PLA Blog

I’d like to thank everyone who helped make PLA’s first blogging effort such a success. To date, the blog has received 9,277 page views- I think that’s pretty good for an experimental blog! I’d like to especially thank Steven Cohen, for spearheading this effort and for managing it during the course of the Midwinter Meeting, as well as the enthusiastic team of bloggers who fanned out to cover so many different events for our readers.

This was one of the biggest Midwinter Meetings in recent history, with over 13,000 persons in attendance and so it was a very busy meeting with lots of programs and meetings for the bloggers to write about. As I read over the blog, it strikes me just how important a tool it is, especially for our members who can’t make it to conferences. Again, thanks to everyone who helped make this blog a reality.

PLA is hoping to use this experience as a base for a continuous blogging effort. Check back here or at www.pla.org for future PLA blogging news.

- Clara N. Bohrer, 2004-2005 PLA President

This event took place on Saturday, January 15, 2005 (sorry for late post - too many Midwinter meetings!)

Ron Heifetz was invited by PLA President Clara Bohrer to discuss leadership with public librarian leaders attending Midwinter. Heifetz is founding director of the Center for Public Leadership at Harvard University’s John F. Kennedy School of Government and principal in Cambridge Leadership Associates- www.cambridge-leadership.com. He began his talk by discussing the doctor-patient relationship (Heifetz is a physician too!). Doctors are trained to give technically accurate advice. An overweight smoker who has a heart attack will be told to quit smoking and go on a diet. Six months later, many patients remain overweight smokers. Why? The medical advice was technically correct but it does not consider the required adaptations that the patient must make to be healthy. It is not enough to be right! Leadership (the physician’s) must be empathetic, must listen and must understand that adaptive change will be resisted.

Heifetz recognizes that leadership is risky and hard business. He reminded the audience that people don’t like to deal with problems and that if they can ignore them or find a scapegoat, they probably will. He said one of the challenges of being a leader is to not take criticism personally. Criticism can be a way to avoid confronting the real problem. When a leader is criticized, those criticizing don’t know you, they are criticizing a role you (the leader) play. It’s important not to take it personally, you need to get past defensiveness so you can listen with a clear mind. He implored librarians to learn from mistakes and not to hide failure!

In an article in Fast Company, he reminds readers that Bill Gates originally did not think that the Internet would be a big deal. He encouraged librarians at the conference to share their successes AND their failures. Why didn’t it work? Was it a good idea that could still be saved? There is as much or more to learn from our failures as from our successes. He used classical music and the symphony to illustrate his point that leadership is difficult and requires the leader to confront problems head-on. American symphonies are struggling. Their traditional audiences are aging and younger people are not replacing them. Many symphonies can continue at present, while their audience is still in the 50-60 age group, financially secure and able to contribute. But, if the crisis is not handled now, in the next 20 years, that same audience will be gone. Libraries might consider some parallels to the symphony. (Amazingly, in addition to his medical training and his management pedigree, Heifetz is also a cellist, having studied with Russian virtuoso, Gregor Piatigorsky.) Heifetz’ talk was down-to-earth, humorous and very thought-provoking.

I could have listened and asked questions for a few more hours and so could many in the audience. His most recent book, “Leadership on the Line: Staying Alive through the Dangers of Leading,” written with Marty Linsky, was available to afterward and he graciously stayed to autograph dozens of books.

Barb Macikas, PLA Deputy Executive Director

Ron Heifetz autographs copies of his book and chats with attendees on Saturday evening.

One of my goals for attending sessions was to seek out some of the smaller interest groups to hear about how public libraries are tackling problems in the hectic day-to-day flow of normal operations.

I thought I would encounter lots of useful advice at this session from practitioners of thwarting the various sneaky tricks of patrons intent on disabling PACs and what native tools to XP there are to assist in this task. And I did - but as far as I could tell, everyone (there were approximately 12) in the room was from an academic library so their perspectives on challenges were focused in that direction.

The participants threw out a lot of useful suggestions, such as a checklist of tasks to prepare a secure XP PAC, discussed software packages for security (DeepFreeze was mentioned most often), and there was also some discussion of the use of individual software packages vs. Active Directory (AD) Group Policies to lock down access.

The discussion highlighted several differences from my experience in working with public libraries around public access computing. One difference in perspectives is the amount of resources I think even small academic libraries have to throw against these problems of managing public access workstations vs. mid-sized or smaller public libraries. These resources are both budgetary, but also person-related - it seems as if even small academic institutions have dedicated technology support staff that assists the library when they have questions.

There was a short discussion of how best to build the relationship with your IT group if you need help. One participant mentioned that chocolate seems to be helpful in obtaining support and another mentioned that the library had been able to get a good deal of support from the IT group, but that was most likely because one of the library staff had married an IT staff person. There was a short pause and then someone piped up, “I hope I never have to go that far to get help from our IT group.”

The leader of the session is setting up a Yahoo group to talk about these specific issues and I will post the information once that becomes live. One other interesting piece from this meeting was that interest groups will become inactive after three years if there is not enough interest. They recently changed the name of this interest group to try to highlight what it focuses on in hopes of generating more interest. So, if you are planning on attending Annual in Chicago, and are responsible for the “care and feeding” of your library’s PACs, check out the schedule and share your experiences and keep this IG alive.

What would that do to overdue books? To fines? This is just one of the mind-expanding questions we discussed at the YSCON meeting this morning, a discussion forum for youth services consultants in the 50 states. Alaska, Massachusetts, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, and Virginia were represented, and Sara Laughlin, from Interface, showed up as well. We talked about emergent literacy and brain research and library cards and grants and resource sharing and summer reading and loss of funding distance learning and the importance of getting to other conferences besides library ones, such as the principals conference.

And then someone threw out another great idea:
What if ALA bargained not for rent-a-car or insurance discounts, but discounts to other professional organizations? Or got us into other conferences at their member rates? This might be far more valuable than saving 15% on your auto insurance, and encourage the types of collaborations we are always striving for.

Overheard:
The number one reason for parents not bringing their children to the library, and the reason that “using the library” is the lowest pre-literacy activity on the list: FINES

We should be the YES people, not the NO people. Patrons shouldn’t have to take it to a higher level (the director) to get a “YES.”

Call it an “extended use fee” - more positive sound that fine

80% of libraries serve populations of less than 10,000.

I also got several great ideas from my colleagues

1. At a weeding workshop, ask each participant to bring a book they are undecided about
2. Host a teddy bear sleepover at the library. Children leave a stuffed animal overnight on a Friday, and when they pick them up on Sat morning the animals are in slightly different spots, each with a letter attached about the fun activities they did at a sleepover. Cute!
3. Create a Kindergarten Calendar for 4 year olds, with suggested pre-literacy activities each month that parents and children can do at home to get kids ready to read.

Overall, I love the energy you get from these conferences! It is great to be surrounded by people who share your passion, are knowledgeable, and are willing to share that knowledge! While my batteries were definitely low by Monday (and are still low after a six hour flight back to Seattle), overall I am recharged by what I learned, who I met, and all of the excitement people feel about libraries and our future. Reading all the entries already posted just reinforces all of the above and hopefully meets the goal of sharing that with all the people who could not make it to Boston.

This conference was different for me from the perspective of it being the first time that I spent the majority of my time in meetings with others rather than in sessions. So while those meetings were very interesting and useful, I sometimes missed the opportunity to attend some of the great sessions that I had planned on attending. Even with this change in plans, I still had great conversations with random people walking from meeting to meeting or running into people I had met previously or worked with at some point. Unfortunately, it meant I was a slacker when it came to posting content for the blog.

A short summary of the two sessions I attended will follow shortly -
1) the “Windows XP Public Workstation - Personal Computing Interest Group” on Sunday (sponsored by LITA); and
2) the “Top Technology Trends Committee Business Meeting”, also part of LITA.

Librarians? Vendors? My camera phone photo is too blurry to tell…

It’s always a good idea to hit the exhibit halls for a second walk-through on the last day. The vendors are packing up and give away stuff they don’t want to bring back home, and the book discounts are the steepest. After my last scavenging effort, I hung on the round bench in the rotunda at the Hynes, eavesdropping and watching the world come and go.

First was a steady stream of librarians laden with bags of posters and advance reading copies, then vendors, lugging battered cardboard boxes and cases on wheels. I ran Owen Ellard, Director of the Mt. Holyoke College Library, who, as a recent transplant from Texas, had some great coping mechanisms for New England winters to share (get a house with a fireplace and a garage, and drink copiously -’ just kidding,’ he said… someone else recommended ‘popcorn helps too’). I overheard librarians comparing their loot - seems the items in highest demand were insulated travel mugs and clocks that came WITH batteries.

The rotunda also appears to be cell phone central - hardly MY first choice, given the echo-y quality - and the meet-up place of choice for academic librarians from Massachusetts colleges who got bussed in together.

Just outside, I ran into fellow Simmons grad Jenn Koerber (BPL, Allston branch) who told me that SF convention Arisia was coming to the Plaza next weekend. Apparently, Arisia is traditionally MLK Jr. weekend, and the hotel overbooked this year. ALA won, and Arisia had to move to next weekend. Talk about information being a conversation!

I had a lovely early dinner at OSushi while I read an ARC of Shelf Life by Robert Corbert. Then I lounged in the Westin until the joint AASL/ALSC/YALSA reception began. Cash bar, but free veggies with two kinds of dip. Audra Caplan, YALSA past president, presented a gift on behalf of the YALSA board, to Julie Walker, outgoing YALSA /AASL executive director, for her exemplary years of service.

I also got the scoop on the morning’s YALSA board meeting. I had been told there was no need to attend, but apparently my recommendation that YALSA investigate a video game selection list became quite controversial, and I thank Linda Braun and Ellen Snoeyenbos for speaking up on my behalf. Watch for more news on this topic - if gaming is a concern or interest of yours too, I’d love to hear from you.

Alane writes::

“And kudos to PLA for blogging ALA. It was most interesting reading and a whole lot better than reading just Cognotes…that human voice is very important. I hope that more associations try this as a way of reaching constituents…it’s a whole lot better than quarterly newsletters.”

Another one of our goals for the PLA Blog was to provide a multitude of voices for the meeting. We wanted to put that “human face” to the numerous passers by that seem to generate at all conferences. It looks like we’ve succeeded in doing that as well.

One goal for ALA Annual: More bloggers. I’m talking at least 40 of them. I don’t think that this is a lofty goal. We’ve proven that blogging works.

Another goal for ALA Annual: Have at least one more division blog their events. Who’s it going to be? LITA? ACRL? Who is going to step up to the plate?

Separate checks, please.

After watching Malcolm Gladwell and others speak, we headed over to Carol Brey-Casiano’s reception at the BPL Social Sciences library. 3 PLA Bloggers were present and we had the chance to speak to Brey-Casiano after shooting some pictures.

I asked Brey-Casiano is she would be willing to talk-up the PLA Blog at her various meetings and she seemed welcome to the idea. I also cornered Keith Michael Fiels at the turkey station, even though we had already spoke about the blog earlier in the week, and he agreed to do the same. Actually, I was told by a colleague that Fiels told her that I was the “nice young man who is running the blog.” Well, thank you very much Mr. Fiels.

Continuing Andrea’s and Rochelle’s point about reframing the profession, I think that blogs can do a great deal in pushing more content, events, scholarships (Andrea told me this morning that she wished she knew about a scholarship that was available when she went to library school: a blog may have helped her gain this knowledge), and much more. Blogs can move the power (read: knowledge) into the hands of more people, not just a selected few. Blogs can help re-energize librarianship by getting more people involved in the profession. Blogs can reframe. Granted blogs can’t do it alone, but they can surely help.

The fact that the “young crowd” was chatting it up with the “older librarians” at the president’s reception says alot about this reframing.

In case folks are curious about the authors & their work, or want to be among the first to read the winners’ statements, if they’re posted online. Note: some of these are the authors’ official, personal sites, and some are pages from their publishers’ sites.

Newbery
Winner: Cynthia Kadohata
Honor: Gennifer Choldenko
Honor: Russell Freedman, who will also deliver the May Hill Arbuthnot Lecture at Drexel University in May, 2005. I have tickets, and I will certainly be blogging it.
Honor: Gary D. Schmidt (very brief)

Caldecott
Winner: Kevin Henkes
Honor: Barbara Lehman (this is a press release about her award-winning The Red Book.
Honor: E.B. Lewis
Honor: Mo Willems

King
Author Winner: Toni Morrison (not an official site)
Illustrator Winner: Kadir Nelson
New Talent Author Winner: Barbara Hathaway (no official site)
Author Honor: Sheila P. Moses (National Book Award Site)
Author Honor: Sharon G. Flake
Author Honor: Marilyn Nelson
Illustrator Honor: Jerry Pinkney
Illustrator Honor: Leo and Diane Dillon

Printz
Winner: Meg Rosoff
Honor: Kenneth Oppel
Honor: Gary D. Schmidt
Honor: Allan Stratton

Edwards
Francesca Lia Block