Month: May 2023

Posted on
by
whiteboard with various phrases written on it in blue

“It’s what we learn after we think we know it all that counts.” 

Frank McKinney Hubard, Fairmount (Ind.) News, 17 Feb. 1913.

Just before leaving the office in March 2020, I wrote the following on my whiteboard: Don’t Panic. Those words would remain undisturbed for more than a year as we continued to work from home during the height of the pandemic. When I returned to the office in late 2021, I couldn’t bring myself to erase it. The dry-erase ink seemed physically and psychically etched into the laminated surface. 

It has been a good reminder to keep things in perspective. Since that time, I’ve added a few more notes. These gentle nudges helpfully steer me toward more sensible actions, and serve as a warning light for when I’m drifting off track. Here is what I have as of this writing in May 2023, with brief explanations.

“This could succeed if…”

I have a tendency to immediately focus on everything that could go wrong, but the minute I begin thinking about what it would take to make something work, I instantly begin to find manageable solutions. Oftentimes, current resources (or lack thereof) don’t make those solutions possible, but outlining the steps from A to B is more than half the struggle.

“Tell me more about your thinking…”

Where “This could succeed if…” is something I tell myself, “Tell me more about your thinking…” is something I need to reminder myself to ask of others. Both statements help to curb my natural tendency to be a contrarian, seeking out the pitfalls in any idea.

“Curiosity > Criticism”

All things being equal, if I’m not sure how to respond to a request or a proposal, or if I don’t have an immediate answer, or if I’m feeling defensive, I find it’s always best to default to a curious response, instead of a critical one. Curiously opens doors in a conversation. Criticism closes them.

“How can we reduce friction?”

This is an important question for me when developing new programs or seeking out ways to improve existing programs. Oftentimes, the reason an initiative fails is something as simple as there being too much friction. For example, maybe the reason we get low response rates on some surveys is because it’s just too much work (just enough friction) to stop and fill out a form. How could we make that processes more integrated into existing habits or practices?

“4-1”

Anytime you are trying to balance “good vs. bad”, whether it’s compliments vs. criticisms, or pros vs. cons, or giving favors vs. asking favors, I’ve found that the 4:1 ratio is just about the right mix. Whether this has any relationship to the Pareto Principle, I couldn’t say.

“Did you save it to Box?”

Email 👏🏼 Is 👏🏼 Not 👏🏼 A 👏🏼 File 👏🏼 Storage 👏🏼 System 👏🏼. This past year, one of my employees left and we lost so much critical information about projects in-play because they used email to organize their knowledge. Whether it’s file attachments, advice, answers to questions, or communiques, none of that information is accessible if it’s stored in someone’s email account. The essential structure and protocols for email have not changed in 40 years. It was never built to be an information management system, and it has not improved in that regard (other than the fact we no longer have to watch our email storage limits).

“Is this actionable? Or is it just an idea?”

I enjoy starting new projects and experimenting with new technologies and platforms. But as I am fond of saying to my team: “we don’t need ideas, we need actions.” There are plenty of smart, creative folks working in academia, but not every ideas is worth pursuing (especially if you don’t actually have the resources). So when I’m presented with new ideas, I remind myself to pause before taking action. Maybe this is one of those “let it go and see if it come back to you” type of ideas.

“Did you communicate this clearly? Did you follow up?”

I overestimate my ability to communicate to others. I think most of us do. “It makes sense in my head! Surely, you see it the same way as I do!” Of course, this is rarely the case. So I need to remind myself to over-communicate when possible, and to follow up after folks have had time to sit with the new information.

“Is it urgent? When do you need it by?”

This was my most recent addition. MPOW operates on the hyperactive hive-mind model: no project planning or mapping out milestones. Just brute force emailing and DM’ing until the project gets done. This means I’m constantly getting random, unsolicited requests for support on projects that, until that very moment, I was not aware of. It’s frustrating to say the least. But I can mitigate some of that frustration by always asking whether the request is urgent, and/or when is it needed by. Unfortunately, the answer is usually “as soon as possible.” 🙄

What I’m reading

Photography is Dead. Just Admit It and Move On. There Is No Hope. by Don Giannatti

“With AI there is no painting WITH light, as “photograph” means. There is the painting of light — illustrators, painters, sketches, collage… all of that. And that is cool.”

Twitter Is a Far-Right Social Network by Charlie Warzel

I’ve been on Twitter since 2007, and it hasn’t always been a delight, but the last year has been utterly miserable. Every time I log in, my outlook on the future of online communities plummets.

News from the garden

purple flowers beneath a green vine

This spring, we have had an overabundance of cloudy, cold, and/or rainy days. Everything in my garden is growing slower than usual. This last week, however, the sun began to show its face. My trionfo violetto beans are finally starting to stretch their legs!

Links to the past

  • 6 years ago: Peaches for me. This is what my peach tree is supposed to look like this time of year. I’m hoping my tree’s current lack of foliage is simply a result of this year’s overly wet and too-often cloudy Spring.
  • 8 years ago: Tear down that wall. And John marched around the walls seven times. On the seventh time he took the holy sledgehammer and brought down the walls of the bamboo city.
  • 10 years ago: All established institutions seek to persist. Telling a librarian that ‘this is the future; deal with it’ is not a wise strategy — because all established institutions seek to persist.

Overheard online

“Once again I’m going suggest that every person who wants to ban a book has to show knowledge of the book and its contents, preferably by being quizzed, without access to notes and/or a phone, by a librarian, in person, at the library. If you clearly don’t know the book: Fuck off.” (@scalzi on Twitter)

Posted on
by
folder of library handouts and an introductory letter

“Hailing frequencies still open, sir.”

“The Corbomite Maneuver”, Star Trek (1966)

Before the pandemic, I was passionate about outreach to university staff at MPOW. Our weekly all-campus email used to include a photo of the attendees at the bi-weekly HR orientations (which of course used to only be held in person). The photo’s caption included the names of the newly onboarded employees. Using our online directory, I would pull the departmental and mailing information of the new folks and prepare a library welcome packet for each (seen above). It included: a custom letter outlining the various library services that might appeal to staff members, a copy of our latest annual report, a list of upcoming events, and various swag* items.

I would diligently send these packets through intercampus mail, being sure to track when and to whom I sent these off. Within 1-2 weeks, I would follow up via email to see if they had received the package (oftentimes, folks would contact me directly to express their appreciation) and offer to set up a tour of the library. But I didn’t stop there. I also set a reminder to follow up with each new employee one year later to see how things were going and if they had any new questions about using the library.

I was incredibly proud of this workflow and the connections it created, not just between myself and staff from other units, but also between those units and the library. COVID upended that entire project. HR stopped posting the photos to our internal all-campus newsletter (because who wants to see yet another Zoom screen shot). And even though new staff orientation have returned to in-person, the information about new employees is no longer published to the campus community. 

Of course, I don’t put all my staff outreach eggs in that basket. My team and I host “VIP Staff Library Tours” twice a year, first during the Thanksgiving week and again during our campus staff appreciation week in the summer. We regularly invite staff to our events, and collaborate on various events with other units, such as our finals stress relief events, annual storytelling program, and one-offs like the Human Library and Long Night Against Procrastination. University staff continue to be an important connection point between the library and students.

Yet I miss the one-on-one outreach to new employees. I am still passionate about outreach to university staff, but I’ve yet to regain the momentum we lost post-2020.

*My student employees tell me that “swag” is no longer a cool word.

What I’m reading

The Platform Wars by Joshua Citarella

“Once these ideological views are coded in, users will not be able to exit to their preferred political values because they remain materially reliant on other lock-in features of the stack: like cash and health care data that are non-transferable.”

My students are using AI to cheat. Here’s why it’s a teachable moment by Siva Vaidhyanathan

“It’s a library without librarians, consisting of content disembodied and decontextualized, severed from the meaningful work of authors, submitted to gullible readers. These systems are, in Alvarado’s words, ‘good at form; bad at content’.”

Those aren’t “Tweets”, Those Are Your Thoughts by CJ the X

“People who habitually use Twitter will often make comments about Twitter as if it’s synonymous with lived experience.“Everyone is saying *this* about *that*.” Everyone? Like who? Someone you know? This line of questioning consistently produces the admission that ‘Everyone’ meant ‘The thread I scrolled through while on the toilet.'”

News from the garden

I’m worried about my peaches this year. To start, the tree didn’t produce as many fruiting stems as usual, and of those it did, they didn’t produce as many buds. Then as you can see from the image above, I got leaf curl (despite my diligent application of dormant spray in winter). I’ll still get a small crop, but I may not be canning as much as I did last year.

Links to the past

  • 2 years ago: Garden seeds and room. I am well into midlife, and I’m still not sure that I’ve found “a task life-long given from within”, but I am lucky to have most of these others in my life.
  • 7 years ago: The opportunity to breathe. There are a few stories that irrevocably changed my outlook on work and rest. This one I still think about frequently.
  • 10 years ago: On Lincolnshire Posy. There is no lie.

Overheard online

Tristopher: What exactly is the academic dream?

Elsevier: Spending your entire youth creating knowledge, then paying a billion dollar corporation to take it from you in exchange for career capital that you can then use to buy meaningless promotions from other exploited individuals.

Tristopher: That’s the dream?

Elsevier: I didn’t say it was a good dream.

Posted on
by
The chandelier at LAPL, with lights and zodiac surrounding a globe.

“Show me a hero and I will write you a tragedy.”

The Crack-Up “Note-Books” (1945) by F. Scott Fitzgerald

At work, when there is problem that I feel I have the capacity to solve, I enjoy finding a solution. For me, “fixing things” is a natural impulse. I like being helpful. Acquiescing to that motivation, in part, got me to where I am today. But lately I’ve been stepping back, hearing myself say: “That’s not your job.” This voice often continues, transforming itself into a mantra: “A single person’s drive is not a sustainable solution to systemic problems. Don’t be the hero.” 

This line of thinking feels particularly cruel to me. [It is not]. My core resists it. [That’s the problem]. Working in the service of others was one of the key factors in my decision to pursue librarianship. [Not a lie]. Yet these past three years have unceasingly kept my abilities up against the ropes, and the need to care for myself so that I can care for others is currently the predominating force in my struggle for balance.

So it was refreshing to stumble across this reminder from Fobazi Ettarh (via @CharlotteRock):

The problem with vocational awe is the efficacy of one’s work is directly tied to their amount of passion (or lack thereof), rather than fulfillment of core job duties. If the language around being a good librarian is directly tied to struggle, sacrifice, and obedience, then the more one struggles for their work, the “holier” that work (and institution) becomes. Thus, it will become less likely that people will feel empowered, or even able, to fight for a healthier workspace. A healthy workplace is one where working around the clock is not seen as a requirement, and where one is sufficiently compensated for the work done, not a workplace where “the worker [is] taken for granted as a cog in the machinery.”

“Vocational Awe and Librarianship” by Fobazi Ettarh

In reading this paragraph I don’t see MPOW. I don’t feel like I need to work round the clock. I feel that fulfillment of my core job duties is valued. I feel sufficiently compensated and I do not [usually] feel like a cog in the machine. For the most part, MPOW values the quality of one’s work and the dignity of individuals over passion, and for that I am incredibly grateful. That said, the narrative of the passion-driven individual is always present, just beneath the surface. In my own soul, too, I fear. That is why I find it useful to resist being the hero.

What I’m reading 

News from the garden

Green blueberries on leafy stems

The blueberries are beginning to swell and ripen. Like most of my crops this season, the fruit yield and growth has been small due to an unusual lack of sunny days and the colder weather.

Links to the past

Overheard online