Hack Library School Interview

I was interviewed by Brenna Murphy as part of the great blog, "Hack Library School." Head on over there to read the interview, and when you're done poke around the rest of the blog.

Here and Now: Buddhism, Mindfulness, and Burnout

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I wrote a post for Maria Accardi's great blog, "Librarian Burnout," that was published last week. 

"Last year, I wrote a post on my blog about the routines I’ve built to avoid burning out professionally. Shortly afterward, Maria approached me about writing a guest post. In her invitation, she said something that struck me as particularly apt..."

Head on over to Accardi's blog to read the rest. 

Information Today Interview

I was one of three people interviewed for an article on Information Today, Inc. Take a look!

The whole thing makes me feel very cool (see below for how cool), so thanks to Brandi Scardilli for approaching me about it.

Dressing for Interviews: An Extended Answer

I've been an on-again-off-again contributor to the "Further Questions" series on Hiring Librarians. The "off-again" part is because sometimes I don't have any experience from which to answer or I'm just too busy, so I'm glad I had a moment when the question that was published yesterday showed up in my email.

The question:

"Which outfit is most appropriate to wear to an interview with your organization? Please pick one for women and one for men, and feel free to provide commentary as to why you chose one over the others (or share how you might change an outfit). Bonus question: Can you share any funny stories about horrifying interview outfits?" (There are options from which respondents chose at that link.)

My answer:

"Since gender isn't a binary, I say you wear whatever you feel is appropriate to the level for which you're applying. In general, dress just a little bit nicer than you think you would dress if you got the job. If you feel unsure, check with a friend/contact who already has a job in the kind of library where you are interviewing. Don't know anyone? Feel free to reach out to me and I'll get you in touch with someone who can help."

I feel the need to expand upon what I wrote there, partially because I'm still angry at the assumption of gender as a binary and partially because of the great discussion that happened on Twitter and other places after that Hiring Librarians post was published.

Here are some things that I know are true:

• I've talked before about my privilege (or lack thereof), but it's important to note that since I'm caucasian and mostly cisgendered I can bend or even break some of the so called interview outfit fashion rules with relative impunity. YMMV.
• Performance of gender and performance of race factor into this in a big way.
• I already have a job in a library, so in some ways it's easy for me to talk.
• But I am also fat, and fat prejudice is a problem.

Having explained all that, I still stand by my answer. Wear what feels appropriate. Wear an outfit that makes you feel confident but that is also comfortable. I suggest you avoid high heels unless you are super used to walking around in them all day, because you will be walking much more than you expect to walk. I also suggest you dress appropriate for the weather, for the most part. If you don't think you can dress following my advice and still stand a chance at getting a job offer, please consider turning the interview down. Remember you're going to be at this library a lot, and if you won't feel comfortable dressing the way you normally dress while at work, you will not be happy there.  

One last thing... If I'm ever lucky enough to interview you for employment at my library, please rest assured that "it don't matter what you wear, [we're] checking out your savoir faire" and - of course - your qualifications.

(I hope you'll forgive the light hearted videos that are bookending this post. I needed to find a way to laugh about this and thought you might need a laugh, too.)

Circulating Ideas Interview

I recently spoke with Steve Thomas for his fab podcast, Circulating Ideas. Steve has been kind enough to write for LtaYL twice in the past ("You Are Going to Fail (But That's Okay)" and "One Small Step"), so I figured I should return the favor.

So here it is: "Episode 61: Jessica Olin"

Like I said on Twitter, I hope you all enjoy listening to it as much as I enjoyed recording it. I think Steve made me sound a lot better than I have a right to sound, but I'll take it.

Square Pegs: On "Fit" in the Hiring Process

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I responded to a survey for Hiring Librarians recently, and my response was published yesterday. I always learn a lot from Hiring Librarian posts, although it is frequently of the "what not to do" variety, so I recommend clicking through and looking around at what I said and what others have said.

Three notes before I get into what I mean by fit, and how I've learned to test for it:

1. I know 'fit' is sometimes a way for people to hide their biases. This has been and will continue to be an issue in academia and libraries in general, one of which I am very aware. What I'm talking about is organizational culture and organizational values.
2. I have experiences with looking for fit from both sides of the interview table, and this post is informed by all of those experiences.
3. I know it might sound dismissive for me to advocate looking for fit in your job search. After all, here I am comfortably employed, right? But the truth is I have made the mistake of taking a job just to get the experience and been unhappy as a result. I've also turned down an opportunity, at a time in my life when I was feeling a little desperate to find a job, because I didn't think the fit was right. (In both cases they were lovely people, great schools, just a bad fit for me.)

Anyway, in no particular order, here are some of the questions I ask myself/the interviewer(s)/the interviewee and things I look for when interviewing.

• As I mentioned in my response to the Hiring Librarians survey, I pay attention to what kinds of questions am I being asked? There are lots of ways this can play out, but here are some examples... An interviewee asking "What's your favorite thing about working here?" shows me that they are curious about the culture. Conversely, an interviewer asking something like "If you were a tree, what kind of tree would you be?", and doing so seriously, worries me.
• Are people smiling? Of course they are going to smile when they face you, but try to see their expressions when they don't notice you looking.
• How risk averse/risk seeking are they? This can be hard to tease out, but asking questions like, "How do you like to keep up with new developments in the field?" or "How comfortable are you with taking on new projects?" can help. Remember: this is about fit. If you are a risk taker, that's what you want for an employer. If you are risk averse, likewise. You just want to avoid being the person who likes cutting and/or bleeding edge who is working for a long tail organization.
• Is there joking going on? Personally, I like to be able to laugh at work. I spend way too much of my waking life at my job for it to be constantly serious. I think a lot of people feel the same way, but I know not everyone does. From the interviewer perspective, I look to see if the person laughs at my jokes. Yeah, I get that sometimes people will laugh as a way to kiss up, but I've learned to look at someone's eyes to see whether or not the smile extends there. (It's hard to fake a genuine laugh.)
• Do our politics match or at least come close? No, I do NOT look for this from the interviewer's perspective. Politics are a DO NOT PASS GO DO NOT COLLECT $200 situation if you are the interviewer. However, if you're the interviewee... it could be a make or break kind of thing. For example, I decided not to apply for a job based on the fact that the school was hosting a Republican Presidential debate series.

Two other pieces of advice: read Joe Hardenbrook's piece, "Interview Red Flags," which has lots more suggestions of how to interview your interviewer; and consult GlassDoor.com, which has reviews by employees and interviewees of employers (I've never looked for a public library in their database, but I've rarely not been able to find at least a couple of reviews of colleges/universities).

How about you? How do you judge for fit? Or, if you've never thought about it before, how do you think you will in the future? If you've never thought about it before, you really should. I've been that proverbial square peg trying to fit in a round hole, and it really never works.

Leading Change as a Library Administrator

Being part of the Frye Leadership Institute (now Leading Change Institute) was one of the best opportunities of my career so far, and it keeps reverberating. The most recent impact is the article I just wrote for EDUCAUSE Review Online: "Leading Change as a Library Administrator."

It Can Thereby Be Proven That One... Should Talk Like a Normal Person

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There is so much to love about academia - the challenge, the communities we serve, the commitment to growth - but there is one thing about this world that I absolutely loathe: academic speak. Pick up any academic journal, in library science or any other discipline, and you stand a good chance of seeing it. The third person pronouns, the passive verbs, the conditional language, and the fifty-cent words that get in the way of any kind of the meaning. I despise it all so much that, when I taught freshmen writing classes in the past, I went out of my way to pick topics where the academics in that field talk like people.

The thing is, I'm not the only one who feels this way. There are many essays, books, articles, etc., to which I could point that all make the same point: plain language is teh bestest. Just so you know I'm not fibbing about this abundance, here are two of my favorites (both of which are so good that they were assigned reading for the freshmen classes I taught):

• "Politics and the English Language," by George Orwell
• "'It Can Thereby Be Shown...,'" by Rachel Toor

I'm bringing this problem up here because of a book review I wrote that was published last week. The book itself was okay. It definitely had its issues, but there were also good bits. My big problem with the book is how the authors' adherence to academic conventions absolutely got in the way of readability. It's too bad, too, because the topic was so promising.

I'm not sure how to combat the problem of Academic Speak, other than writing as plainly as I can manage in my blog and, when I get the chance to do so again, influencing undergraduates to write that way, too. What do you all think?

Social Media for Professional Development

A couple of weeks ago, I was the guest on the LiTTech Show. It was fun talking about how I use social networks for more than socializing. I shared it all around - Twitter, Facebook, Google+ - so you may have already listened to it. In case you missed it, here it is again. (Fair warning: the sound quality isn't the best.)

I'm posting it again for two reasons: (1) to make sure everyone got a chance to listen to it, but also because (2) there's a point that I didn't get to make while I was talking. I've seen a lot of talk about personal learning networks lately, and social media is the foundation of mine. Working at a small, liberal arts college has a lot to recommend it, but the relative lack of available budget for professional development can be a problem at times. That's why social media is crucial for me. Whether it's the blogs I read, or the Twitter streams I follow, or even the Pinterest boards in which I participate, there's always something to help me grow as a librarian.

So how about you? How do you use social media? Is it in a purely social (non-professional) way? Professional development? Both?

Letters to a Young Librarian From a Different Blog

My post this week is hosted at another blog (with all the guest posts I host, it's a nice change to write one myself), Collection Reflection. The post is about managing a children's literature collection at an academic library: http://cdstacked.blogspot.com/2012/02/guest-post-managing-childrens.html