Little Libraries, Big Ideas

It's something that's been apparent to me almost my entire career: little libraries have just as many - if not more - big ideas as do big libraries, but our budgets and personnel constraints make it so that we have a hard time getting the word out. I remember distinctly attending ALA Annual in DC back in 2010, walking over to have a conversation with someone at the Dark Horse Comics booth (we'd emailed before, and I wanted to say hi in person, and then later overhearing a remark about how cool it was that librarians were adding comics and graphic novels to their collections. I was flabbergasted. I'd been in charge of a graphic novel collection for most of my career - probably about 6 years - at that point. How was it that people thought libraries didn't do that thing?

And that's not the only instance I've seen in the 14 years since I started my first job in a library. Necessity sometimes truly is the mother of invention, so when your choice is between some fancy new expensive thing and keeping the lights on... you get creative. Small libraries - particularly small public libraries from whom I've shamelessly stolen ideas for years - are hot beds of creativity. Gaming in libraries. Maker spaces that go beyond a 3D printer. Outreach at places you'd never expect it, like a book club that meets in a brew pub. Art shows. The list goes on and on.

Now I need you to bear with me as I try to make this next point, because I'm not exactly sure where this will end up. I know a few things, though. I know that the cost of attending conferences, even smallish local ones, is cost prohibitive for too many people. Further, there are only so many slots for online presentations. I know that a lot of you are going to talk about the amazing connections you can make and enhance when you go to conferences in person, and you're not wrong. I've spent literally thousands of dollars out of my own pocket over the last 5 years to attend conferences, so I know. But I also know that my situation isn't common and not everyone can afford to do what I did.

Further, what about publications? I've tried to make LtaYL a bit of a platform for sharing ideas and innovation. There are plenty of other publications that do the same - The Journal of Creative Library Practice and In the Library with the Lead Pipe come immediately to mind. But what about the people who are so busy keeping their libraries open and running that they have no time to write?

It's hard to think about the kinds of things we're missing because of the disparity in finances between different kinds of libraries. And let's be clear: this isn't just a problem of academic and public libraries. Think about the teeny museum libraries that are run by curators who are also the librarians. Think about the small corporate libraries that have one librarian splitting their time between multiple locations. Think about librarians who work solo in the libraries of small city hospitals. What innovations have they dreamed up that could solve major problems at bigger libraries?

This isn't the first nor will it be the last time I discuss this problem, but it's gotten so much more frustrating lately. Admittedly, part of it is because I see big name/big school libraries getting lauded for doing things those of us at smaller libraries have been doing for years, and it stings. It really stings. Beyond the selfish aspect of this, though, is the fact that we really are missing out on some amazing ideas.

So, how can we solve this problem? Scholarships are good, but don't go far. Can we get more committees - particularly committees that are part of national organizations - to go digital? I'm not sure how to answer this issue, since my own solution was to dig into my own bank account. So, really, what ideas do you have?

Surviving Peer Review on Your Own Terms, by Alison Skyrme, Jane Schmidt, and Curtis Sassur

Source

A new librarian, an experienced librarian and an archivist got together to do a research project. What happened along the way was not quite what we expected. Maybe you’ve experienced something like it, or maybe you’ll face a similar situation in the future. We want to share our experience with the joy, excitement, trials, and disappointment in the world of academic publishing.

Why we did the research

For us, finding the topic was the easy part. We had decided that we would purposefully avoid supervising unpaid internships as a matter of professional integrity, and only take on students that our library could properly fund. During the course of this decision, it was clear that the topic had been neglected in library research and we wanted to take a close look at the institutionalization of unpaid internships within accredited library science graduate programs. There was (and remains) a climate of scrutiny on the misuse of unpaid interns in many sectors. Work-study programs are an accepted part of librarian education - we thought it was prudent to take a critical look at how well it’s working. We wanted to hear what the interns had to say. Are they really benefitting? Is their work valued? Is the experience worthwhile? So, with ethics board approval, a research plan, and a literature review in hand we were on our way.

Research: The good, the bad, and the anti-climactic

We thought a social sciences-based approach would best serve our needs, so we used survey tools and interviews to examine the value of the internships. Our background research went well: it showed a gap in the research, offered guidance in the form of similar studies from other fields, and highlighted issues to investigate. The dreaded ethics approval process was a useful exercise, even though it did feel a bit fastidious in the moment. Gaps in our survey tools, ethical considerations we’d missed, and practical issues were highlighted and remedied. With approval in hand, we eagerly sent our surveys and interview requests out into the world and waited for the data and volunteers to come flooding in.

Cue the crickets.

Sometimes, despite best efforts, all you get is a small sample size. In our case, very small. Tiny, really. Why? Some institutions may have been unwilling to participate, some individuals were perhaps afraid of giving negative feedback that may affect their future career, despite assurances of privacy. Others may have simply deleted the email. Still others may have had survey fatigue. There is no way to know why we got a a poor response rate, but we did. We re-sent requests, we widened our search, we ensured messages were being received, but we still only received a small amount of responses. What next? We sought the advice of our ethics review board to see if we should proceed. They told us that we could, but we would have to note that the sample size would have to be acknowledged in the final product. And so, we carried on - we’d gotten this far, right?

The interviews we did with former unpaid interns that did contact us were fascinating. They shared experiences we hadn’t considered and gave us a point of view we hadn’t anticipated. That’s what research is supposed to do, right? We became so immersed in the rich narratives before us, our concerns about the sample size were assuaged.

Putting it out there

When we had collected all the data we could, we found a journal that seemed in line with the kind of research we did. We followed the structure, formatting and submission instructions, and then we waited. And waited. By the time we received the good news that our publication had been accepted (with “extensive and comprehensive revisions”), the research was well over a year old, and we were starting to lose enthusiasm. But we rallied, and began to carefully review the required changes. Receiving negative feedback is never a hootenanny. We understand the process is designed to ensure high quality - and certainly there were changes that needed to be made - but upon reviewing the portions that were re-written as per the reviewers suggestions, we no longer felt the paper was meaningful enough to be published.

Making the hard choice

So, now what? When you have annual reviews pending and research is expected, it’s difficult to say “no” to a publication, even if the final product would feel inauthentic. While our paper was technically accepted, the required revisions would have nullified any conclusions we made, and we honestly wondered why they wanted to publish it. We concluded that we didn’t need to shoehorn our research into a box that didn’t fit. We also decided we didn’t want to let it go, and opted for Plan B - alternative dissemination.

Plan “B” doesn’t have to be Bad

This must be prefaced with an acknowledgement that we are lucky enough to work for an institution that takes a relatively broad view of publishing. Poster presentations, self-publishing, and blog posts are all reasonably considered. This isn’t the case for everyone, of course. But if librarians are meant to be at the forefront of a bold new world of scholarly dissemination, we need to walk the talk. This project may not have gone exactly as planned in the traditional sense, but even with its shortcomings, there is value to its existence. We are sharing it now, for the wisdom to be gleaned from its (limited) results and to talk about the experience we had from idea to peer review. We feel privileged to be able to take this approach and hope that it helps inspire others to explore a similar path if they find themselves in a similar situation.

Alternative dissemination is ok. [Editor’s Note: I’m obviously a fan of alternative dissemination.] We don’t need to publish in an academic journal to have our voices heard, to start a discussion, to make people think. Certainly the traditional peer-review model has its place, but it is not always the best way to reach your audience. We cannot expect scholarly communications to evolve if we aren’t willing to take the lead by example.

Sounds like a great research opportunity….

Alison Skyrme is the Special Collections Librarian at the Ryerson University Library and Archives, and an instructor in the Film + Photographic Preservation and Collections Management graduate program at Ryerson. Alison holds a Master of Information from the University of Toronto, 2015, and specializes in the management of photographic collections. She is currently the Image Arts liaison librarian. She tweets at @A_Skyrme.

Jane Schmidt has worked in collections management at Ryerson University in Toronto since she graduated from University of Alberta in 2004. She has previously presented and published on issues related to monograph acquisitions including weeding, demand driven acquisitions and budget management. She is presently the Engineering liaison librarian. Her current research interests include Little Free Libraries, public libraries, political economy and dinosaurs, thanks to her 5 year old son Elliott. She tweets at @janeschmidt and blogs at The Incidental Academic Librarian.

Curtis Sassur currently serves as the Archivist and Coordinator of Archives & Special Collections at Ryerson University. Curtis holds a Masters of Information Studies (MISt) from the University of Toronto, and a BA in philosophy from the University of Guelph. Curtis' current research interests include the Canadian cultural donation/tax credit system and the increasing encroachment of private sector paradigms and practices into the library sector. He tweets at @RU_Archivist.

One Small Step, by Steve Thomas

In fewer than forty hours, to my delighted surprise, the Kickstarter campaign I’m running for my podcast was fully-funded. I have plans for any further money I happen to receive for the remainder of the campaign, but even if the pledges completely dried up, I’d be satisfied because I kept my expectations reasonable. I planned out my initial goal to help me succeed in moving the show forward qualitatively.

Sure, sometimes we allow ourselves to be so overtaken by our grandiose dreams that we won’t accept anything less (believe me, I understand having big dreams - just check out the stretch goals for the campaign), but perfectionism can be our greatest enemy. As librarians, we are trained to focus on getting the details right while at the same time holding up the Big Idea folks in our profession as the gold standard. But that’s not the only way to move forward. Even making mistakes can mean forward progression, so long as they are the right mistakes.

Look at an example from another industry: Apple stock has taken a hit in recent months because investors and the market are waiting for that next huge leap into the future, the next iPod, iPhone, iPad, not content with the slower pace of improvements they’ve made to their hardware and software. But why does every improvement have to be earth-shattering? Apple has turned the technology world on its head a half dozen times since its inception. Why can’t modest, iterative improvements be enough sometimes?

That’s not to say that “good enough” should be “good enough” or that we should always set our expectations low. We need lofty goals to aim toward and occasionally need to take that leap into the great unknown in the name of progress, but not every leap has to be of the Neil Armstrong variety and even these larger goals can be measured in smaller steps.

Slow progress is still progress. The backers of my Kickstarter have allowed me to take one small step into the future of a grander show, one I couldn’t’ve made on my own, and the completion of that step is as satisfying as taking a giant leap. Enjoying the small victories makes the larger ones even sweeter.

Steve Thomas is a public librarian and the host of Circulating Ideas, the librarian interview podcast. He lives in the suburbs of Atlanta with his wife, two kids, and two cats. He has never watched an entire episode of Doctor Who but hopes you can forgive him. This is the second post he has written for this blog. The first was “You Are Going to Fail (But That's Okay).” You can follow him on Twitter@stevelibrarian.

Librarians, Tenure, and Research, by Kirstin Dougan

The question of whether academic librarians should be part of a tenure system on par with teaching faculty is not a new one, and this post will not debate the pros and cons of the issue. However, I offer the thoughts of a librarian who went from an academic position in which librarians did not have faculty status or tenure (but instead had something called continuing appointment), to one in which librarians have faculty status and are held to standards as rigorous as those for other faculty.

For some background, the AAUP/ACRL recently put out a revised statement on college and university librarians and tenure. All in all I agree with this statement. However, I do so with some lingering ambivalence. You see, this is my third professional position (three different institutions), and the only one at which librarians have tenure. Over five years ago I came to this aspect of the job reluctantly, but willing to tackle the challenge of research and tenure in order to have the job I want, at an institution I admire, and to be back in a part of the country I adore. Now, more than five years later, my tenure papers will start their long process forward. I am excited about the research I am doing and questions I am examining, and I can truly say that the research part of my job keeps it interesting and thought-provoking.

The biggest challenges I faced were the need to develop a research agenda and learn how to implement it in a relatively short amount of time. If you look, you’ll find that there are many articles in the library science literature that address this topic, but here are a few guiding principles. How does one decide what to research? First, think about questions that intrigue you. What issues do you face in your job on a regular basis that would benefit from exploration and data collection? My research questions all come directly from my daily work as a public services librarian in a large academic music library. Whatever you choose, make it something that interests you and that you want to spend some serious time with.  Ideally, it will be something that you can analyze in pieces and get more than one project/publication out of. Next, think about how you can gather data on your question. You must match the methodology to the question at hand or your work won’t produce meaningful results. There are several good resources on research question development and research methodology, and the one that really got me thinking was Practical Research Methods for Library and Information Professionals by Susan Beck and Kate Manuel. Also, it’s likely that your campus will require institutional review board training/applications for research projects involving people (surveys, focus groups, observational, etc.) so plan ahead for this.  Many campuses offer faculty and staff funding opportunities as well as survey and statistical support for their research, at a minimum.

Make research and writing a priority. Many productivity advocates say to write every day to keep the ideas and words flowing. Set weekly writing “dates” with a colleague, either a librarian or another faculty member. Share your goals with each other at the beginning of the session and check in when you’re done. Get advice from colleagues about projects and ask them to read your work throughout the process. Not all library tenure systems are the same. Some, like ours, include elements of librarianship, research, and service to the school and/or the profession, and have expectations equal to that of teaching faculty. Keep those expectations in mind and prioritize your efforts. If publication is a primary requirement for your tenure case, don’t do conference presentations unless the proceedings will be published or you can turn that work into a peer-reviewed article.

Of course, research and publication isn’t limited to those librarians who need it for tenure. I’d encourage anyone to consider taking on a research project that is important to them. The opportunity and support to do research has informed and transformed my librarianship, and I would like to think that the publications I have produced have increased the profession’s knowledge base.


Kristin Dougan is the Music and Performing Arts Librarian at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. She tweets both @kmdougan and @mpalillinois. This is her second post for this blog. The first was “How to Prepare to be a Subject Specialist Librarian.”

[Editor's note: Kristin recently gave a presentation on this topic. A Google doc of the slides is available.]

Finding Your Voice, by Maureen Barry

Wright State students help prepare Chesterhill Produce Auction for it's opening during their week-long service trip to southeast Ohio last spring break.

When I was on the job market in 2004-2005, as I was finishing my MLS, I applied for both tenure-track and non-tenure-track positions. I preferred non-tenure because, like many new librarians, I hadn’t yet discovered my voice. Why jump into publishing if I didn’t have anything to say yet? This idea came back to me in the response I got to a question I asked during a phone interview, “What are the benefits of the non-tenure position?”  She said, “I like this situation [non-tenure] because I don’t feel pressured to publish, but I am supported if I want to publish.” 

It wasn’t until about five years into my career that I got the urge to start publishing. It happened when one of my friends, Dr. Sarah Twill, a social work faculty member at my current institution, introduced me to service-learning. Service-learning is a teaching and learning pedagogy that closely ties together course content with service to the community to help solve real-world problems. It’s different from volunteerism in that service learning is a delicate balance of curricular materials, service, and reflection.  It’s also different from internship because an internship is usually done after your coursework is complete. (See Andrew Furco’s continuum for further explanation.)

The more I heard Sarah talk about service-learning, the more I was hooked. One day, I thought to myself:  How can I use service-learning in the for-credit information literacy course that I co-teach? Has it been done? My thought was that incorporating service-learning would attach a real-world component to the course making the class a more meaningful experience not only for me, but also for my students and our would-be community partner.

A journey into the literature revealed NO instances of such a course, although there was some discussion about the parallels between information literacy and service-learning (see Riddle, 2003). Hmm. I realized I might be on to something here, even though no one else appeared to have tried it yet. So I went for it. (If you’d like to read more about the course and how it came to be, see my article, “Research for the Greater Good:  Incorporating service-learning in an information literacy course at Wright State University,” in the June 2011 C&RL News.)

Then I had a light bulb moment near the end of my first quarter of teaching the service-learning information literacy course. I was walking across campus with my supervisor when I said, “I may have found my niche with service-learning.”  She responded, “If you want to be known for service-learning, you need to start a blog.”  All I could think was, “Ugh. Really? A blog? Do I really want to write THAT often?  She’s right though – it’s what we librarians do.” And now, looking back on it, I’m really grateful to her for giving me that push.  At the time, I really didn’t want to blog; but when your boss suggests something, it’s hard to say no.  So, here I am, the self-labeled Service Learning Librarian.    

Because of my blog, I was invited to write a two part piece for LOEX Quarterly (Part 1; Part 2). Loanne Snavely, an academic librarian, recognized from my blog that my course engaged students with the library in a unique way, so she contacted me because she was seeking chapters for Student Engagement and the Academic Library. I have also been invited to be a panelist for the Women’s & Gender Studies Section of ALA’s President’s Program at the annual conference in July 2013. And finally, just a few weeks ago, I was contacted to blind review an article about service-learning in library education.  All of these opportunities presented themselves because of my blog.

In addition to my for-credit information literacy course, my success has helped me seek new opportunities to partner with faculty and instructors who incorporate service-learning pedagogy.  Over the past few years, I helped instructors pair information literacy and service-learning in English composition courses. I was the embedded librarian in an honors interdisciplinary service-learning course about sustainability in Appalachia, co-taught by Dr. Sarah Twill and an instructor in Earth & Environmental Sciences.  This course includes a week-long service trip to southeast Ohio.  Yes, in case you were wondering, I went on the trip.  It was without a doubt the most meaningful interaction I’ve had with students at Wright State.  Another benefit is that these experiences have provided new material about which I can write and present.

Service-learning has been a rewarding way to serve both my community and my profession. I’m grateful that I discovered the concept here at Wright State. Or, perhaps it discovered me. Either way, I found my voice, and I continue to develop it through seeking new service-learning experiences at my institution, giving presentations, writing, and also a little reading, of course.

If you haven’t found your voice yet, don’t worry. It will come. It doesn’t happen overnight, so don’t get discouraged. It took me almost 5 years to figure out what I could possibly offer to my field that was new and different.   

Maureen Barry is the First Year Experience Librarian at Wright State University in Dayton, OH. She tweets @SLLibrarian and blogs at Service Learning Librarian.

Not So Different After All, Or, Academics and Publics vs. Predatory Pricing

I always try to write about things libr* people have in common - customer service, communication skills, job hunting, etc. But how much do we really have in common when it comes to collection development and our relationships with publishers? For instance, a friend who works in a public library said something like, "If a paperback costs more than $10, I don't even look at it." I responded, "If a paperback coast less than $10, I don't even look at it." To be more explicit: she's only interested in mass market paperbacks whereas I avoid them.

Think about these differences through the lens of recent publishing scandals. On the public library side, it's ebook pricing problems. Random House has moved to agency pricing and other publishers are completely refusing to sell ebooks to libraries. On the academic library side, it's the Research Works Act and Elsevier and getting access to scholarly and scientific articles. The publishers with which public librarians do business seem to want to employ predatory pricing and the publishers with which academic librarians do business seem to want to employ predatory pricing. Not so dissimilar after all.

If we aren't that different in our problems, I can't help thinking that there's got to be a way we can team up to fix our problems. I just can't think of it. So no, I don't have the answers this week, but I'm wondering if you do. I'd love to hear from any of my readers about this, but I'm especially interested to hear from the people at whom this blog is targeted: library science graduate students and new library science professionals. With all of our experience, established professionals haven't managed to solve these issues yet. So, new libr* kids, please help me with your fresh perspective.

What do you think?