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Thursday, November 30, 2017

Interview Post: Jen Brown


Biographical

Name?
Jen Brown; my full name is Jennifer, but I usually shorten it because I always feel like it’s three syllables too long. ¯\_()_/¯

Current job?
I’m the Emerging Technologies Coordinator at Columbia University Libraries.

How long have you been in the field?
Four years, if you count my assistantship work at the University of Michigan (which I definitely do).

How Do You Work?

What is your office/workspace like?
Living and working in New York City has given me an interesting perspective on space (in short: we never have enough of it); to get your own office, even in the libraries here, isn’t the norm.

So I treat mine like my home away from home. As you can see, I’ve splashed the walls with artwork from my favorite comics, pictures of my family, memorable conference swag (my #PoCLibrariansAtWork and #BlackLivesMatter ribbons comfort me at eye level every day); I also display a watercolor painting I purchased from Monireh, an artist I met while strolling through the Villa Borghese gardens in Rome earlier this year. I put it up to keep a piece of my recent travels with me, and to remind myself that I’m privileged to be able to see the world and support aspiring artists near and far. This is nice because that’s pretty much my life goal -- to make and support art wherever I am! Alongside all that, I’ve got spur of the moment art purchases up too, like a selection of Georgia O’Keefe postcards; buttons and pins; stickers and totes; signed posters from some of my favorite comic book writers; you name it.

Though all of this probably sounds like A Lot™, I see my office as a site of both resistance and reflection; a place where I get to challenge the professional norms that say you can’t bring your full self, or outside passions, into the workplace.

How do you organize your days?
So I recently started using the Pomodoro Technique, which has been very helpful for structuring my time and getting the most out of my day. This also lets me focus intently on work for a burst, then refresh with bite-sized breathers in between.

In general though, mornings are for catching up and prioritizing; midday is for digging into large projects that need sustained amounts of my time and attention; late afternoons are for exploring, researching, or investigating new technologies.

I try to stick to this format as much as possible, but of course there are plenty of days where this plan goes completely off the rails!

What do you spend most of your time doing?
Recently, big picture thinking. Columbia Libraries just underwent a large-scale strategic planning process, which saw (among many changes) me re-organized into a brand new division called Digital Scholarship. Since transitioning, I’ve spent a lot of time brainstorming ways to reimagine technological support, services, and programs in broader, interdisciplinary contexts.

I also spend a fair amount of my time thinking about instruction and outreach, which happen to be my favorite parts of this job.

What is a typical day like for you?
It’s really hard to pin down a “typical” day, but lately it’s been a mish mash of handling email, scheduling consults with students interested in our microcontrollers (like the Arduino and Raspberry Pi) and virtual reality devices, delivering or planning for library workshops, working on grant-funded projects, and attending lots of meetings.

What are you reading right now?
SO. MANY. THINGS. I just started The Stone Sky by N. K. Jemisin, and I’m rotating that book with Crooked Kingdom for (somewhat) lighter reading. In the short fiction realm, I’m also reading Fireside Magazine (just finished the October issue and, hot diggity, was it good) and Fiyah: Magazine of Black Speculative Fiction.

What's the best professional advice you've ever received?
Two things:
  1. Find your people; it would be much harder to stay in this profession if I hadn’t connected with so many fantastic librarians of color through formal and informal networks. (POC libs, if you’re reading this check out We Here to connect with other POCs in closed group settings).
  2. Set aside time every day/other day for learning something new. It’s like setting up your own mini professional development goals, and could inspire whole new areas of inquiry. I try to do this as often as possible, and it’s really rewarding to catch up on the latest instruction or tech literature. Also, our time is valuable and we deserve taking time to better ourselves.

What have you found yourself doing at work that you never expected?
Never thought I’d be working on large, grant-funded projects; it’s been interesting so far. 

Inside the Library Studio

What is your favorite word?
Obsidian.

What is your least favorite word?
Moist. *shivers*

What profession other than your own would you love to attempt?
I would love to be a graphic designer! Spending my day pouring over typography options, color palette ideas, and layouts sounds heavenly.

What profession would you never want to attempt?
Beekeeper. If you know me, you know I’m terrified of bees (and wasps or anything else that buzzes and stings), so I literally don’t know how those people do a job where the creature you are trying to care for or protect just jabs a part of its body into you because it doesn’t understand that you’re trying to help it.

I have mad respect for beekeepers though.

Everything Else

What superpower do you wish you had?
Teleportation would make my life so much easier. Second choice would just be outright flying.

What are you most proud of in your career?
Maybe this is a cop out, but I’m really proud that I’m still chugging. [Editor's Note: Note a cop out.] This is my first role out of library school, so impostor syndrome was a huge thing to overcome early on. I’m happy to say that every day, I feel more and more like I deserve to be here.

If you're willing to share, tell about a mistake you made on the job.
Early on in my position, I was asked to lead an internal professional development initiative to promote skills training among myself and other colleagues. I felt pretty in over my head and struggled to thoughtfully structure the experience. What helped, though, was acknowledging that I was in over my head; I actively sought feedback from my colleagues and asked them for suggestions on how to make the experience better. That meant being humble and embracing my mistakes.

When you aren't at work, what are you likely doing?
Often, I’m writing. I spend a lot of time working on short story drafts and novel outlines. I’m also one of those people who gets lost down internet rabbit holes like the cat videos section of YouTube :).

Who else would you like to see answer these questions?
I would LOVE to see the ever wonderful and dope likes of Rebecca Martin at Harvard and Nicholae Cline at IU Bloomington answer these questions!


Jennifer tweets at @jeninthelib.

Tuesday, November 28, 2017

Finding a Mentor Mid Career: The Frankenstein Approach


Recently, I was talking with a couple of friends about how hard it can be to find a mentor when you're no longer early career. When you're mid career, it's a little weird. Sure, you like where you are and what you're doing, but do you really want to stay forever? All three of us are the Head Cheese In Charge at our respective libraries, so there is no natural person to whom we can turn for mentoring. Or is there?

As I started to write a general, "Gee, I don't know either," kind of response to the email chain, I realized I did have an answer. Since I'm so new in my job (both of my friends have been in their jobs for a while), how I started and handled my first three months is still so fresh in my mind. I worked to find the perfect mentor, but I didn't. What I did instead was... for lack of a better name, let's call it The Frankenstein Approach.

What the heck do I mean by that? Well, the way I've found my mentor is to cobble together multiple mentors so that (almost) every piece I need is embodied by at least one person. I've got a couple of people I can turn to for questions about community college settings. There are a few who've been in libraries longer than I have and in administration on top of that. I have a couple who know my current institution - one who is my official mentor through the program Human Resources runs, and another who is just someone I can ask questions, and both of them are peers (all of us report directly to the provost). I have a couple of people who know western NY academia, too. Finally, I have a few peer mentors who just know me and my approach. Only piece I don't have yet is someone who knows SUNY, but I just agreed to be on a couple of committees that I'm hoping that will help me fill in that blank.

This has worked for me so far. It's like... if I have a question about how to approach money centered issues, I turn to an old boss, whereas if I'm having personnel issues I can turn to someone who was formerly an "official" mentor but who has turned into a peer. If I'm trying to wrap my head around faculty relationships or anything else related community colleges, I can turn to one of a couple of contacts who are also directors at community colleges. If it's a very specific question about a dynamic I saw at a meeting on campus, I can go to one of a couple of people I trust on campus. And if it's about where my career should go, I turn to my peer mentors.

You're never going to be able to get everything you need, mentoring-wise, from one person. That becomes even more true the further you get in your career. So, take my advice: use the Frankenstein approach. If you're really lucky, when you're done you'll be...

Thursday, November 23, 2017

Big Tent Librarianship, Part 2, by Becky Yoose

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In Part One I talked about to move from one part of the Big Tent of Librarianship to another. In this post, I’ve turned the focus on those on the hiring committee, the ones who decide who can join them in their part of the Big Tent. If you took a close look at your workplace, you will probably find that the majority of your coworkers share similar life and work experiences. They will probably look similar to you too. Unless you have the power and authority to definitively change hiring practices at your place of work, you might be wondering how you can make room for folks from other parts of the library field when you are just another search committee member. How do you sway the recruitment process to venture away from the cultural “fit” default?

A major part as to why you see a homogeneous workplace is implicit bias. Implicit bias is about our attitudes toward stereotypes - both positive and negative - that are held on an unconscious level. While you might have worked on correcting attitudes and stereotypes you held in the past, chances are you only worked on the external bias that you hold, since external biases are easier to spot in everyday thinking and behavior. In short, you are biased, your search committee members are biased - and you all might not even know it. If you are sceptical that you are biased - even after all those hours and work you put in not being actively biased - take the test on the Project Implicit site. Implicit bias is a reflex that takes active, consistent work in recognizing and addressing over time on a personal level. You have probably seen implicit bias mentioned in conversations about race, gender, age, and ability, but implicit bias also plays into someone’s judgement of another person based on their school or workplace.

Combating the implicit bias present in the search committee can take on many forms. The first place to start is awareness - your HR or organization might already have an implicit bias training in place, or have a section on implicit bias in the materials that the hiring committee receives for the hiring process. If neither of those are the case, talking to HR and the hiring committee chair about addressing implicit bias in the hiring process will start the conversation in your organization.

Moving on to the job post that your committee is drafting, pay attention to the tone of the post. Look at any key words or phrases are you using that might turn off qualified candidates from applying. Take this example phrase in a required qualifications section of a job post - “experience in an academic library”. Widening the net and changing the phrase to “experience in a library setting” (or another broad phrase) opens up the candidate pool to those who have the skills but not in the setting of an academic library.

Another strategy to combat implicit bias is blind reviews. This will take some buy in from the committee and HR if your organization does not perform blind reviews already. Usually blind reviews take the person’s name or any gender or racial identifiers off of the application materials, and this is where a good portion of the literature regarding blind reviews focus on. Removing school and employment identifiers is not as commonly practiced as removing name, gender, or racial identifiers; nonetheless some organizations have taken that route. A non-library example of this is with an UK law firm who stripped out the names of educational institutions on resumes to ensure that the evaluators will judge the candidates on their skills and not the reputation of the school the candidates attended. Another company that specializes in the blind review process found that when they removed educational institution identifiers that applications from community college graduates rose 15%.

You might not be in a position to have your HR department develop a blind review process. You might not even have a say in what the job posting says when it goes out to the public. In those cases, when you see candidates who have the skills and experience but not in “right” type of library, advocate! While it is on the candidate to ultimately show that they have the skills to succeed in the position, it is on the hiring committee to evaluate candidates without penalizing for experience gained at the ‘wrong’ part of the Tent.

Further Reading on Implicit Bias



Becky Yoose is the Library Systems and Applications Manager at The Seattle Public Library. This is her second post for LtaYL. The first was "Fitting” into the Big Tent: The Role of “Fit” and Moving Between Library Types She tweets at @yo_bj.

Tuesday, November 21, 2017

The Fight for Net Neutrality, Redux

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I've written before about the need to fight for net neutrality. Fairly recently, about the Net Neutrality Day of Action, and before that about SOPA & PIPA. Now, the FCC is trying once again to enact a total repeal of the rules that govern Net Neutrality.

You need to call to complain. Yes, even if you've called before.

SENATE

Here is how you can find your senators and their phone numbers:
https://www.senate.gov/senators/contact/ 

And here is a list of the senators who are on The Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation which, among other things, oversees communications:
https://www.commerce.senate.gov/public/index.cfm/committeemembers

HOUSE

Here is how you can find your representative and their phone number:
https://www.house.gov/representatives/find-your-representative

And here is a list of the representatives who are on The House Subcommittee for Communications and Technology:
https://energycommerce.house.gov/subcommittee/communications-and-technology/

SCRIPTS

Here is what you can say to them if they are not on one of the committees listed above:

"Hi, my name is [name]. I live in [zip code]. I am calling today to ask [elected official's name] to take a stand against Chairman Pai's attempts to roll back Net Neutrality rules. I understand that the [senator/representative] may be limited in their ability to make demands on the FCC, but as a constituent I want [senator/representative] to both publicly push for open hearings across the nation, in advance of any sort of vote, and to introduce a telecoms bill that will address what the FCC is trying to roll back. Please keep the internet open for us all. [Personalize it by talking about the impact the internet has on your work or schooling or children]. Please thank the [senator/representative] for me. And thank you for answering the phones."

And here's what you can say to them if the ARE on one of the committees listed above:

"Hi, my name is [name]. I live in [zip code]. I am calling today to ask [elected official's name] to take a stand against Chairman Pai's attempts to roll back Net Neutrality rules. I understand that the [senator/representative] is a member of [name the committee/subcommittee] which in part oversees the internet. It is crucial for the [senator/representative] to do everything in their power as a member of that [committee/subcommittee] to stop Chairman Pai. In addition, I want [senator/representative] to both publicly push for open hearings across the nation, in advance of any sort of vote, and to introduce a telecoms bill that will address what the FCC is trying to roll back. Please keep the internet open for us all. [Personalize it by talking about the impact the internet has on your work or schooling or children]. Please thank the [senator/representative] for me. And thank you for answering the phones."


Scripts based pretty closely on those suggested by #ICalledMyReps.

Thursday, November 16, 2017

Interview Post: Emily Drabinski

From left to right: the author, Clive, and Tom
Biographical

Name?
Emily Drabinski

Current job?

Coordinator of Instruction, Long Island University’s Brooklyn campus (GO BLACKBIRDS!)

How long have you been in the field?

15 years! Wow!


How Do You Work?

What is your office/workspace like?

Messy. Piles everywhere. I have an organized calendar and an organized Dropbox, but my actual office is a mess.

How do you organize your days?
I have a nine year old, so he does a lot of the organizing for me. I am up at 5:15 to get him fed, homework done, and out the door to the bus stop by 7am, and then I’ll run to the office or around Prospect Park with a friend before heading into work. My work time is organized around meetings, reference desk shifts, and instruction sessions, with plenty of staring at the internet and responding to email.

What do you spend most of your time doing?
Talking to people and scheduling time to talk to people. I do a lot of organizing work for my job (getting people into the library for information literacy instruction), and these days I am organizing in my workplace around increasing management control over our labor. I start my term on ALA Council at Midwinter this February, so I’m having lots of organizing conversations trying to figure out what the scope of my work in that body might be over the next three years. And I’m organizing a conference in July at Simmons College, and I organize a book series, organize organize organize. I could stand to spend a little more time clarifying for myself what my vision for the days ahead might be. Sometimes, down in the weeds, we can lose sight of what really matters, why we bother to do the work we do.

What is a typical day like for you?
Lots of appointments and meetings and emails and reports. I keep a to-do list in a print calendar and I update it constantly throughout the day. So many little things to do. But big change happens one small task at a time. I’m usually making sure those tasks are completed, one by one.

What are you reading right now?

Vincente Hernández, History of Books and Libraries in the Philippines, 1521-1900. Tana French at bedtime.

What's the best professional advice you've ever received?
Write a little every day.

What have you found yourself doing at work that you never expected?

I am exceptional at stapler unjamming, and I unjam my fair share of staplers. I also hand out an awful lot of candy to undergraduates.



Inside the Library Studio

What is your favorite word?
Tension when it’s used as a noun.

What is your least favorite word?
Tomorrow. It never comes!

What profession other than your own would you love to attempt?
Flight attendant

What profession would you never want to attempt?
Unlike my kid, professional baseball player. Full count, bottom of the ninth, bases loaded, down by three, I think I would come apart if it was me at the plate. Happy to bat in the middle of the order.

Everything Else

What superpower do you wish you had?
The ability to redistribute wealth and opportunity!

What are you most proud of in your career?
The book series I edit for Library Juice Press/Litwin books. It is a boatload of thankless work, lots of emails and calendars, and checklists, but I think a lot of good voices are out in the world because of the editorial infrastructure I’ve helped to build.

If you're willing to share, tell about a mistake you made on the job.
Withholding information because it’s hard to admit or confront. I’ve made that mistake many times, it’s always bad. “No surprises” is my number one workplace rule, and I have always regretted breaking it.

When you aren't at work, what are you likely doing?
Watching reality television on the couch with my cats.

Who else would you like to see answer these questions?
Fobazi Ettarh, Annie Rauh, Regina Gong


Emily tweets at @edrabinski.

Tuesday, November 14, 2017

New Job, New Interview


Feels a little like cheating, but as I've been editing interviews recently, I've also been thinking about how my answers have changed. At least a lot of them have. So I decided to redo my interview with myself. My blog, my prerogative? 

Biographical

Name?
Luna Lovegood

Current job?
Director of Library Services, Genesee Community College

How long have you been in the field?
Closing in on 15 years!


How Do You Work?

What is your office/workspace like?

I have walls now, and privacy. It's a bigger institution than my last, so I'm not needed on the front lines as much. I have an L desk, a big filing cabinet, a table with chairs (!!) for meetings, and a bookshelf that is chock-a-block full of things I need to read and do. I like tidy, and my office feels such a mess - mostly because of the piles on my bookshelf.

How do you organize your days?
I'm still a combination of an electronic calendar and a paper journal, but I'm full-on bullet journaling now. To be fair, it's my own special version of the bullet journal since I can't be bothered to make it pretty, but it helps me so much to have all of my to do lists and notes all in one place - for the most part.

What do you spend most of your time doing?
Meetings. Meetings meetings and more meetings. I sit down with everyone who works at the library - 17 people - at least once a month, and a few meetings are more frequent. I have a weekly meeting with my boss, the provost. I have biweekly meetings with an on-site mentor. I have biweekly meetings with the deans & directors who all report directly to the provost. There are monthly web team meetings and monthly library staff meetings. I also have biweekly meetings with a student group called the Student Library Council. Oh, and we are going through a functional area review (FAR) - kind of like a program review or a reaccreditation, but for administrative units - which necessitate monthly meetings with the committee plus a bunch of other meetings with important constituents and stakeholders. And those are just the regular meetings... never mind about the avalanche of "hi, I'm new here, let's get together and chat!" meetings.

What is a typical day like for you?
I come the front door of the library to make sure nothing is figuratively or literally on fire, and that check means a quick hello with the circulation manager. I say hello to everyone who is working, put my lunch in the fridge, make myself a cup of tea, and then double check that I'm prepped for the day's meetings (I try to prep for the entire week's meetings on Monday). Once that's done, I try to glance at whatever email has come in since the last time I was at work. Then it's off to the aforementioned meetings, in between which I try to keep up with the administratrivia and paperwork and also try to sneak some work in on the bigger projects like working on the FAR or reading some of the files my predecessor left. I (almost) always take a lunch hour, which I try to make restorative by keeping work out of that time if possible. Then I go back into the race of meetings, paperwork, and getting to know my new job and new library. At the end of the day, I plan the following day's to do list, and then I head home. I leave via the front door so I can say hello and/or good night to the staff who work until close.

What are you reading right now?
As usual, too many books at once. But here's the list:

What's the best professional advice you've ever received?
The last time I answered this question, I cited Jessame Ferguson's advice to stop interviewing for a job I already had, and that is still the best, but a close second is something I got from The First 90 Days: don't give into the action imperative when you're new in a job. This basically means don't make changes just to have change, and don't do things just to do them. Have reasons for your actions and think about what you're doing before you do it.

What have you found yourself doing at work that you never expected?
Navigating the line between accommodating members of the public and not letting them take advantage of the library. I've never worked at a public institution before, and didn't think I ever would, and being polite and helping people who are not associated with my school other than the fact that they live nearby, but making sure that the needs of our students come first, can be... challenging.


Inside the Library Studio

What is your favorite word?
I still really love mellifluous, but "resist" has a special place in my heart lately.

What is your least favorite word?
Again, any word that is a derogatory term for a group of marginalized people. Nothing even comes close.

What profession other than your own would you love to attempt?
Wildlife rehab is still the top of my list, but I'd also love to do science communication to help others share my passion for the unloved animals of the world like Damon diadema (tailless whip scorpion) and Cathartes aura (turkey vulture).

What profession would you never want to attempt?
Anything medical.

Everything Else

What superpower do you wish you had?
Still kinda want Jamie Madrox's power, but have to admit the lure of James Howlett's healing factor as I age and have to deal with more aches and pains.

What are you most proud of in your career?
Still and forever this blog.

If you're willing to share, tell about a mistake you made on the job.
This happened early in my career, but I'll never forget it: a student came up and asked me for help finding information for their science paper. I heard "zebra muscles" so I spent 30 minutes finding her all sorts of stuff on equine musculature. She got a blank look on her face and I finally asked clarifying questions and learned she'd actually said "zebra mussels." Oops.

When you aren't at work, what are you likely doing?
Right now? Exploring my new city and making friends with locals. Been spending time investigating local restaurants, especially.

Who else would you like to see answer these questions?
You!

Thursday, November 9, 2017

Interview Post: Lindsay Cronk


Biographical

Name?
Lindsay Cronk

Current job?
Head of Collection Strategies, University of Rochester River Campus Libraries

How long have you been in the field?
7 Years, but only 6 months in my current job.


How Do You Work?

What is your office/workspace like?

I have a window, which feels like the crowning accomplishment of all my library striving and hustling. Each morning, I gaze out my magnificent window and I feel a sense of accomplishment. I have a kind of more than a cubicle/less than an office space with a door. There’s a white board covered in project notes, also tons of friendly tchotchkes because I’m an aggressive office nester. The office space is open and collaborative, which I love. I’m not at my desk very often because we’re always meeting and I’m always in someone’s grill or investigating the stacks.

How do you organize your days?
I pride myself on my flexibility, and I take a lot of meetings, so the structure of my day is often defined by others. However, two critical organizational pieces for me are:

  1. Each morning I review to-do list items, prepare for meetings, and try to clear my inbox. I also try to use this time to reflect and consider how I can instill social justice in the tasks and meetings ahead.
  2. Each afternoon I write a to-do list for the next day. Mindful reflection FTW!
I try essentially to calendar off an hour in the morning and a half hour in the afternoon to make this possible.

What do you spend most of your time doing?
My friend and mentor, Miranda Bennett, warned me that being a department head means “doing email, going to meetings, and worrying about what you’re missing.” I find this to be largely true. I spend a lot of time in project management, and there are always a lot of projects in collection development and management. I check in and support projects from my team and from subject experts. I have found the hardest part of my transition to this role has been the piece of delegating and stepping aside for practitioners. I still create projects, develop ideas, but I am learning to nourish and support the creativity of others.

What is a typical day like for you?
I take the shuttle to work, and I am lucky that other library colleagues do as well. This gives us an informal check in every day where we talk about our work. I get to the office about 8:30, take coffee with some colleagues who are in academic engagement, shop talk about our overlapping projects. The meat of any day can be extremely different, but I’d misrepresenting my experience in academic libraries if I didn’t mention there are always a ton of meetings! On a productive day I’ll check in on a variety of projects with multiple departments, maybe frolic through the Stacks to see where researchers are. At the end of the day, I settle down to look at my calendar for the next day and set my to-do list.

What are you reading right now?
I’m reading Maplecroft by Cherie Priest, and it’s perfect Halloween/Fall reading. Priest reframes Lizzie Borden as an axe-wielding Cthulu-monster slayer, and I am living for it.

What's the best professional advice you've ever received?
My former boss, Mary Elin Santiago, now Senior VP at Gale told me, “If you can learn to thrive in chaos, you will succeed under any circumstances.”

What have you found yourself doing at work that you never expected?
I definitely never thought I’d spend this much time looking into physical collections - I thought I was an eresources/licensing person exclusively. It’s been a real joy to work in the print collection, but an unexpected joy.


Inside the Library Studio

What is your favorite word?

What is your least favorite word?
Meritocracy

What profession other than your own would you love to attempt?
Late night horror film host or Foley artist

What profession would you never want to attempt?
Teacher

Everything Else

What superpower do you wish you had?
I would love to be able to talk to animals.

What are you most proud of in your career?
I am most proud of the relationships I have built and continue to build. I am proud of my community. From a project standpoint, I am probably most proud of my contributions to the profession regarding data visualization for collection data.

If you're willing to share, tell about a mistake you made on the job.
I once communicated what was an accurate, negative description of a current budget situation in a sort of Chicken Little, “the sky is falling” way. I was trying to give a sense of urgency, which I thought was lacking in the organization. When we received additional funding from administration, I had to walk back my communication. It damaged the trust I’d had with some of the people involved. If I had it to do again, I’d definitely communicate it differently! It was the result of my own inexperience.

When you aren't at work, what are you likely doing?
My dude and I spend a lot of our free time in the gorgeous local parks here in Rochester, New York. There’s so much natural beauty! We also love to go see movies at the Little Theater and pick up records at Record Archive.

Who else would you like to see answer these questions?
Amie Wright (@librarylandia), Ariana Santiago (@aripants), and Mea Warren (@meawarren)!


Lindsay tweets at @linds_bot.