Time for Lunch

"Time for Lunch," by Finn Frode 

I've been having lunch about once a month with a few local public library administrators. It started out just me and the director of my city's public library, then we ran into the county librarian at that restaurant another time, and now the assistant director of my city's public library is coming along as well.

There are a number of reasons why I'm excited about this:

• It's a simple but effective way for me to contribute to bettering the town-gown relationship - which is one of our stated goals in my college's recent strategic plan. (This is common in higher ed, but is especially important for small schools like mine.) 
• Our jobs are much more similar than you'd think. I work to further integrate information literacy into the curriculum while they work to make sure storytime has some educational substance and not just flash. I work with my school's administrators to best use our financial resources, and they work with city/county/state officials. Heck, our staffs even overlap (one of my library associates also works at the county library and another also works at the city library).
• We also have a fair amount of overlap in the constituencies we serve. Set aside the fact that we're in the same consortium, there's also the fact that we have plenty of students who grew up in the local area. Add to that how many of our faculty live in this county and it's clear we have overlapping missions as well.

I don't know if these kinds of relationships are possible in bigger cities and/or at bigger schools, but it's got to be worth a look. We're starting to talk about small scale partnership plans, too. It's nice to think that we're doing something substantive as we chat over food at the local Indian restaurant, but if nothing else: it's nice to have conversations with peers who understand what my job is like.

Building Bridges and Closing Gaps: Faculty/Library Communication

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Earlier this month, I was on the agenda of a faculty chairs meeting (the library is considered academic affairs but not faculty at my current institution). My goal was to talk about database changes that have been a long while coming, but that we've finally put into effect. I especially needed to ask all the chairs to please follow up with the faculty in their departments, particularly with their adjuncts, to make sure everyone was on the same page. (We've all got faculty at our institutions that use the same assignments again and again, and I know there are some that point students towards specific databases we no longer have.) While I was at the meeting, we also spoke about collection development, both acquisitions and deacquisitions. In general, it felt like a good conversation and I left there feeling like I put another few bricks in the bridge I've been trying to build since I started.

The next day, I took a moment to read the Library Journal piece about a recently published study, "Bridging the Librarian-Faculty Gap in the Academic Library." I have to admit I haven't yet read the actual study, but that report coming so soon after my attending the meeting of faculty chairs seemed too good a coincidence not to write about it right away.

You see, none of the findings I saw surprised me. It's more like they showed me I'm on the right path with building that bridge I mentioned above. Of particular interest to me, though, was the disparity between how faculty and librarians perceive our relationships and how we communicate. 98% of librarians think we could communicate better with our faculty counterparts, whereas only 45% of faculty see a need for improvement. I don't take this as comfort, as in "we're doing a better job than we think." No, I see this as a further call to action, a reason to try harder.

We librarians know all we do to support the communities we serve, and wish people realized it. We made so many things seamless and painless. They don't see a need for communication because they don't know what all we are doing and can do. In some ways I like that our faculty and students and staff take these resources for granted. It means that what we've done works. But in the same way it is good to know they've grown accustomed to what we can do, it's uncomfortable being undervalued.

And yet, I think the onus is on us, as librarians. I know we're all busy - trust me, I know. But faculty and staff and students are busy, too. But if it's important to us, and I believe communicating and building relationships is central to our jobs, we need to make the time. I haven't seen many think pieces about the lack of relevancy of STEM going around. I have thoughts about why people pick on libraries so much (gender being primary among them), but if we proceed from the place of knowing we are important to the academy even when the academy doesn't, it's obvious we need to communicate that to our constituents. Besides, it can only help improve our relationships with members of our community. Librarians need to be the one building the bridges as much as possible.

Don't Let the Old Guard Get Ya Down, by Amy Diegelman

When you start a new job, especially early in your career, you may have to face the dreaded ‘Old Guard.’ The Old Guard are the librarians who have been in the field or institution you’re entering, for a long, long time. They resist all your ideas, brush off your opinions, and scorn your enthusiasm. (Please note that I know not all experienced librarians are the Old Guard. Heck, some new librarians act that way.)

It can be crushingly frustrating, but it isn’t insurmountable. There are a few things you can try:

Give them their due - Most (though not all) people aren’t actually evil, malicious, sabotaging monsters who want you and/or the library to fail. So, regardless of your personal feelings about your Old Guard, it's important to recognize the work they have done. Maybe 10 years ago they championed a needed library remodel. Maybe they were the first in the library to institute some change in service that we consider a given now. At the very least, they have probably shown up and done their job with some level of success. They know the library and the community, even if they feel differently about it than you. Acknowledge these things, give the Old Guard credit. Not only will this make them more willing to work with you, it will make you a little less miserable. Hating people is super exhausting.

Take it slow - It’s easy to get wrapped up in new ideas and possibilities and want to jump right in. That’s great! But you have to remember that you’re the new kid and this team existed before you got here. Your coworkers probably don’t know much about you, so it will take a little time for them to trust your judgment and see your strengths. They also need time to integrate you and your ideas into their normal processes/routines at work. This is the time to learn, get the essential parts of the job locked down. If you push huge new ideas and changes before showing that you’re willing to learn and work, the people who’ve been busting their butts for 20 years aren’t going to be very interested in investing their time and energy in you.

Involve them - One of the biggest problems you can run into with the Old Guard is making them feel (probably unintentionally) like they’re being ousted. Ask for opinions, run ideas by them before taking it to the boss, ask if there are things in their departments/interests that could be incorporated into your ideas. This is good for you, too. They can help you navigate things that would take years to learn otherwise - community priorities, trustee preferences, administration policies, etc. Plus, if you have an idea that is going to shake things up, getting even one member of the Old Guard on your side is going to help sway others. 

Reciprocate - You don’t have to make back-room deals or secret alliances to get the Old Guard on your side, but you can be supportive. Support people on things that they clearly feel will be a benefit your organization, even if you are not particularly passionate about them. That doesn’t mean you have to agree with everything the Old Guard wants, but when you agree, say so. It will make the times you disagree easier for them to stomach.

Remember they were you once, and you might be them - Everyone was new once, including the Old Guard. So cut them some slack. Remember that things you want to change may be things that they had to fight for against their own Old Guard. And someday you may be someone’s Old Guard. We all hope we can retain an openness as time goes on, but the truth is that everyone gets tired, everyone gets a little set in their ways, and everyone grows attached to their projects. Consider how you’ll want to be approached when that time comes. Hopefully any of us who reach these points will have fresh colleagues come in and shake things up - and hopefully they’ll remember that we’ve been in their shoes. 

Amy Diegelman is a young adult librarian in Massachusetts. You can find her shouting about libraries, teens, and being a big geek on Twitter at @amydieg.

Another Thing I Didn't Learn in Grad School: It's All About Relationships

I've talked before about the kinds of things I didn't learn in graduate school, but there's one I've been thinking about a lot lately - and that's the need for relationship building skills. Everything I do almost every day gets down to building relationships. Writing my blog? That's my relationship with the profession. Creating and watching over the budget? That's my relationship with the finance office, my staff, and many others. Teaching? My relationship with faculty and students. I didn't understand that when I was new in the field, and it's taken me years to learn. I've made lots of mistakes, including accidentally burning a bridge that it took me about a year to rebuild. Since one adventure in relationship building recently bore fruit, though, I thought I'd share.

I've been trying to build a connection with the Vice President for Institutional Advancement (VP of IA) ever since I first showed up on campus. (I know IA is a fairly widely known term in higher ed circles, but for those of you who are in public or special or other kinds of libraries: institutional advancement is what colleges and universities typically call the people who do fundraising for the institution. By "advancement" we mean financial advancement.)

When I was brand new, I tried to meet with as many departments as possible, to share my ideas, to see how I could help them and their areas, but mostly to say hi. With the VP of IA, I opened with a few small scale ideas - things that could help IA in general, things that could benefit both IA and the library, and so on. We chatted about the major fundraising push he was shepherding at that time, and left it that we would check in again at some later date.

Though the tone of the meeting was fairly negative, I didn't get discouraged. I went out of my way to help people in his department. I reworked the library's process for taking in book donations to make it as easy as possible for IA to handle their part of the process. We don't have an archivist and our archives are in need of a lot of work, so when IA staff needed materials from the archives, I helped them. I kept in touch with the VP, but in casual ways - chatted with him whenever I saw him at campus events, asked for his advice on something related to the aforementioned form, and so on.

Then, a few months ago, I got a great idea from my mentor: she suggested I create a wishlist of items, naming opportunities in the library and the like, and bring that list to the VP of IA.

He loved it.

So, almost a year after I met with him originally, the VP of IA asked me to write a letter that his department could then send to people who had given to the library in the past. In the letter I talked about the library's recent efforts, focusing on our successes. I shared my ambitions for the library, and thanked past donors for their support. The letter included the wishlist, with a range of giving opportunities from books all the way up to having the archives named for the donor. IA edited my letter, then I wrote a brief message and signed each one by hand (and we're talking hundreds of letters... my hand hurt for a couple of days after).

The letters were mailed a little over a week ago, so it's too soon to know if this first effort will yield anything. I have hopes that this will be me soon:

Mo' Monies! (Source)

Realistically, though, we'll be lucky if we get much right now. Even if we don't get anything, it will still have been worth my time. People who have had the library in mind in the past are being reminded that giving directly to the library is an option. Also, staff in IA have a specific list of library related giving opportunities in case a prospective donor mentions something like, "I can only give $1000 right now, but will that have much impact?" Most importantly, though, I have strengthened relationships across and beyond the campus walls. All this because I took my time, cultivated connections, and heard the VP of IA's initial negative response for what it really was: it was a "not now."

I know there are plenty of people who read my blog who don't work in academic libraries. I also know the majority of you aren't administrators. Think of it this way: libraries are all about relationships. What kinds of relationships could you be building right now? Who can you help who might, later on, be able to help you?