Gutted.

Written by . Posted on 9 May, 2012. Filed under Uncategorized. No comments.

Gutted., originally uploaded by kendrak.

This is a picture of the back of the library at work. You can see where the shelves used to be by the holes in the carpet and the brown paint. I still don’t know how much has been moved and discarded, but it looks and feels like a lot. There will be a wall going up soon, which will intersect the brown wall. We’re losing a huge chunk of our footrprint and it hurt.

Don’t anybody think that this whole process didn’t suck. It sucked a lot. It physically hurt carrying all those books to make it easier for the movers. It mentally hurt taking apart one of the most well known transportation collections. Students, faculty, the public, librarians, pretty much anybody who heard about this project has asked “How can you do such a thing?” as if we had a choice.

Big props to the movers. They were amazing. They have been involved in a number of similar moves on campus and really knew what to do. When we were doing the pre-move walk-through, one of the movers made the observation, “Another library moving to make room for offices? What a surprise.” It’s not quite an epidemic, but I think we might be the fourth or fifth case on campus. Space is a premium and unfortunately a lot of campus leaders think library stacks are under-utilized, practically empty space waiting to be turned into a cubical farm. It stings but I also know we’re not the first nor the last, and there’s comfort in that.

I also know what’s on the shelves is stuff that people use and that you know what? People like the window dressing of large runs of shelves packed with paper, but that doesn’t mean they actually want what’s contained. It’s comforting to see the vast array of stuff on a shelf. You know we have it, you know it’s ours. What about the stuff we license? That’s harder to wrap your head around, even though you probably use it a hell of a lot more and would prefer it.

So now the clean up begins before the wall goes up, and a big part of that will mean making the electronic stuff people don’t know we have access to a lot easier to find and browse. How? Well… that’s the new hard part.

Hands On Collection Development

Written by . Posted on 18 April, 2012. Filed under Uncategorized. No comments.


Goodbye Elevator World, originally uploaded by kendrak.

I’m at about the half-way mark of sifting through my library’s physical collection. Let me tell you, not only having the dry, paper cut riddled, filthy hands to show for it, I also have a new understanding of how much of our collection has been used (or not). I know this sort of approach is not feasible for most libraries. I wouldn’t be doing this if we had circulation data or if we could easily designate call number ranges to be sent to “the Annex”.

The biggest lesson I’ve learned so far is that collection development seems to be done with good intentions, but lacked follow through to see if that was what was really needed. Some sections, such as traffic studies from various cities around the US (mostly from the 1960s and 1970s) were never touched, yet we had thousands of them. Our section on mathematical models, statistical analysis, and probability is much smaller, but almost every item has been borrowed several times. Elevator World is another great example. We had a run that took up an entire bay and a bit. It was used maybe once in my 8 years here? It was nice to have, but nobody actually wanted it, but the library felt like we had to have it just in case.

Yesterday a new statistical abstract came in about international freight cargo shipping. Had somebody asked me “Should we keep this?” before I sorted through that section, I would have said “Of course!” But I know better now. I saw how little most of our stuff about freight shipping was used. Books and reports talking about the logistics, the theory, optimization, research. That was used. Reports for various ports, broad overviews, they weren’t touched. So my response was, “You should ask Professor “Logistics”, but my feeling is that it’d be nice to have someday maybe, but it’s not really going to get used and we don’t really need it.” So my colleague went down the hall, asked the professor, and got pretty much that same answer. That’s $100 we won’t need to spend next year.

Now I’m going back to sift through our stuff about local transportation. For all of the really valuable reports and documents about BART, we have piles and piles of public meeting minutes. While it might have been a good idea to collect that back when the system was getting started, nobody has gone back and asked, “Do we need this? Is it our responsibility? Is this something our researchers want?” For the most part, I think no, but that makes me feel a bit uneasy.

Regardless… weeding shouldn’t be put off until there’s a crisis. These questions about collection development should be in the backs of our minds all the time, taking it back to the stakeholder when necessary.

Looking for Eric

Written by . Posted on 5 April, 2012. Filed under Uncategorized. No comments.


THE KING, originally uploaded by coquettish.

Yesterday I was moving books (it’s basically all I do these days) and listening to old bits from The Football Ramble. Maybe it was the late hour in the day, the fact that I’d been moving books for hours, or maybe it was something more, but the Dean Windass Hall of Fame entry for Eric Cantona really resonated with me. Cantona is an enigma, more complex than your average footballer. Prone to violence on the pitch, famous for kicking a Crystal Palace fan in the stands (which he still says is his best moment), he’s called for the pope to be sodomized, has proposed revolution by killing the banks, and talked about running for president in France to draw attention to social issues.

Even though I hate the club he’s most associated with, I can’t hate him. And as I go through trying to navigate this weird transition of our library, I’m reminded of the film Looking for Eric, about a stressed out Mancunian postman who hallucinates, and works out his problems with Cantona. In the film he tells Paul the postman, “I am not a man, I am Cantona.”

So I’m looking for Eric to help me sort this all out.. Reading interviews and quotes to find wisdom to make sense of my purpose. (I really feel adrift professionally… it’s sad.)

Cantona once said:

“Often there are players who have only football as a way of expressing themselves and never develop other interest. And when they no longer play football, they no longer do anything; they no longer exist, or rather they have the sensation of no longer existing.”

That goes for any profession. I think when I had the most fire, the most energy for the game (the library game), I had very little time or energy for anything else. It was consuming and I was probably a bit manic.

Then things changed. I think it’s normal really, lots of people lose that drive when they have kids, or whatever. I really started to pull back when things started going weird at my workplace. As the budget situation became iffier, I started to evaluate my life and became less emotionally invested in it all. Work, not life. It made getting laid off easier, and I think I’m probably better equipped to ride the waves of change here. Toss 1/3 of the collect? OK. Move all the books? Fine. Get it done and then go home to make dinner, watch the guinea pigs, and listen to my records. It’s nice enough, but I can’t help but feel I’m letting myself down or giving up. I was trying to think of what I’d done professionally in 2012 for the latest LibPunk Radio episode (yeah, another thing that’s suffered…), and I couldn’t think of anything. The work I’m doing now, this moment, is dull and messy. It’s not sexy. It’s not going to illicit deep and retweetable phrases. It’s not going to make people feel anything towards me as a librarian but pity. I think that’s sort of part of my ennui- I went from trying to push the lines a few years back, to barely hanging on. My library used to be a jewel, and now we’re a shell. No staff, no money, and fighting to survive. So how can we keep up with the interesting things people are bigger organizations are doing? Fact of the matter we can’t. It bugs me a little, but I know that if all I had was work it would bug me more. So in that way, thanks Eric.

Moderation is key: Being yourself, being professional, and personal attacks?

Written by . Posted on 14 March, 2012. Filed under Observations. 3 Comments.


Yesterday the Libray Journal Movers & Shakers for 2012 were announced. Congratulations to them all! To be honest, it’s one of those days that comes and goes without much notice of me, but a couple of people were talking about the winners all over the Twitterverse. I happened to open the link for JP Porcaro from 8bitlibrary and @makeithappenday, and then went to the meeting and forgot about it. When I got back from my meeting people were talking about the comments on the page at Library Journal – namely, that some were moderated/censored. Since I still had the comments in question open in one of my several tabs, I took a screenshot for posterity.

The comments that were deleted refer to Porcaro as a “tool,” a drunk, and question whether or not he deserves the award. They aren’t particularly nice but they don’t seem completely out of line. I would put them in that uncomfortable grey area – somewhat unpleasant statements based upon personal observations.

Some people, such as Anna Creech and Jenica Rogers, questions Library Journal’s moderation. There was also FriendFeed discussion. This morning I checked to see how the discussion went and I found a comment that really goes out of bounds:

I applaud Milli Vanilli for going for, sort of like Porcaro would, and calling Library Journal’s own Annoyed Librarian a crackwhore, well, that made me chuckle.

Aside from Library Journal’s poor moderation which made me actually pay attention to something I’d otherwise ignore, this episode does serve as a reminder about how you behave in professional settings. The only thing I knew about Porcaro was based on stories from people who have worked with him on ALA things and his own online presence. He likes to drink, he likes to party, and he sort of reminds me of the Festrunk brother from Saturday Night Live. He’s a wild and crazy guy! It’s part of his thing, his gimmick. He describes himself as, “‘party king’ of librarianship, our own Andrew WK.” Clearly, he has a healthy ego. Porcaro may be an outlier, and he may annoy people, and that’s OK. When you make that your persona professionally, I think some criticism is to be expected and it’s OK. If he was only getting drunk or being the life of the party after meetings, after hours, and in more private venues, I would be more inclined to see people referencing that behaviour on the Library Journal site as more of a personal attack. Since they are just commenting on the persona that Porcaro has marketed and used to gain notoriety, then it’s fair game. (As an aside, is a dance party at ALA really all that revolutionary? SLA has had several dance parties at their annual meetings for decades. Yet another reason I love SLA…)

Library Journal, party foul. You picked a Mover & Shaker who’s like marmite or Heino – people love him or hate him. That’s cool. Don’t get mad though when people question it and as long as nobody said he was a crackwhore with STDs, deleting the comments only draws more attention to them. To all you professionals out there, just remember about the image you’re projecting. If you want to be a bit irreverent you might have to take some lumps. I’m sick and tired of rolling my eyes at hipster librarian jokes, even though I’m not really a hipster, but as long as I keep talking about obscure bands and buying lots of vinyl, I’m sort of asking for it. (On that note, seriously JP – all of your cultural allusions are so played out. They’re too MTV and not really alterna-anything.) All’s fair on the internet.

Weeding: Dirty work, but somebody’s gotta do it

Written by . Posted on 9 March, 2012. Filed under Uncategorized. 1 Comment.


Dirty hands, originally uploaded by Photos by Rose.

For those of you following from afar – I’m still working at the library and we’re still going through big changes. One of the big projects we’re undertaking is a substantial weeding project. (Weeding is library speak for thinning the collection.)

We’re not really sure how much of the collection we’re supposed to weed, as the target keeps moving, but it’s already thousands of volumes. Unfortunately we don’t really have any of the collection data most libraries have when they undertake these kinds of projects because we only have circulation data for the past two and a half years, when we got an ILS. (Yeah, we’re a modern library now…) This means that selection of titles to discard is being done by hand for the most part.

I’m touching all the books and man are they filthy. It’s been an interesting look at what is really on the shelf. Some areas, the ones we know are used and are research, aren’t being affected. Then there are the sections that have made me scratch my head – why do we have shelves and shelves about soils? We haven’t done any soil research in decades. The same goes for our whole run of Elevator World.

Really, this weeding project has made me appreciate collection development policies. We didn’t seem to use one for decades, and now we’re going through a very physical process to realign the library with the institute. Paper cuts be damned, it will be worth it.

Seeing the trucks of books ready for the discard pile has really been unsettling to our users. Faculty are freaking out about us getting rid of so many volumes, even though we assure them they are items that have never been used and will probably never be used and are available elsewhere. There really is security in looking back and seeing shelves full of books. Even if those books are never used and collecting dust, as researchers rely on more and more electronic content. They want that image of the library, but nobody wants to pay for it. I’ve had to accept it and eventually they will, too. Hopefully we can make it clear how this weeding project will free us up to do other things, like data curation and management.

That said, I gotta go get my hands dirty and load up another cart about culverts.