DIY Librarian

You think books and libraries have it bad? Take a look at the state of our nation’s local newspapers.

Newspapers have always been a big part of my life. Wherever my family lived, we always got a local paper, and I still do. My father and husband were both newspaper reporters for a time, and I do some freelancing for my local paper now. I am an anomaly in my generation, and a complete weirdo to younger generations. (I know young people are getting their news from the internet, but I still don’t know what they line their birdcages and compost bins with, or how they pack fragile items, or quickly dry out their wet sneakers.)

Some would say we don’t need newspapers. We can get a lot of news from other sources. Citizen journalists, bloggers, and even libraries can fill some traditional newspaper roles.

I think there is a reason the founding fathers insisted on a free press, and it wasn’t just because blogging hadn’t been invented yet. We don’t just need newspapers for our daily Sudoku fix or to line our birdcages with – we need strong, independent, and diverse media.

Who else, besides a free press, is going to do investigative journalism? (as Leonard Pitts, Jr. asks in his column).

What else will force us to look outside our own worldview? (as Nicholas Kristof asks in his column).

It’s only preliminary, but a study conducted by scholars at Princeton showed that newspapers promote political and civic engagement.

Clearly, newspapers–like libraries–need to make some changes. They need to be where their readers are (I’m following my local paper on Facebook and Twitter). They need to become more interactive (my local paper has started publishing comments received via Twitter on the opinion page). They need to focus on their specialty (usually, their local community). They need to find new ways of supporting themselves. I just hope it’s not too late.

I just finished posting the program for APLIC’s 2009 Annual Conference.

I look forward to this conference every year, and I think this year’s conference will be particularly good. While APLIC is geared toward population information professionals, the range of topics for this very small conference is impressive: data confidentiality; author’s rights and open access; delivering user training; China demographic data and GIS; ROI for libraries; and tours of ICPSR, the University of Michigan’s vast data archive, and the Ann Arbor District Library. (I’m not responsible for this great line-up, just for getting it up on the web site.)

I’m also looking forward to having the conference on the University of Michigan campus instead of in a big-city hotel. It’s always an intimate conference and I think it will be even more so this year.

If you’re interested in attending, the 3-day conference is a bargain – $200 ($75 for students) includes all the sessions and tours plus a banquet.

Inspired by a book pocket posting at librarian.net, I took a photo of the inside back cover of a book from my library. Because we still use a card checkout system, you can get quite a bit of information about the book, and about our library, from this photo.

You can tell that the library moved from one building to another. You can tell that we own (or owned at some point) multiple copies of this book. You can tell how many times it has circulated, and when. You can tell that we reuse book cards.

(We do have an online catalog and we track circulation in a database. We are not old-fashioned, just very small-scale and this system makes sense for us. I always tell new graduate students, “You just write your name on this card and drop it in the box, just like you probably did in elementary school.” I am waiting for the day when this description draws a blank stare from the student – it has not happened yet, but when it does, it will make me feel old.)

Librarian Trading Cards took a break, but they are back! I always enjoy these little glimpses into the lives of other librarians – and I was especially pleased to see a card for Lesley Farmer, who will be a panelist at a program on succession planning I’ve helped to organize for SLA 2009. You can see a description of the program in the Social Science Division’s conference guide.

This is your last chance! The deadline to submit a proposal for the poster session that my division is sponsoring at SLA 2009 has been extended to March 20, 2009.

The theme is “Inspiration and Diversity – SLA Around the Globe” – but that’s just an idea to get you started. We’re interested in seeing all kinds of ideas – research you’ve been doing, innovations in your library, or anything else relevant to SLA members.

Presenting a poster is a great way to share your ideas with colleagues, to get recognition in the field, and to justify travel in tight budget times.

The poster session, sponsored by the Social Science, Museums, Arts, & Humanities, and Education Divisions, is open to any SLA member. For details, see the call for posters.

There is still time to submit a proposal for a poster session at SLA 2009. The theme is “Inspiration and Diversity – SLA Around the Globe” – but that’s just an idea to get you started. We’re interested in seeing all kinds of ideas – research you’ve been doing, innovations in your library, or anything else relevant to SLA members.

The poster session, sponsored by the Social Science, Museums, Arts, & Humanities, and Education Divisions, is open to any SLA member. For details, see the call for posters.

A friend of mine has posted a photo he took of Spencer Shaw, a librarian from Hartford, Conn., who received a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Connecticut Black Caucus of the American Library Association.

In one of my “week in the life” series of posts, I mentioned an ACRLog post by Steven Bell about the pressure to improve presentations at library conferences.

If you found the subject interesting, you might want to check out the PALINET Leadership Network’s article on presentations. It includes some critique, some pointers, and Bell’s commentary.

Friday!

6 am. The alarm goes off. I usually get up early and run or walk with the dog a few times a week, but this week the dog hasn’t wanted to go out in the snow and ice, and I’m resting up for an indoor mile race tonight. While I’m eating breakfast, I spot a couple article I want to post to my work blog. I hope I can remember them when I get to work.

8 am. Arrive at the office. Check my email, respond to one, and look for the articles I wanted to blog. I find one, but the other does not seem to be available in the online edition of our local paper, so I use Google News to find another version. I need to call a foundation and ask for their annual report, but they are in Chicago so it’s still too early to call out there.

Noon. Checked some of my literature search RSS feeds. This is tedious so I try to check them fairly frequently and import the relevant records into EndNote libraries. While I am waiting for each record to load (I am very impatient) I browse through a publisher catalog and select a few items to add to our collection. Answered a cataloging question from a staff member.  Signed off on a book purchase. Requested funds to attend the Population Association of America meetings in April. Received another search request. Now eating a sandwich at my desk and catching up with Facebook, Twitter, and Bloglines.

The afternoon got busy, with trying to finish up a search by the end of the day, working on our difficult document request a little more, talking to our programming manager about our fledgling intranet, and answering a couple drop-in questions. (We generally operate via email and phone, so drop-in questions are a nice change. We don’t have a reference desk in our tiny library.)

4 pm. I leave early to head to my club track meet. I like that my job is pretty flexible so I can do things like this once in a while. Then after the track meet, it’s home for a quick shower and then off to the pub for dinner.

This is the only day this week that I don’t have something scheduled in the evening. While I like being active and busy, I really need the break.

6 am. The alarm goes off. I get up and take a peak outside. It is all frozen slush in my parking area, so shoveling won’t do much good. I pray that I can get my car out, and go about making coffee and cereal.

8 am. I arrive at the office. The drive in was pretty icy. I check my email, briefly look at Twitter, and get to work on this search. I’m glad I checked my email and responded to a few APLIC things last night so I can get right to work this morning. I’m searching for active research grants on a topic, so a researcher can see what’s been funded recently before she submits her own proposal.

9:30 am. Finished part one of the search, which was needed by today. Taking a break to follow up on a document request and a few other things before starting on part two of the search, which is not as urgent.

10:30 am. Catching up on a few library blogs, including an ACRLog post questioning whether we put too much pressure on library conference presenters. (For the record, I don’t think we are the only profession concerned about the quality of our conference presentations. We just notice our own navel-gazing more. The genesis of my annual poster design workshop was a request from a faculty member for help improving the quality of posters at a conference he was involved in.) I am then prompted to update my web page on poster design.

Noon. Eat my PB&J while reading through emails. There are a lot today: more back and forth about the APLIC newsletter, SLA 2009 programs, a request to re-send a file that had problems, information about the LFO meeting I had wrong on my calendar, a question from a staff member about how to search for his publications. Heading over to the library to grab a cup of coffee to keep me going. I haven’t been getting quite enough sleep this week.

The afternoon gets busy: finishing up the search request, responding to emails, talking to a few staff members who drop by my office. I receive another search request, needed by tomorrow, so it looks like another busy day tomorrow.

5:10 pm. Head over to the library to say hello to my husband. It’s been a few days since we’ve talked in person (the problem with the night shift). One of our faculty researchers passes by, so I talk to her about the search results I just sent her. She seems happy. I love moments like that. While I’m at the library, I check out a book I want to read, then head out to run some errands (so much for an evening with no obligations).

6:45 pm. Arrive home. Let the dog out, cook dinner (burritos – my first real cooking of the week), eat, call my grandmother, give the dog a bath, and settle into the armchair with my laptop to finish up the APLIC newsletter and blog launch. Catch up with a few people on Facebook and answer some personal emails.

11 pm. I really need to start getting to bed earlier!