Awesome

I met the coolest kid in the world today.  More on her in a second...

I observed a first grade library lesson as part of a course requirement.  I've sat in on library classes for a variety of ages, but never any so young.  It's no secret that I'm not particularly comfortable with little kids, so I went in as neutral as possible, ready to observe.  I was kind of surprised at how interested the kids were in me.  One girl walked through the door, stopped dead in her tracks when she saw me and went, "WHOA.  Who are you?"  Several others got really excited when Jane explained that I was studying to be a librarian like her. 

The lesson itself was really instructional for me.  Jane has a great presentation style, and had a lot of tricks for keeping 20 wiggly six year olds engaged.  It was actually reassuring to hear that she felt that this had been her most challenging session so far this year. 

The highlight for me came after the actual lesson though.  This little girl came up to me and started showing me her book, which happened to be about snakes.  After we admired all the snakes in that book, she put it away and came back with a field guide on reptiles.  Score!  She asked me to sit with her, so we went through the book and pointed out different kinds of snakes, lizards and turtles.  I was thinking, of all the children and all the books in the universe, how did this kid know to come to me with a book about reptiles? 

Anyway, I had fun.   Hopefully she keeps up the reptile love. 

Career porn

Pretty much.

Anyone who talked to me after Wednesday's class, or experienced the absolute tear I went on via Facebook can tell you that I'm psyched about this school library stuff.  After spending 23 years not having a clue what I wanted to do with my life, finally hitting on something that I find meaningful and fun and exciting is an immense relief.  It's great to hear librarians talking about what they do, and not only thinking that I'd like to do it, but that I'm actually capable of it and believe I'll be great at it.

It was fantastic to hear from Sue Kowalski.  Not only was it pretty sweet to check out the library scene at my alma mater (yes I just used that word) but I was actually really thrilled to hear that she was less than enthused about working with younger kids.  I know that being certified K-12 will imply a certain amount of time spent with children, and that I need to be open to that possibility when it comes time to find a job, but it was a relief to hear that it's okay for a school librarian to have issues with little kids. 

I shadowed an elementary librarian last year, and it honestly wasn't as bad as I imagined - I'm used to seeing kids at the public library where they tend to act out.  They were much better behaved at school than I expected. 

But still.  Even as a kid I did not like other kids.  I distinctly remember getting in trouble for not sharing my toys, not because I was selfish, but because I was grossed out by other kids.  Kids are erratic, noisy, volatile, messy, inexperienced, uninhibited, and they lack body control.  I know that other people relish these challenges, but I just don't.  I haven't been around kids - no siblings, no babysitting, no close relatives having babies - so everything they do is just a huge freaking shock to me. 

Weirdly, I have no problem with kids older than about 9 or 10.  There comes a point where they stop being just generic kids and become individuals, and at that point I seem to be able to relate to them.  I feel like my attitude and perspective is going to be most effective with middle and high school students.  I get that they're challenging in different ways, but I think I'm far better prepared to manage those types of challenges. 

On a different note, I enjoyed hearing from Buffy Hamilton, and I think it's great that she's able to run her library and still maintain such an expansive online brand.  Visibility is a big deal if we're going to talk about breaking down stereotypes and old assumptions, so I'm keeping her example in the back of my brain as I move forward.

Bibliosaurus?

The one thing that really caught my interest this week, as evidenced by the plethora of exclamation points surrounding it in my notes, was the idea of production librarians to help people assemble their information into reports or scrapbooks or displays, or help digitize it, or analyze it. Which I love. And am great at. And want to do. Maybe on the weekends? Or at night? Or in the alternate, same-time universe that we need to get on discovering? I need space in my life to be a school librarian, a production librarian, a cat rancher, a turtle rescuer, a custom framer and a velociraptor. (Maybe I'll save velociraptor for retirement.)

The thing is, I really want to be a school librarian. I did my interview this morning with the woman who was my librarian in 3rd grade, and it was awesome. Everything she said was just great. We talked about how committed the district is to having certified librarians in each school, and the collaborative projects that they're able to do because of that. She told me how the librarians have been able to access test data and develop programming to address achievement gaps, and about how she still believes that literature is key to getting kids excited about learning. She talked about how even with almost everything about her job changing, her role has stayed the same. I seriously did not want to leave. I wanted to sit there and listen to her and learn to do her job.

I recognize that choosing school media limits me in some ways - obviously no electives. But it was a conscious choice about the kind of work I want to do. I just wish it wasn't so exclusive. I guess I can't complain...there are enough people who can't think of even one thing they'd like to spend their lives doing.

"It's a shame that we have to live, but it's a tragedy that we get to live only one life, because if I'd had two lives, I would have spent one of them with her." ~Jonathan Safran Foer Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close

Oh cataloging

I'm currently reading through Chapter 11, on information retrieval. What specifically caught my interest was the assertion that classification systems force us to confront the necessity of putting labels on things. When you place a subject term on a holding, you partially define it.

I've always been fascinated with the power of naming to not only define things, but to expand and even create them. I very nearly wrote my bachelor's thesis on the significance of naming in young adult novels (See A Wind in the Door by Madeleine L'Engle for an example). I love that you can put two things side by side and understand both in a new way. The process of classifying materials requires you to decide what is important about them, which is really a weighty decision when you think through how your choice will alter access to the record.

Working as a temp cataloger, I got a feel for how things are currently cataloged, and it often makes little sense. What child would intentionally search for "voluntarism" rather than "volunteering"? There's a reason that database thesauri exist, and there's a reason that the accepted subject terms are always changing. Cataloging attempts to grasp hold of our ever changing ways of looking at life, and succeeds...marginally. And in interesting ways.

My favorite part of looking through catalog entries is checking out how rogue catalogers have chosen to assign subject headings, as you occasionally get interesting surprises (as with Google Autocomplete, another favorite of mine [speaking of which, is there a way to see what people search for and what they eventually settle on, and use that to improve our search terms?]).

The best, most wtf subject heading I have ever come across was from an entry for a DVD of the movie Dracula, which contained the following:

"Subject term: Arteries--Puncture--Drama."

<3

I have never been comfortable with ambiguity. I think it derives equally from my personality, from my upbringing, and from the way information was presented to me until I started college. I always felt that things were black or white, right or wrong, correct or incorrect. I thought that teachers knew all the answers, and that I just had to learn them. I thought that there was a right way to do everything, and I was very anxious about figuring out how to do things "correctly".

I don't like not knowing what to do or how to do it. The first time I bought lunch at school in 1st grade, I cried because I didn't know the procedure. And as my classmates in 605 will attest, I missed lunch and dinner on Thursday due to my anxiety about figuring out where to buy food with a credit card on campus.

While my crippling social/food anxiety remains, I have succeeded in opening up my intellectual borders somewhat. I've gone from my first semester of college (where I was infuriated by a discussion-based philosophy class which never quite got to the point) to now, where I understand that knowledge is nuanced and subject to perspective and interpretation. I'm content to swim in a sea of information, drawing connections, making comparisons and creating my own views.

In my professional life though, I still find myself looking for a guide. I want someone to tell me what a librarian is and is not. I want to know what my duties will be, and how best to do them. I am coping with the understanding that this is not in the cards. I knew that coming in, and I'm excited to be in a field where I can literally be a part of redefining the profession, but it does present a real challenge to my personality. I'm trying to open myself up to what could be rather than what was or even what is.

It's helpful to keep in mind how transient our idea of libraries is. They have changed significantly even in the past decade. Rather than working outward from something like books or quiet space or coffee, or whatever else we're offering and trying to convince people to use, I'm trying to place myself at the intersection of the community (as the community of users is the greater context of any library) and the spheres we discussed in class - knowledge, access, memory, motivation, and physical space, among others. Maybe starting with these basic ideas, and myself, as I am, I can construct my own vision for my future as a librarian.

As Lankes pointed out, laws and rules are made by people, and so are professions. There are guidelines for what makes a good librarian, but adopting them wholesale may not be the best way to meet the needs of changing communities. Certain values remain vital, but I'll do my best to keep an open-minded and fluid sense of myself as a library professional. Even though it's scary as hell.

Oranges and Peaches and Miss Sheldon

I had to laugh as I started this week's readings for 605, as I came across the Oranges and Peaches anecdote. In short, a student asks a reference librarian for help finding a book entitled Oranges and Peaches, which turns out to be a mondegreen (mishearing) of On The Origin of Species (Cassel, 2009, p. 22).

This happens so often, and not only in library contexts. It's a great reminder that language is socially constructed, and that we all carry around slightly different versions of the world in our heads. Three great examples from my own experience come to mind:

A patron approached me seeking a list of books by an author she enjoyed, named Joanna Brady. A catalog author search turned up nothing. She handed me the checkout receipt for the book she had just finished, which listed Exit Wounds: A Joanna Brady mystery. Lightbulb moment! She (and I) had assumed that Joanna Brady was an author's name, but it was actually a character, and the series title! In this case, the library's cataloging and receipt format proved confusing. Of course a patron who sees a name on their receipt would assume that they were seeing an author. Asking more questions up front might have allowed me to run a different search that would have avoided the confusion.

Another instance involved a patron who asked me for a book entitled In Depth. To begin with, I misheard him and began by searching for "In Death". Once that was cleared up, I still was not finding any results. I moved outside of our catalog to worldcat and amazon, without success. I began to ask how he had heard of the book, hoping to be able to find a reference within a publication, and he replied that it was reviewed on C-Span. I hopped on to the C-Span website, and wouldn't you know, In Depth is the name of the segment the author appeared on, not the title of his book. Thankfully the patron knew the date of the broadcast he had seen, so we were able to identify the correct author and ILL several of his books.

Lastly, my absolute favorite incident, which did not occur in the library but which required quite a bit of detective work, happened while I was working the disability services office at a community college. Students would come in and tell us the names of their professors and the dates of their tests, and we would acquire copies in order to provide accomodative testing. One student filled out his form improperly, and we were unable to locate him, his course or his professor in our database. His name was something ridiculously generic like Bob Smith, so there were about 15 of them in the system, and he had given his professor's name as Miss Sheldon. After a few phone calls, I discovered that there was no professor at the college with that last name. I resorted to scanning the entire staff directory. It turned out that while there was no "Miss Sheldon", there was a Michelle Dunn, and she had a student by this name in her class. Mystery solved.

These are some of my favorite stories, because it's extremely satisfying to work your way through the mess of misunderstandings that can come in between you and another person. It's a good reminder that even when a patron says what they mean, we probably don't hear what they mean. The patron is as much a part of finding the answer to his or her own question as we are, so ensure that the process is fully reciprocal, participatory, and keep an open mind (even about things you might think are set in stone, like the very title you're looking for!)

Cassell, K. A., & Hiremath, U. (2009). Reference and Information Services in the 21st Century, 2nd Edition (Second ed.). New York: Neal-Schuman Publishers, Inc..

In which I begin graduate school

So… This will serve as my blog for IST 511. I opted not to tack this on to one of my (many) existing blogs, as I think I’m likely to develop my thoughts more fully if I’m not trying to serve more than one purpose.

Anyway. As a first post I thought it would be constructive to lay out why I’m here. (Library school. Not the intarwebz.)

We talked in class about the many ways librarians are defined, and what it came down to was our mission. Interacting with so many others that want to become librarians for reasons so different from my own makes me feel a bit like I’m swimming in mission. Of course we want to oppose censorship/preserve historic buildings/teach children to read/build databases… It’s amazing to see how many different ways people are tackling this question of how to make, store, access and disseminate knowledge.

My own experience is a bit more humble. I come to the field by way of A Wrinkle in Time and the Dixie Chicks.

To try to make an extremely long, convoluted story short, I had a poor attitude about learning for much of my life. I didn’t enjoy school, primarily because it was so much work, and because no one could give me a good answer to explain why I had to go to that much trouble. In sixth grade I asked my teacher why we had to learn about rocks, and she replied that it was in case we wanted to be geologists. That was basically the only answer I was ever given – “It’s about getting a job.” It wasn’t until much, much later that I realized that the process of learning about rocks, or fractals or Chaucer or whatever was actually teaching me how to learn. If I had seen school as being about skills rather than facts I probably would have been a lot more enthusiastic.

Over the course of high school, my worldview became increasingly narrow as I got more and more involved with my church. I began to self-censor because I was so offended by things that I read. I felt like my friends in the church would judge me for even considering ideas outside the normal scope of Christian dogma.

A lot of things collided for me around 2003. I started to realize that my friends in the church were not necessarily good people. I began a photography program at Onondaga Community College that exposed me to wildly new ideas and ways of combining knowledge. Natalie Maines opened her mouth, and the violence of the backlash against her made me really look at how our society makes decisions. And I reread A Wrinkle in Time, which helped me understand that information doesn’t have to be explicitly religious to be good or sacred. All of this combined to shatter my worldview and rebuild it around the belief that all knowledge is useful, worthy, and good, and that if as a society we are going to proceed toward truth, we need all of our people actively seeking and processing knowledge.

It’s both a societal and a personal philosophy. I think it’s crucial to society that people think and speak freely rather than subscribing to a broad set of beliefs. I also believe that on the individual level, every person has the right to access whatever information he or she needs to become his or her own best self. It’s this second part that leads me into school librarianship specifically. I want to make kids aware that they should not trust anyone else to tell them what to believe. They should question everything, and seek the best information to make their own decisions. Empowered to find and evaluate answers, we are equipped to navigate this world on our own terms.

(I’ll be honest. I wrote this post because I wanted to, before reading anyone else’s. I may come back and post some more if I discover that this was not at all within the scope of the assignment. But either way, I’m leaving it, because I hope that the record of what motivated me to come here will be something I can return to over the next 2 years.)