Midwinter, where the business of librarianship gets done

I think other people must also experience those flashes of doubt, moments at conferences when you wonder why you chose to leave your home, family, and its accordant comforts for the whirligig of running between meetings at far-flung hotels, surviving off overpriced yet mediocre convention center food, and breathing the stale forced air in meeting rooms and airplanes. You must run your own personal cost-benefit analysis, especially if you are paying for your own expenses. I always conclude that it is most definitely worth it to be an active participant in raising the profile and ensuring the success of the particular portion of the profession serving young people. This Midwinter meeting has left me with a feeling of sheer pride in ALA as the body of American librarianship and a real sense of optimism about its direction.

ALA is tackling difficult and important issues like equitable access to digital resources while simultaneously promoting the rich tradition of literature, be it the informational resources and literature honored at RUSA's CODES or the Youth Media Awards, like the Caldecott Medal, which celebrates its 75th anniversary this year. The commemorative logo below is the work of the incredible Brian Selznick.

The big discussion this time centered around pegging association dues to the Consumer Price Index. It's a difficult thing given the stagnant economy and younger people in particular articulating their desire for tangible benefits from organizational membership. No ones likes price hikes, but dues have only increased twice over the past sixteen years, and this thumbnail analysis actually demonstrates that association membership has actually decreased as an expense over time, while also giving some pause about using the CPI as a trigger. Right now, there is a proposed graduated increase over five years that will then be studied to analyze its effect on overall membership and revenues. We will see how the governing body reacts to that proposal.

My job (and email) change meant I missed a lot of invitations to the fun publisher events at places like the public library and the Space Needle, but my schedule was so chockablock I'm not sure I could have squeezed in another thing. In Council, we discussed, in small groups, how to attract and retain new members, and the theme of maintaining interpersonal connections recurred. Though I had done divisional committee work, I think it was the Emerging Leaders program which really gave me confidence in working within the larger organization. And I do view so much of what I do at conference, be it livestreaming the Youth Media Awards on my phone, tweeting from Council, or typing up the minutes from a committee meeting, in terms of service to others, representing and communicating with those without the wherewithal or means to be there in person.

Personally, I figure out how to make it work. This time, I used my frequent flyer points for a ticket and stayed a bit further from the convention center to halve my conference housing costs. I have been fortunate that my school district supports my professional participation by allowing me to run off for a week at a time, after missing days here and there for other meetings and events. It makes me very sad that other schools do not see the value in it.

For me personally, Midwinter also marks the beginning of some new things, as I start member management of the YALSA blog, and the end of some other things I've worked on, particularly the Office of Information Technology Task Force on Digital Literacy, whose report on how libraries support digital skills over a lifetime was released the day I left home. It is an exciting product because it places school libraries in a complimentary continuum with public and academic library settings and illustrates how all must work in concert to promote lifelong learning.

Tomorrow, we return to Council for the third and final day, one of the last meetings after the exhibitors have left and so many people are already back at home. And of course we are already planning for the Annual Conference, in Chicago this June. See you there?

On being a woman (in a woman’s field)

I try to stay out of the back-and-forth on the biblioblogosphere, but, like everyone else out there, I keep coming back to Julie's salient and through-provoking post.

I commented:

I have been thinking A LOT about the gender side of this. It’s even worse in the school library world, where idolatry of a few high-profile male librarians has reached fever pitch. Not that we don’t need great male role models for our kids, but still… there are lots of women, doing lots of the same sort of things, that never get that attention. Thanks for a great post.

... and went back to a draft post I'd saved here last month:

Back when I was in library school, an eon ago, I remember Dr. Gordy Coleman telling our class that the men in our class would be library directors in two or three years, and that few of the women would reach director, ever. He wasn’t being biased, he was just being frank about what he had observed after watching what hundreds of students had been through over the years. 

A few years ago, an academic library director I knew, with far, far fewer years of experience than I had, try to recruit me for head of public services at the school where he was director. I know that the K12 experience does not directly translate into academia, so in some respects this was a rare opportunity, but I was still a little bit offended. I felt he wanted me to be his lackey. And, when I inquired into an junior college library looking for an electronic resources librarian last year, I was told only two years of academic or public library experience would satisfy the requirements. Frankly, I'm sure they didn’t find a candidate with as much knowledge of ebooks and databases as I have had. It made me sad that our profession could be so small-minded.  

Is it little wonder that school libraries are such havens for women? I can count the men in this specialty I have met on two hands. But more than half of them are “names,” and all of them receive a little more approbation than their practice would warrant, in my opinion.

Part of the reason I chose to move to my new district was the very competent woman superintendent, and the fact that the majority of the school board were women. And the faculty here is more female than my previous high school, even in social studies, which has been male-dominated in my experience.

One of the really cool things about the NationalConversations on Digital Literacy sponsored by ALA’s Washington office has been the number of tech-y women showcased. There are women doing cool things, and they are the same things we usually hear about from men. And I think we, as women, need to be their champions.

I went to library school with every intention of becoming a school librarian, but the derision with which that group and other youth services interested people were treated (and my being very, very impressed by library technology pioneer Professor Michael Malinconico, whose classes I adored) caused me to re-think my initial plan. I ended up working for an automation vendor immediately afterwards because, as my advisor told me, I would be “stuck” if I were to begin in a school library. That experience was terrific, I learned a lot, but it was not librarianship in any real sense. 

I might be "stuck," now but I am happy, and I help people every day. And it's 2013, but sometimes I feel like it's 1913 when it comes to gender politics in the workplace.

Anticipating midwinter, and news

I hear that yesterday was supposed to be the statistically gloomiest day of the year. Things here certainly bear that out. It went from unseasonable 70s over the weekend to freezing temperatures yesterday, and my galoshes are getting a workout.

I'm getting a little tired of driving to and from school in the dark, and of waiting for feedback on "that paper" (as someone I know once put dissertations into perspective). The substitute I'd lined up for ALA Midwinter backed out, too, so I have to hustle to find someone with whom I'm comfortable.









But -- Seattle! Well, I'm very much looking forward to it, but I'm going to be exceptionally busy, with lots of committee work commitments, and ALA Council. I will be speaking on the OITP Task Force on Digital Literacy panel Saturday at 3. And don't miss the USBBY session Friday night at 8.

In related news, I'm very excited to be the new member manager of the YALSA blog. And it was a thrill to see my name on both the YALSA and the ALA home page.

Back at work, I'm still chewing on the question of the library supplying required reading. After all, it could be half of our circulation if we met the student demand for those books. But I ran the numbers yesterday, and the amount of curricular titles checked out dropped to 13.7% percent of fall semester checkouts, versus 17.8% last year. So, more voluntary engagement with books. But circulation is still far from what I'd like it to be... I need to write more about the transition from a robust library program to one with entirely different concerns and practices, but I'm freaking out a little about having to move everything into a portable or into storage before Spring Break in March. We should know for sure if that's the timeline -- tonight.

I go to China (sort of)

I've been boring everyone to tears chattering about our holiday trip to China. We'd been gearing up for months, my husband learning a little Mandarin, me printing cards that said "I am vegetarian, I do not eat meat," and stockpiling granola bars and earplugs. We booked a package, because I thought I remembered hearing that if you went through an agent, you didn't need a visa, but the the travel agency sent us all sorts of information about its recommended visa company, so we filled out the very long applications. I printed it and filled it in by hand first, then was told by the visa company (we had to get a visa from the Chinese consulate in Houston, because we live in Alabama) it had to be typed, so I printed it, scanned it, used Adobe acrobat to fill in the blanks. nightmare. And we were flying out of San Francisco, so we had to supply all our domestic travel arrangements as well. And it was expensive. When the visa company charge went through on my credit card, I honestly thought someone had gotten hold of my number, we paid them that much for going to the consulate in Houston on our behalf.

School was a half-day Friday ( I love my new district!), and we flew out Saturday morning to San Francisco. We had a wonderful time there, visited friends, went to the SFMOMA, and had an anniversary dinner at Greens, which is one of my favorite places in the world. Monday, we left for the airport midday, to make sure Air China would seat us together. The flight was more than twelve hours, but we were terrifically excited, and I had a super-yummy sandwich from il Forniaio, so it passed quickly.

We landed in Beijing late on Christmas Day, and went to the immigration area, as one does, and the agent looked at my paperwork first. I was all set when he asked to see my passport again. There wasn't a problem with my visa, but there was one with my husband's. His visa was set to expire Dec. 31, 2012. Mine was expiring December 31, 2013. They were issued to the visa agency on the same date in November. It was obviously a clerical error, but there isn't any room for error there. My husband would have "to go back," I was fine to stay, in fact was encouraged to stay, but of course I didn't want to be on my own in Beijing and Shanghai.

They offered to send us to Hong Kong. Umm, we had no plans to go there, and how would we return? Eventually Air China found us seat on a flight leaving for Los Angeles. At this point, we were thrilled to just be together. But I had to"enter" China to leave again, and my husband wasn't allowed to, so we were separated. I browsed in the airport shops while my husband was being searched and questioned. His little bit of Mandarin came in handy, because the agents he was with didn't speak English. One agent asked him if he was on business or pleasure. They seemed very confused about why he was being deported.

I waited until the end of boarding, when I saw my husband being physically escorted on the plane. I wasn't going to leave without him. He had the seat directly in front of me -- we were both in middle seats, so just being able to see him was reassuring. Fourteen hours later, we were eating a tragic Christmas dinner in an LAX hotel restaurant. Today, we have tickets as far as Atlanta.

So no New Year's in Shanghai, no birthday dinner for me in San Francisco on the way back, and we're thousands of dollars out of pocket, but all I want to do is get home to spring our cat from the veterinarian where he's boarding, and read some books in my pjs. I don't think I'll be going back to Asia for a while.

Try just a little bit...

I managed a break from more academic reading yesterday to devour India Knight's Mutton. It's a charming installment in the life of Knight's heroine Clara, what can best be termed the cosmetic surgery flirtation. But what stopped me dead in my tracks? Its very lovely design.

The cover is embossed, with alligator skin, redolent of ancient reptiles and old bags (ahem), but the very sweet little cartoon is NOT textured. The endpapers are a charming floral print. The cost of such fripperies (which I use here, as I was told fifteen years ago to remove it from a feature story as it "wasn't a newspaper word." Obviously, the editor was mad because I sent her to her dictionary...) had to be mere pennies, but what a transformation into OBJECT! Give me books this lovely, and I'd never use a Kindle.

It didn't surprise me that it was from Penguin, as I have always been impressed with their design savvy. Anyone who can monetize the public domain through the aesthetic rocks in my estimation...