I updated in June?  Really?  That recently?

Okay, well, then I guess I can feel slightly less guilty about this post.

Mike has recommended that I spend more time in reflection, primarily because my brain is wrapped in layers of "shoulds" and worries and bullshit, and half the time I don't even know my own thoughts.  By the time they become conscious they've already been filtered.  Good in the workplace, not so good in relationships and when talking to myself.

This blog isn't really the place to parse out why I've built up so many walls, but I do think that I need a space to continue thinking about this field outside of the context of classes.  I try to enjoy classes, but I end up resenting classes.  I think honest reflection might be a way to hang on to some of the passion that brought me into this career.

In a week or two.  I finished IST612, and even though it was a really good course, I didn't enjoy it much, which is a shame.  July was a packed, stressful month.  I do feel like I gained some skill in talking about literature and creating programs for a library, but I was just a ball of nerves the entire time.  Again, Mike asks me why, and I don't really know why.  That's just how it is?  He says that's not a good enough answer so...reflection.  Why do I get so attached to my tasks, and why do I feel like I'm going to die until they're finally done?  Why am I always convinced that I'm going to fail, when that has literally not ever happened?

Work is good at least.  I get stressed about that too, because I really do want to do a good job and make my coworkers happy.  Again, I have no realistic sense of whether I'm trying to do far too much or if I'm doing nothing at all.  The booksale is great because it looks pretty and I get a report at the end of every month - easy to assess.  The teen space terrifies me, because I don't feel qualified to be doing the work I'm doing on it.  I got to attend a webinar, which ended up being more useful than I initially thought.  I had to do a writeup of the content of the webinar and boil it down to key points, and although it seems ridiculous to come away from an hour and a half long webinar with 4 action items, they are things that will be useful to us. 

I have my internship lined up for the fall, and again, while I'm excited about it and I feel like it's going to be a fantastic experience, when I think about it I feel like I'm going to die.  I have to learn basic html over the next month, brainstorm lesson plans, and sketch out a library orientation scavenger hunt, among other things.  Again, excited, but terrified.

Anyway, I'm hoping to document my thoughts a little better as I go forward.  It's tough to find time (I'm also training for a triathlon, btw) but I think that in terms of getting organized, focusing my thoughts and getting realistic about how my schoolwork is not going to cause me to spontaneously drop dead, it's worth the time.

The reason I've been away from this blog so long is actually the topic that brings me back to it: burnout.

Burnout is something I've dealt with off and on since high school.  I get charged up and motivated for a goal, take on a lot of projects and responsibilities, and feel great for a while.  But over time I start to lose my joy in it, and I get tired and cynical about it. 

I had hoped that it wouldn't happen this time around, as my life is filled with people and activities that I really love and care about.  What I'm finding though, is that a sense of mission is not an antidote to burnout.  I personally love the idea of being on the go all the time, energized and engaged in as many things as possible, always pushing toward a goal.  I'm still learning how to make that attitude sustainable.

My boss approached me at work today and let me know that I was approved to participate on a committee that I had asked to become involved in.  She was concerned about whether I've taken on too much.  (Her actual words were "We want to make sure you're not going to keel over on us.")  I'm hard pressed to respond to that.  I never feel like I'm doing enough, although between school, work and regular life I'm stretched pretty thin.  I get frustrated that I can't do all the things that I would like to do, particularly because I feel like I should be capable of doing them.

I'm attempting to find a way to make all of this work.  I think the keys will be organization and efficiency.  I will freely admit to allowing myself to get bogged down by two things: obligation and emotion.  I allow my tasks to stress me out, so they become scary, and I spend too long procrastinating and too long doing prep work that probably isn't necessary. 

I'm trying out a new organizational scheme that allots me a certain amount of time each day for all the things I need to do.  This includes mundane things that usually get forgotten, like doing dishes and packing a lunch.  It also includes a finite amount of time for homework.  My hope is that if I stick to a rigid schedule, I'll actually end up doing more than if I pack in several hours in one night because overall I will avoid classwork less.  I also hope that my stress level will go down due to having everything I need to remember written out.

Librarians and other professionals: how do you recommend taking full advantage of the opportunities in your life and career, and doing your best work, while maintaining your life's balance?

611 group B

On rules for bloggers:
Warlick's article had a lot of great suggestions for how teachers and librarians can use blogs as a part of instruction.  I really liked that he talks about creating a policy that promotes positive uses of blogging rather than focusing on what is prohibited.  My feeling is that in general, school districts are so concerned with controlling what is said that anyone with an opinion will go to an anonymous forum to express themselves.  I much prefer the idea of encouraging an honest discussion: allowing teachers this forum to reflect on and share their experiences, encouraging them to be open and creative, and making it clear that as long as they are respectful and appropriate, the school will stand behind them.

On misinformation:
I think we have a responsibility as librarian bloggers to model good information practices.   Link to more information when necessary, encourage comments and discussion around your ideas, and be clear about the line between fact and opinion.  The value of blogs is rarely in the provision of factual information - it's the exchange of ideas and opinions, and getting students ready to understand and participate in it is an awesome step forward from what we all learned in school.  I really feel like we as librarians need to make a significant point of discussing credibility with students, and making sure that they can distinguish between facts and opinions.  Facts can be checked, and we can give students the tools to do that.  Opinions can be a great way to explore a topic, but it requires a very different mentality to navigate, and I think that in the past teachers and librarians skirted around it by just forbidding blogs and wikis as sources.  But they can be used responsibly, and we're getting to the point where they're not going away, and we really need to teach our students how to use them.

On self-censorship in personal blogs:
I think that what a school would consider "normal" is about the narrowest, most conservative range possible, and I just don't think it's right to treat teachers as if they've signed away their outside lives.  I know that many people disagree with me and say that it's just the cost of being a professional, but I dislike this, like all forms of censorship, because I feel like it favors a sort of bland, average-of-all-extremes which in no way represents the richness and diversity of the real world.  I'm not saying that teachers should expect to rant with impunity, that disrespect is ever cool, or that we should encourage students to access our personal blogs, but we're not robots - not everything that comes out of our mouths should have to be educational. 

Hate to say it, mini-blogosphere that is 611, but I doubt I'll be sleeping tonight, let alone reading the articles Dan posted, let alone writing a response.  I should be free around 1am Friday morning, how's that?

Doing dishes and pondering librarianship

As always, a huge issue in a career like librarianship is figuring out how to describe what you do without limiting or labeling yourself.  If you define yourself by the books, ebooks will put you out of business.  If you say you read stories to children, why can't a lower-paid clerk do that?  If you argue that you promote valuable literacy skills, what's the difference between you and a reading teacher?

I think I finally have my answer.  School librarians are the generalists in a community of subject specialists.  We know that knowledge does not exist in a vacuum, and that all disciplines influence and connect to one another.  This is what the Collaboration! hubbub is all about.  We are the interdisciplinary wizards at the center of it all, drawing connections, remixing and re-imagining knowledge, in a way that is meaningful to our school community.  No one else has the perspective and resources to make the collective knowledge of a school a living thing.

I've read that the library should be the "learning hub of the school", but I get it now that that only happens if the library and the librarian are not static.  Students and teachers don't just go there to get knowledge; they go there to swap, create and develop it.  And the librarian is the one with a hand in every piece of it.  We have the potential to forge new connections between seemingly unconnected areas, and enrich both, and that's really, really cool.

Nudity in the library

Catchy title, eh?

*The following post (and my blog in general) is my personal opinion, should not in any way be construed as an expression of or commentary on the policies and positions of my employer.*

At our library, we have monthly displays from local artists.  They have ranged from abstracts to watercolor still lifes to Chinese landscapes to portraits.  This month we have a beautiful collection of portraits by a prominent local painter and teacher.  They are absolutely gorgeous - the man is supremely talented.  Most of the paintings are straightforward head and shoulders portraits of young women.  One portrait is of a bare breasted woman.  It is not in any way sexual, nor is it the first nude that has been included in an exhibition at our library.

Today a patron took issue with that image.  He took the time out of his day to approach the desk and complain that it was inappropriate, since the library is a family place and there are children around.

The complaint was noted, with courtesy and respect toward the man's point of view, and he was given the appropriate information to allow him to express his opinion to management.

I dislike complaints of this sort for a number of reasons.  First of all, I always get the feeling that people fall back on the "think of the children" argument because something or other makes them vaguely uncomfortable and they need to bolster their bluster.  I also strongly disagree with the notion that seeing a bare breast is going to disturb or somehow sully a child.  Children breastfeed; do we flip a switch when they stop that makes them unable to comprehend that it's a body part like an elbow or a nose?  It's one thing to teach children about privacy, but we often go too far and make them feel like certain parts of them are shameful mysteries.  Further, I dislike the implication that the world should be dumbed down to a child's level.  Like it or not, this is not a child's world, and the least we can do is offer them realistic information about it.

In the end though, the fact is that everything offends someone.  My being offended by this man's indignation accomplishes nothing.  I just become fearful every time someone like this succeeds in limiting the experience of others.  No one's mind is big enough to be right about all the stuff in this world, so we've got to trust each other to build up the whole of human experience.  That means coexisting with things we're not sure about, so live and let live.

More thoughts (it was a banner day for thinking)

More news from the front of Why Censorship Is Crap:

I received an e-mail this morning from my advisor/counselor/guru at school, describing an incident she faced as the manager of a large listserv for school librarians.  She learned that a list member had been removed from the list by her school's ISP, which automatically scans incoming emails for offending terms and bounces back spam and "adult" content.  In this case, after some investigation, it was discovered that the term that was being rejected was "LGBT". 

The premise is itself somewhat ridiculous - first of all, who ever heard of an offensive/spammy email using such an innocuous term as LGBT?  Second, it's always seemed odd to me that teachers and administrators aren't trusted to monitor their own e-mail.  I've struggled to contact people within my alma mater, as even my highly professional emails from my .edu address are always flagged as spam and are sometimes even rejected. 

The consequences?  As my advisor pointed out, the people at this school have been blocked from receiving any and all resources that might have been sent out dealing with bullying, support for diverse student bodies, and resources relevant to those students (the email in question was about lists of award winning books). 

The incident serves to illustrate my longstanding belief that it is impossible to censor without blocking content of quality, whether intentionally or not.  Censorship is driven by fear - fear of the world as it is, fear of offending somebody somewhere, fear of letting people think for themselves.  It's a shame if we let a minority judgment of "appropriateness" determine access to resources.