ACRLog welcomes a guest post from Kathy Parsons, Associate Professor and Head, Stacks and Media Department at Iowa State University.

After reading the July 2012 Will’s World column “Your Mileage May Vary” in American Libraries, I found myself pondering library fatigue, retirement, and the value of my career. Was the librarian he described me? Did I need to retire? I sincerely hoped not but I saw a part of myself in his statements. Was library fatigue taking over? Could I rekindle the passion and joy for library work? But how do long-term librarians stay relevant, refreshed, and motivated? And if it was indeed time to make a career change what can I do with my experience? Were there others pondering the same questions?

I moderated a roundtable discussion at the 2013 National ACRL Conference in Indianapolis about issues facing long-term career librarians. I hoped that this session would be part counseling, part positive reinforcement, and part networking. It was just that and a bit more. While I used questions to guide the conversation, the answers were often elusive. Participants’ comments frequently redirected the conversation into areas I had not anticipated. The questions used were “How can librarians reinvent themselves and stay out of the rut? What other jobs can librarians do if they left the profession? How do you market your experience and skill sets for jobs outside of the library venue?”

During the discussions a couple of themes became evident. First, many of us expressed concerns about the reduction of staffing levels at our institutions. These reductions were the result of retirements, downsizing due to budget concerns, job changes, or even reallocation of staff. Coupled with this were the increasing expectations for new services while keeping the old. Rapid technological changes provided benefits but also added more stress. On top of this we needed to prove our value to our institution. Many of us sensed that we were just barely holding on; stretched thin with many responsibilities. We felt that we lost our passion and were unsure what to do. Some have thought about changing jobs but jobs are scarce. We talked about the shrinking job market and the unstable economy which was occurring at the same time of increased retirements of baby boomers. This was impacting long term employees wishing to change jobs and the younger colleague’s ability to move up. An article discussing the concept of “gray ceiling ” was mentioned that addressed the impact of delayed retirements has on younger workers.

Another theme that emerged was the generation gap. Some of us felt unappreciated by our younger (and sometimes new) colleagues especially if they were our supervisors. We thought we were seen as dinosaurs: not adaptable; technology deficient with little or with no social media skills including texting and blogging; slow learners living in the past. We realized that our chosen vocation has undergone tremendous change over the last decade or so but our longevity should count for something. We wondered if we needed to remind our younger colleagues of the advances our generation of librarians developed. Had we been so quiet about our “history” that the younger librarians do not know that we are the shoulders of change they are standing on? We developed online catalogs, integrated library management systems, and database searching; all these things and more paved the way for the support of open access, the use of social networking, cloud technology, and digitalization for library work. We wondered why the younger managers would not use our institutional memory as it could help prevent problems down the road. We recognized that there is a fine line between living in the past (refusing to adapt to changes) and sharing about the past (explanation of why something is the way it is). We, also, wondered if risk taking is hard as we age. Those of us who were middle managers felt especially conflicted by the generational gap as we may have both younger supervisees as well as younger supervisors. One person described us as being in the “bibliographic definition of hell.”

Woven throughout the conversation were ways of coping, recharging, and renewal. One way many of us “recharge” was attending conferences and workshops and volunteering with library associations. Universally we agreed that we returned to work after these activities motivated and refreshed but the feeling quickly disappeared as the normal workday intruded. We talked about the need to sustain and enlarge our professional contacts and network. Some found mentoring younger colleagues rewarding and in turn have been mentored by them. We brought to the relationship these strengths: navigating the ins and outs of serving our professional associations, assisting with research and publishing, and developing leadership skills. For us, the younger colleagues helped us hone our skills with social media and other technological advances. We concluded that this roundtable had great potential for a larger discussion and suggested that the topic be developed into a workshop or pre-conference at the 2015 National ACRL Conference in Portland. We need to continue this type of dialogue with ourselves and to include our younger colleagues. Most importantly, we walked away with new colleagues in our networks, not feeling so lost and alone, and later that night some found new dancing partners at the all-conference reception!

It’s hard for me to believe that this time last year I had just completed the on-campus interview for my current job, and then a few days later walked in my masters graduation ceremony. As my first year as a librarian winds down and the adrenaline rush of the academic schedule starts to wane, I find myself feeling… reflective and rather tired. Last week, it was a nice surprise to find several ideas circulating around the web to boost my energy and my spirit to push through the end of the semester and maintain momentum to plan summer projects.

“Start small… but start.”

While attending ACRL 2013, I was blown away by the awesome, inspiring, and interesting work my colleagues across the profession are producing. But at the same time, I couldn’t help but feel a bit like a “little fish in the big ocean,” surrounded by those more experienced and more successful than me. Although I enjoyed the opportunity to co-facilitate a roundtable discussion, I couldn’t help but wonder when I’ll move on to bigger opportunities and when my CV will start to look less like a new librarian’s, and more like a tenure-track professional’s.

And then this week two of my favorite library blogs reminded that life sans banana slicer (or other badge of honor) is still pretty darn good, and that striving for success in my daily work is valuable as I continue to take small steps working towards larger goals. I also attended Maryland’s Council of Academic Library Directors meeting, where Debra Gilchrist reminded librarians that it’s better to “start small, but start” than to never start important, potentially daunting, projects at all.

Upon closer examination, I can already look back to see several instances where starting small has begun to pay off. For instance, while I’ve lept at the opportunity to apply my undergraduate degree, previous work experience, and natural interests to my duties as the Psychology department liaison, it’s been more difficult to get “into” the department than I originally imagined.  Last December I was allowed five minutes at the beginning of a Psychology department meeting to introduce myself to the faculty (and then I was promptly asked to leave). Though I was skeptical five minutes would make any sort of a difference, right after the meeting I received two quick email questions from psychology faculty members. And the following semester, two faculty members I had not personally met contacted me to help find and recommend resources to be used in a Psych 101 course redesign. A small, but growing start.

“Failing forward.”

Of course, there are several instances where “starting” something does not lead to completely positive results. I don’t personally care for the word “fail” (for me, it carries a negative connotation of dejection), but failure is a natural part of risk taking. The problem is we like to focus so much on success I think we brush aside that most learning comes from failure. And this year as I’ve happily watched my colleagues present papers, give lectures, win scholarships, lead professional associations, and achieve promotion, it’s been equally helpful to talk with them about what has not gone so well. The classes that fell apart. The requests that were denied. The proposals that were not accepted. Because, quite frankly, working through problems and disappointments with successful people that I admire reminds me that success if often the product of perseverance through, and learning from, failure.

This idea was summed up nicely last week when a tweet appeared in my Twitter stream reminding me to “fail forward.” How can learning from failure propel you forward?

While I was catching up with a graduate school friend at ACRL, I learned that a paper we submitted with fellow graduate school colleagues had been reviewed and rejected for potential publication. Although this was not entirely unexpected, the news still stung. A few days later, my friend sent along the reviewers’ comments and in the 10 or so minutes I spent taking a preliminary pass at the mostly constructive criticism, I learned more about the practicalities of the peer review process than I have in any single sitting since my undergraduate years when I learned about peer review for the first time. And now, as we pick through the comments and strategize options for moving the project forward (or not), I’m learning about picking priorities in my work – which parts of the project are worth further time, and which are simply no longer a priority for me. And while “failure” stings, I now feel more prepared to anticipate some previously overlooked research pitfalls as I turn my attention to new endeavors.

Looking forward to Summer

So, as classes wind down and my summer rapidly fills up with those projects that get neglected or pushed off in the heat of the semester, many of which have no clear starting point or are the result of a previously failed attempt, I am re-energized through recommitting to these two goals – start small, and fail forward.

With the month winding down folks are getting back into the swing of things following this year’s ACRL Conference in Indianapolis a couple of weeks ago. Several of us ACRLoggers were in attendance — we took the opportunity to meet face to face and chat, and in those conversations the idea of a collaborative post-conference blog post was born. Several of us focused on participatory learning at the conference, while some attended more traditional sessions and brought back ideas for active application in their libraries. All of us had a great time.

Kim Miller: Seeking Application

ACRL 2013 has been highlighted on my calendar since I missed my chance to attend in Philadelphia two years ago (the conference fell during the second-to-last week of graduate classes, not great timing). This year, I was determined to make it happen since my classmates who were crazy enough to go in 2011 had nothing but positive reports, and I heard from my current colleagues it was a conference where academic librarians can get a lot of bang for their buck. I was looking forward to visiting a new city, learning new things, meeting new people, catching up with old friends. The cherry on top turned out to be my opportunity to also lead a roundtable discussion about mobile games in libraries.

Throughout the conference, I found myself naturally drawn to talks which explore issues I’m currently facing at work. For instance, our library recently started planning to redesign one of our classroom spaces which will incorporate modular furniture, group workstations, and iPads to facilitate a more creative and active learning space. So I was interested to attend “The Flipped Classroom: Integrating Formal and Informal Learning Spaces” session in which I learned about the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s College Library’s Wisconsin Collaboratory for Enhanced Learning (WisCEL) classroom. With collaborative computing areas, break out small group workspaces, and technology-enabled teaching stations, WisCEL seems like a marriage between a library learning commons and an active learning classroom; it’s definitely a space I would love to explore as an instructor (though it sounds like the UWM librarians do not currently teach library sessions in the space). They presented some interesting footage of professors explaining how they approach instruction in this space, as well how students have responded to the environment. I left the session inspired to start brainstorming ways our new space will used to promote more active library instruction sessions and how I might facilitate my colleagues’ experiences transitioning to the new space as well.

As a self-described “research nerd,” I usually love reading through stacks of literature from diverse areas of scholarship. However, at conferences I particularly look forward to poster sessions because, in addition to learning about a multitude of projects in a short amount of time, I have the opportunity to talk one-on-one with the people behind these projects. I appreciate the instant gratification of having my lingering questions or comments addressed first-hand by the librarian project experts. Again drawn to projects which speak to my daily work, a small sample of the areas I learned about over the 4 poster sessions include: re-thinking online subject guides with “Mapping Standards to Content: Creating Comprehensive Research Guides using ACRL’s Psychology information Literacy Standards”, connecting with first year students through workshops with “Making Connections, Providing Support”, iPads in instruction with “iPedagogy for Adults,” using concept maps in instruction with “Sketching Success”, and responsive web design with “Once is Enough.”

Ian McCullough: Mission to Learn

I may be the only blogger who didn’t have an official reason for going to ACRL 2013; I didn’t present, have a poster, or lead a roundtable. I was the only one with the time and interest to attend from Akron; so I balanced my schedule between personal interests and broadly applicable knowledge I could bring back. Two workshops, three sessions geared to science librarians, two poster sessions, and some library marketing.

The workshops are what really stuck with me. I attended “Flip It, … Flip It Good!: Adapting the Flipped Classroom Model to One-Shot Library Instruction Sessions with Understanding by Design” and “Higher Learning: Effective and Engaging Information Literacy Instruction for Upper-Level Students,” both were heavily pedagogical – and both were awesome. Steven Hoover taught the flipped classroom workshop and as noted in the title cribbed heavily from Understanding by Design by Wiggins and McTighe. He presented the clarifying content priorities model as a way to decide what to present in person and what to flip in an IL one-shot. “Enduring understanding”? Try to present it in person with active learning. “Important to Know and Do” or “Worth Being Familiar With”? These are your candidates for external tutorials. Each table tried to work through a scenario and pare down our (hilariously long) list of learning outcomes, triage them, and come up with instruction strategies. We didn’t make it, but the strategy made sense and I’ll be trying this for a chemical engineering class in the Fall.

“Higher Learning” addressed the problem of upper division students stultified by repetitive IL sessions. Lynda Kellam and Jenny Dale used a variety of fun activities, which we could deploy back home, but also emphasized the connection of outreach to and collaboration with the faculty as critical to effectively reaching upper division students. If the communication isn’t there, the instructional design will suck and you’re likely to bore the students. Like my earlier workshop, we took a scenario (of our own devising this time), broke it down to learning outcomes, and reverse engineered a lesson, this time with using the ADDIE model. Once again, we didn’t finish; but the structure is there and my advanced chemistry lab students should benefit.

These workshops addressed a problem, mainly that my pedagogical background is weak – I can hold attention but am historically poor at using active learning techniques in class. But also Akron is modernizing our information literacy program, so I may have some colleagues who might benefit as well. The conference got me fired up about improving both my teaching and our IL program. I’m hosting a brown bag session for some of the other faculty to share what I’ve learned and I hope my enthusiasm rubs off.

I wanted to quickly praise two posters – “Mapping Standards to Content” which Kim has already noted and Can Bibliometric Indicators Predict Institutional Citation Patterns?” which was the closest thing I saw to my own research at ACRL, but way better.

Maura Smale: Thinking, Camping, and Sharing

I arrived in Indianapolis later than expected due to weather-related travel snafus; the conference was well underway by the time I set foot in the Convention Center, and I felt a bit like I’d fallen behind before even beginning. Perhaps that’s the reason that, once I finally got to Indy, I found myself preferentially seeking out the kinds of conference experiences that offered the opportunity for conversation and participation rather than the more traditional paper sessions. There were lots of papers and panels that looked interesting, as usual. Actually, that’s always my one complaint about ACRL: there’s just way too much to do. Instead, I decided that I’ll spend a day at some point over the summer going back to the conference website to take a look at the papers, presentations, handouts, posters, and video of the sessions I missed (a colleague suggested calling it #ACRLrewatch — who’s with me?).

On Friday morning I attended the first half of THATCamp. I’m a big fan of THATCamps and had a great time at the sessions I participated in: Diversify the Digital Humanities and Libraries and Publishing (links are to the public, collaborative notes in Google Docs). I think what I most appreciated at THATCamp was the chance to talk with librarians from all over the country and lots of different kinds of academic libraries: from research universities to community colleges, from rural to urban, from small to large. Not to devalue the interaction we all have online — of course the library community is very digitally connected — but I so rarely have the opportunity to have a face to face discussion with a variety of folks about big chewy topics like diversity and inclusion, community activism and engagement, and scholarly communications. It was delightful.

Another participatory highlight of the conference for me was the Saturday morning panel How Feminist Pedagogy Can Transform the Way You Teach and How Students Learn. One of the panelists started with a story, which is always a great way to begin a session, about her own experience with feminism. Then the panelists asked those of us in the audience to do some work, to turn to a fellow attendee and consider our own feminist perspectives and lessons we’ve learned. I’m sure I’m not the only one who initially blanched at the prospect of engaging in a think-pair-share activity at 8:30am on the final day of the conference, but it was easy to get into conversation with my partner and we found lots to discuss. The panel continued with definitions and themes of feminist pedagogy, and each of the panelists shared examples of the ways in which they’ve brought this perspective into their library classrooms. To round out the session we were asked to participate in a follow-up think-pair-share and consider the ways in which our responses and understanding of feminist pedagogy in library instruction had changed. It was reassuring to learn that feminist pedagogy incorporates active learning strategies that many of us already use in our instruction sessions: group work, asking for student input, and encouraging discussion, to name just a few. I left the session eager to bring new focus to feminist pedagogy in my own teaching, and luckily I still have a couple of classes remaining this semester to try it.

Marc Meola: Entering Conference Space

This was my 5th ACRL National Conference and each one always seems better than the last! Three sessions that stuck out for me were a writing workshop, a THATCamp, and a Roundtable discussion.

The workshop was called, “Get Writing! Overcome Procrastination, Remove Roadblocks and Create a Map for Success.” This was perfect timing for me since I am working on a paper right now and feel a little stuck. Unlike Contributed Papers or Panel Sessions where attendees can simply sit back and take in information, the Workshop format asks that participants actually do some work. Instead of just hearing someone talk about how to create a work plan for writing a journal article while saying to yourself, “hmm those are some mighty fine ideas and I sure am going to do that someday,” you actually have to sit down right there and go ahead and create a work plan for writing a journal article. Trained facilitators are on hand to whip you if you can’t hack the workload.

Creating a work plan for writing a journal article involved:

• breaking the project down into steps
• writing the steps on post-it notes (green or yellow)
• identifying roadblocks (red)
• creating milestones (blue)
• organizing the post-its into a time line on a piece of 11 x 17 paper.

Simple enough, but very useful tools for anyone, novice or experienced, working on a journal article. Some ideas for getting over roadblocks included getting a mentor/coach and using an accountability buddy who checks in with you at milestones. (Don’t forget the ACRL Research Coach program!) I took my work plan home and taped it above my monitor, where it now mercilessly taunts me. Facilitators Jerilyn Veldof and Jon Jeffryes of University of Minnesota Libraries did a masterful job of organizing the content and managing participant interaction.

Handout: How to Get a Paper Written and Published: Designing a Work Plan to Avoid Procrastination

I arrived at THATCamp at 8:30am on Friday morning with a pounding headache thanks to a libation called “Remember the Maine,” which I and some librarian friends felt compelled to investigate fully (because of our pure love for American history) the night before. In the session I attended we created an e-book using a web bibliography, our laptops, and a tool called Calibre. The whole spirit of how we went about doing it was great fun: people were willing to admit when they had no idea what to do; those who knew taught; and those who just learned then taught someone else. It would be wonderful if we could duplicate aspects of this model in our workplaces. Although our finished product was not perfect, working through the complete process together was very valuable. Micah Vandegrift skillfully coordinated the whole thing.

One Hour: One Project – DH and Libraries Ebook

Finally, although I’m not quite there yet but like to look ahead, I attended a roundtable discussion called, “55 Years Old with a 33 Year Library Career: What Now?” The discussion was wide ranging but included important issues such as ageism in librarianship, career and retirement planning, and the need for intergenerational dialogue. These issues deserve more attention; look for a blog post that continues the discussion soon!

ACRL Conferences are perfect for getting yanked out of your day-to-day routine and entering Conference Space — that unique zone where you explore new ideas, meet new people, and return to work reinvigorated and re-energized. Thank you ACRL, see you in Portland!

Early last week I opened the New York Times and was surprised to see a front-page article about sham academic publishers and conferences. The article discussed something we in the library world have been aware of for some time: open access publishers with low (or no) standards for peer review and acceptance, sometimes even with fictional editorial boards. The publications are financed by authors’ fees, which may not be clear from their submission guidelines, and, with the relatively low cost of hosting an online-only journal, are presumably making quite a bit of money. The article included an interview with and photo of University of Colorado Denver librarian Jeffrey Beall, compiler of the useful Beall’s List guide to potentially predatory open access scholarly journals and publishers.

I’ve long been an admirer of Jeffrey Beall’s work and I’m glad to see him getting recognition outside of the library world. But the frankly alarmist tone of the Times article was disappointing to say the least, as was the seeming equation of open access with less-than-aboveboard publishers, which of course is not the case. As biologist Michael Eisen notes, there are lots of toll-access scholarly journals (and conferences) of suspicious quality. With the unbelievably high profits of scholarly publishing, it’s not surprising that the number of journals has proliferated and that not all of them are of the best quality. And there are many legitimate, highly-regarded journals — both open access and toll-access — that charge authors’ fees, especially in the sciences.

As I’ve bounced these thoughts around my brain for the past week, I keep coming back to one thing: the importance of evaluating information. Evaluating sources is something that faculty and librarians teach students, and students are required to use high quality sources in their work. How do we teach students to get at source quality? Research! Dig into the source: find out more about the author/organization, and read the text to see whether it’s comprehensible, typo-free, etc. Metrics like Journal Impact Factor can help make these determinations, but they’re far from the only aspects of a work to examine. In addition to Beall’s List, Gavia Libraria has a great post from last year detailing some specific steps to take and criteria to consider when evaluating a scholarly journal. I like to go by the classic TANSTAAFL: there ain’t no such thing as a free lunch. Get an email to contribute to a journal or conference out of the blue? It’s probably not the cream of the crop.

So if faculty and librarians teach our students to evaluate sources, why do we sometimes forget (or ignore?) to do so ourselves? I’d guess that the seemingly ever-increasing need for publications and presentations to support tenure and promotion plays into it, especially as the number of full-time faculty and librarian positions continue to decrease. I appreciate reasoned calls for quality over quantity, but I wonder whether slowing down the academic publishing arms race will end the proliferation of low quality journals.

The Times article last week notes that one danger of increasing numbers of fraudulent journals is that “nonexperts doing online research will have trouble distinguishing credible research from junk.” This isn’t the fault of the open access movement at all; if anything, open access can help determine the legitimacy of a journal. Shining a light on these sham journals makes it easier than ever to identify them. It’s up to us, both faculty and librarians: if the research and scholarship we do is work we should be proud of, prestigious work that’s worth publishing, then it stands to reason that we should share that work and prestige only with and via publications that are worth it.