Revisiting the Dread: Public Speaking

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The thing about speaking in public is... I still hate it. Loathe it. Get stomach aches over it. But I also still seek out opportunities to do it on a regular basis. So, despite the fact that it's been almost 6 years since I last wrote about speaking in public, and how important a skill it is, talking in public is still a stumbling point for me.

I have come to accept that my process is:

• Agree to give a talk (sometimes I submit proposals, sometimes I'm invited);
• Futz and futz about topic and title for an inordinate amount of time;
• Write furiously and generally hate what I've written;
• Pay way too much attention to the slide-deck, perfecting the flow of the memes and dumb jokes - sometimes to the exclusion of the content;
• Practice and edit my remarks even more until I absolutely loathe them;
• Leave the talk alone until the day before;
• Edit again the night before until I only mildly hate what I've written;
• Panic and breathe funny right before I speak;
• Semi disassociate while I'm talking (honestly, it feels a little like an out of body experience) but somehow make complete sense and never seem nervous;
• Relax, because it's over.

How do I know I made complete sense? By looking at Twitter. I'm actually sometimes amazed when people quote me in a tweet... "I said that? Really? Wow, that's kind of brilliant." Here are a couple of examples:

"Innovation isn't the lightning strike; innovation comes when you keep working at it" - @olinj on blogging #ILEADUSA #innovation

— Sarena Deglin (@SarenaDeglin) June 24, 2015

"You can't just be the job; you have to be yourself!" - @olinj at #RECIPCLRC

— Kellie Barbato (@joyouslibrarian) October 14, 2016

I had only vague memories of saying both of those things when I read them on Twitter. And these weren't the only positive things said. People mentioned the memes and jokes. People mentioned that I gave good advice. Even more, I've been invited to speak other places because of how well my talks have been received. So... I must be doing something right?

All of this is my way of saying that you're never as bad a public speaker as you think, and don't worry if your process doesn't look like what other people do. Yes, plan ahead. Yes, edit. Yes, practice. But beyond that, know you'll be okay. I absolutely dread public speaking, but I keep doing it because I know I have things to say. I also know you have things to say, so no matter your experience - keep talking. We'll listen.

Revisiting Difficult Patrons

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I've discussed difficult patrons in the past, but in that post I was talking about people who are awkward or emotionally overwrought or out-of-sorts. My context then, as it is now, was an academic library. The advice I'm about to give might not apply in other kinds of libraries. Heck, it might be expressly against the rules, so check with your boss(es) before you do anything I've suggested.

Before I get into my advice, though, I want to tell you a couple of stories about difficult patrons I've had in the past, over the course of my career. Also, and this may go without saying but I'd rather be upfront about it, I've changed and/or left out personally identifiable details where possible.

Up first, the sportsball team. I've actually had similar interactions with football, basketball, and soccer teams, so saying "sportsball" is as much about protecting identities as it is about an umbrella term to capture the experience. If you've worked on an academic campus with a popular sports team, you can probably predict what I'm going to say. The athletes came into the library on a regular basis. Study hours are frequently a required thing for student athletes - after all, student is the first and more important part of that phrase - and the library and/or tutoring center is a good place for this to happen. Only problem with this is that they didn't always have work to do even though they always had to do the hours. With nothing else to do, they talked. They got loud. They collected people the way an electromagnet collects spare paperclips.

This led to:

• Discussions and reminders that if they wanted to talk, there are other parts of the library available where that wouldn't disturb others. Verdict: completely unsuccessful. Had to do this repeatedly throughout the same evening or afternoon.
• Sending a staff member who read as male to have the same conversations. Verdict: more successful than when I did it, but still not a true solution.
• Jokes about, "don't make me call your coach." Verdict: this would usually quiet them for the rest of the time period - afternoon, evening, etc. - but it wasn't a permanent thing.
• After a particularly difficult day, when even sending a male staff member only quieted them for 5 minutes, actually contacting their coach. Verdict: this was a permanent solution. Getting to this point was kind of a nuclear option, but we'd gotten repeated complaints from other students and hadn't found anything else that worked.

Up next, the angry teaching assistant. I'll tell you up front that it turned out to be a miscommunication between the professor and their teaching assistant - a minor one, at that. The TA came to the front desk of the library, and I'm not sure how the conversation started, but I was walking by and overheard this individual getting aggressive, so I inserted myself.

This led to:

• "Is there something I can help with?" This is how I insert myself when I sense a tense situation anywhere in my library. Verdict: successful in that it brought the TA's attention off of the (if memory serves) student worker and onto the full-time staff member.
• A lot of back and forth with the TA where I tried to pin down exactly what it was they wanted, to inform them it was not something the library did, and to suggest another department at that school that would be able to fulfill that need. Verdict: very unsuccessful. Even though I remained calm, used open body language, and stayed on topic, the TA got increasingly agitated and even started cursing at me about things.
• "I won't talk with you unless you can be civil. And if you can't be civil, I'll also have to ask you to leave the library." The TA walked off in a huff. I would have called security, but I didn't need to go that far. Verdict: Very successful. The TA came back later to apologize and explain the miscommunication. Please note I might not have been this direct if I hadn't already known the TA.

Finally, the community member. I've worked at multiple libraries that allowed computers to be used by people who aren't attached to the school in any way other than they live in the same municipality. In this case, the difficulty was not as overt as either of the two cases above. This person was having difficulties with a particular thing on our network, and they weren't satisfied with the speed at which our IT department was addressing the issue so they asked to speak directly to me, the director.

This led to:

• Vague threats about appealing to someone above me. I responded by making my own vague threats about changing the policy that gave this patron access to our space and resources. Verdict: partially successful. I needed to let this person know that I cannot be bullied, and this was the first step.
• Walking away as soon as the initial conversation was over. I gave this person's concern attention, but not a single drop more than was warranted. Verdict: partially successful. Sometimes these kinds of things end up being attention seeking behaviors, and I didn't want to feed into that.
• Communicating with appropriate staff both in and out of the library. Of special importance was that I spoke with my boss, since she was one of the people the patron had threatened to contact. Also of importance was that I brought security into the loop. Verdict: very successful. I took these steps mostly to help my own piece of mind. 
• Documenting everything. If this person escalates, I need to have a paper trail to support the need to have this person banned from campus. Verdict: very successful.

In each of these interactions, I took responsibility for what was happening. As the director, it's my job to deal with the angriest of the patrons, but you won't always have someone higher up around to help. Common themes from each of these incidents:

• I did my best to diffuse without backing down.
• I had and was willing to fall back on contingency plans. 
• I never took it personally, even though in each instance there was definitely a moment of the difficult patron making some sort of personal insult/attack.

Sure, each situation is different, but you have to have a way to approach difficult patrons. How about you? Have you had any difficult patrons? Had to anyone banned from your library?

On Still Not Knowing Everything

Since I just closed out my first six months of my not-so-new-anymore job, I figured it was time to revisit the idea of knowing that I don't know - something I wrote about almost exactly 5 years ago as I was about to start my first job as a library administrator. My mind was boggling at all that I had to learn, and the truth is that I hadn't even imagined half of all that there was to know.

This most recent job change was easier in some ways. I made a lot of mistakes as a new library director... mostly dealing with people issues. Learning that I couldn't think aloud anymore was hard. Learning to ask questions in a way that the staff understood it really was just curiosity with no subtext was even harder. Hardest of all was learning to look at the entire context of an issue before trying to come up with a response. So starting my second job as an administrator was smoother because of all my past missteps, but that prior learning hasn't actually made it easy.

Although I'd worked at a two year institution before, I've never worked at a public institution of higher education. Further, although we are relatively small at just under 6000 FTE, this is also the biggest school that has ever employed me. Another big change is the size of the staff - I have 17 people working for me. I have learned a lot a lot a lot, but I'm still adjusting to all of this. And there is still so much more to learn.

Here's a list of what I KNOW I need to do:

• Experience all the ins and outs of our budget cycle;
• Sit down with as many of the rest of the faculty as possible;
• Live through the rest of our strategic planning process and experience its ramifications;
• Understand all of my responsibilities as they play out through the school year;
• Get to know all the nuanced (or not so nuanced) differences between working at a small liberal arts college and a small-ish community college.

And that's just the stuff I know that I need to learn. At least once a week I learn something that I had no idea I needed to know, like how we handle email when someone leaves the institution or who to contact when I want to reserve a room in one of our new buildings. We all know, in theory at least, that we never stop learning, but it's so very different to be living it every day of my life. I love it.

How I Manage

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I know I still have plenty to learn about managing people, but after close to four years in this job I've learned a lot. And I realized I've talked around this topic, but never wrote a whole post about it. Decided it was time... For those of you who intend to go into management, or who are new to it, here are some of the most important things I've learned about being a manager:

1. You need to individualize how you work with people. Some people like more guidance on projects, and others will want to make a task their own. After a period of getting to know each other, and knowing how people work, it's best to let someone work to their strengths. We can't all be good at everything, so letting people shine is more effective and makes people happy to come to work.
2. You need to trust the people who work for and with you. If you can't trust the people you've hired, why did you hire them in the first place? Don't get me wrong, "trust but verify" is an important part of my management style, but people who feel trusted will also be happy to come to work.
3. Trust is a two way street. You've got to keep your promises and admit your mistakes. If you have to say "no" to a proposal, tell people why. On a rare occasion, when you're in a management position, you'll be constrained by those above you, but you can at least say that: "We can't do that right now, and I've been told not to explain this just yet. As soon as I can, though, I'll explain this." 
4. You need to check in regularly. Having meetings just to have meetings may sound like a waste of time, and it can be, but everyone who works for me gets a certain amount of guaranteed, individual time with me. Sometimes we have an agenda, sometimes we just chat. Part of it is that I have a glass office, and regular meetings will dispel any "oh, Jane's in the boss' office! What did they do wrong?" Another part of it is that sometimes people will have ideas that they want to share, but not in front of coworkers. Sure, we have monthly staff meetings as well, but one-on-one time, especially for people with whom I don't normally overlap on the schedule, is crucial.
5. Be their umbrella and their foundation. A big part of my job is making it easier for my staff to do their jobs. When the circulation desk computer started to crap out, I was relentlessly cheerful and cheerfully relentless with IT. When the budget gets tight, I make sure to protect the things my staff needs. I require professional development and, when the opportunity comes up, happily give good references - even for current employees - when they apply for jobs that will make better use of their skills and knowledge. Strategic vision and guidance is what head cheese in charge library administrators are supposed to do, and helping the staff succeed is one crucial way to achieve that.

So how about you? For those of you in management positions, what other advice do you have? For those of you who are managed, what do you like to see?

Money on Your Mind, by Dolly Moehrle

You know what we talked about in library school? Collection development; the history of libraries; marketing; web and tech-y things; and other stuff I dutifully wrote about and promptly forgot after the end of the semester. You know what we didn’t go over very much? Money. And now that I’m the director of my small library, guess what I spend most of my time dealing with and thinking about? Money. 

A lot of people tell you, if you don’t like math, go into the humanities. The liberal arts! Psych majors don’t have to do math, is the promise. Librarians don’t need to worry about accounting. “They” promise that librarianship is a soft, math free field. You get to sit in a cozy office, cat in your lap, cardigan over your shoulders, and read for a living. (And maybe those librarian jobs do exist and I just haven’t had any of them.) But as it turns out, there is PLENTY of math in libraries.

I started in circulation and we accepted money for fines, lost books, supplies, and lots of other things. None of the amounts were huge—we didn’t take in one week what the average retail store probably takes in one day—but still, we had to count the amounts in the register, and eventually I was given the task of preparing the weekly deposit.

(A note on financial management tasks, specifically deposits: every library and library system is different. Some deposit directly into a bank account. Others direct you to go through the parent organization’s treasury. Still others only have designated people handle cash at all, and some require deposits to be made under a full moon with fire. It depends.)

Reconciling register tapes and daily cash count logs wasn’t what I pictured when I thought about working in a library. At my next job, I was in an administrative position and didn’t handle cash, but I did manage something else: acquisitions! Our integrated library system had a module that allowed us to track collection spending and pay vendors electronically, so now I was monitoring and reconciling A WHOLE LOT OF MONEY. More than that, I was part of a process that was actually getting money to vendors, which came with its own set of challenges.

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As a library director, I am ultimately responsible for not only making sure vendors get paid, but the entire process of budgeting. (Did I mention I am not a trained bookkeeper?) I have to draft the budget, present it to my board, and work with them to make sure it is adequate for the needs of the library. While our county is essentially our “banker,” it is my responsibility to keep a copy of the books for the library and making sure that everything is balancing out the way it should and matching with what our county is reporting. It’s never been malicious, but mistakes happen and I need to be able to catch them. A new challenge this fiscal year, for example, is that the county is preparing to switch to a new financial management system, and we have had to make changes to our books to reflect their new system. We also have to be trained in the operation of the new system.

There are jobs in librarianship where you don’t have to think about money, but even collection development librarians need to be aware of and work within their budgets. If you aspire to management, you don’t need to be a trained bookkeeper, but basic awareness of accounting procedures and governmental accounting (if relevant) is pretty darned important. Here are a few things to keep in mind:

1. Money is a tool, and keeping track of it will serve you well. Knowing where you are in your budget cycle, and being aware of what’s being spent, is useful knowledge even if you don’t have a role that involves budgeting or even spending. [Editor’s Note: Submitting a purchase request towards the end of your fiscal year is a bad idea.]
2. Know how to use your tools: the acquisitions system, if you have one, or even good old fashioned Excel. Knowing what you’re using is half the battle. (If you’re working in Excel, LOCK YOUR FORMULAS you won’t regret it I promise you.)
3. Are you working with vendors? You need to know your purchasing power. Do you need a purchase order? A credit card number? How much credit will they extend? What are their payment terms?
4. Is your funding source stable? Are you looking at a reduction in service hours or layoffs next fiscal year? Ignorance is not bliss.

Most public library systems and a lot of public higher ed institutions make their financial documents available on their websites, so you can begin to get an idea of what costs make up a library’s budget. (Hint: the majority of costs are in staffing.) Lynda.com has several cool looking courses on Excel and budgeting, but if you’re lazy and cheap like I am there are books and YouTube videos and tutorials galore on the internet to walk you through the basics of understanding what a budget document is. Until library schools wise up and make budgeting classes mandatory, you may have to take charge of this aspect of your education alone.

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Dolly Moehrle is the director of the Ventura County Law Library in Ventura, CA. She was a 2012 Eureka! Leadership Institute Fellow and received her MLIS from SJSU in 2012. She blogs sporadically at dollymegan.com and tweets obsessively as @loather.

Living the Double Life of a Dual-Library Librarian, by Brianna Hoffman

Working two jobs to make ends meet (or student loan payments) is not unheard of in the librarian profession. I have seen a lot of librarians, especially those new to the profession, do this. For the last fifteen months I have been one of these dual-library librarians. I graduated with my MLS in the summer of 2013 and, for a multitude of reasons, moving for a job was not an option. After spending six years working part-time at a municipal library, I accepted a part-time position at the busiest branch of an 11 branch library system. Since I have been doing both jobs for a while now, I have definitely experienced pros and cons of this “secret agent” life.

The biggest advantage of being at two separate libraries has been the variety of experiences I get. Since my libraries are not part of the same library system, they are very different. I work with two different ILS’s, service models, service populations, and two sets of goals and expectations. I do feel like I have been able to use the differences between libraries to enhance my level of service at the other. Working at both libraries has also given me the chance to work with multiple communities. My city library is very focused on the one community it serves, while the multi-branch system serves all of the other cities and counties around it. I have the opportunity to work on a variety of programs and initiatives, and I have learned a lot about each community’s individual needs. One of the really cool things about working at both libraries is it feels like I am getting twice the amount of experience. One full year doing both positions felt like two years of experience. I know that this is making me a better librarian.

Despite the positives, I have definitely experienced challenges. The biggest challenge has been maintaining or even achieving balance. It can be very difficult to give 100% to either library when you are only at each one 50% of the time. For me, it sometimes feels like working more, yet contributing less. This has been especially difficult and something that I continue to struggle with. And yes, there have been a couple of days where I have had to remind myself just which library I was working at that night. I am however proud to say that after 15 months, I’ve only answered the phone wrong twice. Scheduling is also difficult because each library has their individual staffing needs, and as the employee, I do my best to meet them. Both of my libraries require evening and weekend shifts, so I work late three nights a week, every Saturday, and every other Sunday. Maintaining this schedule has caused me to take a hard look at my priorities and how I spend my free time. I have learned to focus on what is important to me and choose what can be “back-burnered”, or even eliminated. Working both jobs has also forced me to be ridiculously organized (check out my giant, color-coded calendar), but this has actually been a good thing!

The one thing I did not expect was how my communication skills would be tested. I am lucky in that I have a good relationship with the management at both libraries, which makes communication easier. I have had to be open and very forthcoming if I was struggling. I have had to ask for help, which is not easy for anyone to do, but it has been essential in order to maintain a work/life balance of some kind.

Even with these challenges, I can say that I am enjoying my time as a dual-library librarian. The experiences I’m having and professional – and personal - relationships I’m building are well worth it. If you find yourself presented with the opportunity to take on two libraries, I would recommend that you don’t shy away from it. I would also recommend that you keep a few things in mind:

• Take time to decompress. Even allowing 15 minutes to mentally “leave” one library before going to the other can make a huge difference. Take time to decompress at home, too. Read a book, put your headphones on, or watch garbage TV. Do SOMETHING that doesn’t involve work.
• Be honest with your management and yourself. If you are struggling, reach out to them. I finally had to ask for a change in schedule because for a while I was working 14-16 days in a row with one day off. Neither of my managers knew I was struggling because I didn’t tell them. They were more than happy to change my schedule.
• It is also important to keep in mind that working at two separate libraries means you are going to have access to confidential information at each one. I have a rule that if you can walk into the building and see it, or find it on the website, then I will tell you about it. If it’s part of personal communication, or plans and services that haven’t been made public yet, I won’t tell you about it.

The best piece of advice I can give you if you’re looking to take on this double life is to embrace it. Embrace the experiences, learn from each institution and, most of all, learn from the communities. You will learn so much from the variety of people you serve. You will become a better librarian because of it. I know I have.

Brianna Hoffman splits her time between the Richland Public Library and the Mid-Columbia Library System in Southeastern Washington State. A little bit loud and a lot curious, she loves pop-culture and exploring new places when she’s not catching up on sleep. She tweets @Librarian_Bree.

So, You Want to be a Science Librarian?, by Lydia Fletcher

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I have a master’s degree in medieval studies and I went to library school to study rare books and archives, so when I told my friends and family that I became a science librarian they got confused. They asked if I’m happy, or if I’m just doing this “temporarily” until I get a rare books job. It’s understandable—I spent ten years of my life studying and talking incessantly about medieval studies.

So what happened?

I tend to refer to myself as “The Accidental Science Librarian” (and I talked a little bit about why a couple of years ago on my own blog). The short version is that when I first considered librarianship, I stumbled upon a job in the outreach department of a health sciences library. Then, when I moved on to graduate school for my MSIS, I ended up working the UT Physics, Math, & Astronomy Library (where my primary qualifications were having reference desk experience and attending Space Camp as a kid). I have to admit I mostly took that job because they offered one of the few available Graduate Assistant positions my first semester. So, even though my courses at the UT iSchool were split between archives/rare books/conservation and general academic librarianship, I was “apprenticed” into science librarianship as my career. And it really has become my career, solidified in my first two professional positions as Math, Physics & Astronomy (and Classics) Librarian at UC Irvine and now as Scholarly Resources Librarian for Science at UT-San Antonio. And I love it. I really do.

In my last two years as a professional, I've gone from "maybe I want to do this" to "doing this" to "I LOVE doing this.” My days are never dull—I get questions on everything from gaseous diffusion methods for uranium enrichment, to the energy efficiency of fireplaces, to helping students find information on eating lower on the food chain (complete with “thank you” cookies made with cricket flour. Yum!). I also serve on the UTSA IACUC. It’s exciting work and it’s fun.

At heart, however, I’m a deeply practical person, so I’m here today not just to talk about my personal journey towards science librarianship, but to also talk about the most important thing in any young and/or potential librarian’s mind: jobs. STEM research is a massive industry in higher education and there’s a growing need for librarians who can support it: from pure liaison roles for science departments (like mine) to GIS and data specialists.

I’ll admit my evidence is purely anecdotal (other science librarians or people who have hired science librarians, please feel free to chime in) and entirely concerned with academic libraries, but in my experience, positions for science librarians attract FAR fewer candidates than positions for humanities librarians. I recently heard a statistic from a colleague that for a humanities librarian position at their institution there were more than 200 applications. For a science librarian position at the same university there were only about 50.

And, again anecdotally, it seems as if competent librarians with a humanities background, a basic understanding of science topics, and a willingness to learn are being hired into these positions. Last year at STELLA 14 in Stanford, I chatted with several young librarians who were in STEM subject liaison positions but had humanities backgrounds.

I’m hoping to begin work this year on a research project with a colleague to collect anecdotal and quantitative evidence of hiring trends for science librarian positions. The ultimate goal is to supplement the already-great resources for professionally developing young science librarians—or anyone who finds her- or himself supporting science departments due to staffing changes, hiring freezes, or budget cuts.

All right, have I got you interested? Are you considering a career as a science librarian? Don’t be afraid—the learning curve is pretty steep, and involves a lot of “what a fascinating research question! Do you mind if I look into it and get back to you in a day or so?” If you’re still interested, here’s a rundown of some professional development opportunities for young and old science librarians—and would-be library school students!

• The Eugene Garfield Residency in Science Librarianship
• The Science Bootcamps for Librarians – Northeast, Southeast, West, and True North! So far, the 2015 bootcamps are: Northeast at Bowdoin College, West at Stanford (I don’t have a link, but will be happy to provide details), and True North at the University of British Columbia.
• STELLA – The next STELLA Unconference will be May 20-21, 2016 at UNC in Chapel Hill, NC. The Unconference is driven by participants and topics are determined by the group. Look for me there, talking about supporting non-science science librarians!

And if all else fails, please feel free to ask me directly!

Lydia Fletcher is the Science Librarian at the University of Texas, San Antonio. She blogs at Book Archaeologist and tweets at @lamfletcher.

So You Want to be a Catalog Librarian?, by Christine DeZelar-Tiedman

It may or may not be true that catalogers are born, and not made, but most catalogers I know naturally drifted toward it. For some it was through pre-professional work experience, for others it was in library school, where they were one of a handful of students who actually liked their introduction to cataloging class. However we got there, changes in technology, standards, and funding have all led to a radical evolution in what we professional catalogers actually do. This means there’s been a change in what skills are needed and desirable.

Caveat: My comments are from the perspective of a cataloging manager in a larger academic library, although a lot of what I have to say may also apply in other types of libraries.

The Cataloging Life

If you have a romantic notion in your head of spending your day with a stack of books, carefully crafting MARC records, think again. Although monographic cataloging tends to be the default in introductory cataloging classes and training sessions, in many libraries a large portion of books are received shelf-ready, and the batchloaded vendor records receive at most a cursory glance by a copy cataloger or acquisitions staff member. Also, larger and larger proportions of acquisitions budgets are going toward ebooks and electronic journals. Professional catalogers are much more likely to be managing copy cataloging staff, editing and loading records in batches, ensuring access to online resources, or providing cataloging expertise in a specialized format, language, or subject area. If you are an academic librarian, you will also be expected to serve on library and campus committees, be active in professional associations, and do research and publication. While many of us find cataloging relaxing and meditative (as well as intellectually stimulating), you’ll be focusing on item-level original cataloging far less often than you might expect.

Cataloging or Metadata?

Job postings for Metadata Librarians sound an awful lot like cataloging positions. Many libraries (including my own) use Metadata as an umbrella term to encompass traditional cataloging and metadata creation in other schema, such as MODS, METS, EAD, and Dublin Core. The most common model for a Metadata Librarian is to provide consultation regarding metadata standards for digital collections or other units or departments creating metadata, though some metadata postings seem to be traditional cataloging positions with a little bit of metadata thrown into the mix.

Desired Skills

The current library job market being what it is means there are a lot of aspiring catalogers out there looking for work. When hiring, there are particular job skills I’m looking for (and rarely find) that would help an applicant rise to the top of the pile.

• Programming skills. Linked data is getting more and more important. Add to that the development of BIBFRAME, and you can see why catalogers who know how to code and can speak the language of IT staff will have a leg up in helping us use and transform cataloging data in multiple platforms.
• Batch editing skills. Know how to use MarcEdit or OpenRefine? If you haven’t had the opportunity to use these tools, I recommend you start playing around with them. The ability to analyze data sets, and to see the big picture, rather than thinking record by record, is what’s needed.
• Foreign language proficiency. If there are monographs sitting around my department waiting to be cataloged, chances are they are in a language that no one on staff can read. The tricky part is that the default languages taught by most colleges and universities are Western European languages such as French, Spanish, or German. We have numerous staff who can deal with those. I’d love to find someone who can handle Russian, or Arabic, or Hebrew, or South Asian languages like Bengali and Gujarati.

The good news is that there are fairly inexpensive ways to acquire most of these value-added skills. MOOCs, online tutorials, and open source software abound. Although cataloging has never deserved its reputation of being rote and rule-bound, the life of a cataloger today is dynamic, challenging, and at the center of cutting-edge technology. In fact, I’d say there’s no better time to be a cataloger than today.

Christine DeZelar-Tiedman is Manager of the Archives and Special Collections Metadata Unit at the University of Minnesota Libraries, and has worked as a cataloger in academic libraries since 1995. She received her MLIS from the University of Iowa, and is active in the Rare Books and Manuscripts Section of ACRL. You can follow Christine's musings on books and reading on Twitter @Place4Readers and on her blog The Reader's Place.

So You Want to Work in a Foreign-Language Library?, by Chrissy Bellizzi

Confession time: I didn’t always want to work in a German-American library. Frankly, I didn’t know such a thing existed until I was a grad student looking for ways to get experience. That’s when I stumbled across my now-employer. But here I am, two years into being the part-time special collections librarian for a 250-year-old cultural institution, fielding research requests and pulling together exhibits from our vast archive.

What advice would I offer to someone considering work in foreign language special collections?

• Know the language. This may seem obvious, but you’ll need at least a working knowledge of the language your materials are in. By no means would I consider myself a Deutchmeisterin (master of German), but after studying German through high school and college, I’ve got enough vocabulary and grammar to reckon with our 22,000+ books, pamphlets, and manuscripts. It’s also enough to correspond with the occasional German-speaking remote researcher.
• Know your collections. This one is harder and takes time, but it’s worth exploring your collections beyond what catalogue records and inventory lists tell you. Like many an archive, we have a serious backlog of uncatalogued materials, and if I relied on our OPAC alone, I’d be overlooking all of the “hidden” books and ephemera of potential interest to my patrons. It’s very satisfying to be able surprise a researcher with an “invisible” item, especially if it turns out to be valuable to their work. Plus, taking the time to occasionally leaf through a scrapbook or remind myself what’s in that flat oversized box just makes the job more fun!
• Learn when to be nice and when to say “nein.” Working for one of the oldest German-American organizations can be pretty cool, but with great power comes great responsibility. That is to say, EVERYONE wants to give us their German books, and that’s not much of an exaggeration. (Seriously, an unsolicited box of mass-market German translations showed up on our doorstep last week. The return address? California. We’re in Pennsylvania.) Sometimes this is a good thing, like when the donated items complete a partial set of books already in our collection. However, more often than not, the materials in question may be dear to the potential donor’s heart, but they have little scholarly or monetary value. After the first dozen or so instances, it gets a lot easier to thank someone for wanting to give us their father’s paperback Goethe collection while tactfully explaining why we can’t accept the books and suggesting some alternative recipients.
• Those who can’t do, refer. Thanks to the wonders of internet searching, anyone doing any sort of research pertaining to German-Americans and the state of Pennsylvania finds me. This is mostly a great thing, especially on the rare but exciting occasion that I’m able to facilitate a major durchbruch (breakthrough) in someone’s research. (One of my proudest moments: helping a sweet older gentlemen finally locate the burial site of an ancestor as recorded in a Civil War-era local newspaper. Geil!) Yet at the end of the day, we’re a cultural society, not a genealogical library or government archive, and thus our resources for tracking down specific people are limited. As a result, I’ve built up a great referral list of other local organizations and individuals that may be better equipped to help patrons track down their long-lost great-grandfather. I never want to leave a researcher hanging, but at the same time I know my collections’ and my personal limits.
• Network, network, network. This goes for any line of work, but I’ve found it especially vital in the small, eclectic world of special collections. Schmoozing is not something that comes naturally to me, and I was admittedly pretty awful at it for the first year or so of this gig. However, as you attend various meetings and functions, you start to get a sense of how to talk to your counterparts at other institutions and how to approach them for help. While large-scale collaborations are great, I’ve found some of the most beneficial boons of networking to be discovering who will help promote our events and will appreciate us promoting their events in return. A little mutually beneficial back-scratching goes a long way in this business!

It’s not the most glamorous job (pro-tip: don’t wear anything in the archive that isn’t red rot-proof), but it’s inarguably interesting and pretty unusual. If you happen to have both an MLIS and multilingual faculties and are looking for an unconventional workplace, give working in a non-English repository a try!

Chrissy Bellizzi splits her time between the reference department of a public library and the 1888 reading room of the German Society of Pennsylvania.  When she’s not rummaging through 19th-century manuscripts or deciphering Fraktur, she can often be found testing a new recipe, competitively watching Jeopardy!, or supporting Philly’s local music scene.  She tweets as @marimbamaiden18. 

Project Management: The Skill Everyone Wants, Everyone Just Doesn’t Know It Yet, by Michael Perry

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Project management is a growing profession and the importance of its skill set has created demand for it across a variety of industries. Librarianship is no different; a recent search on ALA Joblist for “project management” returned 36 current listings. Project management is mentioned in library school curricula (at least it was in mine), but I’m not aware of entire courses devoted to it. In fact, if you asked me back in library school if I thought one day I’d be a ‘Collections Services Project Manager’, I would have asked you what that even meant. I can’t help thinking if these skills are in demand but aren’t being taught, where will other future librarian project managers come from?

My project management skills are a result of being in the right place at the right time with the right attitude. I was fortunate enough to have a non-library job during library school that provided me excellent opportunities to not only manage employees but also manage projects. Coupling this with my study of knowledge management and some outside reading on the subject I was able to pull together enough experience and knowledge that I feel comfortable in my job. Like I said, there was a lot of luck involved, so this is not a model that will scale.

So where do we librarians turn? The project management community does an incredible job of recording their professional knowledge. There are thousands of books, included the Project Management Body of Knowledge (PMBOK) produced by the Project Management Institute (PMI) which is the primary project management professional organization. While informative, these often aren’t the most engaging reads and often describe theory in a vacuum without real world context.

There are also many certificate programs there that will supplement reading with classroom and group exercises and instruction. PMI has a list of registered education providers. I completed the certificate program at Northwestern University and it was great experience both in class and online. Unfortunately these programs are often expensive and the prospect of an additional certificate program after library school may seem daunting.

I’d like to suggest a third option that is probably realistic for most situations: wing it. Even if it seems scary or impossible, you are at the same point where everyone else was when they started. Here are some tips for how to do that:

• Read a book. We’re librarians, after all, and we have access to written materials. I started with The Fast Forward MBA in Project Management which is accessible and well-written.
• Pick a tool. There are countless project management tools out there. I like Trello, but you can accomplish the same with a white board or post-it notes on a wall. The key is to be able to track work and make it transparent. If everyone knows who is doing what, you will encounter far fewer problems.
• Plan and then plan some more. People often think planning is a waste of time that could be spent doing. I could not disagree more. Planning helps you identify potential risks and how to handle them, stakeholders that might have been overlooked, and redundant and unnecessary work.
• Communication is key. If this is a project team they should be talking all the time. The project manager should have a clear plan for talking with stakeholders in a manner that they expect and works for them. It is impossible for me to envision a scenario of too much communication.
• Close out projects. Often when the work is done people simply want to jump to whatever is next. Take some time to let the team or users talk about what went well and what can be done better next time. You can often uncover something that will make the next project much smoother.

There is no magic bullet. Some techniques work better in some situations than others. Never put a process or technique above the people or results. If it isn’t working try something else, you will find something that does.

I hope this provides a starting point for people who may be asked to take on project management responsibilities, but who are unsure about how to get started. Project management can be tricky, especially for libraries which are not always known for their agility. But if the goal of a project is clear, project management will help you achieve it.

Interested in learning more about project management? I’ve started a blog about project management and libraries. I will be posting about the ins and outs of project management weekly at LibraryProject.Info, focusing on how I’ve applied these skills at my own library.

Michael Perry is the Collection Services Project Manager at Northwestern University. He is currently working on the migration to a new ILS and a switch in classification scheme use. He holds a BA in Political Science from DePaul University and received his MLIS from Dominican University. He tweets at @michaelrperry6 and can be found on Google+ here.

Don’t Believe the Myth, You Can Change Library Types, by Maribel Castro

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After 14 years, it was time for a change.

Though an accomplished school librarian, I had hit a plateau and needed a whole new set of challenges. The choices for me were to either seek these challenges within the world of school librarianship or to look to a whole other area of the library profession. As it happened, a move to a new city resulting from my husband’s job change served as the perfect opportunity to pursue try something new.

I had always held a deep interest in academic librarianship and polled a number of my academic librarian friends regarding their work. I was excited about the new possibilities and applied for two research and instruction positions in my new home town. My ego took a hit when I received two rejection letters. I had assumed that because I had name recognition as an active member of our state library association that I would magically receive an interview. Since I needed a job, I accepted a position as a high school librarian working with an incredible team, but still held on to my goal.

I continued to eye every academic librarian job that was posted and continued to seek advice of friends who are academic librarians. I periodically updated my resume to highlight my most recent jobs, duties, and titles. I had no idea that it would be three years before I would see the perfect posting for an academic librarian. This time, I took a whole different approach.

Doing an Honest Self-Inventory of Your Skill Set

I began objectively assessing my challenges in applying for this position. My strategy was to emphasize my skill set through my years of instructional experience, my expertise in electronic resources, and my experience as a systems librarian- areas where my academic librarian competitors might be at a disadvantage. I printed the job description and became intensely familiar with it. I placed check marks next to each of the required and preferred job qualifications and listed my skills separately. I stayed honest and did not “inflate” any of my skills.

I also agonized over every single word of my cover letter, particularly since my academic librarian friends informed me that hiring directors and search committees “weed” out applicants based on the cover letter. There are many online resources to help librarians who are in the job market write the perfect cover letter. Additionally, online resources are valuable tools to assist in “selling” yourself, as well as avoiding the tendency to sound prefabricated and indistinguishable from the pack.

In essence, my self-inventory served as the guide for my cover letter. It provided me with the foundation I needed to stress my qualifications.

Getting “The Call”

After the intense work of looking at my skills through a new lens, I was thrilled to receive an email from a library director requesting a “time to talk” about my candidacy. It happened very fast- I answered the scheduled call that was, indeed, a phone interview. After I hung up, believing I did not do well, I felt it was pretty much over for me. However, as I pulled up to our home, I received the call inviting me to a face-to-face interview. I was still in the game!

While I did not yet have the credentials as an academic librarian, I knew that my mission would be to demonstrate my confidence in my abilities during the job interview. By the time I got to the job interview I had committed the job description to memory. In addition, I had spent countless hours becoming intimately familiar with the university’s library site, its resources and usability. The library website, I determined, was in need of an overhaul.

From my instructional experience, I had a keen sense of how students interacted online when seeking information. I would leverage this skill in the interview. Furthermore, I planned to constructively utilize my perspective as an “outsider” to delicately critique areas of need. For example, the job description specified duties pertaining to electronic resources, but what improvements would I recommend?

When asked by the library director toward the end of my interview if I had any questions, I asked, “Are you happy with your online interface and presence?” The exchange between us for the next hour clearly indicated to both parties we were the right fit for each other.

It’s Been a Year!

Just last week, my library director mentioned to me that I had simply “jumped into the deep end of the pool” when I started my job, now over a year ago. It was a challenging first year to say the least. I conducted 82 research classes, migrated our library site and guides to LibGuides CMS, learned to code to a much more sophisticated level, and took over the duties of managing our electronic resources within the first term. Becoming a subject specialist, understanding tenure, publishing, university committees & politics, outreach, are next on my plate, but I was right! I knew I could do this job and I’m so thankful to my library director for taking the leap with me.

Maribel Castro is the Electronic Resources & Instruction Librarian at Lubbock Christian University Library. She tweets @eatdrinkbooks.