Tag Archives: dean

Nothing ventured, nothing gained

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Almost every post Meredith Farkas writes provides plentiful food for thought.  She has a real talent for expressing her views and thoughts and for digging deeper into “big issues” than many others.  Recently she wrote about all of the success she has already had professionally and identifies some of the factors that have helped her in her career thus far.  One of the main factors, she writes, is the willingness to take risks.

I agree with her on this.  Nothing ventured, nothing gained.  When I look back on the past sixteen years of being a professional librarian and on what events or involvements I am most proud of, they all involved taking a risk.  I well remember how nervous I was when taking on a fairly major management position after only about three years of being a serials cataloger (which was my first full-time job, ever).  I literally lay awake at night worrying myself sick, wondering, what on earth had I gotten myself into?!  It was definitely a trial by fire.  There were significant conflicts and problems needing to be effectively dealt with literally from day one.  One of the mandates I was given was to completely revamp workflow so that my unit would not only be able to keep up with current receipts (i.e. no adding to backlogs), but to also reduce and get rid of longstanding backlogs, and do all of this with fewer staff than my predecessor.  Because of the quality of the people with whom I worked, these goals were met and a lot of progress was made.  But there was not one day that went by that I didn’t feel nervous or worried about my responsibilities.  It was all worth it, though.  I grew personally and professionally by leaps and bounds.

Then there was the opportunity to lead a major professional library organization, which I’ve talked about a bit in the past.  I had never dreamed it would be possible to be nominated, let alone elected.  Yet I went ahead and agreed to be put on the ballot, anyway, in spite of others whom I respect telling me that I shouldn’t expect to get elected given the caliber of the person I was running against.  I thought, why not?  If it happens, it happens, and if it doesn’t, well, it would be good experience either way.  To my delight and shock, I won.  I was the youngest elected president in NASIG’s history (I think I still hold that particular record); I had no prior Board experience; everyone else with whom I would be working was deeply experienced and significantly older than I was at the time.  I think the Board member (Carol Diedrichs, now Dean of Libraries at Kentucky) who was nearest to me in age was ten years my senior.  This is not a bragging session but rather a way to make clear just how big of a risk this was for me.  I was delighted, yes, but completely, utterly terrified as well.  It was one of those situations where you need to be careful what you wish for, because you might get it.

A third milestone event involving a big risk on my part was agreeing to teach a class in the distance education curriculum at my alma mater, UIUC GSLIS.  This class had been taught before but I basically had to start from scratch to create the course.  Again (and honestly, this is no exaggeration) I was terrified.  I can’t tell you how many times I mentally kicked myself, saying to myself, “Why oh why did you ever agree to do this!”  The fear of failure was so all-consuming.  I lost countless hours of sleep.  I couldn’t eat sometimes, I felt so nervous.  And that was just before the class started.  When I had to do the class every week, each time was like the first time and I was nervous, self-doubting, and upset every time.  I would get home from work and after Michele and the children were in bed, I’d go and work on the class until two or three a.m.  I managed to survive for about five weeks of this, and then I became really, really sick with meningitis and ended up in the hospital, twice.  Because of the love and kindness of others who stepped in and helped me out, I was able to get better and finish the course.  I felt that I had done a terrible job but at least I had done it.  I went on to teach that course two more times.  It got a little easier with time but it still felt like a huge risk.

I have to say that there were other risks I took where there was significant failure on my part.  For example, one of my best library friends asked me to co-author a book with her, and I agreed.  Yet instead of fulfilling my responsibilities, I largely left her in the lurch.  I’m still trying to get over the guilt of that experience and it happened years ago.  Sadly, that isn’t the only example of failure.

Aside from this blog, I have largely withdrawn from direct, active participation in the profession.  My choice.  But I want to point out that risk-taking didn’t end there.

A tumultuous and highly risky decision I made in the early 90s was to leave the Christian fellowship in which I had been raised since I was a baby.  Repercussions of this decision exist even today and probably will bother me all of my life.  I completely left the society and “comfort zone” that I had known and functioned within all of my life.

There was more change to come a few years later.  Probably the riskiest thing I ever did in my whole life was to ask Michele if she’d go out on a date with me and then, within a short time after that first date, I asked her to marry me.  Incredibly, Michele (and Keegan, whose permission I asked for) said Yes.  As a result, in one fell swoop I took on the role of husband AND father, two things I had never done before.  These roles have dominated my life since, and I have no regrets at all.  Each additional child we were blessed with was yet another step into the unknown in so many ways.  Moving several times, taking new and different jobs, were all involved in the risks I’ve taken in recent years.

How grateful I am to have even had these opportunities!  Many of them were presented to me, but also, many of them were opportunities I actively pursued.

It’s not all been successful.  I have failed miserably more times than I can count.  But I have also enjoyed success (although I’d define “success” in a much more well-rounded way than some).  I have experienced things I would never experience if I hadn’t stepped out in faith and told myself, Give it a try!

The power and peril of blogs

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I have been a little bemused by the many posts and comments on library-related blogs in the past week that mention NASIG. Great exposure, right? Right, except that most of them seem to have focused on one person’s informal writeup of one particular session that discussed the role of columnists in library journals in a world increasingly dominated by blogs. Anna Creech (Eclectic Librarian) provides a bit more perspective of what was said, which is good, especially since she was there. I mention bemusement because frankly a lot of what has been written seems to me to be a little too quick to judge and especially, a little too quick to assume an “us (bloggers, the good people) vs. them (those evil, skulking column people who are fearful of bloggers)” perspective. Behold, the power — and peril — of blogs.

Let me make it clear, first of all, that I wasn’t there for the presentation. I wish I had been. What I write here is simply the result of reading various posts about “the incident.” For those who don’t know to what I refer, “the incident” involved a presentation at this year’s NASIG conference that apparently had some negative (and perhaps unfair) comparisons to make between columns in print library literature and information derived from blogs.

Second, my general point here is, calm down folks and try to get some perspective! T. Scott Plutchak writes about this in his blog and combines this perspective with discussion of another controversial blog post by Michael Gorman. T. Scott’s tone is welcome. He also makes the following point:

“We are really still at the very beginnings of figuring out the best ways to engage in discourse using all of these new tools.”

I think this is true, but one could imply from that statement that what we are experiencing in the blogging world is radically different than what we have long experienced in other forms of discourse. (Also, T. Scott seems to question — and I think rightly so — the prevalence of written responses to Gorman’s post that attack him personally. This isn’t new; a few years ago the same thing happened in response to another Gorman statement, and it also happened in a discussion about Indiana’s library school dean.) I don’t think that the struggle to figure out “the best ways to engage in discourse” is something new to blogging. One only has to attend a few scholarly conferences to put the blogging discourse into perspective. It is not uncommon to see faculty presenting papers with opposing viewpoints devolve into very thinly veiled personal attacks as the papers are discussed. I saw a few such scholarly conference exchanges firsthand when at The University of Chicago. It was entertaining at times, but also disconcerting.

One thing that is a little different, though, is the speed and the ease with which such discourse can be articulated, disseminated, interpreted, and reacted to in the world of blogs. And then reworded, or re-articulated, or re-interpreted, or re-reacted to (bad English, I know), again and again until the discourse peters out.

Here is a list of the various blog postings I’ve read about “the incident” just for the record. And be sure to also look at comments for all of them:

Eat-Your-Vegetables librarianship alive and well (metaProjects)

Out of Context or Being a Hypocrite (A Wandering Eyre)

Authority, Formality, Reality, Hypocrisy (Walt at Random)

since when did this become a column? (Eclectic Librarian)

Still in the incunabula stage (T. Scott)

If I’ve missed any others, please add a comment to this post letting me know.

Cronin responds

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Some time ago I wrote a rather negative response to a rather negative online editorial by Blaise Cronin, dean of IU SLIS, about blogs and bloggers. Cronin strikes back with a weak attempt at seizing some kind of moral high ground about freedom of expression and the need for “civility and decorum.” While I do not agree with many of the things written about him by others that Cronin quoted in his column, all I could think of while reading his response was something like: “Oh please, spare me.” Something I wrote about him (“This guy is another guy whom I’ve never taken a liking to, although unlike Gorman, I know next to nothing about him other than that he tends to be controversial.”) was quoted and noted down as part of “irrational likes and dislikes” that “routinely trump logic and suasion.” Again, I say to myself, “Oh please.”

His response strongly reminds me of a scene from one of my favorite movies, Casablanca, in which Captain Renault (played by Claude Rains) closes down Rick’s bar saying, “I’m shocked, shocked, to find gambling going on here!” at the same time as he pockets money from his gambling winnings handed to him by one of Rick’s staff.

Yet another anti-blog statement by a “librarian” (Updated)

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[Update: I feel obligated to add a bit more to my posting on this topic. See changes/additions in brackets below.]

I haven’t joined the hundreds (thousands?) of others who commented negatively on Michael Gorman’s well-publicized anti-blogging diatribe a few months back[, until now.] I know [just] enough about him and his background to not be surprised by anything he has to say. I am just about as anti-ALA (American Library Association) as you can get. The fact that this guy is that organization’s incoming president is more proof (not that I needed any) of its need for reform. There are some areas of ALA that are notable exceptions such as LITA, but my experience after having been involved in a number of areas for years has been [pretty] negative.

As an aside, the recent angry row in ALA Council over the “audacity” of giving Laura Bush an honorary award is yet more proof that this organization is [dysfunctional]. Yes, I am conservative in my views in general, which automatically places me on the extreme fringe of librarianship. However, even librarians from the more liberal side who are heavily involved in ALA (see here and here) have figuratively rolled their eyes over this.

I heard today (see link above) about an editorial written by Blaise Cronin, dean of the library school at Indiana University, that criticizes blogs and bloggers in much the same dismissive tone as that used by Gorman. This is another guy whom I’ve never taken a liking to, although unlike Gorman, I know next to nothing about him other than that he tends to be controversial. If I were an Indiana student, alum, or faculty member, I’d really be cringing right now.

[I should make it clear that this is not a knee-jerk reaction to any criticism of a form of communication that I like and benefit from. Actually, I don't object to criticisms of blogs and blogging. There are problems or weaknesses that reasonable persons can see with this mode of communication and publication, so there is a grain of truth or substance to some of the criticisms I've read. What I do object to, though, is the over-generalization to which many critics like Gorman and Cronin seem prone, as well as the rather arrogant and dismissive tone that tends to be used. Sure, blogging is faddish right now, but that doesn't mean it shouldn't be taken seriously or that it doesn't have value. A recent online article I first heard about at It's All Good, published by Knowledge@Wharton, made a good point (among others) when it stated that while blogging almost certainly will lose some of its current trendiness, blogs will "continue to be disruptive to traditional media."

Blogs, to me, are a true "killer app" -- an indispensible way for me to keep more readily informed about what's going on in areas that interest me. Knowledge is power and blogs, even with their inherent biases or singular points of view, are an incredibly valuable resource that helps me do my job better just about every day.]