Tag Archives: nasig

NASIG presentation work

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I am so thankful to have friend Sarah Morris as a partner in our upcoming NASIG presentation. She is always on top of things, always upbeat, always prepared. She has done the lion’s share of moving this whole project forward. Sarah was a 2006 NASIG Student Grant winner and like me is an alum of UIUC GSLIS. She currently works as library systems coordinator (and overseer of all things technical services-related, it seems) at a major international law firm in Chicago.

The theme for this year’s conference in Phoenix, AZ is “Taking the sting out of serials” and our presentation consciously tries to tie into that theme. We’ll be presenting on the topic of “E-Resource Management in the For-Profit World: Soothing the Sting.” There hasn’t been much in the way of past presentations that deal with serials and electronic resources management in special libraries that I can recall so I’m glad our proposal was accepted this year. As always, the coordination offered by the all volunteer efforts of NASIG members of the Conference and Program Planning Committees has been outstanding.

One aspect of our preparation that I wanted to highlight is the fact that Sarah and I have used Google Docs to work out what we want to present in terms of presentation slides, handouts, and outline. This has been the first time I’ve used Google Docs in a shared manner and it really has been easy and useful. What I would have given for such a collaboration tool when working on past presentations! We have definitely come a very long way.

Followup to UKSG blog plug

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I continue to check UKSG’s LiveSerials blog for updates during today’s opening sessions. I found some of the reporting to be “interesting” e.g. this post from the opening address:

Char Simser, President of NASIG, is greeting us from our sister organisation in the US. It’s Char’s first trip to the UK and to UKSG. It’s been a year of firsts for NASIG apparently including: no longer volounteer organisation; at the conference in June in Pheonix they will have organisational sponsership; they’ve just had their first election; migrating content to a new website (available in the next 6=8 weeks) and the website will be linked into their membership database; increasing support for continuing education (“following in UKSG footsteps”); further intregation of vendors etc. Jill Emery is incoming president and is also present at UKSG. Char invited us all to NASIG, June 2008 (“It will be warmer”).

Um, NASIG still is a volunteer organization; the change here is that the organization is now able to allow organizational (e.g. corporate) sponsorshop. And this year isn’t our first election; we’ve just had our first election using online voting. (NASIG has been in existence and has been having elections since 1985!) I realize that this isn’t official reporting but…folks, make sure you make accurate notes!

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!

Additional thoughts and comments from NASIG 2007

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Below is a smattering of additional thoughts and comments from NASIG 2007:

Karen Schneider‘s paranoia and negativity about things like Google, EPA library closings, survival of small press publishers. Her purpose as a vision speaker was to stimulate debate and thought and I think she succeeded in that. I may not agree with her overall philosophy or approach to these issues but I think it is very healthy to step back and question some of the broader trends in librarianship and ask the hard questions about where they are leading us.

Brainstorming session intended to provide a forum for discussing the problem of reluctance on the part of members to run for office. I wish more people other than “old timers” had spoken up and that there had been more focus on concrete answers to the questions raised by the moderator (Katy Ginanni) and less on generalizations about “trust me, it is really, really good to serve on the Board.”

Dan Chudnov‘s emphasis on the need for simplicity in resource access and discovery. His reliance on iTunes as the standard for judging simplicity has many some flaws even if his general point is well taken. I especially liked his point about trying something out and tweaking it a little. That little tweak may pay off in huge dividends in terms of successful adoption of a new technology. I also think he has a great idea by proposing that libraries insert themselves into the realm of what he terms “service links.” These are available in just about every major media outlet on the web and commonly include links to Technorati, del.icio.us, and other social networking services.

Yet more assumptions about fellow librarians having or sharing the same — liberal — political approach and philosophy. E.g. several negative references to the current (Bush) administration, wearing t-shirt supporting a Democrat’s presidential candidacy, etc. Noticed Dan Chudnov’s reference in his speech to “liberal” vs. “right wing” — perhaps an unconscious but notable inflection of wording.

Importance of networking. I am not a social butterfly at all. In fact, lots of social interaction leaves me exhausted. (By contrast, others like my friend Beverley Geer get their energy from social interaction.) In spite of my natural shyness — some people tell me I come across as aloof — I keep trying to hone my skills and break down the barriers that hold me back from meeting new people. At NASIG this is easier for me to do than in some other situations. I enjoyed sitting next to people at the dine-arounds who were total strangers to me, conversing with them about their work, their interests, and issues of mutual concern. In this way I found out some really interesting details, such as the fact that one longtime NASIG member is an accomplished piano (and flute) player, with two Steinway grands. I learned a lot of interesting facts about the city of Houston from someone else, such as the fact that it had no zoning laws of any kind until relatively recently. Yet another conversation filled me in on what it is like as a foreign national to live in Johannesburg, South Africa (like living in a prison).

Discussion with a librarian from a university in the Southwest about what it’s like to have a non-librarian as library director and the drastic — good — changes brought about so that the library is once more popular with students as a destination.

Several mentions of “work / life balance.”

General recognition (I think) that ERMS are not working out well for many, at least not yet. I likened them to a solution in search of a problem in one open mic comment at a session and described my library’s very recent decision to get out of the vendor-supplied ERMS game altogether. There was some interest in open source solutions.

NASIG 2007 photos

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Just discovered that friend Char Simser, new president of NASIG, posted her photos from the conference in Louisville last week to Flickr. Look carefully and you might see me in one of her photos! I brought my camera with me to the conference but took only a few photos; I don’t know why I didn’t take more and wish I had. Char also points to the Technorati tag for NASIG, which is a good idea and will help those who are interested to track down individual posts about the conference or other things related to the organization that have been published in the blogosphere.

The "dark side" discussion [Updated]

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The main reason I was able to go to NASIG this year was that Anne McKee, program officer for the Greater Western Library Alliance (apparently known as GWLA, pronounced “Gwilla”), kindly invited me to participate in a panel discussion about alternative library careers for serialists. I jumped at the chance to present with friends and colleagues including Anne, Christine Stamison, Beverley Geer, Mike Markwith, and Bob Schatz. Anne represented consortia (the aformentioned GWLA), Christine brought the perspective of working for a subscription agent (Swets), Beverley with a journal publisher (Sage), Mike had a subscription agent (WT Cox) as well as PAMS1 background (TDNet), Bob represented book vendors (Coutts), and I came with a background working for a ILS vendor (Endeavor Information Systems, Inc., now Ex Libris Group) and in a corporate library.

Each of us limited our remarks to 7-8 minutes at Anne’s request in order to maximize the question and answer time with the audience, which numbered around 150 people. That isn’t much time to both describe our backgrounds, why we made the career decisions that we did, and offer pertinent advice as to what it takes to work in an alternative library career.

If you’ve been in the world of libraries for any length of time you will know quite well that there are persistent stereotypes and divisions between various forms of librarianship. For instance, cataloging people and acquisitions people are always supposedly against each other, public services conflicts with technical services, professional librarians and paraprofessionals, and on and on. One of the deepest rooted of these is the continual reference to the “dark side” — meaning, working in the for profit sector. There are many people in this profession who feel that theirs is a higher, better calling if they work in a public or academic library, i.e. a non profit environment. Often there is a lack of respect shown to those who “dare” to look for better wages and sometimes more challenging work in the business world. (Thus the reference to the “dark side.”)

This session, then, was an opportunity to highlight some of the many positives, and negatives, about working for a vendor and in other alternative situations.

One of the things that came up during everyone’s presentations as well as during the Q&A session afterward, was this issue of the “dark side.” I think the highlight of the entire session was when Eve Davis, who works for EBSCO, stated: “We joke about the divide, yet we seem to be perpetuating that very thing by mentioning it so often. Why don’t we stop using terms like ‘the dark side’ even in jest?”

[Updated June 11, 2007: I realized after I had posted this that my narrative just ended without going into any further detail about the session's content, so what follows is what I meant to write originally.]

Here are some of the impressions or things I especially recall from what other presenters had to say:

  • Several mentions by those on the panel of having a sense of impatience with the status quo. I thought this was interesting and noteworthy. Christine Stamison, for instance, talked about the process of implementing a new serials check-in form via a committee at The University of Chicago Library, and how that discussion took six months to come to a resolution. If I recall, she made some quip about how difficult it was to “turn the Queen Mary around.” I worked with Christine in the same environment and I can attest to the truthfulness of this observation. Sometimes things change too quickly in the for profit world, but it seems like all of the presenters preferred a faster pace of change and fewer meetings.
  • Anne, Christine, Beverley, Mike, and Bob all spoke about the supposed glamour of travel, how it really wasn’t that glamorous after all. Mike illustrated this by mentioning the number of times he warmed his McDonald’s hamburger on top of his hotel room’s TV set. Christine mentioned the fact that this kind of work life can be really lonely, and that you have to have a strong sense of self, that you have to really like who you are. Bob mentioned how much he regrets that travel takes away from time with his family.
  • MLS as union card. Beverley made this point, that in her view, the library degree is nothing more than a union card. That doesn’t mean it has no value (Anne also made this point); on the contrary, it establishes important common ground with clients. All of us agreed that we are librarians first and foremost. Anne mentioned, for example, filling out paperwork for her children’s school where she was asked to state her profession, and that she always answers the question with ‘librarian.’
  • It was funny to learn that Bob’s first job out of library school was at a taco shack of some sort in Oregon (his home state).
  • Support for professional involvement. Everyone on the panel agreed that they receive strong support for professional involvement from their employers. In some cases (and this has been my personal experience), such support is often stronger than what we would have received in an academic or public library. Christine mentioned that she requires everyone who reports to her to become NASIG members and to attend the conference each year.

Some of the points that I tried to make in my portion of the session:

  • Be sure to build a record of accomplishment. Then be willing and able to articulate what you’ve done and how it benefits you in various situations. What I was thinking of here, but failed to say explicitly, was the need for project management skills. That is huge. In every job I’ve ever held, the ability to plan and execute projects has been critical.
  • It’s not all about money. Yes, the grass is almost always greener on the for profit side of the fence. I pointed out that this was a motivating factor for seeking a job on “the dark side” (and I think this is true of the other panelists as well) but that it was far more important for me to have work that is challenging, fulfilling, and where I learn new things every day.
  • It is really important to be a quick study, meaning, be willing to learn and learn quickly. I pointed out that many of the jobs I’ve held were ones for which I had no prior background, but that I was able to succeed in them because of working hard to learn all necessary skills.
  • Have specific career goals in mind. Review them regularly, and understand that they may change over time. The example I gave was the difference in my career made by becoming a husband and father. When I was single, I devoted 95% of my time and energy to my career. Now that I have a family, they take precedence.

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1 PAMS refers to Publication Access Management System, a class of vendor-supplied services that helps libraries manage the e-content to which they provide access.

Some NASIG conference impressions

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It’s no secret that NASIG is my favorite professional organization and that I enjoy NASIG conferences more than any other. Why? One reason is that there is nowhere I feel more at home than at NASIG. People are friendly, warm, supportive, thought-provoking, and do very interesting things both in their personal lives and professionally. The NASIG organization is all about relationships. Funny, that is exactly what serials are like, too. I remember my former professor and mentor, Kathryn Luther Henderson, writing about serials in a Serials Librarian article a long time ago and comparing serials to families.1

Aside from the many warm hugs I received from longstanding friends, here is a smattering of what I remember most about this year’s conference, in no particular order of importance:

  • My friend and fellow “way past it” NASIG president, Susan Davis, jokingly remarking that I had peaked early (referring to when I was NASIG president eight years ago) and it was all downhill from there.
  • My friend and another “way past it” NASIG president, Anne McKee, mistakenly using the word obituary when referring to me in her introduction of a session I took part in.
  • Listening in amusement (and sometimes, amazement) at the open mic session Saturday night as various attendees stood up in front of a supportive audience to tell funny stories, read poetry, or sing acapella. I laughed ’til I cried at the story told by friend Gail Patrick of Depauw University that involved a motorcycle trip, snakes, and a visit to a place known as “The Garden of Eden.” Then there was a hilarious story from one woman that involved her mother’s false teeth. One first-time attendee worked up the courage to sing a solo. The whole event was great!
  • Wonderful food and great conversations at the dine-arounds Friday and Saturday evenings. Saturday night especially featured fantastic food at a restaurant in downtown Louisville named Saffron that featured simple yet elegant Persian-inspired food. I had an incredible rack of lamb on a bed of basmati rice, accompanied by a wonderful old vine Zinfandel whose name I can’t recall. I also remember one morning when we sat down with someone I had known for many years who is a cataloger at a state institution in the Washington, D.C. area. She was there with her husband and in the course of conversing with them I was floored to learn that they are avid thoroughbred horse-racing buffs and that they own several racehorses! Even more amazing was the fact that her husband knew of someone with whom I grew up in east central Illinois who is now a highly successful trainer based at Arlington Racetrack. His comment about my classmate, whose name is Chris Block, was simply “Money in the bank; money in the bank.” I told them how much I was fascinated with thoroughbred horse-racing when I was growing up and how Chris planned to grow up to be a trainer and I was going to be his jockey. He has reached his dream but somehow I grew out of any jockey aspirations :-) They even invited me to go with them to one of the nearby stables where they were going to check on the status of one of the brood mares they own. Unfortunately I couldn’t do that because I needed to leave for home immediately after the conference.
  • Many stimulating conversations on personal and professional topics with Mark Lindner, who shared the car trip and conference hotel room with me. I really enjoyed getting to know him and was glad to spend time with him. One of his many strengths is that he is unabashedly open and frank about what he thinks and about his life.
  • Talking with Sanjeet-Singh Mann, a student grant award winner from UCLA’s Department of Information Studies, about the importance of values and ethics in librarianship, among other things.
  • Meeting and talking with Steve Black from the College of St. Rose about the serials course he teaches at SUNY Albany, and also learning about a podcast program he founded for his institution called Periodical Radio, which focuses on interviewing editors and publishers of magazines and periodicals. Steve is also the author of a recently published book on serials management from Libraries Unlimited entitled Serials in Libraries: Issues and Practices.

There was of course much more to the three days. I haven’t even mentioned anything about the sessions I attended. I’ll try to mention some things about that in a different post.

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    1Henderson, Kathryn Luther. “Personalities of Their Own: Some Informal Thoughts on Serials and Teaching About How to Catalog Them.” Serials Librarian 22, no. 1/2 (1992): 3-16.

The terminally overcommitted

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Only recently have I begun to read the T. Scott blog. It’s well worth the time. A recent posting describes the author’s experience attending his first meeting of the board of the Medical Library Association. In particular I just about cracked up over the following statement he made:

“Volunteer organizations are strange creatures. They run off the drive and energy of the terminally overcommitted, so there are never really enough resources to bring to bear.”

This tickled my funny bone because I’ve been there, done that. The time I spent on the board of NASIG was incredibly worthwhile and I will be forever grateful for that experience. Yet I can say that T. Scott’s observations are spot on. I remember attending my first NASIG board meeting as a visitor (newly elected vice-president/president-elect) at the NASIG annual conference at the University of Michigan. Like T. Scott at the MLA board meeting, this was an illuminating experience.

I don’t care what anyone tells you, being president of NASIG is no less work than a full time job (or in some leadership capacity in whatever volunteer organization). It was incredibly stressful and required that a lot of time be devoted to the organization. As an aside, it’s interesting to note the similarities between NASIG and the Medical Library Association given the huge disparity in membership dues between the two volunteer organizations. NASIG charges $75 (and there are variations on dues depending on your status, e.g. students get a lower rate, and location, e.g. those who live in Canada or Mexico pay less in US dollars) whereas the Medical Library Association charges $165 for regular members. And NASIG used to charge $20-25 from its inception in 1985 ’til last year, when the dues were raised significantly for the first time.
Anyway, getting back to the workload issue for volunteer organizations… Given the fact that we all have “real” jobs, T. Scott writes:

“Frankly, it’s a wonder we get anything done at all.”

Still, it is worth it. My NASIG involvement has been incredibly important to my growth as a librarian. Friends I made 15 years ago remain friends to this day, and many new ones have been made along the way. I particularly agree with T. Scott’s closing statement in his post, and it holds true for most volunteer organizations that I know of:

“It is, after all, an association. A gathering of people committed to working together to achieve some things they can’t achieve on their own. Sometimes we’re successful, sometimes we fail. Always our reach exceeds our grasp. I like it that way.”

I like it that way, too.