In my nightly browsing, I came across this post, the contents of which I find quite disheartening:

“Ok, I hold a student position at the medical library and my boss is this super conservative republican lady. It was Friday afternoon and me and a coworker were just sitting around waiting for the clock to tick 6 P.M. so we could go home, then I get a phone call and after I got off the phone the conversation with the co-worker went something like this:

Does that sound like harassment? The comments were all made in a non-threatening tone and just as a friendly chat between co-workers. Now I know that if I was to come out my boss would not be comfortable with me being gay and I do think she would either make it difficult for me to work here or would give me less hours for work next semester. Probably even at the time when she wasn’t at the office.”

It’s sad that his concern is quite reasonable. And to see such an atmosphere of intolerance manifest itself in an environment that should be known for its respect, if not celebration, of diverse identities, backgrounds and viewpoints is tragic. Of course, the author and his co-worker could be off-base in their perception of the boss, but a workplace culture that even suggests intolerance, especially on the managerial level, makes me cringe.

Got an interesting comment from Richard Soderberg that I wanted to share with you, in the hopes of eliciting some comments:

“I’d like to hear more from the library community about the shared and private ontologies being developed at del.icio.us; I’m crysflame on delicious. Glad to see that it’s filling a need in such a relevant demographic I wonder if librarians are, by default, more attracted to del.icio.us than other folk — being a librarian myself, and also having found it completely addictive to use.”

Well, my ontology is woefully lacking as it essentially created on the fly, based on the things that I am cataloging (literary warrant, baby!). Unfortunately, I’m the type that could categorize an item one way on the first day and then forget my thought process the next day, left to wonder what the heck I was thinking (or where that article about ontologies went). I’m sure a little time spent reconsidering my previous choices would serve me well in the long run.

To the second question, of course librarians are drawn to del.icio.us. The opportunity to categorize our online reference sources and share them with an unsuspecting populace will always be a draw.

BTW, since Richard is a librarian, that would make floating atoll a library blog. Better go toss that up onto Blogsource.

Walt certainly has generated a lot of comments lately. I was catching up on my aggie reading and noticed some commentary on the commons-blog regarding a definition of the term Information Commons. But I lost focus on the thread when I saw Walt remark that “At this point, “information commons” just isn’t a way I pull all of this together, just as I continue to be unconvinced that “information literacy” means much of anything (although a couple of old and dear friends are heavily involved in that movement) and also continue to regard the “digital divide” as more hype than substance. (Geez, have I alienated everyone now?)” (bold emphasis is mine).

I was quite surprised since, in my naive mind, information literacy is a very clean distillation of what appeals to me about librarianship. Sure, the term is so much bibliobabble, much like “Interlibrary Loan,” “Selective Dissemination of Information” or even “database.” To me though, it succinctly synthesizes what I’ve come to regard as a fundamental goal of librarianship.

A quick definition: “…information literate people know how to find, evaluate, and use information effectively to solve a particular problem or make a decision—whether the information they select comes from a computer, a book, a government agency, a film, or any number of other possible resources.” 1989 ALA Presidential Committee on Information Literacy Final Report.

Somewhere along the way in the grande olde days of grad school, I realized that I, first and foremost, needed to become that person myself. Second, I needed to empower others to “use information effectively to solve a particular problem or make a decision.” That was my whole raison d’etre and my driving force as I selected classes and subsequently, a career path.

So I guess I’m mildly stunned to see what amounts to my motto/creed (note blog description) summarily dismissed as devoid of meaning by someone I respect. And I suppose I’m too young to recognize Information Literacy as a movement, rather than an essential, fundamental objective. Maybe I’m just enchanted with its progressive and idealistic ring. All I know is that words and phrases such as these are only useful in so far as they successfully communicates ideas, and the phrase Information Literacy has done a whole lot of communicating to this librarian.

I followed a link from Peter Scott’s Library Blog to check out a magazine called New Library World. Thanks to the free access to full-text, I was able to read, in the most recent issue, an interesting article entitled “Job satisfaction among library managers: a cross-cultural study of stress, freedom and job conditions” by Neils O. Pors. Of course, the title spoke to me, given my current position.

The article discusses a survey of British and Danish Library Managers and tries to draw conclusions about how nationality and cultural differences play into the concept of job satisfaction. I’m going to save you some time and pull some summary observations entirely out of their context.

“Age and job satisfaction appear to be independent of each other.”

“Overall no difference in job satisfaction in relation to gender was found.”

“A tendency to a higher degree of job satisfaction among managers in academic libraries is found.”

And the stunning revelations: “Overall, there is a very strong correlation between the level of job satisfaction and the amount of stress.”

“A low degree of stress goes together with much freedom in the job.”

There are actually some interesting observations that deal with the differences in Danish and British culture, but those of you genuinely interested will seek out the article anyway. However, I had to share the conclusion: “The author feels it is extremely important to raise the job satisfaction of managers. It would be a significant part of the organisational culture with implications for staff satisfaction, recruitment for managerial positions and recruitment of new staff. Managers’ job satisfaction is probably one thing that permeates the whole organisation and influences the psychological climate to a great extent.”

To which I say, huzzah!

Well, it seems that Nanette’s post articulating a number of her issues with library blogs has rubbed some people the wrong way. So much so that Nanette felt compelled to address the issue again.

Now, not every one took offense to Nanette’s remarks. My commenters thought she made some good points, as did Jessamyn, Peter and a few of the commenters in the reactionary posts listed above.

I tried my best to hold forth from commentary, in order to avoid being instantly characterized as kin to “the Smelly People of the World” or the “huffy, pissy easily-offended troglodytes.” But I just can’t help myself.

First, inflammatory responses should come as no surprise. Write inflammatorily - expect inflammation. However, it does seem that people felt personally attacked by Nanette. Why exactly - unless she struck a chord? What surprises me most is that anyone would feel the need to strike back on a personal level. I’ve seen some pretty rude words bandied about in regards to Nanette’s character. Folks, if you thought she was talking about you, then at some level, she probably was, but in the most general of contexts. Are you really that insecure about your blogging? Well, maybe you are…and that’s OK too.

Enough about that…on to Nanette’s three inevitable hate-worthy elements of library weblogs (excerpted…apologies for potential loss of context…you can always read the post yourself) and why they just might be off-based. But first, let me concur that at least one of these three elements pervades just about every library blog, including Nanette’s, the library blogs to which she chooses to link, and of course, my own.

1. “Every day, approximatly [sic] thirty librarians or wannabe librarians write some half-assed weblog entry bitching and moaning about how they don’t wear their hair in a bun or say “shhh.” It would be great if they threw all that energy into something productive and meaningful.”

Or into bitching and moaning about other library blogs. Hmmm…what was that about productive and meaningful uses of energy?

2. “poorly-written anecdotes about interactions with surly, smelly, or otherwise offensive patrons at the [circle one] ref desk / circ desk / public access internet computers.”

We can debate the uneven quality of blog-writing all day long. I, for one, use too many pointless adverbs, but on the other hand, I make an effort to check my spelling before publishing (see 1). To this complaint, I must simply comment: judge not, lest you be judged yourself.

3. “The same links to whatever Ashcroft or Meese or whatever conservative flavor-of-the-week is saying about librarians…Is some jerkoff’s column in his online super-duper conservative webzine really worth the energy we throw into ranting about it? No, it probably isn’t. I suspect it is worth about as much energy as pondering the image of librarians.”

It seems that most reactions have been directed at the first two complaints, but this seems to me to be the riskiest assertion. There appears to be two points contained within this one rant: a. excessive link duplication and b. unnecessary, pointless confrontation with the right-wing pundits.

a. While I’m not a huge fan of pure link-dumping (despite my occasional engagement in same), I think that there is something important to be gleaned just from the number of different people who link to a story. That’s why Popdex and Blogdex are seen as such useful, powerful tools. The more librarians (and the more different varieties of librarians!) that link to a particular story, the broader professional implications one might infer said story to have. This is far from foolproof logic, but may help one make decisions about which stories bear the greatest urgency for the profession.

b. Along similar lines, addressing the rants of those expressing anti-library or anti-librarian sentiments is of paramount urgency to the profession. I don’t understand how it could be any other way. Blogging has the potential to be influential. Why let the pundits have all the influence? Should we expect others to voice our opinions for us?

Do I have a point with all of this rambling? Sure. As someone who has read many, many library weblogs over the past year (many more than Nanette herself, I reckon), I can safely say that Nanette makes some valid observations about them. There is a lot of redundancy and ranting. But I refuse to see this as negative.

Perhaps I’m a library blog apologist. I accept that role gladly. One of the glories of library blogging is that it demonstrates both commonality and difference within the profession. The tendencies towards redundancy and ranting often reflect the commonalities. Posts like Nanette’s demonstrate that there are differences. Both are ultimately worthy of consideration and dialogue, encouragement and celebration.

Although I have to admit I quite fancy the idea of repurposing unsold books to make roadway material (Toll road built on pulped fiction), I can’t help but think that there are more than a few libraries who could use some deeply-discounted books. Then again, who are we to get in the way of public safety? (And besides, who has shelf space for books that no one wants?)

With all of my shameless promotion of LIS bloggery, I would be remiss in not redirecting you to a different perspective:

I hate library weblogs.

Over at TechnoBiblio, Steph mentioned that the Web needs some weeding, due to the prevalence of old information and broken links. She goes on to talk about the ability to conduct searches for recently updated content. Having read the post, I found myself wondering what the weeding of an online reference collection might entail.

For example, let’s say that you maintain both a general collection of subject-specific links and a physical collection covering the same topics. It seems to me that the motivations and approaches to weeding these collections might be quite different.

When I weed my collection, one significant consideration is whether the book is ever used (please note public library bias). Well, what’s the online equivalent…a click-through? Would I eliminate the links that no one ever clicks on? (And at the risk of betraying my ignorance, is this easily measurable?)

What about space considerations? We often weed to make room for newer materials. In a physical space, it’s both a practical and aesthetic issue. Do the same constraints apply to an online link collection? Or is an online collection’s size determined mostly by the librarianly ideals of selectivity balanced with breadth and/or depth?

I, of course, have no answers…only more questions.

I wonder how lii.org deals with the issue of weeding its ever-growing collection. I’m sure they know which links are broken, but do they know which resources aren’t used? Does it matter, based on their objectives? Probably not, as I would imagine that the more classic reference source evaluation factors take center stage: currency, authority, accuracy, and all of your other grad school favorites. Perhaps weeding an online link collection shares more with an academic library weeding approach, but having never worked in that environment, I’ll open the floor to the wisdom of others.

Howdy everyone. You can blame my absence on this pesky World Series, but in trying to catch up, I came across some interesting stuff.

There’s been plenty of talk about comment spam lately, particularly amongst Movable Type users, myself included. Since I’ve installed Jay Allen’s MT-Blacklist, I haven’t had a single incidence…until yesterday. But this wasn’t the garden variety “phentermine and viagra” comment spam. Nope, this was from a PhD student promoting a weblog covering the Invisible Web.

Now, I have mixed emotions about this. On the one hand, the content is interesting, relevant and I’m glad to know about it. However, the author is using my comments as a publicity source, without providing a comment relevant to the discussion. So I won’t link directly to this individual’s blog, but invite you to check out the last post’s comments for the URL.

Having mentioned the comments on the last post, I should add a pronounced “Wowzer!” My innocent little suggestion turned into quite the discussion. There were mentions of blogs, wikis, indexes and collaborative information systems. And all I wanted was a little more discussion of what librarians do, when they do what they do. Let’s not get too fancy here and take all the fun out of it.

Oh, and here’s an excerpt from an article that sums up some of my sentiments about the Librarian Action Figure:

“Nancy Pearl looks like a very nice person and I’m sure I would like her if I met her. So, my disappointment isn’t with whom they picked as the model, but the way she is presented. She is dressed in what could be described as predictable librarian clothes — a conservative suit, probably extremely comfortable shoes and glasses. I’m sure it is the shallow part of me that makes me want this, but I wish she could look snazzier — you know, shiny or elegant or glittery — so maybe some girl somewhere might see her and say to themselves: Wow, I want one of these, she’s cool; or something like that. And she would then want to be a librarian because her action figure looks not only intelligent and capable, but also exciting and brave and modern.

I know appearances can be deceiving and so Ms. Pearl is probably all of those. But I wish it was easier to tell by looking.”

And since I expect to get my chance to meet her soon, I’ll let you know.