Month: June 2023

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sunset behind William h. Hannon Library

“Plans are worthless, but planning is everything.”

Dwight D. Eisenhower, 14 Nov. 1957.

The way knowledge work happens these days, everything is treated as an emergency. Cal Newport calls this “rocking and rolling with email” and it goes like this: You work on a project until you get to a point that you need someone else’s input, contribution, or review. You send that person an email or chat saying something like, “Hey, can you take a look at this?” Your project may have to sit in a holding pattern until that person can respond. 

Now, imagine this is happening all over within an organization: thousands of unstructured, unsolicited requests constantly interrupting whatever project is supposed to be a team’s priority. How can an organization function this way? I imagine it much like a ball of tangle worms slowly making its way from point A to point B: it will get there eventually, but it’s not going to be quick. And all of us get dragged along with it.

The alternative to this is project planning: defining in advance what everyone’s role will be and when their skills will be needed. I have managed to move a few of my projects into the mode: our annual Library Open House, the publication of our annual report, the planning and promotion of our premier speaker series, Faculty Pub Night. Each of these projects have clearly outlined timelines, milestones, and responsibility matrices. Everyone knows when their attention for these projects will be needed and thus we can plan in advance to set aside time for them. The work is still labor intensive and rigorous, but there’s no stress about whether we’ll finish in time or uncertainty about when we need to make room for it in our to-do lists.

Lately, I’ve been overwhelmed with the frequency of last minute requests. I don’t mean things that come up unexpectedly. Shit happens. But projects that were initiated weeks or months ago and no one took the time to plan out the steps necessary to bring the project to completion and loop in all the parties involved. Instead, they progressed step by step assuming that, when the time came that my team’s skills would be needed, we would have the ability to drop whatever we were doing to accommodate their project.

But there’s the rub: we’re not sitting around waiting for someone to drop a project in our lap. For better or worse, outreach library folks tend to be proactive, go-getter types and my team is no exception. We have plans. We have projects. And many are in motion at any given time. There’s nothing wrong with adding something new to our plate, but not when we’re in the middle of a four-course meal. 

As a result, I have to say no (or not now) to more projects than I would prefer. Often, this is inconvenient to the requesting party because, well, they have a deadline. But as I like to frequently tell my team, someone else’s lack of planning does not constitute an emergency on our part. As a manager, I feel the obligation to protect my team’s time and attention. I say no to projects we didn’t plan for so they have the ability to say yes to those we did.

What I’m reading

Ingenious Librarian by Monica Westin

“A group of 1970s campus librarians foresaw our world of distributed knowledge and research, and designed search tools for it.”

The Secret History And Strange Future Of Charisma by Joe Zadeh

“The charismatic leader, for better or worse, could be understood as a mere mirror or a charming marionette — the ‘collective projection of the charismatic mass, a projection out of its anguish, its myths, its visions, its history and its culture, in short its tradition and its oppression.'”

How U.S. adults on Twitter use the site in the Elon Musk era by Athena Chapekis and Aaron Smith

“Six-in-ten U.S. adults who have used Twitter in the past year say they have taken a break from the platform recently. And a quarter of these users say they are not likely to use Twitter a year from now.”

News from the garden

The June drop finally happened on my apple trees. This is three weeks later than usual, which seems to be the way most of my garden is going this year. Too many gray days in April and May slowed everything down.

Links to the past

  • 1 year ago: Say no, and carry on. Still working on this, but continuing to get better.
  • 5 years ago: My ALA Annual 2018 schedule. Hard to believe this was the last time I attended ALA Annual.
  • 10 years ago: ALA Battledecks 2013. Don’t let it be forgot, that once there was a spot, for one brief shining moment, that was known as Battledecks.

Overhead online

“If you go to a library and see what the librarians are doing, it’s hard to imagine anyone being against it. We build collections that allow people to find themselves on the shelves.” ALA President-elect Emily Drabinski

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bottle of wine on table

According to the label, this “bone dry” riesling (0.3% residual sugar) was grown in soil rich with shale, gravelly loam, and clay with limestone. The first thing you notice on this wine (other than its slightly amber-straw color) is the nose. If it has nothing else, it has a bouquet enticing enough to draw you in: honey, mead, and apple. Medium to heavy bodied, on the mouth you’ll find lemon-lime soda and pear, with a tart, mineral and lemon finish.

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list of todos

“So it must be slow for you at the library in the summer.”

Everyone.

Let’s be clear. It is not slow for me during the summer. It has never been slow for me during the summer. As a department head and as an outreach librarian, the summer is the inflection point between the end of one academic year and the beginning of the next. It is the crest of two waves approaching each other from other sides of the time axis: from the past year moving forward in time is the wave of assessment, reports, and reflection. From the upcoming year moving backwards in time is all the necessary planning, strategizing, and worrying. And here I am in the middle, just letting the waves crash over me. 

What I do to wrap up the year

  • Write my annual review, detailing my accomplishments in the areas of performance, research, and service
  • Pull together a list of all our programs, their costs, and attendance numbers
  • Pull and analyze a year’s worth of social media data. Create prez for leadership team.
  • Write the reports for any committees I chair (there are always at least two)
  • Submit data demonstrating progress my team made on the library’s strategic objectives
  • Begin the process of producing and publishing the library’s annual report to stakeholders/donors (finished in November)
  • Read and provide feedback on all my direct reports’ annual reviews
  • Archive all the things! (old working documents, photos, emails, etc.)

What I do to jump start the year

  • Set up all the Box folders and planning documents for next year’s events
  • Create a calendar that lists all the event production and communications milestones for all of next year’s events
  • Start the graphic design work for our 4 major tent-pole events/projects
  • Schedule and run planning meetings for fall’s earliest events
  • Estimate the total costs of next year’s events/outreach based on last year’s data
  • Try to map out (on my calendar) all my high-priority and/or new projects (so I don’t overcommit myself at any given time)

All of this work takes most of May through June to complete. All the while, there are still ongoing requests for support on other people’s projects, occasional events and tours to manage, and my own research. Summer is, in fact, the busiest time of the year. Granted, there are fewer interruptions, what with folks taking vacations and most of our faculty and students being away; tasks get done faster, making room for… more tasks. I could take it easier— rest on my laurels, slow down, and recuperate— but I would prefer to be busy now so that, come fall, I can switch to autopilot and ride the wave of the semester straight into winter break.

What I’m reading

Success Requires Saying No, Here’s How The Experts Do It by Robert Glazer

“Turning down additional work and obligations allows you to remain focused on your top priorities and the commitments you have already made. If you don’t do this, it’s easy to find yourself wrapped up in other people’s priorities […]”

What Counts as Enough? by Nic Antoinette

“I’m not trying to pretend this is a novel idea. It clearly isn’t. But it’s a little like ordering a Wendy’s Spicy Chicken Sandwich on a roadtrip every five years just to remember it makes me feel like shit.”

The Tyranny of Convenience by Tim Wu 

“Customization can be surprisingly homogenizing. Everyone, or nearly everyone, is on Facebook: It is the most convenient way to keep track of your friends and family, who in theory should represent what is unique about you and your life. Yet Facebook seems to make us all the same. Its format and conventions strip us of all but the most superficial expressions of individuality.”

News from the garden

red gladiolus blooms

When we bought our house more than a decade ago, we didn’t realize there was a gladiolus bulb sleeping in our front flower bed. Each year, it has dutifully popped up in late Spring. This year however, a second one shot up just as the original one was beginning to fade. 

Links to the past

  • 10 years ago: On breaking up with libraries. “I’m not willing to be a martyr for my profession if it means compromising what I want out of life […]”
  • 10 years ago: Bits and pieces. A snapshot of what library folks were talking about in 2013: the higher ed bubble, building repositories, and the information literacy standards.
  • 10 years ago: Shokunin and the power of habit. “While I don’t know that I could ever attain a level of perfection equivalent to the idea of shokunin, through force of habit I can in the least put these same practices to work.”

Overheard online

@LPerenic: How on earth do you know that?

@bookstax: I am a librarian. If I don’t know it, I know where to look. (on Twitter)