NELA 2013, Part 1

October 22, 2013 JennyLeave a comment

I’m back from the New England Library Association annual conference in Portland, and it was great. I was on Twitter (@itsokihaveabook) Sunday afternoon and all day Monday, madly tweeting and re-tweeting with fellow conference-goers; the conference continues today, and you can follow it on Twitter with the hashtag #nelaconf13.

The NELA Conference blog is also a great resource. I just wrote a post there about the Table Talk I attended Sunday afternoon, Engaging the Community in Long-Range Planning. I highly recommend Brian Herzog’s (a.k.a. Swiss Army Librarian) post about The Art of the E-Book Deal, which was earlier Sunday afternoon; Jo Budler, the Kansas State Librarian, was energetic, inspiring, fierce, and funny, and Brian summarizes her presentation well. There are also links to notes and slides.

Working backward…the keynote event with Rich Harwood of The Harwood Institute kicked off the conference on Sunday at 1pm. His message – “Libraries are needed more now than any other time….Healthy communities need healthy libraries” – was received well, though overall his presentation was less electrifying (and less specific) than I’d hoped.

Harwood said, “We need a greater concern for the common good,” and that libraries should focus on shared aspirations, work, and narrative with the community. Especially in times of pressure, libraries should “turn outward into our communities, not inward toward ourselves and our organizations.” Libraries are trusted, and can leverage that trust to help the community. “Community is a common enterprise with shared challenges,” Harwood said, but we shouldn’t focus on the problems; instead, we should ask, “What are your aspirations for our community?”

The fact that we aren’t supposed to focus on the problems doesn’t mean there aren’t any, just that we shouldn’t get bogged down in them. No one individual or organization can solve all of the issues in a community, but the library should be an important partner, working together with other organizations and individuals to set achievable goals (and celebrate victories). “Narratives play a critical role,” Harwood said. Libraries can help move away from an ingrained negative narrative and create a shared positive narrative instead – after all, storytelling is a big part of what we do well.

I don’t think anyone’s arguing with Harwood’s message; most of us agree about the “what,” it’s the “how” that can be puzzling at times. The keynote speech was a good reminder to keep trying, and that it’s okay to start small.

I’ll be writing more about NELA soon. Meanwhile, remember to head over to the official conference blog to read about some of the other sessions. And if you want fairly priced e-books in libraries, consider “liking” the facebook page “The Big 6 – eBooks in Libraries.”

Neil Gaiman: “Fiction is the lie that tells the truth”

October 16, 2013 Jenny8 Comments

I have spent my whole life in the world of books. I was lucky; my parents read to me every night while I was growing up, from before I could talk until the night I took the book away and started reading it myself, because that was faster and I wanted to know what happened next. I was lucky, and I took that luck and ran with it: I’ve spent the last six years officially in book world, first in publishing, now in libraries.

Over the years, I have identified a few heroes, here in Book World: these people are authors, yes, but they are also, variously, library advocates, booksellers, privacy experts, generous public speakers, tirelessly creative, funny, kind, intelligent, empathetic. (At least, they are all of these things as far as I can tell.)

I’ve written about them all here before: Cory Doctorow, Ann Patchett, and Neil Gaiman. But the latter has gone and given another brilliant talk, so I must write about him again. An edited version of this talk, which Gaiman gave for The Reading Agency, was published in The Guardian. (Not coincidentally, The Reading Agency is the organization that The Library Book – not the easiest title to find, but well worth it – was published in aid of.)

In his “impassioned plea” to support libraries and librarians, Gaiman spoke about the importance of literacy, and the role of fiction in fostering literacy. Fiction, he said, “is a gateway drug to reading.” He said,

“The simplest way to make sure that we raise literate children is to teach them to read, and to show them that reading is a pleasurable activity. And that means, at its simplest, finding books that they enjoy, giving them access to those books, and letting them read them.

I don’t think there is such a thing as a bad book for children. Every now and again it becomes fashionable among some adults to point at a subset of children’s books, a genre, perhaps, or an author, and to declare them bad books, books that children should be stopped from reading. I’ve seen it happen over and over; Enid Blyton was declared a bad author, so was RL Stine, so were dozens of others. Comics have been decried as fostering illiteracy.

It’s tosh. It’s snobbery and it’s foolishness. There are no bad authors for children, that children like and want to read and seek out, because every child is different. They can find the stories they need to, and they bring themselves to stories. A hackneyed, worn-out idea isn’t hackneyed and worn out to them. This is the first time the child has encountered it. Do not discourage children from reading because you feel they are reading the wrong thing.”

Banned Book Week is still fresh in many librarians’ minds just now; it’s when we encourage everyone to celebrate the freedom to read. Some kids want to read Batman comics, some want to read Calvin & Hobbes, some want to read The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe or Pride and Prejudice or The Catcher in the Rye or Twilight or The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. Let them; it won’t hurt. And once they love reading, once they want to know what happens next, maybe they’ll discover new books and new genres – but they’re much more likely to pick up a second book if they liked the first one.

Gaiman also discussed the relationship between fiction and empathy, which has been studied and written about recently. (There are several links in this Banned Books Week post about censorship.) Gaiman explains just how prose fiction stretches the imagination in ways that film does not:

“And the second thing fiction does is to build empathy. When you watch TV or see a film, you are looking at things happening to other people. Prose fiction is something you build up from 26 letters and a handful of punctuation marks, and you, and you alone, using your imagination, create a world and people it and look out through other eyes. You get to feel things, visit places and worlds you would never otherwise know. You learn that everyone else out there is a me, as well. You’re being someone else, and when you return to your own world, you’re going to be slightly changed.

Empathy is a tool for building people into groups, for allowing us to function as more than self-obsessed individuals….Fiction can show you a different world. It can take you somewhere you’ve never been. Once you’ve visited other worlds, like those who ate fairy fruit, you can never be entirely content with the world that you grew up in. Discontent is a good thing: discontented people can modify and improve their worlds, leave them better, leave them different.”

So: fiction leads to empathy as well as literacy. And literacy “is more important than ever it was, in this world of text and email, a world of written information. We need to read and write, we need global citizens who can read comfortably, comprehend what they are reading, understand nuance, and make themselves understood.”

Where then is one to acquire all this nutritious and delicious fiction? The library, of course. But the library, unfortunately, is frequently under attack, less from outright anti-library sentiment than from a need to cut municipal, state, or federal budgets. This problem isn’t specific to the U.S.; it’s just as bad, if not worse, in the U.K. Closing libraries, though, is shortsighted in a society that, presumably, wants literate, engaged, imaginative, problem-solving citizens:

“Libraries really are the gates to the future. So it is unfortunate that, round the world, we observe local authorities seizing the opportunity to close libraries as an easy way to save money, without realising that they are stealing from the future to pay for today. They are closing the gates that should be open….We have an obligation to support libraries. To use libraries, to encourage others to use libraries, to protest the closure of libraries. If you do not value libraries then you do not value information or culture or wisdom. You are silencing the voices of the past and you are damaging the future.”

For most of his talk, Gaiman was speaking as a reader, but he is also an author (quite a prolific one). He spoke out powerfully about writers’ obligations to their readers – what to do and what not to do:

“We writers – and especially writers for children, but all writers – have an obligation to our readers: it’s the obligation to write true things, especially important when we are creating tales of people who do not exist in places that never were – to understand that truth is not in what happens but what it tells us about who we are. Fiction is the lie that tells the truth, after all. We have an obligation not to bore our readers, but to make them need to turn the pages. One of the best cures for a reluctant reader, after all, is a tale they cannot stop themselves from reading. And while we must tell our readers true things and give them weapons and give them armour and pass on whatever wisdom we have gleaned from our short stay on this green world, we have an obligation not to preach, not to lecture, not to force predigested morals and messages down our readers’ throats like adult birds feeding their babies pre-masticated maggots; and we have an obligation never, ever, under any circumstances, to write anything for children that we would not want to read ourselves.”

This single paragraph gets at the heart of reading and writing, fiction and truth. We have an obligation to write true things…when we are creating tales of people who do not exist in places that never were. Truth is not in what happens but that it tells us about who we are.

My friend Kelly just co-wrote an article for the YALSA (Young Adult Library Services Association) blog that explores the common prejudice against fantasy and science fiction. She and her co-author make a strong case for these genres, and arrive at the same conclusion as Gaiman: “The way that we receive guidance from books is not a literal process. We are influenced by something much deeper in literature, which is the connections we share as humans and the ways in which some experiences are unique, and some are universal.” All fiction, whether it’s realistic or fantastical, stretches the reader’s imagination and builds empathy.

Gaiman’s final point – “We have an obligation never…to write anything for children that we would not want to read ourselves” – is important, too, and it explains why so many adults have not just lingering nostalgia for the books they loved as children, but a fierce love for them, and even an interest in reading them still. Many, many grown-up readers today are passionate about YA fiction (despite some others’ judgment on the matter); the people waiting for the library copies of Every Day by David Levithan, The Fault in Our Stars by John Green, Fangirl by Rainbow Rowell – not to mention the dystopian trilogies by Suzanne Collins (The Hunger Games, etc.) and Veronica Roth (Divergent, etc.) – aren’t all teenagers.

If all of this isn’t a strong enough argument for reading and libraries, check out Amanda Ripley’s The Smartest Kids in the World: And How They Got That Way. I’ll give you a hint: their parents read to them.

National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo)

October 10, 2013 Jenny2 Comments

Last year, on the last day of November, Dana Sachs published an essay in Publishers Weekly called “Doing 50,000 Words in 30 Days.” The title of the article refers, of course, to National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo), which started in San Francisco in 1999 and has grown and spread since then. Now there are participants all over the world – over 300,000 in 2012 – and hundreds of “write ins,” many at libraries.

The idea behind NaNoWriMo is simple: write a novel in a month. Specifically, write 50,000 words in 30 days. This works out to 1,667 words per day. (For reference, Sachs’ essay in PW is 750 words.) Admittedly, 50,000 words is pretty short for a novel – about 200 pages – but still, to write that much in a month is nothing to sneeze at, regardless of quality.

In fact, quality isn’t the point of NaNoWriMo. As Sachs writes, “Many writers…suffer from a gnawing perfectionism that can, at its worst, torment us over the placement of a single comma. Forget completing a first draft; perfectionists have trouble completing even a paragraph. NaNoWriMo forces us to ignore our incapacitating inner critic and keep going. The genius of NaNoWriMo is that it obliges us to (temporarily) lower our standards.”

After November, the writer has a working draft; s/he can edit, cut, amend, tinker, and add. The novel may eventually go into a drawer (or computer folder, more likely), may be self-published, may be published through the traditional process with an agent and an editor. No matter the outcome, it’s still an achievement: you’ve made something. And NaNoWriMo provides an encouraging community in which to make that something.

Library literature has been full of buzz about MakerSpaces lately. Many libraries are re-envisioning their mission and redesigning their space. This is an old idea with a new label (“making” instead of “crafting”) and new technology (e.g. 3D printers). The library was never purely a place for consumption; people have always come to libraries to create as well as consume. And what better place to write (or “make”) a book than a library?

That’s why I’m pleased to be hosting Write Ins at the Robbins Library for the second year in a row. Are you a writer in the Arlington area? “Come Write In.”

“The real secret is that anyone can write a book… Writing is for everyone, and this is your chance to scrawl your name across the page. By month’s end, you’ll have done that which many dream of, but never accomplish.” -Gennifer Albin, author of Crewel

“As you enter this month of writing, write for yourself. Write for the story. And write, also, for all of the people who doubt you. Write for all of those people who are not brave enough to try to do this grand and wondrous thing themselves.” -Kate DiCamillo, author of The Tale of Despereaux and Because of Winn-Dixie

Censorship and Invisibility

September 26, 2013 Jenny7 Comments

Barbara Jones, the president of the ALA Office for Intellectual Freedom (OIF), has written an excellent piece over at the Huffington Post. Here’s a short excerpt, but I encourage you to read the whole article:

“I am deeply concerned about the current deluge of removals of classic books from the American literary canon. I thought that, as a society, we had reached a consensus that the literary canon should represent diverse segments of U.S. society. Multicultural literary works are not being included because of some need for “political correctness.” They are included because they are excellent and have been acknowledged as such by countless awards for literary merit. Though books that deal with controversial topics may make some readers uncomfortable, such literature offers a vehicle for true learning and understanding.”

(Emphasis added.)

As Rebecca points out in another great article on the Robbins Library blog (“Freedom to Choose”), “There’s great value in discussion, and books are, by far, the safest route into many of these discussions.” With a few exceptions, the books that get people up in arms are novels, not nonfiction. This only proves that fiction is powerful; that it engages readers’ imagination and empathy, allowing them to experience a time, place, culture, or situation that they might not otherwise be exposed to – or, if they are exposed to it, they may be unprepared.

A little over a year ago, I wrote about the power and importance of fiction (“The Gleam in the Dark”), citing “Your Brain on Fiction” by Annie Murphy Paul from The New York Times and “Why Fiction is Good for You” by Jonathan Gottschall from the Boston Globe. Those pieces are worth a re-read now, during Banned Books Week, to remind us all about the value of stepping into someone else’s shoes, and the magical power fiction has to let us do that.

“Everyone has a different idea of what constitutes ‘appropriate content’”

September 23, 2013 JennyLeave a comment

There is lots of great Banned Books Week-related stuff on Twitter this week (#BannedBooksWeek), and today’s Library Link of the Day was an NPR segment from Tell Me More called “Could banning books actually encourage more readers?” (Answer: we hope so!) My favorite find via Twitter (so far, at least) is this post from Shoshana at the Brookline Booksmith. It was a good reminder that librarians aren’t the only ones fighting for intellectual freedom and defending everyone’s right to read; publishers and booksellers are in it with us.

Shoshana wrote, “Everyone has a different idea of what constitutes ‘appropriate content.’ I’ve talked with a lot of parents about what’s right and what’s not right for their kids to read. Some parents want to avoid anything “scary.” Others ask about the The Hunger Games and relax as soon as they learn that although it’s about teenagers being forced to fight to the death, it doesn’t have any sexual content….What I love about the customers in our kids’ section, though, is that the question is pretty much always what’s appropriate for the particular kid in question, not what should be published or be on our shelves….People around here seem to get that what’s all wrong for one reader might be just right for another; even siblings have different levels of scariness tolerance or ability to understand difficult topics.”

She makes a great point: what is “appropriate” for one reader may not be appropriate for another (this is one of the reasons that putting ratings on books is a terrible idea). This is part of readers’ advisory, and it’s a great skill – as a bookseller or a librarian – to be able to talk with parents about what their kids are ready to read (or to talk directly with kids; I know an eight-year-old who didn’t feel ready to read Harry Potter when he was seven, but feels like he might be ready now).

Remember: Every reader his/her book, and every book its reader.

Banned Books Week 2013

September 22, 2013September 20, 2013 Jenny1 Comment

Banned Books Week is probably my favorite event on the calendar of library and literary events. It is a celebration of the freedom to read whatever you want, the freedom from censorship. It also provides encouragement to those who are still fighting for the right to read – those whose state Board of Education presidents want Toni Morrison’s The Bluest Eye out of the classroom, those who miss out on hearing Rainbow Rowell – author of the excellent Eleanor & Park – speak at their school or public library because a few parents in the community object to the swear words in the book. (Those are just two recent examples; read more about them in my Banned Books Week post on the Robbins Library blog.)

Last year for Banned Books Week, I wrote about which books were most commonly banned or challenged, and who did the challenging; I also shared a few of my favorite “better book titles for banned books.” Two years ago, less punctually, I shared a quote from Jenny Lawson, author of Let’s Pretend This Never Happened: A Mostly True Memoir (which I am certain has been challenged many times since its publication). Also in 2011, I wrote about attending the panel “Whose Common Sense?” at the ALA Annual Conference, where the four panelists (including David Levithan!) discussed why books for teens should not be labeled or censored.

Even if you don’t pick up a book this week, take a moment to appreciate the fact that you could, if you wanted, and that no one would try to control your reading choices, or keep something out of reach because they thought it was inappropriate. We should all get to make our own reading choices.

To close, I’ll quote my co-worker Rebecca, who authored a column for the local paper about Banned Books Week. She wrote, “There’s great value in discussion, and books are, by far, the safest route into many of these discussions (i.e., reading and talking about that book the deals with teen pregnancy is preferable to your teen talking to you about what it’s like to be pregnant). Books are safe spaces to experience new things. New thoughts. New ideas. Different points of view. They are a way to journey back in time and careen far into the future. Books teach us how to empathize with each other, how to stand up for the little guy, and how to recognize the bad guys in our lives….We experience strong emotion alongside our favorite characters – joy, catharsis, loss, excitement. Books are a safe way to learn about life, without all the painful bumps and bruises.”

When the opportunity arises, stand up for your own right to read, and help defend others’ right to read as well. Books change lives – almost always for the good. What’s one book you read that changed your life? A book you’re glad you didn’t miss out on? A book you’d recommend to others? Here are a few banned/challenged books that I wholeheartedly love and recommend:

E-books in libraries

September 12, 2013September 20, 2013 Jenny3 Comments

Cross-posted, in modified form, from the Robbins Library blog.

It’s a real struggle sometimes to refrain from prefacing the name Cory Doctorow with the phrase “my hero.” In addition to being an author (Little Brother and Homeland, among others), blogger, journalist, and the co-editor of Boing Boing, he is also a tremendous advocate for libraries. In particular, he often writes about the relationship between libraries and publishers.

Most public libraries have jumped on the e-book bandwagon, and have found some platform from which to lend e-books for patrons to borrow. However, these platforms are usually somewhat clunky (though they are improving), and publisher restrictions hamper what books libraries are able to buy and how we are able to lend them. Thus, for the most part, e-books work much the same way print books do: one person can use them at a time, and if more than one person wants to read a particular book, there is a waitlist.

The “one copy/one user” model, as it is called, is an artificial constraint put in place by the publishers, who require each e-book to come wrapped in digital rights management (DRM) software. DRM limits what readers can do with their e-books: an e-book with DRM will only work on certain devices, usually can’t be moved from one device to another, can’t be lent or shared, and can’t be copied.

Of course, publishers are correct to be concerned. E-books are new territory, and it’s much easier to copy a digital file than it is to copy a print book. However, as Doctorow points out, libraries are, and always have been, publishers’ greatest allies. Especially with the decline of brick-and-mortar bookstores, it is often librarians, not booksellers, who connect readers with new authors.

Here are a couple of paragraphs from one of Doctorow’s latest essays on the topic, but I encourage you to read the whole piece:

“There are libraries in every town, and even though they’re under terrible assault in the age of austerity, they remain the mark of a civilized society and benefit from librarians’ amazing organizational skills. The modern library has become something like a bookstore, where helpful staff who love books and authors take enormous pride in ‘‘hand-selling’’ the publishers’ products to their patrons. Libraries host some of the best author events, too, providing a vital space for readers and writers to connect.

Unlike every other channel for e-books, libraries are not the publishers’ competitors. They don’t want to sell devices. They don’t want to win over customers to a particular cloud. They just want readers to read, writers to write, and publishers to sell. They deserve a better deal than they’re getting.”

Librarians continue to push the conversation along, but meanwhile, we’re still buying (well, licensing) e-books for our patrons at unfair prices, under unfair restrictions. But it’s not all doom and gloom: some publishers, like sci-fi imprint Tor, are experimenting with DRM-free books, and so far that has not led to an explosion of e-book piracy, so perhaps more publishers will move in that direction.

What to read and how to read it: RSS feeds and library blogs

August 22, 2013 Jenny10 Comments

When Google Reader announced it was shutting down, I considered several options and chose to migrate to The Old Reader. The migration took a few days because of heavy traffic, but once that was done and I started using it, I liked it a lot; it was the most similar and therefore least disruptive change.

However, right around the time I went to NELLS, The Old Reader was having some issues and it looked like it was going to be down for quite a while. To their credit, they’re doing everything they can to make The Old Reader sustainable in the long term, but I didn’t want to be without my RSS feed for that long.

Instead of looking back at my first post on the topic (see link in first paragraph), I went ahead and chose Feedly. If I had looked back at my own research, I probably would have gone with Newsblur, but I’ve been fairly happy with Feedly. It’s easy to organize your subscriptions into folders and move the folders around; there are a number of view options; the app for the tablet is good. The left-hand sidebar menu tends to disappear (to give more room to what you’re reading), but reappears when you float over it.

But the RSS tool is only the how, not the what. The what, of course, is the content itself, and since NELLS I have added a few more blogs to my “Library Blogs” folder, including friends and fellow NELLS participants Anna at LCARSLIBRARIAN and Sarah at librarysarie. (Those links go directly to their posts about NELLS.)

A few of my other favorite library blogs:

Brian at SwissArmyLibrarian: In addition to the always-interesting Reference Question of the Week, Brian also writes clear, concise, thoughtful posts relevant to the public library world. He has a lot of experience as a librarian, but I think his blog would be interesting for library patrons as well as other librarians. Plus, he works in Massachusetts, so if you’re in New England there’s a good chance you’ll see him in person at a conference. Say hi!
Sarah at LibrarianInBlack: Opinionated, honest, and unafraid to stand up for herself and her library, Sarah is the director of a public library in California. As she says on her “About” page, “I am a big technology nerd and I believe in the power of libraries to change lives. Combined, they make a fearsome cocktail.”
Jessamyn at Librarian.net: Jessamyn writes from Vermont about libraries, technology, politics and government (she covered the Kirtsaeng v. Wiley case, for example). A great writer, relevant and interesting content.
Gavia Libraria, the Library Loon: the pseudonymous Loon writes about issues within library school and academic libraries. I enjoy her opinionated style as well as the substance of each post. She recently linked to Meredith Farkas’ piece, “Managing the ‘whole person,'” which I highly recommend, especially to NELLS folks. Meredith’s blog is another good one for those interested in academic libraries and instruction in general.
Julie at Perfect Whole: Julie is a librarian, reader, and writer who until recently wrote twice-monthly essays, published on the first and 15th of the month. This schedule has been suspended recently but there are plenty of thoughtful, well-crafted essays as well as the occasional current post. Her “I can’t believe you’re throwing out books!” essay sparked a lot of conversations about weeding.
Linda at ThreeGoodRats: Linda is one of my co-workers (we both write for the Robbins Library blog) and ThreeGoodRats is where she reviews the many, many books she reads. Her reviews are neat, to-the-point, honest, helpful (if you’re trying to decide whether or not to read that particular book), and insightful. She also has a Sunday knitting feature that will knock your (handmade) socks off.
Young Adult blogs: I enjoy the unique review style at Forever Young Adult, though I don’t read 100% of the content. Some of their reviews are now featured on Kirkus. They also write TV show recaps. YALSA’s The Hub is another YA blog I browse (Anna of LCARSLIBRARIAN writes for them sometimes). There is a high volume of content so I don’t read everything, but a recent favorite post is “Too Many Trilogies.”

So those are a few blogs I make a point of reading. What are your favorites? And what have you found to replace Google Reader (assuming you were using it in the first place), and are you happy with it? Comment below!

Open Letter: Authors for Library E-Books

August 15, 2013 JennyLeave a comment

Naturally the subject of e-books in libraries arose during the week at NELLS. For those who are unfamiliar with the issue, Maureen Sullivan’s open letter to publishers (9/28/2012) is a good place to begin. In it, she explains how libraries support publishers by improving literacy, instilling a lifelong love of reading, and aiding discovery of new authors and genres. E-books in libraries will no more cannibalize e-book sales to consumers than print books in libraries have (i.e., they won’t; research shows that most people who borrow from the library also buy books).

The Authors for Library E-Books campaign (@Authors4LE on Twitter; #A4LE) is an effort to encourage authors to speak out on this issue. Libraries and authors are natural allies, and we all need to speak up to bring this change about. To this end, I contacted a few authors that I have met over the years – through publishing or through author events at bookstores and at the library. I’ve included a template of my letter here; if you know an author (or two, or five, or twelve) who supports libraries, feel free to tweak this and send it along. I personalized each one by mentioning a recent reading of theirs that I’d attended, a program they’d done at a library, or a new book of theirs coming out soon.

An Open Letter to Authors for Library E-Books

Dear [Author],

I hope you are having a good summer so far. I know you are a strong supporter of libraries, and I thought you might like to join ALA’s “Authors for Library E-Books” effort.

I’m sure you’re aware of the ongoing discourse between publishers and libraries on this topic. As it stands, each publisher has come up with a different solution: HarperCollins, for example, licenses e-books to libraries at a reasonable cost, but those licenses expire after 26 uses. Other publishers, such as Random House, charge libraries more than three times the consumer price for e-books and digital audiobooks.

Author and library advocate Cory Doctorow has made a short (four minutes) video about why he supports the Authors for Library E-Books campaign. He says, “Libraries have been so important to the careers of writers, and librarians are such fabulous advocates for authors….Libraries should be able to buy books and they should be able to buy them on fair terms.”

Join Cory Doctorow, Jodi Picoult, Ursula Le Guin, and many other authors who stand with libraries on this issue. You can sign on, speak out, and learn more at the A4LE site, or of course feel free to contact me with any questions or feedback.

Sincerely,
Jenny

NELLS Discussion Questions

August 13, 2013August 13, 2013 JennyLeave a comment

Many of our most lively and productive discussions during NELLS came out of asking questions; a single question could launch an hour-long conversation. I have included several of these questions below, including snippets of our discussions, but first, a definition:

Leader: a person who influences others in an identified situation or group to obtain a particular result that will benefit the organization. Such a position does not depend on a title or on some recognition of formal authority.

That is the definition of a leader from Developing Library Leaders by Robert Stueart & Maureen Sullivan (Neal-Schumann Publishers, 2010). The difference between a leader and a manager is not purely semantic; not all people in management positions are leaders, and many leaders are not in management positions. Thus, when a question is directed at “leaders,” it can apply to managers and non-managers alike.

What do you want to do/become? The scope of this question can be as large or small as you like, but keep in mind: “This is not a dress rehearsal – this is it.” As Maureen Sullivan said, “We are adults in development throughout our lives.” At the same time, she reminded us, “Perfection is not possible.”

What are the three greatest challenges that you face as a leader in your work? Identifying and articulating the challenges is a first step in beginning to address them in a productive manner.

Questions managers can ask those they are managing: What is one thing you would like to change and how could we do it? (One NELLS participant, a library director, said her approach was, “We’re not brain surgeons, no one’s going to die, let’s try it.”) What about [our library/this process] would you like to change? Managers can empower those they manage by saying, “Okay, try that.”

Where and when do challenges become opportunities? “Innovation happens most often through adaptation,” Maureen Sullivan pointed out. Sustained change does not happen by a revolutionary process, but by an adaptive process.

Who are you, what do you bring, how can you sustain it over time? Consider your strengths. Also consider how you can stay energized and focused. (“Work-life balance” was mentioned here.)

Why are we doing what we do? There was a flood of answers to this question, put to the group by Rob Maier. One participant said that patrons frequently approached the desk at her library and prefaced their question with the phrase, “I don’t know who else to ask…” As a group, we determined that libraries are (or can be): the heartbeat of the community, a community center, a social good, access to information and resources, a nonjudgmental space, a path to citizenship, the cornerstone of democracy. Some of these answers sound lofty, but all are true.

Would you rather have a boss/employee who is passionate or effective? This was one of the best discussions of the week. Ideally, of course, you work with people who are both passionate and effective: people who are inspired, energetic, and visionary, and who have the ability to get things done on a detailed, day-to-day level. In reality, however, most people fall toward one end of the spectrum or the other: some see the big picture but aren’t great at the details, while others excel at getting things done efficiently and effectively, but aren’t overflowing with big ideas. The solution? Not everyone has to be everything, but make sure your staff has some of each.

Why aren’t libraries on the radar of non-library users? In every community, there are people who don’t use the library – not to check out books or movies, not as a quiet work space, not to attend programs for themselves or their children, not to access the internet. What can we do to convert more non-library users into library users? Is it a matter of advertising what we offer, or offering different things?

Questions to ask when assessing a new process or program: What went well/what worked? What didn’t work? If we did it again, what would we change? Evaluation is an important part of trying new things and improving them for the next time around.

What if you’re happy where you are and don’t want to get to “the top”? Most libraries are hierarchical to some extent, but what if you have no desire to be a library director? We discussed how to grow within your current position, and considered the question, What do you need to know to do your work?

What steps can we take to prepare for the future and ensure that our libraries thrive? Like many organizations, it can be difficult for libraries to move with agility and speed to adjust to change. This question bypasses reactive steps and encourages proactive ones. Libraries are ideal environments to foster a culture of experimentation and learning. We can help – in nearly every case, are already helping – close the digital divide. We can take more risks, without jumping on every new trend. Libraries can be like nimble little goats, surefooted on a rocky surface.

How is 24-hour access to the web changing your library and how do you want to lead that change? Again, the focus here is on leading change, not reacting to it. Library websites, accessible 24/7, are patrons’ only portal to library services when the building itself is closed. What resources can we offer, and how can we present those resources in a clear, organized, attractive way?

Do you feel barriers to political or community engagement? Can you overcome them? Librarians can and should be advocates for the library, which means community engagement and political engagement. The OCLC report, From Awareness to Funding: A Study of Library Support in America, is a good place to start. (For those in Massachusetts, Krista McLeod, co-chair of NELLS and director of the Nevins Memorial Library in Methuen, can provide additional resources.)