What a day to be back

Some days blogging on library stuff is just too easy.
(thank you Penny Arcade)

Facebook and shark jumping

I was not an early adopter when it came to social networking. I didn't see the attraction early on. I figured if I was no longer in contact with you, well I didn't care enough to keep in touch and nor did you.

Hell, perhaps I was deliberately ignoring one or two people (or in fact, almost everyone I went to school with).

If my memory is correct, I took the leap into facebook following the ALIA New Grads' Symposium in Sydney a couple of years ago. And it was then intended as a professional development tool, I befriended some of the folk I'd met at the conference, joined a couple of library related groups (or pages, or became a fan of...). It was nice and easy, library related status updates amused me. I felt connected to people across the country who were (like me) attempting to push their newgrad thinking on the intractably boring baby boomers who blocked our path to the top of the library tree (to rely on stereotypes).

But it was an idealised facebook which I joined. One without the foolish pokes and sheep throwing of the hoi polloi of the online world. However soon the real world impinged on my utopian fantasy as friends found me online.
Then friends of friends...
and school acquaintances I thought I had left behind for good.

But that alone is not the reason I am suggesting a shark has been jumped. No, I am now facebook friends with both my eldest daughter and my step-mother.

Let that sink in folks,
facebook is no so ubiquitous that there are three generations of us, from my daughter (who is keeping in contact with friends she lost touch with when we moved interstate), to my step-mother is is vainly calling out "what is a poke, it says someone poked me"

Sure, there are still librarians in my list of friends, probably more of them than any other group. And they are the most active of my friends. So I am not about to abandon facebook as a tool for a librarian, but I am no longer feeling quite as productive when I have a facebook tab open at work.

Back again? Lets wait and see

There have been (whether you knew it or not) several ADHD librarian posts written of late. However they have been placed under an embargo as I am no longer an anonymous blogger and I don't feel like harpooning my own career.

So, I have been looking at areas where I can keep blogging without risk to my life and reputation. I am now ready to try again and see if I can do some regular blogging of my world.

I was thinking of redoing the blog layout first, but have decided that is a form of procrastination, so it is the old layout and if I can blog semi-regularly then it may be worth my while doing some work on updating the layout.

So, what have I been doing since my last flurry of regular posting?
Well, I am working for an organisation with a very low level if IT support and very little in the way of new technology.
In some ways I have been trying to remedy this, but for the most part I have unfortunately been content to let my staff continue with what they have always been doing, avoiding rocking the boat...

Of course there are good reasons for this, dropping into a place as a new manager and leaping at every windmill shouting "this is how we did it at my last library"
well, that'll just set everyone offside. Still, I should have found a few more windmills to tilt by now. So, perhaps this blog will chronicle some successful jousting of a windmill or two.

I've also spent a couple of years on a committee for an ALIA biennial conference. Did I learn much form that? Well, hell yes (and some of it is perhaps worth retelling) so I may bite the hand that professionally recognises me and have a look at some of the backroom shenanigans that lead up to a (reasonably) successful conference.

I also want to do a bit of critical thinking of 2.0 'stuff' from the point of view of someone who plays with the new and the shiny, but also from the pov of an organisation where that is a new concept.

So, am I back?
no promises.

In Which I Admit I Piss People Off

My current situation is (as I believe I have stated) that my co-workers at my new job are aware of this blog. As such (and due to my inability to self-censor once I get into a writing flow) I have been reluctant to continue blogging library issues here. Sure I could blog personal issues, but I don’t want to be the new lonelygirl or I could blog theology, but as my current employer is a Christian organisation even that could lead to wailing and gnashing of teeth.

That said, I find myself in need of an outlet at this moment (and in possession of plenty of ADHD related library shenanigan stuff).
So, here goes.

At present I am in the midst of a big library move, my library has been gifted 16000 new items, which as a small library is significant. It has resulted in a lot of work though, floors strengthened, a wall removed, my staff all relocated to a new office and other stuff, like stamping 16000 items, merging catalogue records and stocktaking the incoming collection.

And I as the manager am responsible for the planning to ensure that this all goes according to plan. Yes, I need to plan things. Sure, I make light of this and I do tend to be a bit relaxed about things (which worries people).

How worried do people get? Well my 2IC and the building maintenance supervisor presented me with a timeline. A very good one in fact, so I didn’t need to do that. I just gave it my approval and worried that it was done because they don’t believe I could do it myself. It was however a very ambitious timeline and I did express my belief that it was unlikely that we would find ourselves living in a perfect world and as such I was not concerned with making these dates writ in stone. I have been pleasantly surprised however to find that things have gone very close to the timeline.

One area which has caused time to expand has been the lack of volunteers from amongst the students. Apparently there has in the past been a large number of students willing to volunteer to assist at times like this. Well, you see the place has grown out of an old charismatic bible college and that attitude of all mucking in and having working bees has persisted for quite a long time. It would seem however that it has finally died. Which does not come as a surprise to me as I believe that that part of our culture is dying across the country not just amongst the Charismatics.

Still, I have been given a bit of extra money to spend on casual staff and we are going along very well. Our extension is done, our new shelving (well a mix of old, new, recycled, reclaimed, stolen and mismatched shelving) is being assembled. I have got my staff moving our existing collection into the new area (backwards) leaving what I have estimated is enough room to interfile the new collection (which will be interesting, am I an estimator to be reckoned with? So far I am doing very well, but so far I have done but a fraction of the total so there is still time for spectacular failure.

I have bay end panels for standup OPACs on order. I have people moving our computers around to create some more shelf space. I have had new air-conditioning fitted and the painters in all at the same time we have been doing this. Fun fun fun.

But all in fact just how the ADHD brain was designed to live. I haven't minded at all. It has been the most enjoyable part of my time here so far.

But, it is time for you to play the game Could You Cope With Working With ADHD Librarian.
You see, my 2IC wants a plan of the final layout for the library.
Seems fair? You’d want one too perhaps?

I keep saying "I'm playing it by ear"
or alternatively, "I'm waiting to see how it looks when we put up the new shelves"

Perfectly logical (in my mind)
and in my defence it is working very well so far,
but I am aware I am pissing off one (almost retired) very long-standing staff member (who has in fact pretty well built this library from nothing).
So in terms of people you shouldn’t piss off, she’s at the top of the list.

Still, she didn’t want to be the boss (or so I hear). So she has in fact got me and my wonderful way of doing things.

Ban Books

I created this little poster today as a comment on a FARK thread. Thought I'd put it out there for all librarians to use. No idea where I stole the image from (I downloaded it for just such a use some time ago but neglected to note the source. Naughty librarian) Still, as far as I am concerned you can remix, reuse, reword, recycle, rinse, repeat and do whatever you like with it. Copyleft forever!



also,
I am not dead. I'm just working somewhere where they knew about my blog before I got here, which mean I can't be quite so self destructively honest and self depreciatingly ironic. As such I am still thinking of the future direction of the ADHD librarian persona.
But I will blog again...

someday.

Baldyman Baldyman

Do you ever visit Bob the Angry Flower? Well you should dammit!
the cartoonist (Stephen Notley) has recently drawn one of my favourite Biblical stories. 2 kings 2 11-22, yes you know the one. A heartwarming story in which children learn that if they tease a bald man they deserve to be ripped to pieces by bears.

Stupidity or some sort of Irony I am too supid to get?

Bill Knott is an American Poet with a blog,
no news there until he published a rather anti-librarian rant (did someone delete his books from their collection?)
What does he think of us?

"an ugly bunch of pompous bureaucrats and jumped-up warehouse stockclerks"

is that so? Anything else you'd like to add?

"That librarians like Nazis should cloak their crazed extermination of books with deceptively innocuous phraseology should be no surprise once you realize that librarians are Nazis.
Everybody knows librarians are sexually repressed; that is a truism, a generally accepted fact—
And indeed for most librarians the only erotic release possible occurs when they commit the perverted act of deacquisition, when they destroy the products of creative minds.
The librarian and the writer are natural enemies, cobra and mongoose."

Good lord, the man is completely barmy.

"...but I would bet anything that many librarians often sneak some of these deposed books into the toilet and orgiastically rip them apart. I bet they snicker and wink at each other when they emerge tugging straight their skirts and trousers."

"You can question them about their discard policies, but don't delude yourself they'll tell you the truth: remember they're public employees, they're like members of your legislature, malfeasants who hide their evil behind walls of bureaucratise and lies."

Am I missing something here, because this reads like the words of someone who believes what he is saying?

So,
I decided to post a reply on his site

Deacquisition,
Is that really a word?
I just say deleted
Thrown out
discarded

I've never come across a padlocked dumpster in a library (unless we're disposing of old patron record cards and we are waiting for them to be sent to the industrial shredder, but it’s all on computer these days so that is unlikely). In fact I’ve indulge in my fair share of dumpster diving for books. Although…
I’ve always worked or libraries where the old, infirm and unloved books were sold off for a few cents each to anyone who felt they were worth rescuing. So those left in the dumpster were really the unloved (1970s accounting textbooks, DOS handbooks, Goosebumps books with cracked dry glue and loose pages…)

One trouble with your post is, no one knows which librarians you are talking about (we are legion).
Your local free public library keeps different things and for different reasons to an academic library. Likewise a national library has another set of ideals altogether and government department libraries, law libraries, research libraries… (the list goes on). Is each one of these librarians equally culpable in this NAZI orgy (sexually repressed) of book destruction?
How do you judge the reference librarian who stands at their desk answering questions
The cataloguer in the basement whose carefully crafted MARC allows us to find what we desire
The Children’s librarian whose storytimes make the kids crawl around the shelves roaring like lions
These librarians whose role is unrelated to the difficult task of the second half of the Collection Development Policy?
Are they too repressive,
oppressive
brown shirts

And what of poets,
sad old men in food stained undershirts
sitting alone in their apartments
their unwashed clothes
the smell of old urine
surrounded by the piles of their self published
unread
unloved
unneeded
books
Long dead is the romantic
opium eater, soldier poet
whose youth and vigour brought him women
and respect
that is a truism
a generally accepted fact

(isn’t it?)


The Effing Librarian has blogged a reply to this too.

Yeah I did a quiz - but I like this result

Which Shakespeare Play Am I?
Midsummer Night's Dream -
11% Tragic, 55% Comic,
32% Romantic, 38% Historic
You are A Midsummer Night's Dream. Blending elements of comedy and romance, A Midsummer Night's Dream tells the story of mischievous fairies who conspire to make everyone fall in love with everyone else, often with disastrous, yet humorous consequences. You are most likely haphazard in love, but good natured and friendly. While you may also have a mischievous side to you, it is most likely all in good fun. We have no doubt that you are an outgoing person, who may also be a bit of a klutz. And while you may not always get it right, you always try to do the right thing. We applaud you!

The Which Shakespeare Play Are You? Test

Everything New is Old Again

Well,
Dear Friends…
Here I sit at my new desk half way through my first week on the new job. And what have I learned, what do I think, should I cut and run… ?
Well, last things first, there shall be no cutting nor running. I know it is very early in the job, but I am very happy with the place. Have I mentioned which place? Should I try and keep quiet about where I am in case I want to say horrible things about people later? Probably no point as all you’d have to do is visit my facebook page to discover that I am working for Tabor Adelaide.
Tabor Adelaide? I hear many of you ask. Well, it is a small non-denominational Christian tertiary institute offering courses from VET level right up to Doctorates. It started life as a Pentecostal Bible College but somehow (I don’t know how yet) morphed so now, while it still offers theology it also does counseling, performing arts, teaching, nursing starts next year and I’m sure there is more I can’t remember yet.
But onto the library…
It is too small, but that is the cry of librarians everywhere. Luckily here the fact that the library needs bigger digs is an accepted fact and the Dean of the College mentioned some of his ideas to me on my first day. So it looks like that is a fight I don’t have to have. The staff are fantastic (although there are some casuals I am yet to meet). I am working for people with a real passion for the library and for the college as a whole.
So, what am I actually going to do then being as I obviously have it so good?
Well, there are lots of things I’ve been asking questions about. Finding out which odd things seem perfectly normal to longtime staff members and working out why we do things that way. Most of these revolve around the IT setup. Most of the systems in the library (and those is student services) don’t talk to each other, so there is a lot (and I mean a lot) of entering and re-entering the same information. Some of it we may just have to live with for now, but some of it I think I should be able to work out. So I am putting that high up on my list.

How can you help?
Well it’s kind of you to ask, do you know anyone who uses the e-library from Functional Solutions? Because before I start ringing them and complaining about what their system doesn’t do, I’d like to find out whether it is the system or whether it is the way we’re doing it.
All in all, your ADHD Librarian is a happy Library Manager.

Dinner and a few drinks with SALIN

Well,
I’m settling into the SA library scene. I say that, but I may be exaggerating a little all I have really done is to attend my first SALIN get together. A nice enough get together with a nice group of librarians. I did find out that one of the people there is going to be a speaker at the ALIA conference in September (and I even remembered her abstract) However someone did let slip that she hadn’t finished the paper (which is due soon). As you can imagine I was subtle in my approach to her on the subject, um OK perhaps I wasn’t but I had fun casually mentioning I was a member of the committee and I was waiting for her paper.

I also got the chance to talk to a couple of people who hadn’t employed me. I did get some congratulations on the job I now have, included in the conversation was an opinion that I was better suited for a management role. I took this as a dreadful insult at first, then I remembered the person saying this was herself a manager and as such she probably meant the word manager in its non-insulting way (I know it is an archaic use of the term).

I also got the chance to put forward my hypothesis that the resume/interview system in Australian government is broken. And no, this wasn’t a dig at people not employing me. In fact the point I made was that I do well in interview situations, but that doesn’t prove I will be better at the job than someone who gets so nervous in an interview that they loose the ability to speak. Sure, I might be the better person to be your front of house or the do the introductions for speakers at your big library event, but does it make me the best cataloguer.

It was interesting that a couple of people agreed that there was some problem in this area but felt that in the Adelaide library world this was lessened somewhat by the library world being a bit incestuous. Therefore (unless you are me, the new boy in town) people know your reputation and know a bit about what you can do and how well you can do it. I like this idea, but it does fly in the face of the playbook which tells us we are only allowed to judge people based on what they tell us in the interview. That is to say, if in an interview for a cataloguing roll and I forget to mention I can use Libraries Australia then officially no one should be taking into account that they know I can.

There was also a spinoff conversation in which a coupe of stories were recounted of people who had been given glowing references by their employers because it is an easier way to get rid of someone than to go through the process to fire someone. What does that mean for the interview process? I have no idea, other than the fact that it is more evidence that the system is flawed.

It's a gig for me, it's professional development for you

Yes gentle reader,
in September of this year the Australian Library and Information Association will be holding a conference in Alice Springs. A wonderful little city all on its own in the middle of the emptyness that is Australia, so if you're wondering what to do for your professional development this year you should add this to your diary.

Still, it seems like a long way away, doesn’t it. I mean Australia probably seems remote to many of you and Alice Springs seems remote even to most Australians. Yet there are some very good reasons to come along. Most notably amongst those is that your ADHD Librarian will be the MC throughout the conference. Yes, my brand of irreverence for our profession will be being broadcast from the roving mike unedited and unapologetic. I have no idea what I will be saying, but in amongst the introductions, directions and general housekeeping messages I plan on a decent sideline of sarcasm, social satire, stream of consciousness monologuing and possibly ad lib interviews with random people walking the halls.

Other reasons to visit include a very nice program of speakers, interesting library tours, a fantastic social program and a wonderful setting. Speaking of which, the conference is the week before the Henley on Todd Regatta so that is one reason to extend your visit to include a holiday or you could take a nice walk to see Uluru (it’s only 500km from the venue) well then perhaps a bus trip?

Whatever reason you need to give your manager to convince them you should be there, let me know and I’ll tell them we’re doing it. Just make sure you come along.

Who ever thought Librarians weren't cool?

My librarian readers no doubt already know Andrew Finegan of Librarian Idol fame. I can however say “I knew him before he was famous” or words to that effect. So while I wouldn’t usually be spruiking the competition (library based comedians aren’t exactly highly called for) none the less I loved this piece in The Age about his Melbourne shows.

Sure it is ostensibly about his cabaret style performance, but as someone who has recently moved out of the Public Library system (but still feels passionately about its raison d'etra) his quotes really ring true and it is very nice to know that Andrew has managed to get these thoughts to a wider audience.

There's a big difference between academia and the real world. In theory, you're the repository of all this important professional knowledge, and a major aspect of librarianship is information literacy. Then you get into a library and realise that people just want to argue about their fines and internet access.

Also, libraries attract a lot of people who can't read. It's actually a credit to public libraries that even the homeless and loonies feel comfortable. They aren't moved on but it makes you question your existence sometimes.

Lets see if my move away from public libraries puts me in contact with a few more patrons who want more than bandwidth and a warm place to spend the day. And for those of you still in the public system, keep up the good fight.

Why with all of the sexing?

This little piece has just popped into my email (for the third or fourth time courtesy of my being subscribed to multiple ALIA email lists).

Congratulations to Suzanne Parker, from the University of Queensland, for providing the ALIA Information Literacy Forum with its new name – ALIA PATHWAYS!

Now I don’t know Suzanne (unless we met at a conference in which case I apologise, terrible with names but I’m sure I’d recall your face if we met again. I blame the ADHD – it’s easier than doing something about it)
Anyway, I don’t know Suzanne but I’m sure it’s not her fault there was a competition. Nor would it be her fault she won. So I'm trying to say this post isn't about her at all but I'm using this as an example of ‘sexing up’ something that doesn’t need the sexing. Which seems to keep happening in library land, is no one is happy to be a librarian anymore?

ALIA Information Literacy Forum is a perfect name. I read it and I know what it is. It is an information literacy forum. And if I am associated with the library world then chances are I know what ALIA is too, but even if I don’t there is enough information in the name for me to make sense of the group and to make educated guesses at some of what it does.
ALIA Pathways however is a complete mystery to me, in fact if you were to ask me in six months what ALIA Pathways did. Chances are that despite my having written this post I will be unable to tell you.

Why must we try and make everything seem so much more exciting than it is. Do we need to fool people into coming along to find out about these new ‘pathways’ and if we do aren’t they going to be disappointed when they find out it is just information literacy.
Meanwhile those with an interest in information literacy are staying at home because they don’t care about pathways. They just keep checking the calendar and wondering when ALIA is going to do something about information literacy.

That said, if you are interested in Information Literacy they are looking for new committee members, so if you don't mind having to explain Pathways in every job interview you get from here on in you might like to visit their website for some details.

Past Job Hunting

On previous occasions I have tried different methods to get jobs, with (for the most part) a lot of success. As an unqualified library assistant, ALT or stackie I had a great run. For a while I was sitting at close to a 100% success record of being offered every job I made interview for.
So, how did I manage this? Well I was a young man in a field where there weren’t a lot of young me. I think that helped me stand out in the minds of the panels, plus I manage to be reasonably relaxed and conversational in an interview situation (I have recently learned this is called assuming rapport – but I knew how to do it before I knew there was a name for it).
More than that I came across as a bright person, with age the ‘bright young thing’ has faded because the older you get the more is expected of you, but especially as a young man this helped. That was phase one of the career, which saw me move from temping for the State Library of NSW to a contract role with the University of Western Sydney Library and then into permanent work for Penrith City Council.

Job hunting phase two happened when it was getting time for me to move on from Penrith. They had been fantastic about supporting my study, but the staff there were all settled in their jobs and no one was going to retire to give me a librarian's role. So with about six months to go before I got my ALIA seal of Librarianness ™ I started leveraging my new found intellectual capital and signed up with an agency. Agency job hunting really does make so much of the process easier, I found myself in interviews for jobs I had no business being interviewed for. The trouble there is that this can soon lead to a feeling of complete disenchantment, because as someone completely unsuited to the role I was not going to get the job. My success rate during this period slumped to 0%. Therefore after my graduation I started two things, I started writing my own resumes again and I started casting a wider net. I had interviews in Dubbo and Orange, I drove from Western Sydney to Tamworth and back in a day just for a half hour interview and I had a phone interview for a Job in Alice Springs. Well, long term readers will know that the Alice job was a go and indeed most of this blog so far has been about that job. I was also successful in Dubbo but only after their first choice ‘didn’t work out’ by which time I was en route to Central Australia and the best five years a Newgrad Librarian could ask for. Librarians in Orange and in Tamworth weep for your lack of foresight!

Phase the third has been an interesting one, in order to calm readers of a nervous disposition, let me be clear. I have found my new job and am poised to begin. This phase however has been a strange one. I have had several interviews and have been given positive feedback even from the ones I didn’t get (no silver medals in the jobs race). But what has taken me aback more than anything else is the jobs I haven’t made interview for. It seems a most unsatisfactory system when I can apply for practically identical jobs in two similar sized organisations and be interviewed for one but not another. Likewise I have made interview for positions paying $20,000 a year more than jobs I haven’t made interview for. The process I can say (having been on both sides) is broken and needs more than a facelift if we are going to find the best people for our libraries.

The other interesting part of phase three as opposed to phase two is the differing cities. In Sydney I knew people and while I wasn’t exactly the name on everyone’s lips the people I was talking to knew the same people I did. An interview which started with “so you work with Peter Goodfellow” was always going to go well. They already had a high opinion of me based on who I worked with. Plus I knew people from a couple of public library networking groups. Sure this was the days before the ALIA newgrads group (or so I believe, certainly I didn’t know of it if it did exist) but it was a small enough pool of people that you felt some sort of familiarity. Adelaide has been a different matter, I haven’t been spruiking myself as the ADHD Librarian but I have been able to drop into resumes and interviews that I am on the committee for the ALIA Biennial. Plus I’m sure it doesn’t hurt to mention I have presented a couple of conference papers.
Correction, actually it can hurt. I was turned down for one job because (if I can remember the wording) I was going to be bored with it and find myself something better in a fortnight. So I should warn people it is possible to oversell yourself sometimes.
Perhaps that is the reason I didn’t get interviews for some of the positions I thought I was a shoe in for?

35 essentials and desirables in one job description

OK, we're on to my experiences now. So this one is a good starting point as I've already alluded to the fact that I had to write War and Peace for one job application. In fact there were two jobs at this organisation, luckily for me they were word for word identical (despite the fact that the jobs weren't). This is clinically insane and is no way to run a business. Can you imagine having to read ten or twenty, twenty page resumes in order to work out which five people you'll interview?
Plus, how many people will decide they aren't going to waste their time. Perhaps they'll focus on the other jobs advertised that week.

So, why do they think that this is a good idea? I guess you’d need to talk to their HR department, I could see their hands all over this job description in the (multiple) OH&S style questions but there was more stupidity than that.
There were questions which were repeats, so while in skills you might have “ability to read” then under the heading experience you get “experience with the written word” and a little later on in Job Specific Skills you get “ability to read stories to kiddies”
I think I’m making the point here, that I found this a stupid way of finding out about job applicants. I had to repeat myself in several places, trying to reword things so it wasn’t word for word what I’d written in an identical (but slightly differently worded) question.

As a job seeker I’d say that this is clinically insane and points out to me that this is the sort of organisation which is horribly rule bound and whose bureaucracy has gone mad. Now, I was a new boy in town just moved from interstate. As such I was applying for everything and as I had already resigned from my old job I had lots of time to apply for jobs. However, this sort of application process might well put off people who are just looking for a change or a move up the career ladder. And in some cases these people may be the best applicants, not in this case because I was the best applicant in this case obviously (although in this case they didn’t realise it).

How many essential and desirable points do I think should be in a job description? Ten would be too many, but if you have to put in a couple of standard OH&S questions then that's only 8 left for job specific ones. But make sure they are specific to the job and that there is no overlap between the questions, that's just a waste of everyone's time.