It happened again last week.
I was chatting with a librarian friend of mine about general library stuff. I happened to mention a statistic I had read in a recent article – one I got through my aggregator, of course. In response, my friend groaned and rolled her eyes.
The stat itself wasn’t the problem… it made the point we were discussing more convincing and validated our shared opinion. But the fact that I had come across it online through a feed like that was what elicited her apparent disapproval. Well, maybe “disapproval” is the wrong word.
“Ugh,” she said, “I don’t know how you have time to do all of that stuff.”
I was confused. “What stuff?”
“Oh, reading all those blogs and online articles and research and stuff,” she replied, “I know I don’t have time. I’m way too busy with my job. I guess they let you have time to read things like that?”
Well, that was the beginning of a much longer conversation that ended up bringing out several points:
- We need to keep informed. Sometimes librarians get so busy “doing our jobs” that we forget the responsibility we have to our profession. And a big part of being good professionals is keeping current and well informed, even if it takes you away from day-to-day tasks now and then, and even if it means you have to devote some of your personal time to doing so.
- We need to rethink our priorities. I think this is true for most of us in life, not just librarians. But when you find that you are missing out on something important in your profession because you “don’t have time,” I think some of the things that are eating up your time need to be reevaluated. If I could have a nickel every time a librarian who “doesn’t have time” explains in the next breath the weird, complicated procedure they use for this-or-that function in their library… Are those strange work-arounds and time consuming procedures so important and necessary? How can you streamline your job so that you can accommodate your professional responsibility to keep current?
- Employers and supervisors need to support professional development. For real. I think that most of our supervisors talk a good game about how we all need to engage in “professional development” and keep abreast of Libraryworld happenings and trends. So they need to stick to that. If you are a supervisor, what are you doing to encourage your staff to keep themselves informed? If you’re a “supervisee,” what are you doing to keep your boss honest about this one? And how can we be supportive of our colleagues in this endeavor?
Do you know any librarians who think that “keeping up with professional literature” means circling some reviews in Library Journal every now and then? Are you that librarian? Do you ever feel in over your head when it comes to “keeping up” with what’s going on in Libraryworld? Are you ever too busy “doing your job” to cultivate your professional knowledge?
What are you going to do about it??
Tags: librariansView blog reactions
Entries (RSS)
April 28th, 2007 at 11:58 am
I just read this blog post after seeing it linked in Michael Casey’s blog, which is in my aggregator. It didn’t take long to do the hopscotching and reading. Which just proves your point.
Hearing “I don’t do blogs” declared with pride is like fingernails on a chalkboard. I’m a trainer, so I’ve been pounding the drums for social web literacy and interactivity with our patrons. Piggybacked to that project is an attempt to get our librarians to walk the talk.
April 28th, 2007 at 2:26 pm
Exactly right. I’m taking a break from my Saturday yardwork to have a sandwich and a glass of wine for lunch, and I’m running through my feeds while I eat. I’m a librarian 24/7 (as well as a husband, writer, musician, grandfather and a thousand other things) — in a highly networked world, I’m freed from having to carve my life up into scheduled chunks. I don’t have a “worklife” and a “personal life”. I have MY life, with a multiplicity of things to do on any given day. I learned a long time ago that it is rarely true that one doesn’t HAVE time to do things; there’s always time depending on how one chooses to use it. To be the librarian that I want to be requires choosing to use some of my time to “do all of that stuff”. To be the grandfather I want to be requires choosing to make time to devote myself utterly to Josie and her needs. To be the musician that I want to be requires choosing to make time to go down to the basement and crank up the telecaster. I never have as much time overall as it would take to do all of the things I’d like to do — but there’s always enough time to do the things that I believe are the most important.
April 29th, 2007 at 10:49 am
Thanks for the comments on this little rant of mine. I’m glad to see I’m not alone in my “suck it up” attitude towards the “I don’t have time” whiners. Hey nobody has less time than I do… but I make time for the things I think are important. My husband, my son, my professional and personal interests all have a niche. I’m not saying it’s always easy, but with a little commitment, it’s very doable.
April 29th, 2007 at 1:50 pm
I don’t have time either, but I make it. If i had to choose b/w taking the time to read email or Bloglines, the aggregator would win every time. My own personal professional development has quadrupled since began subscribing to feeds (both blogs and podcasts.) I watch very little television anymore, as that is the time when I am fixated on my laptop. And I love it.
May 9th, 2007 at 12:07 am
[…] Clasper írta ezt a fantasztikus bejegyzést a Library Revolution blogon, össze is foglalnám […]
May 10th, 2007 at 1:09 pm
Excellent points - I was sharing these same thoughts with a co-worker yesterday…Absolutely - “basic technology competency” needs to be achieved by everyone associated with libraries. Talk the talk, walk the walk - precisely!
May 14th, 2007 at 8:43 pm
[…] - a bit of admiration at being able to handle it all) but I have had this conversation (just like Emily Clasper’s) […]
May 15th, 2007 at 1:38 pm
[…] Uncategorized. trackback If you haven’t seen this already, Emily at Library Revolution had a great post a couple of weeks back on her discussion with a library friend of hers about keeping up. Emily’s friend mentioned […]
May 15th, 2007 at 2:07 pm
I depend on my feeds and it takes very little time to scroll through the articles. As a supervisor I’d love to encourage more for my staff. I send on articles of particular interest and I encourage exploration and the time it takes to do it. I’d love to know what else I could do.
May 15th, 2007 at 6:57 pm
I would like to echo what was above, as a supervisor I don’t require my staff to use RSS feeds, but I have encouraged them and I send articles of interest to individuals and groups about trends, etc… that I think are of interest professionally. In addition, I require my staff to “attend” at least one webinar every month and share with their colleagues. I think by not reading the literature they are doing themselves and our patrons a disservice. I find RSS feeds a godsend and they allow me to dip into a variety of topics that are of interest. When do I find time? Sitting out at the Reference desk (as I am doing right now).
May 15th, 2007 at 8:39 pm
I came here via Librarian In Black, via my Bloglines. I also have these conversations more than I’d like. I’ve started working on a curriculum to help the folks around me get up and running with some of this wonderful technology - http://instructionwiki.org/Library_2.0_in_15_minutes_a_day
It takes a lot of early adopters using the technology to communicate, and also administrative buy-in. If the people in charge aren’t excited about it, then making something happen with your coworkers becomes that much more difficult.
A lot of libraries are starting Library 2.0 programs, based on Helene Blowers 23 Things project at PLCMCL: http://plcmcl2-things.blogspot.com/
May 15th, 2007 at 10:33 pm
I agree completely. Sharing things I’ve learned through reading or in professional development workshops always gets a lukewarm reaction - and sometimes hostility.
But… Even a year ago I wouldn’t have looked to the online community for information or conversation. Was I less of a learner for being less web-literate?
Learning is a must, yes! But maybe it doesn’t always look the same?
Maybe.
May 16th, 2007 at 6:36 am
Couldn’t agree more. Saying you don’t have time to look at an RSS feed reader is a bit like saying you have no time to email or answer the phone. You’re not doing it for the sake of using the technology but rather to fulfil a vital part of your professional requirements- keeping up to date. I have 80 feeds (which I’m sure is far fewer than a lot of people) and I spend less than 10 minutes a day browsing, tops. I find countless nuggets to pass on to my students and academics, plus I painlessly keep myself aware of the latest news and developments. I really resent colleagues saying ‘Oh, I don’t have time’ as if I’m just sitting around trying to find something to do. I make time. I organise myself!
May 22nd, 2007 at 11:00 am
I also came here through the Librarian in Black, through my Bloglines feed. Even more fortunately, I found your article just before presenting to my colleagues on “Taming the InfoClutter: Keeping Current and Managing Overload,” so my thanks for a timely article.
What is striking me about your reason for writing and Wendell’s response above is the hostility we’re encountering as we try to share what we’ve learned. Isn’t that one of the primary reasons to be librarians? To find information and share it? It doesn’t seem to matter what the source of the information is — journal articles, workshops, conferences or online reading. The response remains the same: Don’t bother me/I don’t have time to keep up. Is it fear of change, fear of additional responsibilities and commitments, anger? I’m still working on this one
One of the things I’m going to touch on today in my presentation is figuring out what your priorities are, because that determines where you’re willing to make sacrifices. Maybe your priority is library marketing and getting the word out about your services. If so, you don’t need to add TechCrunch or BoingBoing to your reader, but you should keep up with The M Word or Library Marketing and other library marketing blogs. Coming from that perspective makes the incredible variety of information out there more manageable, because you’re only dealing with the bits that matter most to you. Maybe this will cut through some of the resistance.
Again, thanks for an excellent article. I’ll be adding you to Bloglines, for sure!
May 23rd, 2007 at 12:02 pm
[…] Librarians Keeping Up and Making Time - Library Revolution […]
May 23rd, 2007 at 6:43 pm
I’ve had the opportunity to share with my colleagues how I use Google Reader to keep up with everything that’s going on with technology, libraries, etc. One of the things I pointed out was that even if they didn’t want to set up their own Google Reader or Bloglines account, they can visit my website and look at what I’ve read online recently. One of the reasons I switched over to GR is because they make it easy to add a sidebar widget to my blog of items I mark “Shared”
December 18th, 2007 at 8:41 am
[…] which added fuel to the fire on this whole package for me came from Emily at Library Revolution. “Librarians keeping up and making time” talked about how a fellow librarian didn’t understand how she kept up. Ultimately, its a […]