Attempting Elegance

Ages ago I promised some librarians I’d post my speaker’s notes for my IOLUG presentation on online identity.  Here they are, behind the jump.  It’s pretty true to what I said that day; I tend to paraphrase off these writings rather than read straight from them, and this version is missing some anecdotes, but the core of it is there.

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This is an exceptionally busy time of year in academia, with the end of the semester approaching.  For this librarian it means “the end of classes” which means “the end of long open hours” which means “Project Time”.  One of my between-semester projects is to work on my application for continuing appointment — the elusive and demanding Tenure File.  If all goes as expected, by July 1 of 2009 I’ll be a tenured librarian at the Associate Librarian rank, and I’ll be proud of that accomplishment.  I realized when I was in my last position that if I stayed at that institution I could be tenured by 30.  My mind boggled.  Instead, I’ll be tenured at 33.  Still, I boggle.  Grandchild to academics, I know what Tenure meant in their lives.  Tenure meant stability.  Tenure meant accomplishment.  Tenure meant respect.

But what’s it mean for me, really?  On the one hand, it means I’ve met the criteria established by The Powers That Be at my institution for becoming a lifetime member of our faculty.  It means I’ve accomplished enough work and produced enough scholarship to warrant being kept on indefinitely.  It means I’m a valued member of our campus team who is being honored with a mark of rank and status commensurate to those accomplishments.  More bluntly, it means I can’t be fired. Easily.

For a librarian, I’m not sure what it means.  For our classroom faculty, there’s a culture of tenure and scholarship that defines their work in a particular way.  I often feel that librarians are shoehorned into that structure, but that it doesn’t ever fit quite comfortably.  My scholarship activities, while valuable to the profession and interesting to my colleagues, are not the same kind of research or style of writing done by my faculty peers in the Biology or History departments, but we will achieve the same rank as a result of our efforts.  My daily work bears no resemblance to the work done by my peers in the English department or Music school, yet we will be given the same rewards for our accomplishments.  I don’t know what to make of it, really.

But there’s something to be said for sitting down after six years of work and pulling together all the pieces of your accomplishments and really understanding what you’ve done in that time.  It’s an opportunity for reflection, for introspection, and self-evaluation, and as I begin the process, I’m proud of what I see.  I’m proud of myself.

And that’s worth more than tenure.

Because in the sciences it’s totally okay to blow the concept of peer review out of the water in service of being trendy, right?  I roll my eyes.  For those not yet following along at home, some links:

The problem:

Journal of Access Services 5:4

The blowback, and only the parts that show up in my FriendFeed as of 3:20pm.  I’m certain there’s more:

Apparently Annoyed Anonymous Bloggers can get published in peer-reviewed journals

Officially Annoyed

Being Annoyed with out Being Annoying

Professionally Annoyed
Ridiculous.  Frustrating.  Stupid.  I want it to be some kind of joke that we just missed the punchline on.  Barring that, I can’t wait to hear what Haworth has to say for themselves; I hope they have some excuse for their blatant disregard of their own editorial policies other than “don’t people love the AL? Now they’ll love us, too!”

Sarah Cohen  :  How do we talk about technology to the uninitiated?

The irony of going last. We talk about technology, and we talk about technology, and we talk about technology, but we’re forgetting a big part of our user base: our faculty.  So this presentation ended up last, and that’s sort of the point — we’re leaving the faculty for last.  And that’s a flaw.

What can 2.0 do in our libraries, classrooms, and colleges? Opportunities:  Creation, Collaboration, Commenting, Commitment.  These are the things we like to focus on.  But we must acknowledge the challenges:  Distraction (hey, who’s twittering right now?!), Disruption, Disturbing (many people believe this.  We are not everyone.), Dumb (perhaps our job is to explain that it may not be?).

Who’s using technology?  We are. Libraries have embraced and adapted technology in a unique way.  Our students also are technology-engaged.  But what about the faculty?  Are they using technology?  Do we know the answer to this question?  What assumptions do we make about this question that then inform our actions?

Ideas about faculty technology use:  Faculty are wary of technology.  They don’t want to look stupid in the classroom.  They don’t want to waste valuable time.  They don’t think they have anything to learn or gain from it.  And many don’t see a middle ground – either they use technology or they don’t.

Why do we need to engage our faculty?  Because of student expectations.  Educause studies show that 61% of students agree or strongly agree that IT in courses improves learning.  “They agree that when used poorly IT detracts from” student learning.  (Thus, if faculty use the tech poorly… they look bad. Which they don’t want.)

A two-pronged approach to improvement:  Inclusion and personalization and then logistics.  We need to help faculty see that technology isn’t “not for” them.  And it’s not just for the classroom.  We also need to talk about the technology itself, and use language that makes sense (use CommonCraft, for example).  And we need to figure out where to start by figuring out what the faculty at our own institutions need.

Ways to start:

• Facebook mentality.  We use Facebook because it’s where our students are.  So we also need to get out there and put ourselves where our faculty are.  Find them in their native habitats and listen to them about what they do there.
• Celebrate their successes.  If there’s one small success, network it to another small success.  Build a community of technology users who can help other technology users.
• Collaborate, don’t pontificate.  Faculty are often not a group who wants to be told.  Work together in gentle and easy ways.
• Small steps.  Academia does not move quickly by nature.  So start small – “Maybe we don’t want to start with SecondLife.  Maybe we don’t want to start there, but instead with a wiki.”

Examples of faculty meaningfully using technology:

• Student blogging.  Students set them up, faculty read them and grade them.  It’s inside the traditional “students do work for grades” paradigm, but it exposes both students and faculty to web 2.0 technology.
• Digg.  Faculty do not like Digg.  Digg is a slap in the face to the peer-review scholarship process.  But it makes a great talking point for many classes, to allow discussion between faculty and students about new media, communication, scholarship, etc.
• Flickr.  Current events, media, art, etc.
• YouTube.  Tell stories.  Create media.  Tape presentations.  Share content.  But help!  Help them!

Faculty play many roles on campus.  They are our gateway to students, our partners in education, learners in their own rights, patrons and users of our libraries.  We must not forget them in our fervor to serve our other users.  Change to how we approach faculty and technology must happen in more ways than one.  We must share our successes and interests.  We need to get out there an interact with them.  We also need to do both of those things by sharing, presenting, and publishing in their venues as well as our own.

So what might go wrong?  We may get impatient.  Patience and Fortitude, outside NYPL, are not just symbols, they are perspectives that are important for us to remember when we start tackling the uphill road of educating faculty colleagues about technology issues.  We must make the time to be patient on the person-to-person level, and step way, way back to the level that anyone needs us to go to.

I leave for Computers in Libraries in less than three days. I spent the majority of my day today working on my slides for my preconference session — I know exactly what I want to talk about, but putting it together in a readable, visually interesting, “I have more to say than what’s written here but what’s here is useful” kind of way always takes more time than I expect it to. I got really into it today, though, and had a great time trying to think concisely and usefully, and I think did a good job on my first draft. I’ll tidy it up on Saturday night, make whatever minor changes seem obvious on second readthrough, confirm the details, and be all ready for Sunday.

Of course, I was so happily typing, formatting, inserting images, and reordering my thoughts that I missed my emergency dentist appointment today. Completely forgot, despite the ache in my jaw. Now I get to wait an extra three weeks to see if my wisdom teeth need to come out. If my teeth suddenly go all crooked during CiL, you’ll know why — I was too busy geeking out with a slideshow to tend to my dental health. Smart choice, that. *sigh*

I also reviewed faculty requests and compiled about $1000 in orders for our acquisitions clerk to process. That was how I wound down after my run-in with the extremely annoyed dental secretary. She didn’t have much sympathy for my frantic, “I’m so sorry, I was working on a project and just lost track of time” apology, but, well, I suppose I would be less than sympathetic, as well.

Tomorrow I need to finish compiling my own orders to finish my annual spending, check the state of the other librarians’ budgets, run some reports to ascertain how close we are to our fiscal projections and goals for April, possibly pull a cart of weeding, and definitely attend the monthly coordinators’ meeting tomorrow afternoon.

Friday I have an early personnel meeting, and then the rest of the day ‘free’ to prepare to leave for a week. I am confident, positive, and absolutely certain that something will come up between now and then to fill that day with This Must Be Done Before I Leave tasks.

And then? Drive to Syracuse, fly to Dulles, have lunch with some dear old friends, then meet the Academic Library 2.0 crew at the hotel for dinner and last-minute coordinating. Then the conference, the networking, the good restaurants, and the, well, beer. After that’s all over, I’m taking a few days of vacation to spend time with the aforementioned dear friends and their partners, and then I return to home and work on Monday.

From here on out, this will be a very conference-heavy blog, so if that interests you, this one’s for you. If a play-by-play of my CiL experience sounds duller than dull to you, I apologize. I’ll be back to normal on the 13th.

If you’re going to be in DC, see you there!