This post might be very boring to the library folks, but this is what I do. I’m a transportation librarian, so I think about transportation stuff. One thing that I’m interested in is how transportation agencies use social networking to share information. This is why I started MashTrans, because it was clear that people were interested but didn’t really know where to begin. It is one of those areas where there’s no right way, but there’s plenty of ways to get it wrong.

This week AASHTO, or the American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials (we love our acronyms in transportation), joined the hordes on Twitter with @aashtospeaks. They’ve only tweeted twice so far, but one was a link to results of a survey about Twitter and Facebook with state DOTs. They found 32 agencies have presences on Twitter and 24 are on Facebook. That’s not too shabby for 51 agencies of varying populations and resources.

I had been working on something similar but instead of a survey I chose the brute force method: I just went to each agency’s website and then searched around, also using Google, to find if they were on Twitter, Facebook, Flickr, and Youtube. I also looked to see which agencies had RSS feeds available for the public. It was at times frustrating, but here it is in all its glory. At first I thought, well, AASHTO beat me to the punch, but then I looked at their results and compared them to mine. It’s not the same thing. Here’s why:

1. AASHTO used a survey to get their results, I sought them out myself. Their results depend on people responding to the survey (which is never a sure thing), while I looked for what was publicly available (and relatively easy to find).
2. I looked at services besides Facebook and Twitter. Honestly, I love Facebook and I love Twitter, but they aren’t always the best tool. Flick and YouTube have great applications for transportation information, just look at Washington State DOT’s Flickr. Lovely stuff. When I was at the TRB meeting last month, it was clear that people had gotten the message that people are on Twitter and Facebook, but it was also clear that most people didn’t know what transportation agencies should actually do there besides have a presence. That’s not really going to cut it.
3. I also looked for RSS feeds. I wish I could say I was surprised at how few agencies actually offer them, but I’m not. True, many people don’t understand what RSS means, but in the age of database driven CMS websites, they are pretty easy to offer and can really help push your agency’s message out to places like Twitter and Facebook with minimal effort. More people need to be doing this.

So I need to figure out why my next steps will be with this information. I’ll be looking at MPOs next and then transit agencies. Who knows what I’ll find.

Last month I blogged that I’m accepting applications for a mentor. (Applications are still open, by the way…) Well, this week one of my mentors/role models/heroes, Sarah Glassmeyer, blogged about Libpunk Mentorship. It’s great advice to any wayward librarian (or professional whatever) looking for direction. Her five main points are:

1. Own Your Shit
2. It’s OK to Say “No”
3. It’s OK to Cry
4. Fake it Until You Make It
5. Fuck ‘em if They Can’t Take a Joke

Why don’t they teach us this stuff in library school? Now, I really try to live by 1, 4, and 5. I don’t feel like I’m at a point in my career where I can really do 2, and well, I am too much of a poser to admit to 3. I’ve got a ways to go still…

Sarah touches on something that another metor/hero of mine, Mary Carmen Chimato, has stressed to me. We’re not alone. Sarah says it’s important to pass on compliments, talk your peers up. There’s room for praise and constructive criticism. This is something I really need to remember. Too often I get what I call “Little Red Hen Syndrome” – where I try to do it all myself and then get annoyed when people around me don’t work on my timetable/level. It’s a terrible habit and doesn’t really help anybody. It’s not that I’m too good for my peers or working on more important stuff than my colleagues. I just don’t effectively communicate what needs I perceive and I do a crappy job of listening to what their needs/goals are. We can all work together and progress and change, I just need to have some more empathy and understanding. I need to be a team player. How rockstar is that?

Well, it is and it isn’t. It’s sad, but I really needed people like Sarah and Mary to tell me to look at my role in what I’m doing and trying to accomplish. I value their opinions and trust their judgement, and it’s good to have an outside perspective. I also wish there was more talk about how to work with those around you, rather than finger wagging.

Today’s AP wire had an article about Ohio State University, the largest university in the country, possibly changing the rules for granting tenure:

The leader of the country’s largest university thinks it’s time to re-examine how professors are awarded tenure, a type of job-for-life protection virtually unknown outside academia.

Ohio State University President Gordon Gee says the traditional formula that rewards publishing in scholarly journals over excellence in teaching and other contributions is outdated and too often favors the quantity of a professor’s output over quality.

“Someone should gain recognition at the university for writing the great American novel or for discovering the cure for cancer,” he told The Associated Press. “In a very complex world, you can no longer expect everyone to be great at everything.”

Emphasizing teaching over publishing would be radical. I’m intrigued by the idea because of bitter memories of a few classes where the professors clearly had no interest in teaching, treating it as a horrid obligation. Needless to say, I did not enjoy their lectures. I wonder how many undergrads are victim to that situation (and perhaps change majors as a result)?

Now of course, there are critics:

“The idea of awarding tenure based on teaching makes me anxious,” said Jennifer Higginbotham, an English professor at Ohio State who’s up for tenure in three years. By then, she will need to publish a book she’s writing about conceptions of girlhood in the Middle Ages to have any chance at the promotion.

“There’s a feeling, I think, that good teachers are a dime a dozen,” said Higginbotham, 32. “I’m not sure what you’d have to do to distinguish yourself enough as a teacher to get tenure.”

Are good teachers a dime a dozen or is this a mis-perception from faculty? Perhaps good is not an adequate superlative, how about great teachers? They exist. Students love them. Great teaching faculty engages their students and imparts passion and excitement for whatever discipline. Why do you think I graduated from Cal with a degree in Germanic linguistics? Professors Rauch and Shannon made it easy for me to fall in love with dead dialects.

So what are the implications for librarians? I think it could be great. It would be great if academic librarians were afforded the time to do great work for their library and publish when it made sense and they had something to share, rather than feeding the published article echo chamber because you need tenure. I wonder what this would do to some of the library world’s rock stars, but shouldn’t we all be rock stars for our libraries?

Last week I asked if academic librarians should be faculty. The issue of academic freedom came up, as faculty status (and tenure) should protect librarians. Is that really the case though? Is tenure the only way to achieve that? According to the American Association of University Professors it is.

The bottom line is that librarians (academic or otherwise) are unwilling, through their premier professional association, to shame those involved in the most egregious violations of intellectual freedom when the violations occur within the profession. This unwillingness to engage academic and intellectual freedom within libraries has resulted in a serious bifurcation: such protections exist for the users of libraries and in building, maintaining, preserving, and providing access to library collections of all types, but they do not cross the desk in practice to the professionals who must stock those collections and serve those users. Academic and intellectual freedom in the library workplace is, primarily, a rhetorical value and an object lesson to those who take academic freedom for granted or misunderstand it. It is a reality only for those librarians fortunate enough to be faculty members—and to be taken seriously as such.

John Buschman makes some good points in that article, such as the role of ALA in advocating for the rights of librarians (and how they may have let them down), but ultimately, I don’t agree with his point. He represents the broader interests of faculty and tenure, and as long as many institutions consider librarians faculty, they have to keep that line.

Tara Murrary linked to this Chronicle blog post about the broader issue of tenure and academic freedom. Is this going to be the end of tenure? The implications for professors seems to be more uncertain, but for librarians we’ve been doing this for years. I think this is a great time to reflect on what we do and what academic freedom actually means for librarians, rather than just invoking it in name.

I have a hard time even thinking what academic freedom means to me. Does this mean the freedom to pursue projects and initiatives? I have that. What about research? Well, I could if I had time and money. That has more to do with the staffing and funding constraints of my workplace (which is practically a universal), that I don’t think my lack of tenure has anything to do with it. I feel fortunate that the institute I work for values the library’s missions and what we do, even if we are examining things that won’t immediately affect our users. I think library administrations need to do a more effective job communicating the needs of librarians to campus administration, but that’s a whole other issue. (Maybe I should examine the trend of library administrators not being librarians?)

So what does tenure really protect? It might make people feel comfortable to exercise their academic freedom, but really it’s just the job security. Mess with tenure and people freak out, “Oh no! You can fire me!” Was tenure intended to protect people who weren’t doing their job? It shouldn’t be a shield for incompetence or an unwillingness to perform. For professors, I’m not sure what that means, but for librarians it’s very clear. You don’t want to change what you do to meet the needs of your users? That’s not a tenure issue. This is why I see them as two separate issues.

Last week, when I was deep in the TRB 2010 Annual Meeting, one of my transportation library colleagues ask me if I had a mentor who “couldn’t directly benefit from [my] actions” and didn’t “have any direct control” over my career. When he put it like that, my answer had to be no. I have people I look up to, but nothing formal like “There’s that person, they’re my mentor.” I also thought it was interesting how my colleague qualified it with control and other motives. I never really considered it before, but a mentor really should have your interests at heart and do it for the information exchange and a warm fuzzy feeling, not to exploit the mentee.

I’m at that point in my career where I would like a mentor. Not one tied to the campus or my place of work, but one that can help me articulate my big picture plans and ideas. Any suggestions? I’m taking applications. I’ll probably ask about this at SLA Leadership next week.

Disclaimer: This has nothing to do with the rights of faculty in terms of layoffs and firing. This is just my opinion about whether or not academic librarians should really be considered faculty.

I am not a faculty member. I am not a professor. Most people would never mistake me for one. I mean look at me. (I do get grad student too often, but I guess I can live with that.)

There has been a lot written about academic librarians and tenure and the desire for faculty status. Meredith Farkas blogged about this issue some years ago, and I think she sums it up well:

Why are some academic librarians so obsessed with being treated like academics? I know that the majority of people have no idea that librarians have Masters degrees — and sometimes even a second professional degree. And yes, we librarians have an image problem. But as long as I am helping people and doing a good job, I’m not going to worry about what people think about how educated or smart I am. Who cares if people don’t know we have degrees so long as they come to the reference desk when they need help? Will faculty members really be more likely to bring their students to our information literacy classes if we have tenure? I doubt it. The institutions I interviewed at that had a tenure track had the same problems with faculty that we have at Norwich.

Sure, I’d like to have the respect of faculty members, but I’d rather gain it by doing great work than by getting tenure.

Four years later I don’t think there’s really been an answer to this question. I work on a campus where we are not tenured faculty. Instead, we are unionized and have “academic” status, like the lecturers. Our criteria for promotion are similar to that of tenure-track faculty, but there’s more emphasis on service, rather than research and publishing. I think this is a good model because service is my game.

When you get down to the heart of it, service is the cornerstone of any library, not just academic libraries. So why do academic librarians feel the need to be treated as equals with faculty when our jobs rarely entail the same responsibilities? Is it ego? Faded dreams? It’d be unfair to try to simplify it all into a short phrase, but I will say yes.

Todd Gilman wrote about the issue of academic librarians and rank in the Chronicle of Higher Education. I found it to be a good overview for people with graduate degrees considering an MLIS. (Honestly, I would put this in my “failed academic” pool, which I admit is somewhat perjorative.)

OK, so there’s the background, here’s my reasoning and opinion.

I like the idea of academic librarians as administrative staff because I think the hurdles for tenured faculty are not in-line with our duties and mission. I became a librarian to facilitate research. I did not become a librarian to write lots of papers and be constantly worried about being published. If that was my goal, then I should have lived my dream of a Germanic linguist. Does this mean I don’t want to conduct research for myself and the profession? Not at all. What I take issue with is the fact that we seem to think we have to perform those activities to justify our existence when I think they probably get in the way of our main mission – helping users. I worry that the pressure to publish contributes to the library echo chamber, and too many publications to feed the faculty track out of necessity obscure publications that genuinely push us to innovate.

I also worry that too many people see librarianship as a potential back door to faculty rank and status. They focus on the glamorous side – publishing, research, conferences- to the detriment of many of our jobs – content representation, instruction, research assistance, access. I can’t really fault people if that’s what is expected of them to continue to be employed at their institution, but I wouldn’t mind seeing a movement to change this.

Just because I’m happy to not be faculty doesn’t mean I think academic librarians aren’t worthwhile or that I’m ashamed of the profession. On the contrary, I think faculty status often is a misnomer that hinders us from being the best library professionals we can be. I think it helps contribute to a culture where there’s too much concerned placed on what our peers think of us and keeping up with the trends, rather than engaging our communities of how best we can serve them.

There are times when I feel almost rudderless in Libraryland. These usually coincide with ALA conferences or some big kerfuffle in the profession that doesn’t really seem to impact what I do as a librarian. (Yes, it’s all about me.) The feeling also happens when I go to transportation conferences or meetings. I’ve been working hard over the past year to insert myself into any committee or community that is concerned with the management and access of transportation information. It’s a a logical fit. Librarians know how to organize and manage information. At first I was met with questions like, “But these aren’t reports, what can you do?” but now everybody knows who I am and understand why I keep turning up.

The problem now is that I think I’ve gone too far. I want to be a transportation engineer. Now, I sort of like not being in school or worrying about paying for tuition, but I also have this innate desire to be more involved with research. I wonder if I would have more opportunities or street cred, pardon the pun, if I had a ME to back it up. When I started library school lo those three years ago, I never thought I would already be planning my escape, but it’s not really leaving the library world. It’s more about taking my skills as a librarian and information professional deeper into my subject matter. Whether or not you would call me a librarian is moot, I want to make it easier for people to access and share their data for planning and decision making. It’s a worthwhile goal, innit?

It’s an interesting thing to ponder – how do people become librarians? The Library Routes Project compiles several journeys to the profession. The variety is quite interesting and I think is a good source of information for any prospective LIS student, especially those coming to library school with little or no library experience.

So here’s my little story…

In 2004 I was a student at UC Berkeley, and I spent a semester studying abroad at Georg-August-Universität Göttingen. When I came back to Berkeley to finish up my degree, double major in History and German (minor in Linguistics and Medieval Studies), I needed a job. I probably could have gone back to the job I left at the College of Chemistry, but I wanted something different. I applied to a bank, a Peets, and a library. The library was the first place to get back to me and I was quickly hired. (This all happened within less than a week from my return to the States.) I worked there through my graduation, and then applied to replace the circulation manager when he left to go to grad school. By this point I was sort of thinking of library school, not because I felt a huge desire to be a librarian, but I figured it was alright and a way to avoid the two body problem.

After a year of being circulation manager I was pretty much decided on library school, and enrolled in Drexel’s I-School. Going to school online allowed me to continue working full time. (Nevermind beating breast cancer.) I opted for the dual degree – library science and information systems – because I wanted to have more technical chops. When I got close to graduation from Drexel, I knew I would have to find another job. I started applying to other science and engineering library jobs in the area when my library was able to resurrect an un-filled Librarian position to offer be when I interviewed elsewhere. I realised this is a pretty unique environment with a lot of freedom, so I stayed. In July 2008, I officially became a Transportation Librarian.

It’s been a pretty action packed time and I’m still not entirely sure how I ended up here. I think some of it is inertia, but there’s a lot of luck. This is a great library and the transportation community is quite amazing. I really think special libraries are great. In a small amount of time I feel that I’ve become part of something larger and can really improve a part of society. I’m vain in that I like that.

coffee, water, you know, originally uploaded by kendrak.

It’s weird… it seems like something the past few months happened at work, and now I’m at some sort of critical mass where every other day I have a “call.” When you work on national committees and projects, you no longer have meetings, you have calls. Conference calls and teleconferences are the most common form, but I also have those one-on-one scheduled calls. I only really mention this because there seems to be a cliché in Libraryland about how we spend more time in meetings and preparing for them than out. I used to think I bucked that trend, but now I’m not so sure.

I sort of like going to meetings, even though I skipped one this morning for a phone call, because at least I get away from my desk for a while and see other people. With calls you just sit there, staring at the screen. For that reason, I’ve taken to needing pick-me-ups, before, during, and after these calls. Yesterday, it was Go Sailor and a vegan chocolate donut from Pepples Donuts before. During, is usually coffee. After, usually more coffee and music. This time it was Tiger Trap.

It’s sad, but the more I grow as a librarian, the more I depend on coffee. It’s a saviour of many awkward social situations and braces me for pretty much anything.

do nawt eated meh, originally uploaded by Todd Barnard.

Yesterday polls closed on the election to change the name of SLA to Association of Strategic Knowledge Professionals. From the press release:

The Special Libraries Association (SLA) announced the results of its association-wide vote on a new name today. Voting in record numbers, SLA members failed to approve a proposal to change the organization’s name to the Association for Strategic Knowledge Professionals. 50 percent of those members eligible to vote participated in the referendum, with 2071 voting yes and 3225 voting no.

I’m stunned at the numbers. Not that membership overwhelmingly voted no, but that membership overwhelmingly voted. Over 5000 people voiced their opinion, which means they took the time to consider the options and vote. That makes me want to get even more involved and engage with other members about what the future of SLA should be and to see Alignment continue.

I do think that “failed to approve” is an unfortunate choice of words. There’s no failure here, the proposed name did not pass, it was rejected, but it did not fail. To me, failure implies that we weren’t supposed to have our own opinions about the name. I don’t think that’s actually the case, but it does make me wonder if maybe I should feel bad it didn’t pass?

The last time I blogged about the SLA name change, I admitted that I voted no with reservations. I understand why people are disappointed that ASKP didn’t pass. I won’t try to pretend I’m not happy we’re still SLA, but I don’t think it’s worth gloating about either. This has been a very trying episode for the organization, and hopefully we’re better for it in the long run. I hope the rejection of the proposed name will not derail the rest of Alignment, which I think is extremely valuable.

To me the worst thing about the SLA name process has been the bad attitudes and unprofessional behaviour that emerged in the discussion. I think some of the criticisms of condescension by SLA leadership when selling ASKP to membership is valid, but I also don’t think there was any malice, just poor communication. I think there could have been more outreach with the rank and file, but that’s something to work on in the future. There are hurt feelings on both sides which makes me sad, but I think we can overcome that. I am tired of people who aren’t SLA members jumping into the discussion in less than productive ways, but I think I’ll have to save that breakdown for a separate post.

For now I’m an SLA member and I’m happy to be one.

Oh, and I originally chose this picture because I liked the overtones about identity crisis and a play on names for things, but then I took a different tack. Yeah, it’s a dog in a hotdog bun. It’s a hot dog. Sort of like how information professional and library can be synonyms or not depending on the context. At the end of the day, it’s not a big deal.