Interview Post: Violet Fox

Biographical

Name?
Violet Fox

Current job?
As of June 2018, I work for OCLC as one of the editors of the Dewey Decimal Classification.

How long have you been in the field?
I started working as a library student worker in 1995 and worked as a paraprofessional for seven years, but I was outside of libraries for a while (buy me a drink and ask me about my job as an internet content moderator). I got my MLIS in 2013 from the University of Washington iSchool.

How Do You Work?

What is your office/workspace like?
The Dewey editorial team has been working at the Library of Congress since 1932, so in keeping with that tradition I work at LC, but in not the fancy Jefferson building—the boring building next door. I keep my cubicle pretty sparse. The two computers reflect the two organizations I work within: one belongs to OCLC, the other to LC.

How do you organize your days?
I use handwritten lists on scratch paper for daily tasks, color-coded Google calendar entries for longer term tasks, and text documents for ideas for future projects.

The Pomodoro Technique is a lifesaver.

What do you spend most of your time doing?

There’s a lot of research, especially researching topics that potentially need revision in the DDC schedules: recent subjects I’ve investigated include sewage systems, coloring books, eunuchs, and BASE jumping. The editorial team is only four people, so we work closely together to review each other’s work and bounce ideas off each other. I’m still learning the ins and outs of the editorial rules that govern the development of the DDC, so I refer to those frequently.

What is a typical day like for you?

Things I might do in a typical day: answer a question from a Dewey user, review another editor’s work, research one of my own projects, investigate the history of a particular Dewey number, reach out to one of our international partners for suggestions on how to address a particular problem. Sort through email. Lots of phone/video meetings, since my boss and most of my coworkers work in Ohio. I often have lunch or a coffee break with someone from LC; it’s difficult to get to know anyone outside my tiny department, so I try to be intentional about reaching out and making connections.

What are you reading right now?
I recently finished Naming Nature: The Clash Between Instinct and Science by Carol Kaesuk Yoon. I’ve been reading a lot about classification in a variety of fields; Yoon’s book is a popular science discussion of the history of scientific taxonomy and how it differs from folk taxonomy.

I just started The Almost Nearly Perfect People: Behind the Myth of the Scandinavian Utopia by Michael Booth. Work is sending me to Stockholm & Oslo next month for a conference and it’ll be my first time overseas, so I’m reading up to alleviate some anxiety about that.

I’ve outsourced all my memory of books I’ve read to my GoodReads account, which leads to moments of panic as I totally blank when anyone asks what I’ve been reading.

What's the best professional advice you've ever received?

I’ve heard Dr. Nicole Cooke (@LibraryNicole) speak a few times and have walked away energized and inspired by her focus on figuring out what you want your legacy to be. Reflecting on that periodically helps me focus my energy on the things that matter to me (e.g., making the case for the value of metadata, being encouraging to new library folks, bringing transparency to my work).  

What have you found yourself doing at work that you never expected?

Defending Dewey (the classification, not the man)

Inside the Library Studio

What is your favorite word?

I love learning new color words. Recent favorites are corbeau (a very dark shade of green, almost black) and eau de Nil (a pale green).

What is your least favorite word?

Every single word that comes out of the mouth of the man currently living in the White House.

What profession other than your own would you love to attempt?

Throughout the years I’ve taken a few personality tests that suggest likely careers based on my temperament. Usually number two is librarian, and for whatever reason, number one is always X-ray technician. So I should probably give that a go if this library thing doesn’t work out.

What profession would you never want to attempt?

Marketing.

Everything Else

What superpower do you wish you had?

Just the regular power of not having to struggle with depression. That’d be neat.

What are you most proud of in your career?

Whatever I’ve been able to contribute towards building communities of generous and compassionate people in the overlapping circles of librarianship that I inhabit.

If you're willing to share, tell about a mistake you made on the job.
Honestly, I don’t even—where would I start? I’ve had entire jobs that were mistakes.

Most of my mistakes are the result of procrastinating, which is absolutely my worst trait. Not wasting time putting off small tasks is the life lesson I never seem to learn.

When you aren't at work, what are you likely doing?

Often organizing zine librarian stuff or, occasionally, critlib stuff. Occasionally writing Wikipedia articles. Thinking about the next issue of my zine about roadside attractions. Sending snail mail. I moved halfway across the country for this job, so a good amount of my time is spent traveling to visit my spouse, or counting the days until our next visit.

Who else would you like to see answer these questions?

A few of the amazing folks from my grad school cohort: Alyssa Jocson-Porter (@itsuhLEEsuh), Elizabeth Brookbank (@elizabethbrookb), and Eli Gandour-Rood (@eliganrood).

Violet tweets at @violetbfox.

Interview Post: Jacob Berg

Biographical

Name?

Jacob Berg

Current job?
Senior Librarian, Foreign Service Institute, United States Department of State, via The LAC Group

How long have you been in the field?
Off and on since 1996, but totally all the way on since 2007.

How Do You Work?

What is your office/workspace like?

I've got a windowless office with some bookshelves, cork boards on two walls, and a sit-stand desk. I try to stand about two-thirds of the time. There's also a table and two other chairs for meetings, and there is almost always chocolate as well as trail mix on hand.

How do you organize your days?

It's a small library, and I know I'm going to be working the reference desk for at least an hour per day, so I try to work around that. For the most part, I try to handle internal library issues in the morning, and external in the afternoon.

What do you spend most of your time doing?

Administrating, usually strategic planning, plotting a library renovation, marketing and outreach, and a bit of collection development.

What is a typical day like for you?

I'm training myself to be more of a morning person, and with enough cold brew coffee I can almost fake it. I get to work at 7:30am and scour social media and library listservs for good ideas to steal. Then I stand, check in with the other staff, check email, and start writing. Documenting workflows, strategic planning, brainstorming outreach... I'm out on the desk for an hour in the middle of the day, then I take lunch, and then I'm back at it, standing, often with collection development, and reaching out to schools and divisions within the Foreign Service Institute to see what they need, suggesting edits and editing the website, and the occasional cataloging. I leave around 4:30.

What are you reading right now?

Shadowshaper, by D.J. Older. Young adult fiction, thriller-horror set in Brooklyn. Authors take note: I am reading this primarily due to Older's excellent twitter presence, @djolder. I also enjoy longform journalism.

What's the best professional advice you've ever received?

I'm not going to declare something the best, but please, document everything. Write it down! I'll credit Becky Yoose, @yo_bj, for this through her use of #writethedocs. Also, this is a good time to mention that for librarians like me that don't have and/or haven't had mentors, peer networks are everything. Find your people, please. They're out there.

What have you found yourself doing at work that you never expected?

I had no idea how much outreach to the FSI community I'd be doing. I'm not an extrovert or type A, so this has been interesting, to say the least.

Inside the Library Studio

What is your favorite word?

"Piglet." Just say it with me. Hard not to smile, right?

What is your least favorite word?

Cliché, but I am one of those people who really does not like the word "moist." <shudders>

What profession other than your own would you love to attempt?

Working at a zoo. Poop aside, being outside, with animals... Cheese-mongering would be fun, too, plus it's another good word.

What profession would you never want to attempt?

There are so many. Acting. Lawyering.

Everything Else

What superpower do you wish you had?

Befitting an introvert, invisibility.

What are you most proud of in your career?

At a previous job I worked with a vendor to build open access into our discovery layer, raising awareness on campus and providing access to resources that would otherwise go unfound. Also, I've been able to take advantage of DC's job market, hiring, and training library staff from a wide array of backgrounds.

If you're willing to share, tell about a mistake you made on the job.

I am forever making mistakes. They happen. They happened. They'll happen again. If you can, please give people space to make mistakes, and to fail. I even have a tag for it on my seldom-updated blog: http://beerbrarian.blogspot.com/search/label/failure. Specifics are there.

When you aren't at work, what are you likely doing?

Bemoaning the current state of the world online; gaming with my ten year old; talking about dinosaurs, Star Wars, and Legos with my four year old; petting dogs; gardening and cooking; reading and writing about beer; binge watching TV shows; and rooting in vain for the New York Mets, my favorite squadron.

Who else would you like to see answer these questions?

Kenny Nero, Jr. (@kennynerojr).

Jake tweets at @jacobsberg and blogs at Beerbrarian. This is the third post he's written for Letters to a Young Librarian. The first was "Doing Research Lets You Justify Why You’re Doing What You’re Doing" and the second was Ethics, Copyright, and Information Literacy,

What I Wish Library School Had Told Me About Government Contracting, by The Beltway Bandit

During my library program, I often heard about classmates’ post-graduation career goals. I remember plans to become public librarians, academic librarians, archivists, anywhere-so-long-as-I-___ librarians, a few corporate librarians, and even sometimes civil servants. What I don't recall, except in occasional references a few professors made to "Beltway bandits," was anyone talking about government contractors. As someone who became a government contractor after graduation, I soon realized I had not learned to ask the right questions for academia but not contracting. This post is my way of helping others benefit from what I learned as a government contractor.

Your Employer May Follow Small Business Rules

There are a lot of players in the contracting game and they vary in size. If your employer has fewer than 50 people, they follow small business labor rules. Seems obvious, but when an interviewer tells you they have employees in 10 different states, they may only mean 20-30 people. Easy to remember at a small historical society, less so at an agency of 5,000 civil servants + contractors.

I have been very lucky that I haven't needed to use FMLA, because that's something my employer doesn't offer as a result of being so small. Additionally, I buy my health insurance through the Affordable Care Act exchange because my employer is a small business located in another region of the country and they did not have the staff or investment to negotiate good coverage or plan options that work in my region.

Advice: Ask. Not "hey, will I get FMLA?" but "So tell me more about ____. How many librarians do you have? What other contracts do you have?”

You Work for Two Different People

You work for your employer. You also work for your agency. At times, your agency will treat you as an outsider. Your employer may not always act in the best interests of your agency. Many contracts also have a subcontractor. My boss and I work for different contractors. It gets a little weird. I might get put on his contract next time or he on mine.

This disconnect is something you will have to live with. From knowing plenty of other contractors, I can say that it's more prevalent at some places and less at others. But it's still there.

Advice: Ask whether you want to do job X or whether you want to work at agency Y. If this job matches the kind of work you want to do, take it. If your motivation is that you really want to work at ____ agency and you think the job's good too, great. If it’s a great job but you’re not keen on the agency, take a step back and ask evaluate how you’ll feel about being slightly outside. If you don't like the job, take 30 steps back. You don't want this unless truly desperate. In which case, I can relate, I'd been on the market for quite a while when I finally got this job.

It's Not in The Contract

If I had a nickel… Contracts thoroughly spell out the work they do and don't include. That awesome new reference service or cool digital project idea you came up with? Sorry, that’s probably outside the contract. Some offer flexibility. Mine's fairly rigid. It protects me from new tasks I’m not getting paid for but it limits me, too. You can hit limitations in any library, but it’s quite painful when everyone agrees with you, you have the resources and even the time to do it, and you’re still told to twiddle your thumbs instead because of The Contract.

Advice: It’s not unreasonable to ask your interviewer to describe what’s covered in the contract, how they handle changes, etc. Or, if nervous, ask whether they've done any special projects recently or what new service excites them.

Conclusion

At this point, I feel compelled to point out that there are upsides to working on a government contract. Many agencies contract most of their library jobs, so if you want to do a particular kind of library work for a particular kind of agency, this may be your only opportunity. Some contractors pay more than the civil service (find them!). Many manage multiple contracts and may be amenable to giving you internal candidate status for a job that comes up at an agency where you'd rather work.

Beyond what I shared above, I have three more pieces of advice for people considering a job in government contracting:

1. Put some time into research. It can be hard to research the company, so I'd suggest researching contracting in general.
2. If you've been looking primarily at academic jobs with 10-15 days of sick leave alone, be aware that the contracting world follows corporate norms. 15 days combined sick and vacation is normal. When considering a salary, take this into account. Academic salaries are not comparable, as you have less buffer for illness. Any additional sick time comes out of your salary, and your sick leave may not roll over. Mine doesn’t.
3. Figure out why you want to work for a government contractor. It won't necessarily get you closer to a civil servant job or make you really a part of that agency. But it may allow you to build skills and gain that experience you really needed coming out of library school—and that's a perfectly good reason.

The Beltway Bandit is an obvious pseudonym, for obvious reasons.

Interview Post: Amy Watson

Biographical

Name?

Amy Watson

Current job?
I am an information specialist for a Fortune 500 coatings & specialty chemicals company. Our information centers support our company globally, with a primary focus on our science & technology centers. My areas of research responsibility are coatings/paint, glass, and fiberglass. I always tell people that my job is to support our scientists from their first glimmer of a new idea, all the way through to patenting and commercialization.

How long have you been in the field?
I’ve worked in libraries since I was in high school, starting as a student page. My public library job continued while I was in college, and after undergrad I kind of floundered my way into library school. I finished my degree in 1997, and though my goal was academic reference, I have spent my entire professional career in special (nonprofit or corporate) libraries.

How Do You Work?

What is your office/workspace like?
I split my week between two physical libraries, but in both cases my workspace is integrated into the library. Our company has a “clean desk policy,” so both of them are pretty tidy. They’re very clearly “my” space though – I have a lot of little nerdy knickknacks and I love calendars.

How do you organize your days?

I carry an amazing planner, and I’m queen of to-do lists. I keep a running tally of the searches I need to do, so that my scientists can pop by & see where they are in the queue. I try to make every Wednesday “admin day” and just sit down to crank out all of the administrative stuff I might let slide otherwise. I treat myself to a fancy coffee & a donut Wednesday mornings, and just slog my way through.

What do you spend most of your time doing?

I’d say that the bulk of my time is split between doing literature searches, predominantly looking for patents, and internal document management. We’re the administrators of our electronic laboratory notebook system, and I try to be on hand as much as possible to make that run as smoothly as I can.

What is a typical day like for you?

I’m the early shift at both of my sites, so I turn on the lights a little after seven most mornings. I try to plot out and stick to a weekly to-do list, but have to maintain some flexibility as people drop in with deadlines and emergencies. Since I split my time between two physical libraries it often feels like I have two Mondays every week. I am a firm believer in work/life balance, so I try incredibly hard to be back out the door by four.

What are you reading right now?

Mostly travel guides for Alaska and Vancouver. And maybe a few romance novels. 

What's the best professional advice you've ever received?

My dad once told me: “Never ask someone to do something that you’re unwilling to do yourself.”

What have you found yourself doing at work that you never expected?

I am the introvert to end all introverts, so I’m very surprised at how much I enjoy leading training sessions and teaching. It takes me a bit of time to be comfortable with my audience, and I lean very heavily on self-deprecating humor, but it’s something my boss pushed me out of my comfort zone to do. I enjoy getting to know our scientists through the sessions quite a bit.

Inside the Library Studio

What is your favorite word?

Quagmire. Cornucopia. Plethora.

What is your least favorite word?

Maintenance. I can never spell it on the first try.

What profession other than your own would you love to attempt?

On good days I think about intellectual property law, or auditing. On bad days, long distance trucking, or miniature goat farming.

What profession would you never want to attempt?

Anything medical. God bless every single person who’s ever had to put up with me during a blood draw.

Everything Else

What superpower do you wish you had?

Freezing time or teleportation.

What are you most proud of in your career?

Before my dad retired from the military, he arranged for me to go on an educator’s flight in a KC-135 Stratotanker refueling plane. During the descent to the runway, I was able to sit in the cockpit and I noticed our company logo in the corner of the plane’s windshield. I’ve supported our aerospace scientists on some of their innovations, and I was so thrilled to see something that I’d researched in a real world application. Especially since it was something so personal to me. Our company motto is “We Protect and Beautify the World” and in that moment I thought, “yes, yes we do.”

If you're willing to share, tell about a mistake you made on the job.

I’m a big believer in recognition, and one of my favorite things to do each year is host a patent & trade secret luncheon. A few years ago a scientist came into the library and said “What time’s the luncheon today? I’d like the salmon!” and I realized that I’d completely forgotten to invite him. (Thank god for gossip networks...) Everything was fine, the restaurant was accommodating, and no one knew I’d forgotten him but him… but I was horrified. I still am. This event is something I pride myself on doing, something so important to me, and I’d dropped the ball.

When you aren't at work, what are you likely doing?

Planning our next vacation. Reading, listening to music, hanging out with my husband and our cats.  Knitting. Obsessing about hockey. Napping like a champion.

Who else would you like to see answer these questions?

Erin Leach. Amy Wainwright.


Amy tweets at @librarianamy.

Interview Post: Tim Hensley

Biographical

Name?

Tim Hensley

Current job?

Director of Collections at the Virginia Holocaust Museum.

How long have you been in the field?

I’ve been in the profession since 1995.

How Do You Work?

What is your office/workspace like?

My position oversees the archives, library, and exhibits, so I wind up working throughout the museum. My office is in the library section of the collections department overlooking our reading room. This is where I do both administrative work and all the server-side digital preservation work for the video, audio, and photographic collections.  

 How do you organize your days?

I tend to work through my day based on a floating priority list. As the primary reference person, I attempt to field as many of the incoming questions as possible. This means I’m often pushing information to people outside the organization or digging for something for our staff. The bulk of our internal work is project based, so what we might be doing at any given time depends on the deadline. I tend to stagger my workload between physical and mental tasks to keep from getting bored.  

What do you spend most of your time doing?

I spend the majority of my time fielding requests for information during the academic year and teaching during the summer.

What is a typical day like for you?

It depends entirely on what projects are on my calendar. Since we are an embedded collection within an institution, our work is shaped by the needs of the organization. What often happens is that Monday and Tuesday are spent working through piles of information requests from the weekend while long and short-term projects become the focus of more work as the week progresses. Collection development and processing take place constantly and serve as a nice diversion throughout the week.

What are you reading right now?

The Gate to Women’s Country by Sheri Tepper, Lafayette in the Somewhat United States by Sarah Vowell, Golden Harvest by Jan Tomasz Gross, and Black Earth: the Holocaust as History and Warning by Timothy Snyder.  

What's the best professional advice you've ever received?

It’s not one thing that I’ve been told but rather a collection of things I learned from having a couple of fantastic mentors. I worked with a reference librarian early on in my career – Anita White-Carter – who is incredibly gifted. As a graduate student, I always went to her when I was struggling with a question or some part of a process; she’s really the reason I took the route I did professionally. The second was a professor from grad school – Jim Carmichael – who stressed us weekly with research questions that grew progressively more complex throughout the semesters. His tactic worked well as it gave me a framework for how to think about answering questions (any questions!) even if you have no background in the subject.

What have you found yourself doing at work that you never expected?

Working with mannequins. Not the sort of thing most librarians would ever have to know I imagine. 

Inside the Library Studio

What is your favorite word?

Syncopation.

What is your least favorite word?

Stupid.

What is your favorite curse word?

Asshat.

What profession other than your own would you love to attempt?

Browncoat.

What profession would you never want to attempt?

Auditor.

Everything Else

What superpower do you wish you had?

Teleportation, especially if it comes with blue skin and a prehensile tail.

What are you most proud of in your career?

Not eating my young -- I say that flippantly but this profession can have a toxic bent I didn’t expect when I was coming out of grad school, so I’m most proud of serving as a mentor to young librarians and archivists. I think paying back to a profession that has given me a talent for research a purpose beyond writing unread academic articles is likely the most praiseworthy thing I’ve done.

If you're willing to share, tell about a mistake you made on the job.

I’ve made them all. It doesn’t matter what realm we’re discussing – collection development, customer service, material processing, reference services – I’ve fumbled in a variety of ways both minor and spectacular over the years. I have no intention of stopping.

When you aren't at work, what are you likely doing?

It could be anything but I tend to get the most enjoyment out of reading, drumming, hiking, traveling, cooking, and long, rambling conversations. I also have an affinity for pie and whiskey.

Who else would you like to see answer these questions?

I’d love to see how Anita White-Carter and Jim Carmichael would answer these.

Tim tweets at @geistweg.