Tag: newbie librarian

Countdown to the Conference

I’ve found myself with less time than usual for blogging lately as I’ve been busy working on the poster I’m presenting with colleagues at the upcoming ACRL National Conference. In the handful of years since I’ve been a librarian I’ve been to many smaller conferences and symposia in and around New York City (where I live), but this will be my first time attending the national conference, and as the date draws closer I find that I’m really looking forward to it.

In my past life as an archaeologist I went to lots of scholarly conferences, though I imagine that National will be somewhat different. While I enjoyed hearing about the latest research in my field back then, it always seemed odd to me that the convention was for presenters to stand at a podium and read straight through their scholarly papers. Of course some people are better at public speaking than others, and archaeologists tend to illustrate their talks with lots of site photos, charts, and graphs. But I find the very formal presentation style to be a bit monotonous, and I vastly prefer the more interactive and conversational style that most librarians seem to use at conferences.

Another big difference from my prior experiences is that the ACRL Conference has several keynote speakers, which is not the usual fare at other scholarly conferences I’ve been to. I find this a bit confusing: though I know that keynotes are a standard feature of both ALA conferences, it’s not what I expected to travel to an academic librarianship conference and hear speakers who are not involved in academic librarianship. I have to admit that I’m less interested in the keynote speakers than in other parts of the conference, though I’ll be curious to hear how they relate to academic libraries in their presentations.

I’m lucky to have many events at which I can connect with colleagues from my university and across NYC, but as a still-somewhat-new librarian I haven’t had many opportunities to mingle with librarians from across the country. I’m most looking forward to the two things I remember fondly from the anthropology conferences I used to frequent (and I suspect this is true for many of us attending National):

1) the opportunity to share and discuss my and my colleagues’ work with others in our field, and

2) the opportunity to learn about research and practice in academic libraries from the other conference presenters and attendees

Conferences are a concentrated experience with no distractions — all academic librarianship all the time! — which I always find refreshing and invigorating (if sometimes exhausting). But I’ve got my reusable coffee cup, so I’m ready to go.

If you’re going to National, what are you most looking forward to?

Greenhorn mistake #1: Feeling responsible for everything

Recently I was able to put into words a nagging feeling that I was taking interactions at the reference desk too personally. The moment of clarity came when a patron nearly chewed me out because the library copier only takes coins, while printing from the computers is a separate payment system. I caught myself on the verge of apologizing profusely, realized there is a distinct difference between sympathy and mea culpa, & resorted to re-stating the facts until he accepted them and walked away to stew privately. And now I’m writing this. (Later I did nicely mention to tech support the copier/printer situation.)

Here are some other things I’ve taken responsibility for at the reference desk, but probably shouldn’t have:

-Frozen computers
-Lack of a change machine in the library
-Miscellaneous office supplies desperately needed
-General MS2007 incompatibility
-Power surges
-Corrupted files
-Buggy flash drives

Now, as my boss wisely points out, librarians do not exist to get stepped on. We are all trying to provide the best library service possible, but we are not doormats. There exists a line between being helpful and allowing ourselves to be the targets of indiscriminate blame.

But it’s so easy for me to get lost in the ephemera of students’ needs! I find myself taking up their causes for a  number of reasons:

First, I’m convinced the library is great, & I’m constantly trying to infect others with my enthusiasm. I’ll admit it: I want them to get excited about research tools and information in general, and I do think it’s possible. Hey, it happened to me. (Or will I later be referring to this as Greenhorn Mistake #564?)

Also, I’m always thinking that if I save the day and fix their computers, they’ll realize I can help with other things, such as their research. This thought makes climbing down on my hands and knees to check cables and wires and locations of USB ports SO much easier.

Lastly, and maybe this makes me a bad librarian (?) I am genuinely interested in whatever problems students bring to me, whether it be personal, absurdly vague, or blatantly impossible to fix. In general I like people, and I usually like the students at the community college where I work. I like being their advocate and helping to fix their problems. I think sometimes they come to school with an “us and them” mentality, where us=students and them=teachers & administration, and maybe this is naive but I’d like to transcend that barrier.

I recently read that the difference between a good and a great computer programmer is knowing when to write original code versus reuse someone else’s. Something similar may be true for librarians, in that the best librarians probably know precisely when they can be helpful, and when someone else would be more so. Admitting that I haven’t been doing this may be a step in the right direction…