Interview Post: Andrea Snyder

The View From My Desk

Name?
Andrea Snyder

Current job?
Outreach Services Specialist, Nassau Library System (Long Island)

How long have you been in the field?
12 years (How did that happen??). While I was in graduate school, I worked as a trainee for the Buffalo & Erie County Library System in the local history department. When I graduated, I moved to Baltimore, Maryland to work at the Central Library of the Enoch Pratt Free Library. I held several different position at the Pratt, including managing the Nonprofit Resource Center, managing the Job & Career Information Center, and Assistant Manager of the Business, Science and Technology Department. After 10 years in Baltimore, I moved back to New York to work for the Nassau Library System.

How Do You Work?

What is your office/workspace like?
I have an office all of my own, and I savor every minute of it as I’ve never had one before. My desk seems to have exploded at the moment, but I do my best to bring it back under control before I leave each day. I’ve also got various tchotchkes on my shelves and prints on my walls that inspire me, and remind me of past adventures. My favorite part of my office is my big white, dry erase board. I use it to keep track of my projects and as a ‘parking lot’ for ideas that I might not be able to run with just yet.

How do you organize your days?

I live by my Google Calendar both professionally and personally. I also have a paper calendar on my desk where I keep track of my daily and weekly goals and to-do lists. At the end of each day, I like to review what I accomplished and make my to-do list for the next day. It makes my mornings so much smoother.  

What do you spend most of your time doing?

It feels like I spend most of time with email, but I know that’s not really true! I spend a lot of time researching, planning, and working on projects that will help our 54 member libraries become stronger and provide even better services to their communities.

What is a typical day like for you?

Typical, what’s that? My days are never the same and that’s one the things I love about my job. I might be planning or facilitating a training for member library staff, meeting with a community group, digging into a question that a member library staff person has stumped me on, or conducting a program at our County Correctional Facility.

What are you reading right now?

The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern.

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

“If you get told no, wait 6 months and ask again.” This advice was later amended to also include: “when making the ask be sure to present a solid plan including how it will benefit the organization.”

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

If you had told me when I was a brand new librarian that I would be facilitating workshops for other librarians and absolutely loving it, I would have told you that you were lying. I never, ever expected to find so much joy in having the opportunity to help empower library staff in their jobs.

Inside the Library Studio

What is your favorite word?

Plethora

What is your least favorite word?

Moist

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

Professional violinist. The fact that I don’t like to practice a lot makes this one a challenge!

What profession would you never want to attempt?

Snake charmer

Everything Else

What superpower do you wish you had?

Mind reader

What are you most proud of in your career?

It’s not so much one moment but lots of little moments. I love that my career provides me with opportunities to empower people through so many different avenues: supporting someone as they master using a mouse; handing an inmate in prison their very own book to keep; helping a library staff member work through a challenging situation and seeing them come to the solution on their own; facilitating a training for library staff and hearing lots of excited ideas being exchanged.

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

Only one? A big one for me is not asking for help when I find myself overwhelmed. Lesson learned (and one that I need to periodically remind myself of). It’s ok to talk to your supervisor and explain what’s going on. Asking for help does not equal failure. Your supervisor is there to support you & can only really provide that support when you bring them into the loop.

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

Making music either with my handbell choir or on my violin, lesson planning for my ESL tutoring sessions (some day I’ll not wait until the last minute), but most likely plopped on my couch doing some form of brainless activity to recharge my introvert soul.

Who else would you like to see answer these questions?

Lindsay Sarin


Andrea is on Twitter as @alsnyder02.

Here and Now: Buddhism, Mindfulness, and Burnout

source

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. 

Just for Fun: My "Essential" Reading

source

I recently read a list of David Bowie's favorite books, and while looking over the list I realized that the books I consider my "favorites" or my "essentials" are just as diverse as his. I thought it might be fun to share some of them with you. Emphasis on "some" here, as I try to keep my blog posts from getting too long and to put all of my favorites would take forever... so I have limited myself to ten books.

All Creatures Great and Small by James Herriot
This book is comfort reading for me. If I've had a horrid day/week and just don't feel like turning on the television or eating a big pile of mashed potatoes, Herriot's semi-autobiographical work about a country vet is a perfect pick-me-up. I've read it so many times now that I can skip the bits that will make me cry if I don't feel like crying that day. (That's not much of a spoiler. Books about vets are always crying books in one way or another.)

Jonathan Livingston Seagull by Richard Bach
This is my favorite book, bar none. I read a passage from this book at my father's funeral. It's about love and growth and friendship. This is another one that I know pretty much by heart. Yes, it's about seagulls. Yes, it's allegorical. I first read it when I was 11 or 12 years old, and it's stuck with me ever since.

Thinking, Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman
I wouldn't have believed you if you'd told me that a book about behavioral economics would really and truly change how I think about people, but it has. Everyone, especially librarians, should have a grounding in the basic theories of this field. Understanding how people make decisions helps me interact more effectively with people in my life - both at work and in my personal life. Kahneman's book also helps me understand my own decision making processes.

Start Where You Are: A Guide to Compassionate Living by Pema Chodron
This is the first book about Buddhism that I ever read, and it resonated so strongly with me that I investigated further and eventually decided to build my life around these principles. Any time someone asks me for a good place to start with reading about Buddhism, this is where I send them.

Fool by Christopher Moore
There's only one contemporary fiction author who has never let me down, and that's Christopher Moore. I don't even have to know the plot of a Christopher Moore book before buying it because I know I'll love it. He typically writes paranormal & monster fiction that makes fun of the genre while remaining true to its tropes, but my favorite of his works is Fool. In a nutshell, this book is King Lear from the fool's perspective, but it's so much better than that description would lead you to believe. Be warned: Fool is raunchy verging on pornographic, but it's also one of the most beautifully written books I've ever read.

The Left Hand of Darkness by Ursula K. Le Guin
I wish someone had handed me this book in my teens or my twenties because it changed so much of how I see gender. The story is about a human who crosses the galaxy on a mission of diplomacy and what happens when he reaches the other planet, but the gender dynamics on the other planet are unlike anything you'd expect. I think there should be at least one work of fantastic feminist science fiction on everyone's list of favorite books.

The Sandman by Neil Gaiman
The quick synopsis of this comic book series is: forces of nature are shown as endless creatures who reflect the best and worst of humanity. I know that's a convoluted sentence, but really - that's what it's about. I read comic books as a kid, sure, but I never really loved them until a student at my first library job recommended this series for the library. There are other comic book and graphic novel series I've come to love since then, and plenty of stand-alones, but nothing comes close to this one.

The Gift of Fear: Survival Signals That Protect Us From Violence by Gavin de Becker
This is another book that changed me permanently. Being able to tell the difference between day-to-day anxiety and actual fear is something everyone should learn, but vulnerable populations need this.

Fat! So? Because You Don't Have to Apologize for Your Size! by Marilyn Wann
I don't remember where I first stumbled onto this book, but it was a revelation. I am fat, and learning to let go of the shame attached to that fact (over which I have little to no control) was a hard lesson but an important one. Also, Marilyn Wann's book was my introduction to the ideas of fat activism and size acceptance, which is important to who I am.

The Golden Treasury of Poetry Selected and with commentary by Louis Untermeyer 
I've owned my copy of this book for so long that I literally cannot remember a time when it wasn't sitting on my bookshelf. This book was my first introduction to Shakespeare, Poe, Longfellow, Eliot, and many others. This book, more than any other, shaped my tastes in poetry and even more generally in reading. Heck, Elizabeth Bishop is probably my favorite poet of all time, and I first encountered her work in this book's pages.

So, how about you? What are your favorite books that you think inform who you are?

Ch-ch-ch-ch-Changes (Turn and Face the Strain)

Back when I started this blog, I spent a lot of time complaining about how so many LIS programs have curricula that looks at least 5 to 10 years behind what I do every day. But more and more, I know it's not just the LIS graduate programs. Even in this supposed age of technological wonders and instant communication, we're lucky if 10-15% of libraries are on the same page - let alone our graduate programs and our national organizations.

Let me give you an example from when I was just starting to get interested in librarianship in a broader way. In 2010, I attended my first national conference: the American Library Association annual conference was in DC that year. I learned right away what so many people know: that the best learning opportunities come in the unstructured times at conferences. One moment from that conference still stands out in my memory. I overheard some people talking about "how nice that ALA is finally taking graphic novels seriously." This happened as I was walking away from the Dark Horse booth where I'd had a nice, in person conversation with a rep with whom I had connected via email in the past. By that time I had been overseeing graphic novel collections in libraries for 5+ years and had built collections at two different libraries. Overhearing that conversation blew my mind. Something I'd been doing for a most of my career at that point was "finally" getting attention from a national organization.

I'm not faulting ALA, nor really tooting my own horn. I was lucky enough to work at an institution that encouraged new ideas and also lucky enough to have the kind of relationship with students where they'd be honest with me about what they wanted. It was a shock, though, to realize how different things were between my library and the national conference.

I had similar feelings as I read and commented on the various iterations of the Framework for Information Literacy. Above and beyond the jargon and buzzwords and threshold concepts, I was excited to see that at it's heart, the framework resembles how I approach information literacy more closely than anything I've seen from a national organization. The idea of framing these skills as practical, as more central to student learning than any specific outcomes, feels right. The document is not perfect, but it's a lot better than what came before.

All of this came to mind, yes the graphic novel story as well as my thoughts about the framework, when I saw this tweet:

Feeling need for my reminder that lib instruction didn't start w the Standards+#acrlframework didn't invent new concepts. #history #infolit

— Lisa Hinchliffe (@lisalibrarian) February 27, 2016

Ms. Hinchliffe's tweet made me think about buzzwords and slow steady change and so much more. Not too long ago, when I started in this field, we were in the midst of a jargon change. I took a Bibliographic Instruction class at my MLIS program. The library where I worked for 5 years had even labelled their classroom with the words "Bibliographic Instruction." Students there referred to that room the way long time staff did... "the BI room." But the rubric I helped write to measure Writing Across the Curriculum focused on "information literacy." Library instruction has also been called "user education" and "library orientation." Heck, that last one is the origin of one of the best conferences we've got! Library Orientation EXchange, or LOEX, has been going on for over 40 years.

We can be slow to change, but also we can be quick to throw and/or forget our history.

The main thing I'm thinking about, though, is that I'm starting to understand why more experiences library professionals say things like, "we've always done it that way." I know it's easy to hear that phrase and think the speaker is stuck. But at this stage of my career, I can hear nuances in that much reviled statement. I can hear when someone means "but I really want to change it" versus when they mean "and I'm scared to try something new." More importantly, though, I've noticed an undercurrent of "I'm not afraid of change so much as I'm scared of uninformed progress for the sake of progress."

Things change. It's a fact so true that it sounds a bit cliched. But change without awareness of history can be worse than no change at all. Knowing where we came from can be a road map of sorts. After all, you want to void those million dead-end streets, don't you?

“The only people for me are the mad ones”: On Finding Role Models Where You Least Expect Them, by Shanna Hollich

source

There was a hashtag recently making the rounds on Twitter about the wayward, winding path so many of us have taken before becoming librarians: #BeforetheMLIS. Before deciding to go back to school for my MLIS, I had been: a linguistics and philosophy double major; an overachieving undergrad presenting at conferences/having papers published/teaching freshman-level courses/assuming I would be an academic forever; a cognitive science PhD dropout; a legal assistant specializing in personal injury and Social Security Disability; a tax consultant going toe-to-toe with IRS agents every day; and a worker of many, many odd jobs, from counting cash in a vault in Hersheypark to stocking magazines and trade paperbacks in Wal-Marts and drug stores all across the tri-county area.

Which is to say that I did not always know I wanted to be a librarian. I stumbled into it, as so many of us stumble into so many things. To be honest, I’ve never had any clue exactly what it is I’m doing here. So I looked to others as examples.

In graduate school, this was easy. I had awesome, engaged professors who really cared about their students. I had fellow students who were rock stars in their own right, scoring fabulous internships and working full-time jobs in libraries already and yet still willing to answer all of my questions. Having been an academic for so long, I was comfortable within the confines of school. These were my people. I knew how things worked here.

And then I graduated. And I had to get a job. And I did (lucky me!). And then… I had never felt so alone in my life.

I started my career as a school librarian, and I spent all day practicing solo. I was the only library professional in my entire building. Nobody knew what I was supposed to be doing except me. All of the sudden I was in charge, I was making the rules, and I would be held accountable for them.

Then, just as I thought I might be getting the hang of things, my family moved to another state, and I had to start all over. I transitioned into public libraries and thought: huzzah! I would be working in a whole BUILDING full of librarians! Librarians who had been doing this so much longer than me, who knew what they were doing, and who could lead and guide me towards new librarian adventures.

Unfortunately, it’s not always that easy.

People are BUSY. My bosses and coworkers serve as role models as much as they are able, but they have jobs to do, too. Their jobs and their interests don’t always align with my personal goals. I’m focused on diversity initiatives, individual rights, social justice issues, and how to make the library a dynamic and passionate (and yes, political) community space. But I live in a rural area where we are doing the best we can with an aging and conservative population, and a view of librarianship that rarely strays from the traditional. It’s a great library, and I work with great people, but I found myself wanting more: more engagement, more passion, more creative thinking, more crazy ideas. Where were the really radical role models, the ones thinking outside the box, the ones trying outrageous things and sometimes failing, the ones for me, the mad ones?

I found them on Twitter.

I call these people my “role models,” but most of them have never even heard of me and would be surprised to find themselves listed in this blog post. Nevertheless, the ideas they write about, the causes they signal boost, and the library values that they champion influence me a great deal. They inspire my thinking, they assuage my doubts, and they show me that there are many, many different ways to be a librarian, and most importantly that someday when I least expect it, I may find I’ve even forged my own. A shortlist of my amazing Twitter librarian role models includes: @olinj (owner of this fabulous blog), @rdlankes, @jacobsberg, @michael_perry_7, and @flexlibris. They work in very different environments, they have very different views on librarianship, and they’re all rock stars to me.

So I encourage you to go off and find your own mad ones. Maybe Twitter isn’t for you. Maybe you’ll find your mad ones at conferences, at meet-ups at the pub, or (if you’re lucky!) in your very own office building. These mentors might be your bosses, sure, but they might be your peers, or your neighbors, or people you only know through words on a computer screen. The mentor relationship need not necessarily be a formal one. Everyone we meet has something to teach us about ourselves and the world around us. Keep your eyes open, ask for help when you need it, and find your mentors where you least expect them. And if you’re lucky, you’ll find ones who are mad in the same way that you are.

Shanna Hollich is a Technical Services Assistant at a public library in Gettysburg, PA and an Editorial Assistant for ALCTS News. She makes things. You can find her at http://www.shannamakes.com or on Twitter @srhlib.

(quote in title from On the Road, by Jack Kerouac)

Working For (And From) My Values

Short post today, but I'm hoping to start a conversation instead of espouse a specific view, so bear with me...

source

Lately I've been thinking a lot about what I value in librarianship, and why. I'm in the middle of reading The Upside of Stress by Kelly McGonigal, and one of the things that's stuck with me was about how attaching our day-to-day activities to our value system can make the annoyances of day-to-day activities less annoying. Or, put more simply, things done purposefully - even the horribly annoying ones like driving to work amidst wretched traffic - make a big difference. So I'm thinking about my values and intentionally tying my day-to-day into those values. The goal is to get to a point where I'm doing things more purposefully and less like a proverbial chicken running around with my head cut off.

Here's what I've come up with so far:

• While libraries can perpetuate power differentials, when done right libraries can be democratizing. And I've long owned that my library agenda is to graduate well informed voters.
• Equal treatment and acceptance are hugely important to me. It's why we did a display about protest culture and Black Lives Matter. It's why we have gone out of our way to add materials about different religious practices and cultures (especially books by and about Islam). It's why I've reached out to the LGBTQIA+ group on campus.
• Fostering curiosity is another thing I love about libraries. You can't have lifelong learning - a value every public and academic library lists as important - without curiosity.
• But most of all, I want people to know libraries can be fun. Maybe it's a bit "a spoon full of sugar helps the medicine go down," or maybe it's just "all learning and no entertainment makes you a very dull person." Whatever my motivation, I value the whole patron and not just their academic needs.

This list is a work in progress, as I said, so I'm curious what you value about libraries. Please comment here or elsewhere. Also, please join me in leaving the headless chicken brigade behind. 

Going It Alone, by Sara Kelley-Mudie

I have been a solo librarian for my entire career working in school libraries. For the most part I like it (department meetings are super efficient), but there are definitely moments when I wish I had someone else in working in the library with me. As much as I value my professional network (and I do! I would be lost without them) I often wish I had a coworker who understood the culture and nuances of libraries AND of my school. It’s the difference between “how to collaborate with a reluctant colleague” and “how to collaborate with this reluctant colleague.”

Then there’s the practical aspects of how it would be nice to have another librarian. The first time I ordered new books, I looked at the supplies my predecessor had left behind, some covered books, and tried to reverse engineer the process. With practice (and YouTube) I refined the process. Even now, every time I’m processing new books, I hear this voice in the back of my head asking, “is this the right way to do this?” I am almost a decade into my career as a school librarian, and I am still not sure I’m doing it right.

There are a lot of things in my day-to-day work life like that, and ranging from the small (those pesky book covers) to the far more significant (does the scope and sequence of skills I’m trying to integrate into the curriculum really prepare students to be independent researchers?). This vague insecurity has definitely motivated me to stay engaged in my professional network, and those connections help me grapple with the big questions about my work. On the other hand, there aren’t really professional development workshops for how to cover a book, how to manage shelving, how to not to be driven to your wits’ end by being asked “where’s the stapler?” for the umpteenth time. Nothing strikes dread in my heart quite like the words “the laminate roll needs to be changed.”

All that being said, I do have some words of (what I hope is) wisdom for life as a solo librarian:

You will figure it out.

And even if you do it wrong, it’s okay. Really. Also, document your work along the way. It’s good for you. If you do make mistakes, you’ll be able to track down where it happened. Also, documenting helps you remember how to do those “every once in awhile” tasks (hello laminator, my old friend). Besides, it’s also good for whoever takes over your work for you. I have taken over from someone who left great notes, and someone who did not. Those days/weeks/months of trying to figure out passwords, contracts, and unlabeled keys made me a compulsive documenter--I never want someone else to have that experience.

You don’t have to be good at everything.

You can be awesome at some things and meh at others. If the things you’re not good at bother you, make a plan to improve your skills in one area at a time. Pace yourself. Resist the urge to compare your work to that of non-solo librarians. One of the things I love about our profession is that so many people are so generous in sharing work and ideas. But don’t feel like you need to accomplish the same things that librarians who have colleagues who help with programming and instruction and unjamming the student printer.

Don’t do more with less.

I have, on more than one occasion, written up proposals for increasing the staffing in the library, documenting what isn’t getting done or what could be done better if there were more help. I’m still a solo librarian, but I feel less guilty about the things I have to let go. If you’re a solo librarian, you can’t do everything. This is a hard one for me, and something I still struggle with, but when I’m torn between different priorities I ask myself “what does the community need?” Sometimes it’s not what they would identify as a need, or even something they’ll notice right away. When I made the decision to interfile my reference collection it wasn’t something my community was clamoring for, but the change in usage showed me that it was worth the time. No matter what, time invested in understanding your community and its needs is time well spent.

I don’t know if that voice in the back of my head will ever go away, but I do know that it’s gotten quieter over the years. If nothing else, I know I’ve learned to serve my community and take it one day at a time. Even with the laminator.

Sara Kelley-Mudie is the librarian at the Hawken School. She puts her motto of “Relentless Optimism” on as many things as possible, both as a reminder to herself and as fair warning to everyone she interacts with. She tweets at @skm428.