This Post Didn't Start Out as an Anti-MLA Rant

Click here, and read T. Scott P.'s "issue of strategic focus for MLA", for in the first paragraph, he has captured the essence of what medical librarians face in our very near future.

The best line, in my opinion:
"Libraries are important; but librarians make the essential difference, and the library walls should no longer hold us back."

I was even enthused with the first sentence of the next paragraph:
"MLA has a key role to play in helping us imagine the multitude of new ways in which we can become indispensable to our organizations."

But then:
"By defining the community in which we engage with each other, by providing the continuing education avenues in which we learn new skills and develop our talents, and by presenting the dynamic image of 21st century librarians to the public, MLA is an invaluable asset in helping each one of us become more effective every day."

I say, in the dulcet tones of a tantruming toddler, "No, no, NO, NO, NO!.

No, MLA does a terrible and exclusionary job of definging the community in which we engage with each other. It's too expensive, too small, and too focused on MLS librarians.

No, MLA's continuing education is often between two and five years behind what even ALA is putting out, which is two to five years behind what librarians really need.

And double-no, continuing education and credentialling are not going to save us!

Arrgh! I've got to go to a meeting, and I may not get back to this today. I wanted to do a quick post about the sentence I liked, to emphasize and agree with, "It's not the library, it's the librarians." However, I can't agree with the same-old, same-old coming out of MLA. The association has not been able to effectively manage the problems of the professions with these methods in the past--how can they be effective means of managing it for the future?

WDT

Logic Models Are Just So... Logical

I keep a little mental list of things I've learned at work, both positive and negative, that were of lasting value. I learned all about copiers, printers, Excel, and mail merges. I learned that your employess respect you more if you are usually the last to leave on Friday instead of the first. I learned computer-based MARC-21 cataloging from one of the most personable catalogers you will ever meet, and as a corollary I learned the truth of the statement "Garbage in, garbage out."

From the RML, I learned about logic models (among other things), and I just can't get over how useful they are for planning any kind of project. What I really want to know about my work is what kind of impact it's making, and it you work the logic model system in its logical way, you can easily assess your impact or lack thereof.

Logic models are a valuable way to think about your work, and it's one more reason I am so happy I had my time with the RML.

WDT

OMG! Google Sidebar!

I've seen glwoing mentions in the biblioblogosphere of the new Google Desktop, which includes the Google Sidebar, but I hadn't gotten around to putting it on my machine. I just didn't want to be another Google-Me-Too kind of person, because I know what Google does with all that data. I know they track my every move. I was trying to resist giving them even more access to my habits.

This morning, I went to talk to a faculty member in the department I serve who had just installed it, and when I saw it, I said, "I was wrong. I gotta have that."

So, now it's installed, and I have to give it up to Google--Google Sidebar is one of the most exciting things I personally have seen in a while. It comes with little boxes that do news, web clips, a "scratch pad" for typing little notes, a photo viewer, "quick view" links to the last web and PC documents you have viewed, weather, stocks, more, and more! It's like My Yahoo, but up where you can see it, and with the extra bonus of desktop documents included.

I'm a little dismayed by the real estate it takes up, but with the search box and the "Quick View," I can clean up the toolbars in my browser and gain some screen zone that way. It auto installs to the right side of the screen but I've moved it to the left; it's less annoying for me that way.

I'm even a little amused by the "smart search" capabilities--I was looking for recipes for a minute this morning and it subscribed me to the Allrecipes Dinner RSS feed. I clicked on a couple of links to "praise" it.

On My Yahoo! I get my horoscope, and that's the only thing I can see that's missing from my Sidebar. I suppose if I could find a decent horoscope with an RSS feed I could add it that way.

I guess might as well drink the Kool-Aid and move from Yahoo! Mail to GMail, too. I've had that Yahoo! account since 1997, and I've been reluctant to give it up. But, but, but--the Sidebar will index my Gmail, too! How can I pass on that?!?

On a totally different topic, today was the first time I have had to use PubMed's Help on the Bookshelf since they moved it, and I am NOT impressed. I always loved the context-sensitive assistance you got when you clicked on the "Help" link in the left toolbar, so having to leave my search and drill down through a "book" really seemed like a step back. Maybe I just need to work with it more. Maybe I need to download it and have Google Desktop index it for me. Hmm.

Best wishes to all for a wondrous weekend.

WDT

The Krafty Librarian

The Krafty Librarian

Krafty asks, "What is a Librarian's Responsibility?" and it's an interesting enough post for the both of us today.

Back in the public library day, we had a smiliar conversation over whether or not to buy a book about pig hormone injections for autism. It had been mentioned several times by national media and we had a number of requests for it, but it really made me nervous. We bought it, and a bucketload of quality autism books as well. The questionable book circed a few times and then fell apart, so we withdrew it with no fanfare and no subsequent patron requests, and the quality books lived on. Seemed like a good way to meet stated patron needs while making sure good information ended up on the shelf.

A Place to Call Our Own

This is a minor thing, really it is, but I am pleased to no end: in all of the mess with the library remodel, we were able to carve out a former study room/office to be a small, classy, cosy place to meet with each other, with faculty, or with students. It's all set now, except for a few decorative touches that I have volunteered to add (amazingly, Karen only rolled her eyes a little bit).

I have found that as we get out more and talk more with people, there are a lot of opportunities that are too big for an office but too small for a conference room. I think space really affects interaction, and a more intimate space will hopefully encourage close interaction (and if any of you are smirking over having "intimate" and "close interaction" together in a sentence, I say get yer mind out o' the gutter).

Now, if only we could get the librarians the new office furniture that's been promised...

WDT

12.5 Hours is Way Too Long

On a good day, I really love my work, and on a bad day, I don't hate it, so I guess I am pretty well-placed and well-adjusted as a librarian. However, yesterday I was here from 9AM to 8:30PM because I was A) on call and thus required to be in-house from 9AM to 5PM and B) scheduled to do an orientation for Health Policy and Management Students at 8PM.

Even counting blog-writing time (20 minutes), dinner (50 minutes), and Oh-My-Goodness-I-Can't-Believe-I'm-Still-Here Insaniquariam activities (30 minutes), it was still a long, long day. I had pep, energy and verve to get me through, but it is all stunningly absent this morning. So, I'm going to take a little comp time and go home to read and relax.

Oh, man, and the nerd quotient of THAT is sky-high: the librarian is going to take some time off to READ. Ha ha!

If you're interested, I'm reading a trashy but somehow compelling fantasy series by an author named Sara Douglass. I found the series by wandering randomly through the scifi/fantasy at Central Resource and picked up the second book because of it's title. I started the first one and decided to continue on.

Ahh, it should be a lovely afternoon. And I promise, I'll have my pep back for tomorrow.

Cheapskate = Luddite

Siobhan sent me an article this morning on how to monitor your eBay auction using your cell phone or PDA, and my first thought was, "Wow, that's really neat!"

My next thought was that, especially with my return to a paper planner, I am so 1995. I had an emergency phone while travelling to Emporia for my Master's, but didn't get another until we put Trixie in daycare in early 2004. Even then, I bought a TracFone so I wouldn't have to pay a monthly service charge. It's cheap, it's convenient, and I don't use it for anything other than making the occasional phone call.

And, even though I've got a wireless PDA, it mostly stays in the cradle. This is because it won't do what I want it to do: sync with my calendar, instant message, and...work as a cell phone.

The obvious answer to this is to get either a really high-end cell phone or a combo device. However, I am waaaaaaay too cheap for this ever to happen. Not only am I not interested in spending $300+ for a device, but I am also not interested in a monthly contract for service.

This little incident has gotten me thinking about how the lack of money keeps us from pursing change in our lives, both personal and professional, technological and otherwise. How many opportunties do libraries pass up because there is not enough staff, or enough funding? Would access to these opportunities make the libraries the vital centers they want to be? Would my overbooked, constantly-juggled life be easier to manage with the right tools? Would a Treo make the difference for me between staying afloat and really reaching my goals? If you could have the money you needed to make a change in your life, what would it be?

Most libraries will never know, and I'll never know. We simply can't afford the investment needed to innovate.

Love...order...progress

Love our principle,
Order our foundation,
Progress our goal.
--Auguste Comte

The switch back to the Franklin Planner is already paying off--this is today's "inspirational" quote at the top of the notes page.

I initially glanced at it and moved on, but then I was arrested by its resonance and decided to both post it in my office and write about it.

I don't think Monsieur Comte was thinking about libraries, but he was thinking about "alturism" or "the moral obligations of individuals to serve others and place their interests above one's own" (quoted from the Wikipedia article linked above). What are (most) libraries if not an embodiment of alturistic feeling?

Love our principle
"Hey, instead of buying all these books and locking them up in rich people's houses or rich institutions, let's put 'em out on shelves where anyone can walk in and look at them! And then, let's form giant sharing arrangements where almost anything can be gotten by almost anyone for almost no charge!"

Order our foundation
Oh, and let's get 'em all organized so you can find them, too. AND, let's all use the same or very similar systems so users can wander into any library anywhere and get the gist of how things are put together.

Can you argue that order is NOT our foundation? We collect, we organize, and we disseminate. If you don't catalog it, or index it, or tag it, or whatever you wanna call it, you can't find it, making collecting moot and disseminating impossible.

Progress our goal
Why do we do what we do? Certainly not for the huge personal financial gains. I actually just had a very interesting conversation with my boss about measuring the actual impact of library services (or in our case, library improvements). If progress is the goal, how do you measure that? It's a sticky question that I'm willing to put aside for the moment, just to feel good about the possibility of progress. I'll take it on faith that the world is a better place because we all troop in each day and do the best we can at what we do.

WDT

Back on the LIS PhD Wagon

I wrote about the PhD question a bit back in June, and I'm back on the wagon again.

I think the rejection from UNT's distance program was actually a good thing, because it has forced me to seriously think about myself and what I might want out of a PhD. If accepted into UNT's program, I was planning to explore technology, and language, and search, and all that good stuff.

I could probably still do that in another PhD program; I think my qualifications for doctoral work are pretty good and that I could get in somewhere.

However, a number of spatio-temporal problems arise. To be a little less Trekky, I am severely limited by location and time, and this reduces my options substantially.

But the fact is, the more I think about it, the more genuine hope and optimism I feel. One thing that the local option can offer is faculty who are interested in the varying aspects of information access, technological and otherwise. The organization of information might take me down some intellectually stimulating paths, but thinking about access might be more ultimately satisfying.

If I truly believe that knowledge is power, then I think my studies should follow that path.

I also have to face a fact about myself: without access to the people we serve, my days are just empty. I can do the metadata thing for a couple of days, or weeks, but then at some point I have to get out to the desk or to a faculty meeting and get energized. If I am going to wade through a dissertation, I had best be sure that what truly energizes me--people--should be the focus.

I have plenty of time to get my materials together, and then I guess I'll know next spring whether or not it's going to happen.

Back to the Franklin

An organizational update: the wiki never really got off the ground; my current PDA won't sync with my Groupwise calendar without some major effort, so there's really no reason to carry it around; both Google Desktop and Grokker have fallen short of my perennial organizational dream (although I can see some use for Grokker a few versions from now).

So, I am once again drowning in sheets from notepads and other miscellaneous slips of paper, and I think I have only one choice: go back to my Franklin Planner.

I know I made a mistake when I bought a new system last fall and chose a compact binder instead of the "classic" size I carried from 1997 to 2003. I just wanted something that would fit in a large purse (instead of, say, a totally-librarian-tote-bag), but the compact size is too small to handle what I throw at it. Heck, the daily to-do list only has 26 spaces!

I've got to say, though, that I return to the Franklin semi-willingly. For one thing, it's a book, a lovely, red, leather-bound book, and there's something calming and comforting about the physicality of the object. You can play games on your PDA, but you can't use it as a wubby.

WDT

How to Make an Effective Decision

I've been thinking a lot about decision-making recently, both at home and at work. I tend to be the kind of person who takes concrete data, looks at it, assimilates it, and then adds that into my intuitive feeling about a situation to come to a decision.

When I was in marketing, we developed a data collection system to determine how many suckers were falling for our sales pitches. It proved that we were more than earning our keep, and that negative messages ("Bad guys are gonna getcha!") sold more security-system add ons than positive messages ("A fire system calls the fire department even if you can't!").

When I was in the public library, it was the rubric I developed to assign collection development money based on population, circulation, branch status designation, and independent streams of income (e.g., the Geneology branch had their own funds from the historical societies). It was easy to say, "So-and-so Branch gets more money because of these thirty-three cogent reasons."

When I was with the RML, we used a rigorous planning process based on the Kellogg Foundation Logic Model Guide. Although this process wasn't as heavily numbers-oriented as my previous two examples, it nonetheless provided a structured framework to determine progress towards a goal or goals. Those goals were tied into overarching visions or impact statements, and so it was pretty easy to see how the day-to-day work fed into the success of our venture.

Right now, none of my activities seem to have this same kind of accountability. To beat what might be a dead horse by now, how can I know what activities have a true impact if there's no way to measure it? I can serve my little sliver of the patron pie, but is that really improving the library's status? The question of whether I deserve to keep my job becomes moot if the decision is made that the library itself can be redefined into something that doesn't need librarians.

I don't necessarily see this happening, but I really feel the lack of a mission, the lack of a unified goal. If we're not working towards something, are we working ourselves out of employment?

The Worst Jobs in History

This is either from the Librarian's Index to the Internet or from the Library Link of the Day (sorry, I can't remember which), and it's hilarious.

Worst Jobs in History

The quiz is particularly humorous. It all makes a day on the desk seem a lot less odious.

WDT

It All Comes Down to Priorities

I was just having a little chat with myself about my lack of time and its impact on my work and life when I had a flash of insight:

I DO IT, TOO!

My last post just castigated those librarians who spend too much time on the little things and not enough on the tasks and projects that REALLY matter to their constituents, and I am living the example today.

What I want to be doing is working on an easy way to collect and disseminate all of the information I come across for the folks in Health Policy and Management. I'm thinking blog, but I don't have access to WordPress or a similar product here at work, so I've got to use Blogger or Bloglines or ratty old email or something. I'm just not happy with my results so far.

However, we have two newish online resources at the library that need to be promoted, and so I limited myself to 30 minutes of playing with my bloggy HPM ideas, and then I swore I would move on to creating a flyer for AccessMedicine.

And that's when it hit me: my bloggy HPM ideas are mine and mine alone. No one else here can provide that service to this constituent group. We've got a couple of fantastic Assistant Librarians who can do the darned flyer for AccessMedicine.

So, I obviously need to take a hard look in the mirror and a hard look at my to-do list. How can I use my unique skills in my set amount of time to make the most impact? Or, to use my own vernacular, what's the most useful way to shake my moneymaker?

WDT

Why (Many) Medical Librarians Deserve to Lose Their Jobs

Wow--I can't believe I just typed in that title, and I can't believe I'm actually going to go ahead and write this post. However, this topic has been rattling around in my head for a while, and I think it's time to let it out.

If this post makes you angry, I want you to think about why, and I want you to tell me why. Challenge me, and let's start a conversation.

Why (Many) Medical Librarians Deserve to Lose Their Jobs
I come from a public library background, and although I did an internship in a really terrific medical library while in library school, I always thought public libraries would be my home. Public libraries have a mission, a built-in purpose, that I found and find most appealing. Public libraries through their very existence encourage literacy, provide access, and enhance engagement.

Medical libraries, on the other hand, have a mission that seems on the surface to be just as clear and vital, but which in reality is muddled and indistinct. Where else can information truly save lives? Any medical librarian can rattle off a couple of stories about the time they provided just-in-time information to help if not save a patient. Medical information improves outcomes, eases fear, and empowers the consumers of an often-confusing health care product.

The problem is this: because of the way most medical librarians work, the number of times their work truly makes an impact are few and far between. What does the average hospital librarian spend most of her/his time doing? Much of the day is spent on circulation, processing materials (checking in journals, etc.), and processing interlibrary loans, both incoming and outgoing. This is clerical work that takes time away from activities that truly make an impact. Any librarian spending most of their time on clerical work deserves to lose their job and be replaced by a clerk. Modern healthcare cannot support an expense that cannot be justified.

"But wait," you say. "I'm a solo librarian! What else can I do? Materials have to be processed and the work has to get done!"

You get volunteers to cover your clerical work. You find ways to minimize the clerical work. You think outside the box and do whatever you have to do to get the daily clerical work down to less than 25% of your job. You implement self-serve checkout so you're no longer tied to the desk.

And then, you get out there and start shakin' your moneymaker. Medical librarians have skills, they have talents, they have gifts that make them invaluable to any healthcare organization. Who else knows that the MEDLINE search interface in MDConsult sucks? Who else knows that 30 seconds with a Jablonski's or even a Merck Manual can be better than a 20-minute Internet search? Who else truly understands what makes a piece of information a quality piece of information? Who else knows that PubMed citations end in the 1950's?

In most facilities, the medical librarian is the only one who really knows these things, and the medical librarian is the only one who really knows why these things are important. But if the librarian is trapped (willingly or unwillingly) in a room or behind a desk, s/he can't be out sharing this information with the people who need to know it. If you're trapped, you can't be making the impact that can save that pateint, and save you.

The fact is that it's not just medical librarians who face this problem: even public libraries have to justify their existence, academic librarians struggle to remain relevant in a Google world, and I can't even imagine what it must be like for corporate librarians. However, I think the nature of medical librarianship particularly encourages the kind of passivity that makes us so vulnerable. Someday, they might need us to help save somebody, so they have to keep us, right?

Not right. Not anymore.

Do you deserve to lose your job?

WDT

Absolute Overload

The problem with vacations is that you must always at some point come back; even if you are somehow permanently on vacation, at some point it ceases to be a "vacation" and starts being your "life."

It's been a beautiful five weeks for me. Even coming in on a few Mondays and Tuesdays, it essentially feels like I've been out of here since July 1. The time spent in Tiny Tot Gymnastics, looking at the "twucks" at 135th and Metcalf, and the trips to the pool have just been magical. Trixie's past that baby stage and well into toddlerdom, and more than a few people have said to me, "Oh, that's too bad--don't you just want them to stay babies forever?"

I loved Trix at three months, and six months, and nine months, but now she sees so much more, understands so much more, and really "gets it." Watching the light come on for her has been a privilege. Of course I want/wanted her to stay a baby forever; I want her to stay exactly the way she is each and every day, and at the same time, I can't wait to see the woman she grows into.

I can't stop time, though, and so it seems to me to be better to conjugate my feelings and say, I loved her yesterday, I love her today, and I will love her tomorrow.

I've got a lot of libraryland thoughts stored up, and some updates on previous posts, so there should be a lot of content through August.

WDT