Library Buzz

No - I’m not going to be presenting on anything - I mean author Michelle Knudsen - the author of Library Lion.

Michelle was signing the book at the Candlewick Press booth at the ALA Conference here in Washington. It was a treat to meet her and get her to sign a few copies of the book. She had her picture taken with me. Once I get a copy from her I’ll post it here.

I was only visiting the exhibit hall - pretty impressive - the space is two full city blocks! But I managed to run into a few people that I know. I added to my pen collection, but all the really nifty give-aways were gone - I don’t even know what I may have missed.

Another thank you to my friend and colleague Barbara Davis for tipping me off about the book. She was at ALA yesterday too and she found me in line for the book signing. After that we toured around a bit together!

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While attending SLA 2007, I attended the business meeting for the GLBT-Information Caucus - a truly fun group of folks!! In addition to the business meeting, there was a presentation by Ellen Greenblatt, Associate Dean, Technical Services, University of Colorado at Denver.

Ellen wrote and edited a book titled Gay and Lesbian Library Service back in 1990.

In talking about her own research for the book she talked about tracking through LC’s Subject Headings over the years to see how the Subject Headings for LGBT folks has changed. The term homosexual entered the vernacular in the 1880’s, but LC didn’t start using it a subject heading until much later and then only as a cross reference. It was still referring to Sexual Perversion. Only around 1974 - the same time the APA dropped homosexuality as a mental illness, did LC catch up.

Mention was made of the effort to get LC to adopt African American over Afro-American and likely there are other terms that have migrated.

It got me thinking - this might be an interesting dissertation topic for someone.

Cheers!

- David

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More from my blogging at SLA 2007 - read the official blog for more info

Hi Gang,

I’m fresh off Government Librarians Get Saavy sponsored by the Government Information Division. The presenters were Hildy Dworkin - a solo government librarian from NYC, and Roberta Shaffer, director for FLICC. Donna Scheeder of the Library of Congress was the brilliant moderator.

One of Hildy’s points was about the need for government (and all) Librarians to market their services. The challenge for us is that we also have to market our profession at the same time. When an attorney goes into a room - everyone understands what an attorney does (specialties of law aside). Special Librarians often have to explain what makes us so damn special!

Her other big point is not to say No to all opportunities. Those requests for help in the organization that are outside the immediate focus of the Library - will provide networking opportunities that often provide big payoffs for the Library.

After Roberta Shaffer explained that the work of FLICC is more than chopped liver* she proceded to talk about the future for government librarians as horizontal professionals.

Horizontal Professionals are competent (savvy) and more than mere survivors in the organization. They share their skills and resources for budget, planning etc. The biggest skill that librarians add to the organization is our ability to analyze and authenticate data and determine our data is authoritative.

In order to stay competent, Roberta encourages us to acquire skills we may not already have.

• Project Management Skills
• Privacy Management
• Digital Rights Management
• We also need to understand and develop metrics to support what we do

Next group of skills are

• Enterprise Risk Management, ERM - identify the vulnerabilites and threats of our organization
• Customer Relation/Resource Management, CRM - provide information to our patrons and help manage their time by effective delivery of our services
• Human/Computer Interaction, HCI - design our web and electronic documents in ways that are more effective and for people to read (color, fonts, graphics, organization)
• Commercial Psychology — marketing skills
• Competitive Intelligence
• Future developments - what is coming down the road for our organization

Following this was a great exchange of practices and ideas among the assembled folks. Many thanks to the Government Information Division for this program!!

*Roberta summarizes FLICC’s work as Procurement for federal libraries; Advocacy; Advice; Training and Education - PAATE or paté.

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I recently posted about the book Library Lion, by Michelle Knudsen.

I wrote to Ms. Knudsen and asked her about her inspiration for the name of Mr. McBee for her Reference clerk character. She replied

It’s funny - I thought other library folk might be familiar with the McBee name, but since the book’s publication I’ve come to believe that the reference must be unique to the library where I worked at Cornell University.

Most of the collection there has been barcoded for electronic scanning, but we still had many books that could only be checked out manually. We also had a separate tracing/searching system for those un-barcoded books, which involved pale yellow cards with perforated edges that were called . . . McBee cards. I think I remember learning that they were named for the person who created them, but maybe it’s just a library legend.

In any case, I was working there when I wrote Library Lion, and Mr. McBee just seemed the perfect name for my character, especially since he is rather old-school in his approach to library policy. Of course, as you noted in your blog entry, he does come around by the end, and happily both staff and patrons are well-served by the lion’s return.

My former boss at the library was a big believer in balancing the needs of the individual patron against the needs of the collection, and that philosophy clearly made its way into my book!

In fact - I have heard of the McBee System - I did find a personal website with a few photos of cards and a description. Some photos are missing however.

I have purchased three copies of Library Lion two as gifts and one for mysel. Ms. Knudsen will be at the ALA Conference this year in Washington, DC and will be in a book signing from 3-4pm on Monday, June 25 at the Candlewick Booth. I’ll be in line!

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I’ve been posting to the SLA Blogsite already - here are my posts from there.

Great Beginning to SLA 2007

On Saturday I took part in the CE Course - Leadership & Knowledge Services - Developing the Management Framework for Enterprise-Wide Success. The course was sponsored by the KM Division and the instructors were Dale Stanley and Guy St. Clair.
Fortunately the course only had about 18 participants so there was plenty of time for interaction.

To me, the best part of the day was the work session when we compiled an Action Plan for a project that each of us wanted to pursue. The worksheet that Dale had prepared was a great tool to organize our thoughts and posed questions to help us anticipate potential hitches to our plan.

Once completed we got into small groups and got immediate feedback before going to the larger groups. I get to take something back to work with me that is immensely practical.

So good-bye to KM - hello KD/KS — Knowledge Development / Knowledge Sharing.

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Inspired thoughts

During the Leadership Development Institute I had an inspired thought — well, it had been percolating for a while.

It seems to me that Librarians don’t do anything essentially different now than we ever have. Read this through.
The application of our skills has broadened significantly beyond the printed book, but Raganathan’s Five Rules still apply and are a part of Web 2.0 and Library 2.0.

The downside of this idea is the notion that Librarians could become complacent or worse, stagnant and resistant to change.

The upside is that we regularly re-describe ourselves and re-evaluate who we are what we do and that keeps us fresh.

So much of the world around us changes so fast - we can be the constant as we adapt our skills the the changing scene (the moving baselines!)

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Social Life so far…

The conference is going gangbusters so far and it has been a lot of fun. The CE Course on Leadership and Knowledge Services was great (as mentioned previously). Others have reported on the Leadership Development Institute - I was just there to dip my toe in the water.

And I was pleased that my former Library School advisor Eileen Abels, PhD. was awared the Rose L. Vormelker Award - Eileen is a truly outstanding teacher and an excellent Librarian. Yea!!!

Then Al Gore spoke - others have written — he’s a good speaker, passionate and amusing.

First night parties — Business & Finance Division had a good party - beer, wine and martinis. Starving, feverish librarians battling for food. I had some nice conversation with Libraians from Cleary, Gottlieb; Forbes Magazine Library; Wharton School and Clemson U. Standard & Poors was the sponsor and our gift was…. a cocktail shaker.

Next stop was the Museum Division - nice folks - yummy desserts. I met a first timer who is also a Library Student at UNC - nice fellow. Not at all the “deer in the headlights” look of some first timers (was that me a few years ago?) But we talked about the conference and Librarian stuff in general.

As I left there with fellow blogger Von Totanes - we could hear rowdy Librarians so we followed the noise. Chem librarians and Pharmaceutical librarians. Nice party - good food - and a good sponsor - they had an open bar!!!

After eating a bit more and enjoying a cocktail and meeting more fun librarians - the entourage (that may be a stretch - there were three of us!) headed back to the Adam’s Mark.

Monday morning -early start with a breakfast meeting for B&F division. Met some folks and Alacra had some giveaways - tape dispensers — cool. Now - where am I going next?

Peace out!

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Greetings from the Mile-High City!!

I arrived safely on Friday and got settled. After some lunch I got my bearings - and headed over to the Molly Brown House. The docent was very nice - but please do not touch any of the furnishings or the wallpaper. So after learning about Mrs. Brown, I helped the local economy by spending some money in the gift shop. Afterward I wandered back to the hotel, stopping at Immaculate Conception Cathedral.

I got a phone call from IBCA Librarian Susan Fournier and we met up for dinner at the Apaloosa Grill.

In the evening I visited a couple of night spots and then to bed.

Saturday was a full day session titled Leadership & Knowledge Services. Presenters were Guy St. Clair and Dale Stanley. An excellent session and very practical. Helped me put together my plan for Library outreach back at work. There was a lot of give-and-take in the sessions and good contribution from other librarians. It was an excellent start to the Conference!

sla2007

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