that there are free alternatives like Open Office, and I wonder if offering classes on programs like that would be even more helpful to patrons that the Microsoft classes we offer now.  Always stuff to think about.

• Click here to download and/or find out more about portable apps.

Transaction #1

A woman came to the reference desk and stated “I remember reading in Reader’s Digest in the late 1960’s to early 1970’s about this man who was kind of famous when he was diagnosed as having three months to live. He checked himself into a hotel and then watched all of these funny movies he liked when he was little, like the Three Stooges. After three months he wasn’t sick anymore.” Can you tell me who this man was? I guess if one was familiar with the time period you might know straight off. I was born in 1981, so I had to probe the question a little bit further. I found out that she was pretty sure it was cancer and that he had definitely been given “Three months to live”. I took the woman’s number and let her know I would research it and give her a call back later. So I started to research using ‘cancer’ and ‘three months to live’ as my jumping off point. (This would prove to be red herring) After scouring the historic new York times from the 60’s and 70’s looking in some timeline books, I finally decided to try some new search terms and focus on “laughter cures” and “comedy cures cancer” in Google. I finally reached some headway and discovered the name Norman Cousins. After looking him up in our biography database I concluded that this was in fact the man the woman was searching for. I printed out his biography, put the book that he wrote about his illness on hold for her and gave her a call back. Later that day when she came back I gave her the biography and let her know that I put the other thing on hold. She was thrilled that I was able to figure out this man’s name and that I had taken the time to print out his biography and put his book on hold for her. When she came back to pick up the book, she came back to the reference desk and said she was so happy with her information she wanted to do something special for me, and she gave me a necklace.

The Lesson

It is easy to get caught in a red herring even if you properly do the reference interview. Although I was eventually successful in finding the answer, a few things would have made it easier. First of all, I spent too much time focusing on his illness and the three months to live. I asked a leading question, “Was it cancer?” to which the patron responded “yes”. (His illness turned out to not be Cancer) The important detail I missed was how important the funny movies were to his recovery. Once I hit on that I was easily able to find his identity.

 Transaction #2

A patron was handed off to me, and he wanted to know who the performer was in a certain YouTube video. (A 1991 benefit performance of John Lennon’s Give Peace a Chance by the Peace Choir) He said he thought it was one person, but then figured out he was wrong. So, I took a look at the video with him, and he showed me the performer in question. The performer in question had dreads and a feminine sounding voice. I gave him my first guess. “Could it be Tracy Chapman?” He said that it wasn’t Tracy Chapman because she wasn’t on the list. He told me how to pull up the list and we looked at it together. He thought it was a female, but he recognized almost all of the names on the list except for a few. I was able to eliminate the few that he didn’t recognize because I recognized them. Then, looking at the list I saw Terrence Trent D’Arby’s name. I told the man that if I remembered correctly Terrence Trent D’Arby looked very similar to the performer we were trying to identify. We looked up pictures of TTD and decided that it was a very good possibility that we had identified the mystery performer. Because the voice sounded feminine and the person with the voice looked feminine in the video the assumption had been made that it was a woman. When we worked together we discovered otherwise.

The lesson

 This transaction illustrates the importance of working together. Two heads are almost always better than one. This patron had access to the information he needed to solve the puzzle, but it wasn’t until we worked together that the puzzle was able to be solved. It isn’t just patron/librarian transactions that work this way. Never hesitate to ask the librarian or staff member that you are working with what they think about a question. It is possible that they will look at the question from an angle you hadn’t thought about, and the patron will be better served.

Transaction #3

Two men came to the desk asking for information about the copy machine. I noticed that they had a Chilton’s guide from Reference with them and that was what they were trying to copy. I could have just let them make the copies, but I used this as an opportunity to promote our databases. The book that they had in their hands was a general guide, not one designed for a specific car. I asked them if they knew about the Auto Repair Reference Center database available online. They didn’t so I explained to them how they could use it, and we looked up the car that they needed to fix right there. We found the exact procedure they were looking for and they were excited to know that they could access this database from home. I gave them a handout that explained how they could access our databases in the future, and they went away with exactly what they wanted.
The lesson: Be generous with information not stingy. Patrons are not always aware of everything the library offers, so anytime you have an opportunity to promote useful resources do so. Don’t be afraid to be proactive. The patrons didn’t ask me about the database, but I knew that it would have something that could help them, so I offered it up. Another place I frequently use this tactic is with foreign languages. Often people will ask for CDs on language learning. As I walk them to the location I let them know how they can enhance the language learning experience by using interactive online resources. (The BBC has an especially strong language learning website). I also let them know that there are several groups in the area that meet up for conversational hours.