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.

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?

Why I Fight

My Grandfather

So many things I could write about this week. I've been thinking about how small libraries have big ideas that are ignored until a big library follows suit. I've also been thinking about the world of difference between my last job and my current one. I've spent some time thinking about mental health. But I can't stop thinking about the events this past weekend in Charlottesville, and similar events that have been happening again and again in the United States - not just in recent times, but for decades and beyond. That seems more important.

I'm a long time fighter. Here are some examples: Boycotting Coke in the 80s because they were still in South Africa - also posted signs around my high school, even on the Coke machines. Marching for women's rights, and regularly skipping classes to campaign for the same, in the 90s. Embraced and pushed size acceptance in the 00s. As I (and my knees) have aged, I've started fighting with money by donating money to civil rights organizations like the Southern Poverty Law Center.

And now? What am I fighting for now? I'm fighting so I can be the person my grandfather expected me to be. That means there is no one issue that gets my sole attention. Instead, I work for respect for people's humanity, religious differences, race, and beyond. But it also means that I won't back down from defending people who have been disenfranchised and had their voices taken from them. The United States have a long and bloody history of racism, sexism, religious intolerance, discrimination based on gender identity and sexual orientation. We need to respect and appreciate differences, not suppress and destroy them. We need to do this in our professional as well as our personal lives.

Norman Olin never stopped learning and growing and doing what he could to make things better. He was a traveling salesman who joined the Army Air Corps then ran his own business in NYC before finally becoming a high school teacher and college professor. And there was never any doubt that he loved me for who I am. I hope you all have someone in your life or your past who makes you want to be a better person the way my grandfather does for me. If you don't, feel free to adopt my grandfather for your own posthumously. He'd be happy to meet you.

Net Neutrality: Day of Action

Once again the neutrality of the internet is at risk, so a lot of people are trying to come together to try to do something about it. Here are two images that I've seen around that capture the whole of it:

And here's some language from Battle for the Net, because they've said it better than I ever could:

"On July 12, 2017, websites, Internet users, and online communities will come together to sound the alarm about the FCC’s attack on net neutrality. Learn how you can join the protest and spread the word at https://www.battleforthenet.com/july12/.

"Right now, new FCC Chairman and former Verizon lawyer Ajit Pai has a plan to destroy net neutrality and give big cable companies immense control over what we see and do online. If they get their way, the FCC will give companies like Comcast, Verizon, and AT&T control over what we can see and do on the Internet, with the power to slow down or block websites and charge apps and sites extra fees to reach an audience.

"If we lose net neutrality, we could soon face an Internet where some of your favorite websites are forced into a slow lane online, while deep-pocketed companies who can afford expensive new 'prioritization' fees have special fast lane access to Internet users – tilting the playing field in their favor.

"But on July 12th, the Internet will come together to stop them. Websites, Internet users, and online communities will stand tall, and sound the alarm about the FCC’s attack on net neutrality.

The Battle for the Net campaign will provide tools for everyone to make it super easy for your friends, family, followers to take action. From the SOPA blackout to the Internet Slowdown, we've shown time and time again that when the Internet comes together, we can stop censorship and corruption. Now, we have to do it again!"

Learn more and join the action here: https://www.battleforthenet.com/july12

This is too important. I know there have been so very many calls for action lately - 45 and the rest of the kleptocrats have made it so we have to fight for our lives almost every day - but this idea of net neutrality underpins all our other fights. Please join. 

Giving Tuesday

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Looking for a way to participate in the tradition of Giving Tuesday while still fighting the prevailing culture of intolerance? Each of these groups is working in some way to support and expand rights and freedoms and civil liberties. These groups will be getting my money today and moving forward.

American Civil Liberties Union
Asian Counseling and Referral Service (ACRS)
Black Lives Matter
Campaign Zero
Community Refugee and Immigration Services (CRIS)
Council of American-Islamic Relations (CAIR)
Disability Rights Education and Defense Fund (DREDF)
Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society (HIAS)
Humane Society
Jewish Voice for Peace
Kids In Need of Defense (KIND)
Mexican-American Legal Defense Fund (MALDEF)
NARAL Pro-Choice America
NAACP
National Coalition Against Domestic Violence (NCADV)
National Coalition for the Homeless LGBT
Native American Rights Fund
NextGen Climate Action
Planned Parenthood
Rape, Abuse, & Incest National Network (RAINN)
Standing Rock DAPL Fund 
Time Out Youth
The Trevor Project
Youth Center for Immigrant Children’s Rights 

Looking for suggestions of groups to add, as well, so please comment.

What's Next? Strengthening Our Communities Ahead of the Incoming Administration

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I'll admit it. I've been lax about some things in the time since I became a library director. In my defense, the list of things I needed to do when I first started was intimidatingly long and I focused on things that were major conflagrations - opting to leave the fire hazards in place because there's only so much time in a day and only so much energy in a person. But now those fire hazards, those small sparks, need attention since the incoming administration seems to want to pour gasoline over all of us.

Here are a few things I've been meaning to do that will be at the top of my list, along with some things I've been doing all along but that will get even more attention.

1. Privacy Audit. I've been meaning to do this for years now. I printed out and read a bunch of materials, such as this checklist from ALA, but there was always something that got in the way of execution. No more. This will be at the top of my priority list.
2. Disaster Preparedness, Including Active Shooter Response Training. I made some progress on this project, but again things got in the way. I need to make this a priority, so I will probably invoke liability to get people's attention. I found Library As Safe Haven helpful when I did have a chance to do this work, and will pull it back out now that I'm making it a priority.
3. Inclusive Collection Development, Programs, and Outreach. I've talked before on this blog about how we will do displays about and for disadvantaged groups, but we make a point of doing it beyond the typical time frame. For example, we had a display on protest culture and civil rights activists, yes, but not in February. Also, I'm planning to spend a good chunk of our collection development budget on beefing up our resources for and by underrepresented voices.
4. Safe Space Building. I went through Safe Space training recently, and the facilitators talked about how it's possible to have your entire building or department be designated a Safe Space. It means everyone who works in the building has to go through the training, so it's going to be a reach, but I want to try. If any building on this campus should be a Safe Space, it's the library.
5. Adding Language to Our Mission/Vision/Values Statements. Our goal of being inclusive (which does not mean neutral... you all know that, right?) is woven throughout our guiding documents, but it isn't stated anywhere explicitly. It needs to be.

So that's what I know I can do. What I think we should all do. But I know there is more, so please comment with what you're doing and what we call can do.

Vote

That's all I can think about today, and all I can write about. Please go vote for Clinton. Please.

I know everyone from weather apps to social media and beyond are offering to help you find your polling place and/or the issues, but just in case you haven't looked yet:

• Find your polling place
• Learn about where the candidates stand on issues
• And here's a personality-aside focus on where the presidential candidates stand

One last thing, since I've never been shy about sharing my politics here:

via Occupy Democrats on Facebook

I Stand With Faculty at LIU Brooklyn #LIUlockout

Rather than me telling you how to do some part of your job better, or how I learned to do my job better, I'm going to ask you to spread the word about what is currently happening and support the faculty of Long Island University, Brooklyn.

Here's an excerpt from the Long Island University Faculty Federations' press release:

Long Island University informed the LIU Faculty Federation (LIUFF) that it plans to lock out faculty at midnight on Friday, September 2, on the eve of a no confidence vote in President Kimberly L Cline. The faculty contract expired on August 31. Picketing to protest the lockout and use of replacement workers will take place on Flatbush and DeKalb Avenues at 10 a.m., Wednesday, September 7, the first day of classes. The LIU Faculty Federation/NYSUT/AFT represents fulltime and adjunct faculty.

That lock out happened. Many are calling this action on the part of the administration at LIU Brooklyn "unprecedented." It is, without a doubt, unmerited and unethical.

So what can you do? You can send a letter to the administration via actionnetwork.org, demanding that the lockout end immediately. You can also send email directly to the president of LIU Brooklyn: Kim.Cline@liu.edu. But most importantly, you can pay attention to what is happening by following the hashtag #LIUlockout on Twitter - you don't need an account to read the tweets.

And if you already have a Twitter account, follow Emily Drabinski there. She's the secretary of the union. She wrote that press release and is keeping the community up to date via her Twitter:

"Replacement workers" are receiving a $50/day commute stipend. This is not about money. This is about power. #LIUlockout

— Emily Drabinski (@edrabinski) September 6, 2016

On Bias

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When I teach undergraduates (or anyone, really) about assessing websites for academic use, I start by asking them how they judge websites for themselves. "Pretend this has nothing to do with a class. Tell me how you decide to trust, or not trust, the information you get from the web." Inevitably, the first thing I hear is something about looking at the URL. Every class always talks about the upper-level domain name. Of course, they don't put it in such technological terms, but they talk about .com and .edu and such. I love this for a lot of reasons, but best of all it makes a perfect segue to the point I want to make: that all websites are biased.

Let me say that again: All. Websites. Are. Biased. Websites are created by people, and all people are biased. I repeat: All. People. Are. Biased. We all think we can escape our biases, that somehow *we're* the one who can be truly and completely objective. But that's not how human brains work. Let me lay some science on you... Depending on where and who you are, estimates say that your are receiving millions of distinct pieces of information, and your unconscious brain makes decisions about which ones are important enough to merit attention. If you're really smart and really aware, the things that merit attention can be measured in dozens. The average bear can pay attention to far fewer. And what do our brains do with all the other millions and millions of bits of info? That 3 pound chunk of meat in your skull looks for patterns so it can maps new things onto prior experiences. That lady ahead of you at the grocery store who aggravates you and you don't know why may remind you of that horrible teacher's aide from kindergarten who embarrassed you in front of your friends. Your new coworker about whom you have warm feelings before even getting to know him could bear a resemblance to your childhood best friend's uncle who bought you a second ice cream cone after you dropped your first. You'll dismiss the lady at the grocery store as "rude" and embrace your new coworker as "kind" without even realizing that something about them maps onto your childhood image of "rude" or "kind."

All this came back to mind when I read about a big company that is trying to do to control for unintentional biases in their efforts. It's a short read, but here are the highlights that felt pertinent to libraries:

• "Focus on skills and eliminate distractions." I've done this by creating interview scripts and listing required skills and knowledge before starting an interview process. There are other ways this could work as well. 
• "Acknowledge microaggression." Microaggressions are real. Microaggressions happen in libraries all the time. I know I've perpetrated some and I know I've been subject to others. I work hard, every single day, to eliminate them from my spoken and written lexicon and from my actions.
• "Talk about it." To some extent, I talk with my staff and colleagues about bias. I have also worked to beef up our materials about Islam. We created a display about protest culture and civil rights leaders when #BlackLivesMatters first started to make national headlines. These aren't comfortable conversations to have, but they are important so we work on it.

That last point is so important. To bring this back to how I started today's post: when working with undergraduates, or anyone really, about assessing information sources, I talk to them about how they really need to do what they've already been doing - looking at authority, content, origins, timeliness, and bias (or who, what, where, when, and why) - but doing it intentionally. That's how I think about bias in libraries. I want to keep learning and improving. Intentionally. So should we all, don't you think?

And, by way of parting, here's one of my favorite jokes about acknowledging bias and privilege:

Continuity or Revolution: Choose Your Own Adventure

A little while ago I saw this tweet:

"How much of what seems real or reasonable to you is decided by a preference for continuity?" - a question for everyone including scientists

— Drew (@MostlyPregnant) August 26, 2015

I shared that with a friend who then introduced me to the idea of "Kuhnian Paradigm Shift." Thomas Kuhn was a philosopher who looked at scientific development. He proposed that, unlike what had been conceived previously (and what I mostly learned in k-12, decades after his most important work, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions was published), that scientific progress is not a steady thing. Rather than being an inevitable march forward, science goes through longer periods of tinkering and refinement, interspersed with major upheaval.

This strikes me as deeply relevant to libraries and librarians. Bringing this idea down to the day-to-day level, I don't think continuity is the worst thing in the world. We librarians are human (well, most of us are) who are supporting the needs of our community, who are also human, and humans tend not to like change. I'm including myself in this category. Unexpected change can bring both sleep and tummy troubles. And yet, I also consider myself an innovator. Practical innovation is a particular passion of mine. Seeing that tweet and subsequently learning about Kuhn has me thinking about change in libraries and higher education, and about how it happens both quickly and slowly. It also has me thinking about how we bring about how we and our communities react to them.

So what am I trying to say here? I guess it's that we need to be mindful of our own practices and preferences, but also recognize that not everyone feels the same. I've heard "because we've always done it that way" used in so many different ways. For some it's, "but I'm open to other ways of doing it." For others it's, "and I'm really afraid of changing because I'm a slow learner and I know how to do it this way." And yet others mean it to say, "and can we please change it yesterday?" Whether you're a stalwart champion of the status quo; or a tinkerer who makes things incrementally better; or are the Galileo of the library world who is going to cause upheaval on an inconceivable level... think about that question up there every once in a while. Think about our preference for continuity - not as a bad thing nor as a good one - before you choose the next step.

They're Back: Giving Students the Respect They Deserve

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For me, the first few weeks of a semester are kind of like a party. Yes, I'm busy - crazily so, this year, with hiring and training two new part time library associates on top of all the other beginning of the year stuff. But still, it's a great time. Seeing all those smiling and familiar faces gives me a glow. And then there are the new students - our incoming class is exceptionally polite and eager and grateful this year. What do I mean by that? Well, I had an uncomfortable moment where a young woman was so grateful that she impulsively hugged me after I figured out what was going wrong when she tried to print using a library computer. It was uncomfortable, but seeing how relieved she was made me smile. Whatever else might frustrate me in my career, I can honestly say I love working with students. Are they perfect? Nah. They graffitti and have to be told - repeatedly sometimes - to be quiet in the quiet areas of the library. Is it fun when they lose their cool because they procrastinated and something isn't going perfectly? Nah. Was it a laugh riot when I had to fail a student for plagiarizing in my freshmen seminar? Not even. I had a stomach ache for days over that one. But taken as a whole, I truly find joy in working with our students.

That's why I find it so disheartening to look around at the so-called periodicals of record in higher education (which sometimes come across as upscale click bait lately), to see so many articles this time of year that bemoan the quality or attention span or even scent of our students. I was thinking this just the other day when I saw this tweet:

Another autumn, another season of reading academics inordinately whining about their students.

— S̗. D᷅ungeon (@scd) August 30, 2015

So glad to know that I'm not the only one who's lost patience with the practice. As grandiose as it might sound, we in education are involved with shaping the future, and I think we lose sight of that. Budget cuts and accreditation standards and crappy job markets in academia are deeply troubling, I'll admit. There are a lot of things I'd like to change about academia in general and academic librarianship in particular - I do tend to write shouty fist-shaking posts, in case you hadn't noticed. But I'm tired of us always blaming the students.

I'd like to suggest that we stop focusing on the problems and start working on the solutions. Maybe it's because I've predominantly worked at schools with big populations of First In Family Students, but I know a lot of the problems cited in those whinging articles mentioned above are really just cultural in nature. We all got into education for a reason, so let's educate - even if it's explaining the importance of getting the text books or showing someone how to write an email to a professor. We have a chance to make a difference in the lives of our students. Little things like making a goofy joke to help someone smile when they are stressed and big things like teaching student workers, who've never had a job before, how to be an employee... these are important teaching opportunities that the authors of those articles are missing.

In academia, we constantly get to learn and teach. We get to grow while helping our students do the same. I'm not blind to the problems in our industry, so I'd like to think I'm not being overly simplistic when I say: let's be grateful for the opportunities our careers afford us and find ways to help our students if we aren't satisfied with their performances. They give us a reason to go to work, and they are (usually) grateful for the learning. So let's get with the teaching, and respect our students along the way.

Best Practices and Research Based Practices: Don't Be A Lemming

Lemmus lemmus

Summer is over. New students will show up later this week and returning students will be here next weekend. Transitions always get me thinking, and this current transition from the pin-drop-quiet of our summers to the "Can you keep it down to a dull roar?" of the semester is no different. This time I'm thinking about best practices.

Specifically, I'm thinking about the difference between "best practices" and "research based practices." Some of it is because of the inevitable rush of email from faculty asking us to do information literacy sessions first thing in the semester instead of having a librarian teach in that sweet spot between when the students get a research assignment and when that assignment is due ("just in case" info lit versus "just in time"). Another factor is that I finally got around to reading a partial transcription of a TED Talk about "Why the Widespread Belief in 'Learning Styles' Is Not Just Wrong; It's Dangerous."And then I saw a public librarian friend calling 3D printing services into question.

So here's my perspective on all this:

• Best Practices can be very similar to research based practices. The key difference is that they are divorced from the research and are, too frequently, a fancier version of "everyone else is doing it, so we should, too." I can almost guarantee there is a grain of wisdom and experience at the core of every library trend. It started out as something that worked for the first few people who did it, but after that libraries become a bit like the apocryphal lemmings throwing themselves off the cliff because all the other lemmings are. 
• Research Based Practices, on the other hand, are formulated to reflect research and science. I remember someone asking me what I thought of some new fad in instruction, and I think I ticked that person off because my response was "It sounds like an interesting idea, but I'm holding off my opinion until I see some research into whether or not it really works." The problem with going based on gut feeling instead of looking for research is that you become prey to things like confirmation bias.

The problem with those ideas is that research lags behind trends. Worse, not everyone has time to do big, longitudinal studies to prove the efficacy of new practices. So what are those of us who are interested in cutting or even bleeding edge ideas to do?

• Action Research. There are all sorts of resources to help you with this idea, but basically it (usually) means small scale research to improve your practice. It includes all the same things as larger scale research, but it on a much more manageable and practical level.
• Adopt, Adapt, and Improve. There are no neutral or normal libraries. That means that what made a project super successful at one library might not work at all at another library. When looking at a hot new trend, we need to pause and think about how it would work best for our community - if at all. We need to ask if there is something else we could do with those funds, and that personnel time, that might better serve community needs. We need to think about why we're doing a thing, and if the answer is "because everyone else is doing it" we need to reconsider. If we stay rooted in our libraries and our users, it greatly reduces that risk of being swept up in a trend for no reason.

While lemmings are incredibly adorable, whether we're talking about the real ones like up above or the fake ones that jump off cliffs, we're humans. We shouldn't emulate lemmings. Neither should we follow along with trends just for the sake of the trends. The problem here isn't with trends or the best practices. The problem lies in treating library best practices as off-the-rack solutions without checking the research and connecting the solutions to the specific context of our libraries and our users. We are a profession that encourages people to be curious and investigate, shouldn't we do the same?

Know When to Hold 'Em and Know When to Fold 'Em: On Being Privileged Sometimes

"Privilege" is a word that comes with steamer trunks' worth of baggage. For the purpose of this post, I am using this word within the context of social inequality, the unearned kind of privilege that comes at birth. For background, please refer to "White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack" and "Straight White Male: The Lowest Difficulty Setting There Is."

One further warning: this is a post where I'm not sure yet of the answers to my questions, but the ideas are still important to me.

I think of myself as fairly privileged. I grew up the only child of two working adults at a time when that wasn't common, so it put my family solidly in the upper-middle-class income bracket. I lived in a fairly affluent neighborhood of a Boston, MA bedroom community. Heck, I lived down the street - for a year or two - from someone who played for the Boston Bruins. Nobody you'd've heard of, but still he and his wife lived there. I'm also Caucasian and able-bodied. I never joined and have always been vaguely but insistently embarrassed by this, but I could be a member of Daughters of the American Revolution since I'm a direct descendant of William Whipple.

So imagine my surprise when I got this result for a BuzzFeed quiz on privilege:

The thing is, that 63% of not being privileged doesn't show for the most part. There are questions on that quiz about never having to hide aspects of yourself, and wow I have done that. I've rarely told outright lies, but I've lost count of how many times I allowed assumptions to stand when I was a kid.

Yes, boys and girls and variations thereupon, I lead an intersectional life. I am a mixed up, messed up, wibbly-wobbly ball of privileged and oppressed.

And I'm not the only one. I've seen a number of people tweeting about this topic lately, but two individuals stand out:

Being white, my ONLY role in the black community is to listen to their lived experience and use my privilege to educate other white people.

— Brianna Wu (@Spacekatgal) July 24, 2015

If you're unaware, Brianna Wu is a video game developer and a self proclaimed "Gozilla of tech feminists." (She also has great taste in fictional leadership role models.)

Screen shot was the only way to get it all. Sorry. Source.

Daniel Solis is an art director and a game designer. Yes, I own games of his. I also had the fun task of doing some editing for him recently.

Most of us have lives like this: some truths about us that are oppressed and minority, but other qualities that are considered "normal" and carry privilege. I know this isn't a particularly library/librarian oriented post so far, but it's so important to discuss this kind of thing. We, as librarians and educators, need think about our privilege and/or lack as we move through our worlds. It's especially important for us to consider other voices in our collections and our programming and our hiring. But the most important thing, to bring it back to where I started, is for us to know when to speak and when to shut up. The second one is so hard for me, I have to admit. I'm so used to being the one shouting about my own stuff that I sometimes forget to be quiet when it's not. But I'm learning to listen. I'm learning not to center my concerns when it's not about my experiences.

How about you? How do you handle the intersections in your life of privilege and the lack?

The "Snake People" Are Coming to a Generalization Near You

I hate generational labels. I remember when I first encountered "generation x" as a label for my generation, That article talked about members of Generation X all being a bunch of slackers straight out of some Hollywood film, but that wasn't me. I was working two jobs at the time and still had some problems making ends meet. I was working hard and was trying to find a way to work harder. Further, I wasn't the only one among my friends who was like that. I didn't identify with the portrait the article presented, and it made the term feel odd and divisive.

I hated it when the press was calling me and my friends "generation x" and I hate it now that people are talking about "snake people." Wait, what's that? You've never heard of snake people as a generation? That's probably because I mean "millennial" but someone in that generation got so fed up with the pictures people were painting of her and other people born around the same time that she created a chrome extension that substitutes the words "snake people" whenever a website has the word "millennial." (It does more than that, such as substituting "Parseltongue" for "digital native." Download it and read the Wikipedia article about Millennials for a good laugh.)

Why all this hate? I recently saw a semi-major media outlet tweet something about "millennials" and had a bit of a hissy fit in response:

I'm feeling an angry ranty blog post about labels like "millenial" and "gen-x" coming on. pic.twitter.com/OOTzpzIngz

— Jessica Olin (@olinj) June 3, 2015

What I got in response made me both cringe and laugh, since it showed the kind of resentment most people feel about the generalization inherent such labels:

Screen cap of tweets instead of an embedded tweet because of one locked account, but Rachel gave me permission to share.

The thread continued, including a brief related discussion about the uselessness of the term "Digital Native." And then Rachel Fleming (who writes a blog with Erin Leach that you should all be reading) made a point that gets at the the beauty of the snake people/millennials extension:

Terms like "Greatest Generation" are used lazily at best, and at worst lead to stereotyping (and are therefore dangerous). Let me give you a fairly innocuous example of what I mean: One of the most common preconceived notions that most people have about the GI Generation or the Greatest Generation is that they were/are tech averse. Meanwhile, my grandfather built his own computer when he was 90. If you believe those generational generalizations, you do things like forget to teach college students how to do basic things like attach a document to an email because "they're digital natives and grew up doing this stuff!" Trust me, as someone who has taught freshmen writing multiple times: they don't know how until they're taught.

When people tout the virtues of some think piece about how to manage millennials or the retirement habits of boomers, I cringe and so should you. We need to get to know our communities. We should have stuff about book clubs for senior citizens on our websites as well as on our bulletin boards. We need to remember that many of our students will have already worked intensively with research databases in high school but others will have barely used computers at all.

Don't get me wrong. I see that people of certain ages who lived the same country will have shared experiences that inform how they relate to the world. Things like the creation MTV (either you had it or were jealous of someone who did), the attack on the World Trade Center, and the televised presidential debates are embedded in our psyches, but they don't determine every aspect of who we are. So please, don't be that think piece writing futurist who pens yet another slapdash piece about "kids these days." Take a moment to analyze aggregate data and glean useful information to be shared, and put it in that kind of context. Always remember:

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p.s. I unfollowed the semi-major media outlet. If they can't be bothered to write nuanced pieces about generations, I can't be bothered to read their shlock.

Embracing Librarianship, Warts and All: My ENY/ACRL Keynote

Note: This is as close as I can come to recreating the keynote I gave at the annual conference of the Eastern New York chapter of the Association of College and Research Libraries (ENY/ACRL). This post is based on my notes and my memories of what I said, and is not an exact transcript. In a couple of cases, I've removed references to specific people and things that were part of the conference in the interests of making it more blog-y. I want to thank the organizing committee in general for giving me this opportunity, and Emily Thompson and Tarida Anantachai in particular for all their help.

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Before I get into my talk, I need to make a confession. The first thing I did after the organizing committee approached me and I said yes to giving this keynote... the first thing I did was to freak out.

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On an intellectual level, I got it. The theme of this conference ("Building Supportive Organization Cultures in Libraries," or more colloquially: "Librarians helping librarians.") is one of the driving forces in my professional life and it’s the reason I started blogging in the first place. But there’s still something a bit overwhelming about having your passion recognized. I've spent so much time kicking and screaming and shaking my fist at the profession, that when the world finally turned around and started paying attention, it was a moment of "Oh, [expletive deleted]!"

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I know it’s supposed to be bad form to share fears and insecurities about public speaking in an actual talk, but it feeds into the actual theme of my talk: owning that I’m human.

I’m not exaggerating, however. Letters to a Young Librarian has always felt like me shaking my fist at “the man.” Forget about how weird I feel now that I’m an administrator and therefore kind of “the man” myself, I wasn’t in charge of much of anything back when I started writing. So let me tell you about what led to the birth of my blog and why I’m so passionate about the theme of this conference. 

The first thing was that I finally, after years of meaning to, got around to reading Letters to a Young Poet by Rilke. If you’ve never read it, I can’t recommend it highly enough. Ours is a creative profession, and anyone who is creative for a living needs to read this book. Next, I read something about a woman who started a blog that turned into her career, and I realize now that it planted a seed for me. 

Shortly after reading those two things, I was supervising a library science graduate student in his culminating experience - kind of a cross between an internship and a research project. I asked him one day about how his classes were going, as I often did, and this time he started complaining about having to learn an outdated piece of technology. It turned out it was a piece of tech I’d complained about when I was learning it a decade prior, and it had been outdated even then. I brought that conversation up with some coworkers over lunch later that week, and found out that library hand - the specific kind of handwriting librarians used for cards in the card catalog - had been taught in graduate programs as late as the thirties despite the invention and proliferation of typewriters. We were still teaching it, "just in case." Outdated curricula was not unheard of, in other words.

And that's when I got angry.

And that's when I started writing.

Something else has been making me angry lately, which brings me to my real topic today of owning our mistakes. That’s this: there are so many talented librarians who feel they don’t belong.

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I want to backtrack again for a moment and talk about my path to librarianship.

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I left college with a bachelor of arts in american history. I know that my liberal arts background prepared me better than almost any other experience for this profession. However, at the time, I had no idea what to do with my life. I bounced around to different jobs - residence counselor for an autistic teenager, bookstore clerk, assistant manager of a Roy Rogers, secretary… The last one was particularly miserable, and I realized I needed to find an actual direction. So I took one of those much maligned career aptitude tests. I don't know why those tests are so eschewed, because it worked for me. I don’t remember much about the test, but I do remember that librarianship was the top result. And it made so much sense. There was the fact that my favorite job I’d ever had was at that bookstore, mostly because of the kind of people who came into that store. Also, my godmother was a librarian and loved it. Finally, and I don't talk about this publicly very often, my very first kiss happened in my hometown public library. I’m not one to believe in fate, but there was a definite constellation of events that took the shape of me becoming a librarian. 

One important thing to note, though: I’d never worked in a library a day in my life before I applied to library science graduate programs. 

Obviously that didn’t get in my way, not too much anyway, but that’s a story for another time. I’m telling you all of this to express that when I was the new kid, it took me a while to feel situated as well.

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I sometimes have a hard time believing I’ve been at this librarian thing for twelve years now, because I still remember how it took me a long time in my first professional position to be able to trust myself, even though my boss and coworkers seemed to trust me well before that.

The thing is, there are still sometimes when I feel like I’m playing a game of “fake it til you make it.”

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I’ve struggled with this feeling off and on throughout my entire career, truth be told. And I’m far from being the only one. Meredith Farkas wrote about it recently, too. If you don’t recognize that name, she writes a blog called Information Wants to be Free. Great stuff, that blog. Anyway, she recently wrote about her struggles with “gut churn” (a concept she got from Jad Abumrad's keynote at ACRL this year).

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"Gut churn" can loosely be defined as the specific way your stomach hurts when you try something new and scary. The whole post, which is titled “True confessions”, is worth your time. But one passage resonated with me:

"There are people who say they admire me. I’ve always been uncomfortable with that because I don’t think I deserve it. I’m also uncomfortable because I worry that it creates this false expert vs. novice dichotomy that might make them think they can’t achieve what I have. Anyone can do what I’ve done."

I don’t know if I agree that anyone can do what Meredith has done or what I’ve done or what any publicly successful librarian has done, but I do agree that most anybody can have career success. I’ll explain the caveat of “most” below, since I don’t want to lose the current point - the “false expert vs. novice” point. I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about why this is, why we have this false dichotomy. One thing I think might be contributing is rampant perfectionism. Between photoshop, romantic comedies, bootstrap myths, and a few other forces in our culture, we really do think we have to be perfect. I’m not immune to this feeling which, if left to fester, can lead to self-doubt and feelings of vulnerability and eventually shame.

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I can feel you shifting uncomfortably even if I can't see you. And I get it. Talking about shame, and it’s partner vulnerability, in a professional context feels taboo. But if we’re going to get to the heart of why so many people joining this profession or taking new steps in the field are feeling so alienated and out of place, then we need to talk about the emotions.

And to do this, I’m going to borrow wholesale from the work of someone who researched this stuff for years: Brené Brown. You may know that name because she’s given two hugely popular TedX talks or because she sometimes gets to hang out with Oprah Winfrey.

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I feel the need to explain that I’m not a member of the cult of Oprah, so I’m glad I didn’t let Brown’s association with Oprah stop me because I’ve come to embrace Brown's work. Her definition of shame has stuck with me and it is integral to my thoughts on helping other librarians: “shame is really easily understood as the fear of disconnection: Is there something about me that, if other people know it or see it, that won’t be worthy of connection?” Let that sink in for a moment. Something that won’t be worthy of connection in this hyper-connected world? And yet we all know this feeling, this “I’m not good enough” feeling.

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I wasn’t sure if Stuart Smalley, a Saturday Night Live character portrayed by Senator Al Franken in the 90s, would work as a joke for everyone in the audience. For those of you who don’t know, the joke was a show about self affirmation and Stuart was known for saying “I’m good enough. I’m smart enough. And doggone it, people like me.”

I want to share a few more Brene Brown quotes with you before I go on. I’m sharing them because they are the things I hold to me when I’m feeling small and scared and vulnerable and weak.

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I think these quotes might help you, too. Brown says “This is the world we live in. We live in a vulnerable world.” She also says “Vulnerability is not weakness.” and, more to the point of my discussion, “vulnerability is the birthplace of innovation, creativity, and change.”

This leads me to my main point. If we want innovation and progress and new strong leaders, we have to support vulnerability and we have to stop stigmatizing mistakes.

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Okay, I already brought one non-librarian into the mix. Next I want to talk to you about Joi Ito. Ito is the director of the MIT Media Lab and is seen by many as a guru of innovation. He was interviewed a while back by Wired Magazine, and through the course of that piece, Ito ended up giving some rules of innovation. (My thoughts are in parenthesis, but the list otherwise comes straight from the article linked above.)

1. Resilience instead of strength, which means you want to yield and allow failure and you bounce back instead of trying to resist failure. (I printed out "resilience instead of strength" typed in a pretty font and put it on the bulletin board behind my desk so I see it every day and it reminds me.)
2. You pull instead of push. That means you pull the resources from the network as you need them, as opposed to centrally stocking them and controlling them. (This is just as much about personnel and time as it is about money or physical resources.)
3. You want to take risk instead of focusing on safety. (No explanation necessary.)
4. You want to focus on the system instead of objects. (This is especially important in libraries. We’ve got to remember that it - whatever "it" is - may not look like what we expect.)
5. You want to have good compasses not maps. (It’s the future of libraries - and no, don’t worry, I’m not a library futurist - so there’s no way to know for sure what the future will look like.)
6. You want to work on practice instead of theory. Because sometimes you don’t know why it works, but what is important is that it is working, not that you have some theory around it. (This is another nother one that doesn’t need explanation.)
7. It's disobedience instead of compliance. You don’t get a Nobel Prize for doing what you are told. Too much of school is about obedience, we should really be celebrating disobedience. (I feel the need to add “within reason,” of course - I’m an administrator after all)
8. It’s the crowd instead of experts. (Odd for me to advocate this as I stand here giving a keynote, stand here being presented as some kind of expert.)
9. It’s a focus on learning instead of education. (Education too often is seen as having an end point, but learning is lifelong. Preaching to the converted by saying that to a room full of librarians taking time to travel to a conference, I know, but still, it needs to be said.)

Now it’s time for me to make another confession: even though these rules are a huge inspiration for me, I still have a hard time with letting go. The safety of doing things that we know work, even if new things might work better, is a bit of a siren song. The thing is, though, security is an illusion. Safety is an illusion. Colleges close. People get laid off. Budgets get slashed. With the current climate, whether we want to admit it or not, we all live in a state of precarity.

PRECARITY:

n. a condition of existence without predictability or security, affecting material or psychological welfare.

I had this discussion recently with my friend Jake Berg, the author of the blog Beerbrarian and one of my librarian heroes and peer mentors. His response cracked me up. He told me to shut up with my Buddhism talk.

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And this is the point where I break one of those unspoken and mostly sound rules for talks like this - I’m going to talk to you a bit about my religion. I’m a practicing Buddhist, but I’m not going to start proselytizing. A lot of people adopt aspects of Buddhism as a life philosophy and I want to teach you a small part of it that helps me more than any other when I’m feeling like I don’t belong. Buddhism teaches us that attachment is the source of all suffering. More pertinent to this discussion is that our attachment to some image of who we are supposed to be as librarians and as professionals, some impossibly perfect image, will cause us suffering and pain and shame. But being who we are, and allowing the mistakes to happen, will lessen that. It’s not a surprise that I’ve seen Ito’s rules of innovation described in terms of eastern philosophies. His ideas sound very Buddhist to me.

I’m going to give you some practical ways to apply my ideas in just a moment, but I want to share two caveats first:

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First, we need to be careful not to confuse feeling out of our depths - which is something that goes away with time and effort and support - with impostor syndrome, which is a whole other thing. It’s a bit lighthearted, that image, to be used to introduce something so important. Sometimes you have to laugh at things, regardless. Anyway, impostor syndrome is feeling like you don’t know what you’re doing and like you don’t belong even when you do. Also, it is way more prevalent among minorities and women than anywhere else. There are lots of good resources available on this topic, but I recommend starting with Alicia Liu's piece: "You Don't Have Impostor Syndrome, And Neither Do I Anymore." Another well written consideration of the topic is Cate Huston's "The Trouble with Imposters," which has this perfect definition of Impostor Syndrome: “faced with a hostile and discriminatory environment, one we are unwelcome in, our perception of our skills, our chances, and our abilities to succeed - change and suffer.” It's also important to be on the look out for the Dunning-Kruger effect which is when people are super confident in their skills but have no basis for that confidence.

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Second, and more importantly, is the reason I said “most” earlier. All of us need to be careful of our own privilege. The drawing above this paragraph is the first panel of an amazing comic by Jamie Kapp that explains one kind of privilege, the kind that is afforded to Caucasians. Like me. Really, I look the part of a librarian - white, female, middle class, middle age - and that gives me access and opportunities I might not have otherwise. It gives me access to the biggest privilege of all: the privilege of making mistakes. Your mileage may vary, of course, but if you don’t know what I’m talking about, I suggest you do some reading. (John Scalzi's "Straight White Male: The Lowest Difficulty Setting There Is" and Peggy McIntosh's "White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Backpack" are good places to start, but go further. Learn about ableism and ageism and transphobia.) The next thing to do after that, to be frank, is to check your privilege.

Now I know this is a bit longer than what you're used to reading on LtaYL, so I’m going to wrap this up soon. I’ve beaten the drum and have set out a call to action to you all, so I want to tell you how to move forward.

First, to my fellow managers and administrators, reward sticktoitiveness. There’s all sorts research into the importance of grit and perseverance in the attainment of long term goals, and librarianship is definitely a long game. Mistakes are going to happen, but we need to keep going when we make mistakes and we need our staffs to keep going when they make mistakes. We need them to learn from their mistakes, too. So reward that gumption. So long as it doesn’t cross over into stubbornness.

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Second, to my fellow experienced librarians and other library professionals, be honest about your mistakes. Most of us were new professionals well before social media was a thing so our early career mistakes weren’t going to be on such broad display. I know we’re all so eager to share our successes, but like in high school math class, we need to be willing to show our work and the mistakes we make along the way.

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Finally, to those of you who are new to the field: be patient.

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And that leads me to my favorite quote from the book that inspired the name of my blog:

“Be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves, like locked rooms and like books that are now written in a very foreign tongue. Do not now seek the answers, which cannot be given you because you would not be able to live them. And the point is, to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps you will then gradually, without noticing it, live along some distant day into the answer.”

~Ranier Maria Rilke, Letters to a Young Poet

Thank you.