PLA Blog

ALA 2007: Swap’n'Shop, Special Collections, Hot Outreach Tech

This week, we’ll be highlighting various ALA events that might be of interest to our readers, whether you happen to be attending ALA, or just keeping up with the conference here on the PLA Blog.

Swap & Shop: Celebrate PR!
Sponsored by LAMA
Sunday, June 24
11 am - 1:30 pm
Washington Convention Center Special Events Area
Library professionals will have the opportunity to fill their free tote bag full of the very best ideas in library public relations (annual reports, newsletters, reading promotions, and more). More than 850 library professionals attended Swap & Shop in 2006.

Ignite Your Library’s Public Relations and Outreach Using Hot Technologies
Sponsored by LAMA PRMS
Monday, June 25
10:30 am - 12 pm
Washington Convention Center, 146C
Looking for fresh marketing ideas for your library? Trying to lure those illusive teens to your branch? Want to get undergraduates to think beyond Google and check out your collections? If you answered yes to any of these questions, then this program is for you! “Ignite Your Library’s Public Relations and Outreach Using Hot Technologies” will feature Helene Blowers
(Public Library of Charlotte and Mecklenburg County), Steven Bell (Temple University) and Michael Stephens (Dominican University GSLIS) talking about strategies for using current technology to promote libraries. After their presentations, participants will break up into group discussions led by the speakers.

Leverage Technology to Enhance Fundraising
Sponsored by LAMA FRFDS
Monday, June 25th
10:30 am - 12 pm
Room 202A, Washington DC Conference Center
FUNDRAISING, a dirty word these days with so much at stake and so little funding to go around, is still the key to raising the library’s profile in our communities, while supporting sustainable services. Does technology offer any solutions to make this difficult job easier? Attend this session to find out.

There was a lot going on in this program above and beyond the title of “The Future Of Our Profession: Educating Tomorrow’s Librarians,” but I will try to stick close to the original title topic.

There are three questions that Andrei Codrescu put to himself when considering the future of librarianship:

1. How is a librarian better than a mouse click?
His answer: “The machine doesn’t waste time caring about the quality of the information. It’s an unfair competition between machine and people.” Librarians will continue to add a human expertise to information services that a computer can never offer, especially in issues beyond just finding information. This fits in nicely with the rise in popularity of social networking software, and how users are using their own human networks to help weed through the mounds of information on the Internet. In his mind, a librarian must also be a “poet, nurse, and social worker,” due to the simple act of interacting with the public. Can you imagine Google as a social worker?

2. What can library buildings do besides holding books?
His answer: “Libraries are cultural centers for those who don’t fall prey to television and video games.”

The library will never be without books, according to Codrescu. A library like books is like a museum without art. His futuristic view of libraries is one of inflatable, mobile, gigantic dormitories, like “low flying Hindenburgs, accessible by elevators, like what you’d see in 19th century science fiction,” a place of respite for those whose “souls have not been captured by Google.”

Librarians need to feed new information into Google, “instead of letting Google turn them into Googley gophers.” I agree with Andrei in his assessment that libraries should be active participants in culture, and that librarians should assist in transforming libraries into producers of culture. This is absolutely part of K. Matthew Dames’ view of the future of libraries as multimedia information systems. While I do think that patrons are beginning to understand that libraries aren’t just books (even if it means they understand that we can offer movies, music, and free internet access), libraries need to do more to market the idea of “not just books” to our patrons.

3. What does the Freedom to Read mean to the American Library Association?
His answer: Reading banned books is why Codrescu became a writer. Fighting for the Freedom to Read and fighting against the USA Patriot Act are wonderful and necessary acts on the part of ALA, and provide a crucial assistance to libraries and the world today.

His dismay comes at ALA’s lack of action on Cuban persecution of librarians and libraries. How can ALA, defenders of the Freedom to Read and freedom of expression everywhere, look away from Cuba? ALA needs to step up and say something, “to not do so is self defeating.” Personally, I thought it a bold move for Codrescu to take an opportunity where he was invited to speak to ALA for him to get on a soapbox about how ALA was acting inappropriately in the Cuba situation.

On this point I disagree with Codrescu, and there was much banter during the question and answer period about the situation with librarians being arrested and persecuted in Cuba. In truth, Andrei was focusing on the situation of private citizens lending out books from their own private collections, and being persecuted by the Cuban government as a result. These private citizens are not considered librarians, as Michael Gorman pointed out, but Codrescu insisted that if they are people who own books lending books, what else should they be called? Question three became all about the Cuban situation, and really shed no further light on the future of libraries and librarians.

After Andrei’s presentation, Michael Gorman did say a few words on what he sees for the future, but they came mostly in the form of questions for us, the librarians, questions he was not going to answer in the moment, but that he hopes to answer in the next few months:

• Can we (ALA) as a professional association define the elements of our profession in the 21st century coherently enough to pass down to the next generation?
• Do we have enough librarians for the next generation?
• Is ALA sufficiently assertive, like, say, the American Bar Association and the American Medical Association, insuring that program that educate librarians are carrying out their responsibilities in full?
• Is it unreasonable for ALA to demand a curriculum that really meets the needs of the profession in exchange for accreditation?

These are very important questions that really do require considerate thought. I think I know my answers to these questions, but I’d like to hear more about what you, our readers, think. If you’ve got a comment or question, I encourage you to leave a comment on this post, and/or explore these questions on your blog.

ALA’s Captionist
Originally uploaded by rochelle, et. al..

Many of you have probably been at an ALA program that was being live-captioned. I’m someone who tends to look at the captioning screen, rather than the people talking, and have made great sport of mis-captioned material. I hadn’t given much thought to the person who was doing the captioning, even though she is always introduced at the start of every meeting where she’s present.

It was ALA keynote speaker and now, ALA outlaw, Andrei Codrescu, who made the captionist, Patricia Graves, real to me. He was so impressed with her work that he introduced himself after the President’s Program and asked about her work. Graves told Andrei that she’d had several hand surgeries, one in recent weeks, and said that people in her line of work have a limited work-life.

So, during a break at ALA’s Council III, I introduced myself to Patricia and asked her about her work, and thanked her. It was so nice to meet her and attach her very difficult and much-appreciated work to a lovely, hard-working person.

… and I really am disappointed that I missed it. However, I ran into a colleague on Saturday who had attended the forum as she was running out to lunch, and we chatted a bit about it.

Overall, it sounds like it was a good session, or at least there were good parts to the session, but there was also decidedly unproductive parts of the session.

As I understand it, a paper on the topic was read, and there were panels of librarians (who had seen the paper beforehand) whose job it was to respond to the paper. While one librarian (my colleague) did a great job of responding to the paper, using pointed notes, proposing questions, offering counter opinions, and really speaking to the issue, it seemed like many of the other librarians (especially the academic types and professors) on the panel had simply prepared their own three page paper response to read out loud which didn’t really address the issues set forth by the original paper, but rather said what they wanted to say about what they wanted to say. This, unfortunately, seems pretty normal librarianship today, and is somewhat demonstrative of the academic/professorial approach to discussing issues, which sometimes spills over into the classroom as a style of teaching.

The small table group part of the session seemed to be a bit more intellectually fulfilling, since the smaller groupings allowed for more real discussion and a little less rhetoric and diatribe.

I didn’t get to ask whether or not any conclusionary points came out of it, like a list of goals for improving MLIS education, or even a list of aspects that are missing from library education today.

In my travels to conferences, my experiences working with library school administration, my communications with students in other programs (blogs, emails, IM, etc.), and my fellow librarian colleagues, I’ve gotten a sense of what other programs are like, and where the similar weaknesses lie. Taking that experience into consideration, here’s a skeletal overview of my ideal MLIS program, where the goal is to breed librarians with the flexibility to evolve with the ever-changing information needs of our patrons, as well as the ability to help the library profession evolve as a whole.

• Let’s get wicked selective: Like, financial firms who follow promising students in their academic careers then recruit them kind of selective. People in library school should want it, should be hungry for it, and should be super motivated to get it, and not just be there because they “need the piece of paper” or they couldn’t get a job in their own field. It’s not just about flooding the market with unemployed new librarians to throw at the retiree problem, it’s about matching each candidate as a high quality package to the profession. This includes recruiting candidates with core competencies in customer service, professional communication skills, and more that can’t be taught, as well as basic technology skills.
• Aggressive introductory coursework: a one year intro to librarianship course including field trips to see in action what each unit covers. It will take over most of your life for that one year.
• Experience: Not just your average one-semester practicum. Think the Northeastern Coop program, where students work for several semesters as part of their degree. The library school program is responsible for finding, placing, and monitoring each librarian coop, as opposed to the “find your own experience” model that seems to be prevalent.
• Valued adjuncts: It’s the job of the instructors in the program to teach students, not to rake in research dollars for the institution at large. Adjuncts add higher value, and therefore will be valued highly, for their ability to share their real-life experiences with students, and to give a sense of what’s actually going on in the profession right now. Pay them more, and stop treating them like second-class instructors because they don’t have tenure.
• Advisors that know their advisees: Gone are the days where the only interaction you have with an advisor is jumping through hoops in a schedule to have a piece of paper signed. More selective programs mean fewer students to advise, which means more quality advising time per student.
• Technology classes are mandatory: You can’t serve your patrons if you can’t work a computer, a mouse, and a printer, so you can’t get into the program. Period. You need to be able to learn about emerging technologies to serve your patrons. Period.
• Project management is also mandatory: How to assess, plan, assemble, and execute a plan, especially when working with a team from different departments and skill backgrounds, is not a prominent skill in our profession. It needs to be.
• Presentation and instruction skills: Presentations are more than just creating cue cards out of Powerpoint slides. Students must be willing and able to present their knowledge in a comprehensive, pleasing and engaging manner, and to present instructional materials with the same acuity.

Truth be told, I thought that the “The Future Of Our Profession: Educating Tomorrow’s Librarians” presentation by Andrei Codrescu (and Michael Gorman) was going to be more along the lines of what librarians needed to know and learn, and where our profession was going. I have a whole other post for this, but I will say that neither his talk, nor the question period that followed, really even touched on the subject.

Something that will be all over this topic is the Library Education Forum at the Community Church of New York on March 11, 2006. In a nutshell:

We will create a space where all may participate and critically examine the current state of LIS education with the hope that we can learn from each other and provide insight for our colleagues and peers.

This will not be a place to critique specific programs or faculty members. Instead, we hope to give voice to students and recent graduates who have only been able to participate in this general discussion as passive listeners. Be a part of shaping library education for the future. Give light to your own education, your search for work, skills you were glad to have learned and those you wish you had. Gain perspective on where LIS education is heading. Although professors and administrators will be invited to attend, the voice that will be heard will be yours—the student or recent graduate, with the hope that this will be an opportunity for those who are used to teaching to learn from us, the students.

I wish I were going to be in the country for this (I’ll be on a public librarian mindshare trip to China). If you are going to be around, and you care about the future of librarian education, please try to make it to this forum.

While looking at the posts by the prolific bloggers at the Midwinter Meeting (not just PLA, but YALSA, LITA, etc), I came to realize that the content represented a theory espoused by Kathleen de la Peña McCook about libraries within communities. McCook is known for her civic activism and “Librarian at Every Table” mantras. In order for libraries to be involved at the community level, librarians need to have a place at every government/civic meeting that takes place within their local communities.

To me, “A Blogger at Every Table” means that we have an obligation to our fellow librarians to represent and relay important information to those who couldn’t attend the numerous meetings at these events. Why do those who don’t have the money or the time have have to feel slighted from the discussions that took place? In this day and age of instant electronic content delivery, they don’t.

If we were able to, I would have loved to have a blogger at every open meeting at Midwinter. In fact, I wonder how many (out of all of the divisions who blogged) we actually transcribed and delivered to users. I also wonder how many bloggers were at these meetings but didn’t report on them on the division blogs because they felt that didn’t have “permission” to. As far as I know, many of these meetings are open to everyone (Award committees are closed, for obvious reasons), and that should be an indication that they are free to be blogged. The minutes from these open meetings are usually available (in theory), so why not make the discussions available to everyone on a blog?

My point: I’d love it if all of the divisional blogs worked together to get as much content from these meetings online as possible. This not only takes commitment, but an conscious agreement among the bloggers and blog administrators to share information. Call it a divisional blog consortium. More on this as I flesh out ideas…

It should be noted that this was probably the best blogged ALA event so far, with far more information reaching those who couldn’t come to San Antonio. Taking a look at all of the meetings in the program guide, however, we have a long way to go to get full conference/meeting coverage, which has always been my goal as a conference blog co-coordinator. Onward!

As far as I’m concerned, I was still at the conference (aack, rookie mistake…I mean meeting) while I was on the plane from Dallas to Seattle. I sat next to some lovely folks who spent most of the four hour flight talking about books they liked. When they found out I’m a librarian, they got really excited.

In the row behind me were two teens who had participated in the Best Books for Young Adults session. It was easy to pick them out with all their vendor schwag. Meet Jackie and Molly, members of the Teen Advisory Board at the Shoreline Library, part of the King County system in Washington.

Which books were your favorites?

Jackie, age 17
Cry of the Icemark by Stuart Hill
Phoenix Dance by Dia Calhoun
Twilight by Stephenie Meyer
Looking for Alaska by John Green
As Simple as Snow by Gregory Galloway
Naughts & Crosses by Malorie Blackman
Valiant by Holly Black
Dead Beat by Jim Butcher
Gil’s All Fright Diner by A. Lee Martinez
Singer by Jean Thesman

Molly, age 15
graphic novels!
Flight, vol. 2 by a bunch of people (couldn’t find it on the BBYA list)
Superman: Birthright by Mark Waid, illustrated by Leinil Yu
Daisy Kutter by Kazu Kibuishi
Mimus by Lilli Thal
Twilight by Stephenie Meyer
Boy Proof by Cecil Castellucci

Pick one book and tell me why you liked it.

Jackie: “Twilight. What it makes up for in thickness is plot development.”
Molly: “And characters.” “Superman: Birthright. It made Superman more real, versus older comics where he was this guy in tights that flew around…it made him really human.”

Anything you’d like to say to all the librarians out there?

Molly: “Thank you! Keep doing what you’re doing.”
Jackie: “Librarians throw the BEST parties!!”
Molly: “Isn’t that weird? All the stereotypes…”

p.s. Best teen comment heard at the session on Sunday: “My favorite thing about the movie - I mean book - was…”

1. Sun in January! Yippee!

Since I’m running for Council Member-at-Large (Heidi Dolamore, vote for me!), I thought I should take a look and see what I’m getting myself into.

There were less than ten non-Councilors observing the meeting, though there were plenty of chairs on the off chance a mob of folks obsessed with the Sturgis rules for parliamentary procedure showed up to get their fix.

The first little while was taken up by all of the fine print and announcements (like how to submit resolutions, amendments, etc etc). Listening to all of that, I kept thinking, “Sheesh, Council needs a wiki.”

The floor was opened up to questions and proposals for additions to the agenda. Someone asked for clarification on the ALA’s Freedom of Information Act request. Keith Michael Fiels, ALA executive director, got up and said a bunch of legal stuff which I am afraid to misquote, so I’ll just point you to the article in American Libraries which should clear things up.

Then we moved on to debate surrounding the first resolution before Council, which took up the rest of the meeting. I don’t have the text (er, wiki anyone?), but it was basically a response to proposed legislation “that calls for all 50 states to require that their school districts spend at least 65% of their budgets on direct-classroom instruction by 2008.” Unfortunately, according to a 30 year old definition, football counts as instruction, but school libraries and librarians don’t. I don’t know if I would exactly call the discussion a debate, because it was pretty clear from the start that there was a strong majority in support of the resolution, and in the end it was approved. The biggest sticking point was in the first resolved clause, because it calls upon the ALA executive director to write an annual letter in support of school libraries to a bunch of government big-wigs. The word “annual” didn’t sit well with some people, but I think everyone finally realized that it’s okay to revisit this decision in a couple of years if we decide we don’t need to send a letter anymore. Meanwhile, I learned that the American Association of School Librarians is the second largest ALA division. The most interesting point raised during debate was made by Jackie Griffin, Director of the Berkeley Public Library. She pointed out that this is also a public library issue. With decreased funding for school libraries and school library staff, public libraries are becoming the de facto school libraries, without specialized staff, training, support, or funding.

(By the way, I’m back in Seattle and will hopefully catch a bus home to Vancouver in a couple of hours. But I’ve still got to catch up with my blogging…at least one or two more posts.)

Sunday morning I crashed the OCLC breakfast, mostly to meet my friend from NC. Per usual, I was running late and only caught the last fifteen minutes, and then sat in on the roundtable discussion at the general table. The conversation was veering towards 24/7 so I excused myself before I said something bad, and sat in the lobby with my colleagues, chatting about gaming and eating fruit and a croissant. I was very proud that I convinced a buddy to join YALSA just to be part of the gaming interest group.

I went back to my hotel room, tried to write a bit, and … crashed. I was out sort of late the night before and hadn’t gotten enough sleep. I woke up refreshed, midafternoon and wandered over to La Villita for a late lunch and some souvenir shopping.

I got a Philly steak and cheese that would have made a Pennsylvanian shudder. It wasn’t uneatable, but my husband makes it with pineapple teriyaki marinated black Angus, shredded mozzarella, mushrooms, onions and peppers, so steakums and American cheese didn’t quite cut it.

I found baskets and pottery and beads and bells and clever shot glasses for friends and family before trotting off to the Conference Center to finish my tour of the exhibit halls. I never did find the division booths (where were they???). I also couldn’t find two vendors that I wanted to hit up for freebies for a program Metrowest is putting on next week on anime, manga & graphic novels.

Back to the hotel (I’ve never stayed so close to the conference center, or in such a swank place, for that matter) to drop everything off and take a quick shower before heading off to the OCLC red suite. The blue cheese and mushroom canapes were the best, and I had a great time mingling with bloggers, vendors, publishers, library school students, and other friends old & new. I didn’t RSVP for the Blog Salon either. Bad librarian!

I somehow got myself invited to dinner with a group of folks discussing libraries building community - it was sort of a focus group for the two in our party who are putting together a book. The people were from varied backgrounds and locations, and I ended up having something to say on the topic (gaming is, after all, a social event). We went to Boudro’s - I had herb-cured salmon tacos (looked like cream cheese & lox) that were REALLY good.

Then, we decided we’d crash the ASLCA party for dessert, but it was about 11:15 by the time we got there and all that was left were a handful of raspberry pastries and coffee. I ran into some MA librarians and latched onto them and we went to Medusa for late night cocktails.

We got in late and then my roommate and I talked until all hours, finally crashing around 2. I woke up at 6:30 to a blinking orange light. My first thought was that the room was on fire. It turned out my laptop’s battery was dying, so it was flashing a warning - even my computer was crashing! I managed to get back to sleep for a few more hours.

I didn’t attend any meetings Sunday (I really didn’t have any committments), but the connections made and ideas exchanged were great - sometimes, that’s the best part of the conference.

Charlie Ticket gets me home
Originally uploaded by Andrea Mercado.

Unfortunately, today was my last day at the conference in San Antonio. After days of being sick trompsing through rain and cold, just to spite me the weather in San Antonio today was warm and *gorgeous*, and I came home to cold and *snowy* Boston.

Although I’m no longer at the conference, I still have a few things to post, so you’ll still be hearing from me. It saddened me to leave such a wonderfully hospitible city and interesting conference, but I did have a good time, all things considered.

In the meantime, I leave you all in the very capable hands of our conference bloggers, who continue to do a great job posting conference coverage!