So, earlier today Barbara Fister shared on Library Babel Fish the story of How I became a librarian  . Chris Bourg, at MIT then shared this evening on Twitter her story of Librarianship being Plan C at least: This was not Plan B: My #altac story

For me? Far less educated when I became a librarian, having tried far fewer other hats on, but I also grew from student-worker in the university library to full-fledged librarian. And danced a bit with academia around the edges.

athriftymrs.com. (2013). enid_blyton_illustrations [Photo]. Retrieved from https://www.flickr.com/photos/thriftyuk/10038808435/

I was pretty sure I wanted to be a librarian very early on (and do admit to organising my Enid Blyton books with my own classification scheme which involved letters AND numbers and a lot of duct tape on spines).

Part of this was being a country-town girl at the tail end of Australia’s free tertiary education experiment, who saw books, reading and education as the only way to escape an alternative future of either early pregnancy or drug-dazed adolescence, with no hope EVER otherwise living in a place with sophisticated exotic infrastructure like traffic lights or a Chinese Restaurant.

On the way, I was told by my maths teacher I was “too smart for that” and “should think about being an engineer”. And in response convinced myself that I should aim high and try something that I maybe would have some interest in, and go to Law School.

By my second year at the University of Western Australia I was studying a 33% overload as one of the first 20 students admitted to a combined Arts/Law degree. I had tried apple-thinning over one summer to earn enough for next semester, and then by second year had moved to a private girl’s school as a live-in boarding mistress. Board and accommodation were provided in return for 20 hours of work a week. Not surprisingly, I sustained this until Easter before moving to college near the university and becoming financially dependent on my mother for eight months… until a college friend on the University Library committee suggested I apply for a job in the Reid Library for the upcoming academic year.

Reader, I liked it.

I was in Fine Arts, Architecture and Special Collections, so spent countless nights filing slides that the Visual Arts students viewed at the light table or borrowed overnight. If anyone wanted to know what Hunterwasserhaus looked like, we were the only place in town who could show you.

Hundertwasserhaus. (2019). In Wikipedia. Retrieved from https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Hundertwasserhaus&oldid=899063518

I would sneak into the Special Collections and browse the Festival of Perth programmes going back to the first ones in the 1950’s. As a Theatre Studies student I was overjoyed to discover a cache of notes from Peter Brook’s production of the Mahabharata in Perth, detailing the bump in and bump out plans. I spent one evening browsing the collection of original PhDs, trying to locate the first one written by a woman… depressingly difficult to locate.

When law school lost its gloss for the first time, I finished my arts degree and drifted over to Curtin to do a one year Graduate Diploma in Information and Library Studies. All the while still working in the UWA library at nights. I left the job half way through the year to work as a librarian/researcher in a small St George’s Terrace law firm, completing my Grad Dip in the same year.

Unlike Barbara or Chris, I was a long, long way from Grad School when I started my first full-time position as a 23 year old, as a systems librarian in a three-branch public library. It would be another 20 years before I completed my Master in Information Management back at Curtin again, being hired as an Associate Lecturer in the department about a month before my Masters thesis was finally marked.

… but I can’t do both.

Parenting, job and doing other things involving dance or the beach take up my finite amounts of time.

sirexkat. (2009, February 26). 57/365 11:20pm and still working. Retrieved from https://www.flickr.com/photos/sirexkat/3310904615/

(Like making muffins for Mr12 and his three Maths Talent Quester friends as they work on their project)

(Cleaning up again after an old and not-so-neat-any-more cat)

(Trying to find the right dance sneakers that will not split open after three months of use)

(Driving Mr17 to Adult Fans of Lego in Lower Upper Right Woop Woop)

(Working on the box office for the Sound of Music school production)

(Packing to go away for a month)

(Dealing with flooded window and insurance claim so it is all fixed before I go away)

(Long, long skates or bicycle rides along the beach)

If I blog, it cuts into time left over for sleep.

I have so many unwritten blog posts that I would love to write at the moment, including one titled “What happened when I stopped doing all the things”. I would love to be in a place where I could put the time into a blog again, and where I did not prioritise 101 other things that keep me healthy. I love the thinking and writing and talking.

(And, most of all, I love reading what others write when #blogjune cranks things up again and feel like to keep this momentum I need to keep my side up and create too)

But sleep. Better.

Let them.

Here’s why.

tomosaurus. (2006, December 13). Not today, thank you! Retrieved June 18, 2015, from https://www.flickr.com/photos/tomloudon/322172413/

Today Sam responded to the discussion all about Imposter Syndrome, “I’m not a technical person, but…” She describes beautifully the situation I have been in in several jobs – the only woman around the table involved in a discussion about IT and feeling as though I have to really, really get it 100% right with facts and tone if I am going to try to contribute. This is despite knowing all those things that Sam knows:

I know that I have successfully managed complex projects with technical aspects and have learned enough of the lingo to be able to effectively work with software developers, business analysts, systems administrators, storage analysts and other types of IT professionals. I know that I have skills and experience that other people in these groups do not, including an understanding of critical legal and regulatory requirements like copyright, recordkeeping and privacy. I know that there is a need for people who can build bridges between hard core IT professionals and other groups of users and stakeholders, and that is one of my strengths. I know that IT managers come from a variety of backgrounds and cannot have in-depth knowledge of everything, and that by the time they reach middle or senior management their technical skills must necessarily give way to other types of expertise anyway. I know that succesful IT programs need more than just technical understanding and that the soft skills that librarians have can make all the difference. And I know that my seat at the table has not been given to me by accident because someone failed to notice I am a complete fraud.

Once I worked out a strategy about how I could use this situation to my advantage. This idea will not be a surprise for those who think first and talk afterwards. I usually work the other way around. Often not to my credit nor merit.

Sometimes I feel compelled very early on during a meeting to make a comment, or ask a technical question, to establish that I have at least the same level of IT knowledge as other people around the table. (It may be a perverse anti-manifestation of imposter syndrome “I am allowed to doubt my own abilities privately – but don’t you DARE” )

But maybe there is a better way to spend the first part of that kind of meeting.

In judo, one strategy involves using the opponent’s strength and weight against them.

I will not generalise and say outright that all men in IT presume that women do not understand technical discussion unless a woman clearly established otherwise. (I will not point out that some women make the same presumption). I will not say that sometimes men around the IT table know less than other people but speak with greater confidence. I can say with confidence I have sat around many tables with men in IT who were presuming that I knew far less than I did.

I will say that you can learn a lot sitting around a table where people start with presuming you know less than you do, if you let them continue to think that. You can observe who actually has little knowledge and blows hot air instead. You can even pretend that you did not hear something stupid the first time and ask them to repeat it for the rest of the room to hear.  You can learn a lot politically. You can find out who would bother to clearly explain things they do not think you understand (which gives you a lot of information about their communication skills) and gauge how accurately they can do so (which gives you insight into their IT knowledge). It lets you understand whether they acknowledge that other types of skills are important (given that you must be there for some other reason if you have no idea about IT), and so how they are likely to work with others on any joint project, or how savvy they would be at negotiating non-IT matters. It can give you a good perspective on how they make IT decisions (based on actually solid knowledge? by being taken in by marketing buzz-words? by believing vendors without questioning? by defaulting to legacy techniques and tools because they have not updated their skills?).

I have tried this a couple of times, but I get defeated by being a well-brought-up woman. I often feel deceptive and uncomfortable by not letting on that I speak the same language as they do.  I think it could be very powerful, however, to see what happened if I let it go beyond my comfort level…

Please read obligatory apology for blogging about blogging .

In the last couple of days I have considered what blogging has done for me and how, to me, blogging means being a node in a conversation not just making chronologically ordered posts to a site. I want to go on to consider blogging and the “imposter syndrome” as mentioned by Wendy and Lyndelle on Kate’s post does anybody actually care? blogging and professional discourse.

UPDATE: When I use “professional blogging” I am talking about blogging from a disciplinary view about a particular profession. I realized when I re-read the title that “professional blogging” could also refer to writing a blog as a job to make money. I am not using it this way.

Both Wendy and Lyndelle talk about feeling too new, not qualified enough, to join in the conversation by blogging, although they can see the value to the profession of blogging continuing, and in overcoming personal discomfort to do so.

DaPuglet. (2009, September 29). Pug Imposter “Pug Love.” Retrieved from https://www.flickr.com/photos/dapuglet/8426525097/

When I talk about the time that blogging takes I think that part of this time, when one is blogging in a professional space, involves evaluating one’s own risk profile and comfort levels. Given that professional blogging simultaneously creates a personal space (in that one is sole author of the web space) one has a lot of control over the formality, rigour and personality of that professional voice, and of the safety net that exists in this home space where it lives. It is somewhere where it is you who determines exactly what is a “no go” zone on the site, what is discussed, in what detail and with which attitude. The hard bit is really in finding who you want to be in the space.

Forming a professional identity is something that every successful new professional will do anyhow. Finding this professional identity involves introspection (blogging is excellent for this), interacting with other professionals (blogging is excellent for this), making sure one has correct information and is able to share this clearly using the language and concepts of the profession (blogging is excellent for this) and often developing specialised interests and expertise in one area of the profession, according to personal interests and abilities (blogging is excellent for this).

Rachel Singer Gordon discusses the “imposter syndrome” in her 2003 article about overcoming the Systems Librarian Imposter Syndrome .

Joan Harvey talks about a syndrome called “the imposter phenomenon,” in which otherwise successful individuals believe that others overestimate their talents, that their success is not due to their own ability, and that they will eventually be exposed as frauds in their position (Harvey and Katz,1985). While this syndrome occurs in people across all professions, those in positions that constantly require doing new tasks or taking on new roles are particularly susceptible to these feelings. Their cure lies in realizing that their success stems from their own abilities and actions rather than in some random or external force. The cure for systems librarians lies in realizing that, as long as they know (or can find out!) enough to keep the systems in their own institutions humming along, they are successes—and integral to the smooth functioning of their library.

Knowles, C. (2008, June 28). Playing on the Merry go round. Retrieved from https://www.flickr.com/photos/theknowlesgallery/4714085113/

Similarly, to be a successful blogger, one needs to keep a blog humming along and no more (and no less). It involves acknowledging that success or failure (if there is such a thing) in blogging is not due to any external forces, but one’s own talents and abilities.

One does need to choose to be the type of professional, or the type of blogger, that matches one’s abilities and the time one has to devote. One needs to define success in blogging or a profession on one’s own terms and find one’s own niche. No-one knows what professional success or blogging success looks like for an individual because that person is making it up, for themselves, as they go.

Personally, I am not going to win professional awards anytime soon for being most business-like dresser, or best at “working the room” or most committees served for professional organisations. I am not going to be appointed to the highest possible managerial position I can be, nor fill a job that earns me the maximum amount of money that someone with my abilities, skillset and personality could. My blog is not going to win awards for most frequent updates, breaking of original stories nor for short and snappy posts. The blog platform is created on my terms to present the type of professional that I am – competent and able in some areas, less so in others, but all of it richly me and belonging in this space I have created.

In response to Lyndelle and Wendy, Kate has written a very reassuring post about how imposter syndrome affects everyone and is very honest and generous about her own insecurities and the effect on her

Impostor syndrome can be a gag. It can cause us to sit on ideas. It stops us from blurting out the things we should blurt out. It holds us back as individuals and it holds us back as professionals and it holds our professional discourse back. It undermines our confidence in our own thinking and our capacity to make a contribution to professional conversation

 In the comments on this post, Kate mentions a different approach from Kim Tairi

“I’ve flipped it & try to think of it as reflection and questioning rather than self doubt; wanting to be a better leader/boss”

I have attended a fair whack of professional conferences – as delegate, someone who has submitted a paper, as invited speaker and even done a couple of keynotes. I have seen many, many other speakers and I think I have a good measure of what is engaging and what is not. At one point, I remember sitting in the audience at a terrifically engaging, well-researched, clearly organised and interesting talk with beautiful slides and thinking “the main difference between this speaker and most of us in the audience is that s/he has put in the hard yards creating this presentation. I bet that there are a bunch of us who are kind of interchangeable, who could do a similar job if we showed the same devotion and had put in the many, many hours that this speaker has done”.

I know that I have given talks where nerves, insecurity, or maybe a desire to deliver to the people who asked me to be there, have buoyed me on to put in hours and hours of careful research, practice and preparation to be a much, much better version of me than I could ever be without the sheer hard slog of hours of work. In some ways, “imposter syndrome” may well be healthy professionally because it can force one to define what is important, what you care about, to not to be paralysed, and to do something to stop feeling like an imposter.

Reading the posts from bloggers taking part in #blogjune, where people mainly identify as Australian libraryfolk (even if they expressly do not write solely from that perspective) it is easy to see a range of voices and topics that make up this corner of the conversation. Although few voices could be classed as solely discussing disciplinary issues in a formal style, I think that most can be considered to be professional blogs to the extent that others in the profession are connecting with them, potential employers and employees form an impression of them as people and there is a mixture of (often very insightful and interesting) disciplinary discussion that is not happening in any other forum.

Being a successful part of the conversation that is professional blogging does not involve knowing it all, or reaching some ideal standard or level of disciplinary discussion. It does involve forming an identity and finding a voice as a blogger that can only really be achieved by getting in there and experimenting, in the same way that creating a professional identity involves doing something rather than sitting back and avoiding action because you are unsure. Sometimes being the one who does not have the answers but has a fresh perspective and asks the question “why?” or says “do you mean this? I don’t understand” can make people who have been spouting their mouths off for years pause, think and re-think. This is a valuable contribution.

 References

Please read obligatory apology for blogging about blogging .

Yesterday I talked about what blogging has done for me. I want to spend a bit more time talking about what I mean by “blogging”. This is a personal definition about how I relate to this thing I do on this site, not something aimed at starting a debate or fine-tooth-comb examination of definitions.

To me, “blogging” does not just mean writing posts. To me that is broadcasting.

For me to feel like I am really “blogging”  I need to be reading other people who are creating in a similar space, commenting, joining in on other parts of social media about discussion of topics that may or may not end up as more fully-developed posts. The richness of what I write here is dependent on this thinking with others, and takes place as a node in conversation.

I do think that there are a group of people with a “build it and they will come” mentality who write some (often very well-considered and interesting) posts and then are surprised and affronted that there is not conversation happening and their posts are not noticed. I think this is a bit like getting in some food, nice drinks, putting on some mood music, opening doors … then sitting on the sofa complaining that your party is not a success…

For me blogging done satisfactorily and effectively takes huge amounts of time, a lot of discipline, involves building knowledge of where disciplinary conversations are taking place, creating discussions when possible and getting in there boots and all.

Anyone who has been reading this series of posts should be concluding that, to me, blogging  is not simple, mechanistic and easy. I see a blog as an anchor site for my presence on social media, rather than a series of posts arranged in date order. It is a place devoted to the opinions and thoughts of a single channel and, for the way I use my blog as a node in a larger ongoing conversation, should contain a comprehensive “about” page, a way for people to get in contact and some indication of presence on other social media. All this requires crafting and gardening.

It’s all very well to be part of a conversation, but the way I am talking it seems like I am implying that it is just a matter of putting in time and anyone can do it. Actually, I do think it is that simple (and hard). The thing is, I make a choice about how I define “blogging” and what it means to me. I do not expect this definition to be the same for everyone – in fact I would expect most people not to be doing it like I do. In the next post I want to go on to thinking about blogging and the “imposter syndrome”, as raised by Wendy and Lyndelle on Kate’s post does anybody actually care? blogging and professional discourse

Please read obligatory apology for blogging about blogging .

Like Con, I began this blog when I was investigating blogging for work , but according to one of my first posts (where I outline the fact that I have already started four blogs in the last two months ), it was around nine years ago. I wanted to understand by doing, rather than reading the rather puzzling and confusing accounts of what blogging was and how it was useful. Around mid-April 2006 blogging was at the stage of the peak of inflated expectations in Gartner’s Hype Cycle. It was hard to find anything sensible that did not seem to be promising that third world debt, embarrassing personal itches and all issues in professional communications could be fixed by a good blog.

Doing worked.

I understood how hard it is to write clear, short prose that conveys an original-enough idea, has a personable voice and is appropriate for audience.

It took me about a year of blogging rather freely to find out what I was actually interested in/capable of blogging about. That is when my tagline changed from:

“It is and we do. Here’s an apostrophe if you want to add it somewhere ‘ I’m in Fremantle. A librarian at a University Library. Mum to two boys. Balancing both is interesting.”

to

“It is and we do. Musing, enthusing, libraries, technology, balancing, being mum”.

The word “creativity” currently in the tagline came around 2013 … so I guess it is an ongoing process.

I learned how to read, read, read what else was happening in the same space and to engage with the discussion both by commenting and by expanding further on my own blog.

I made mistakes and learned what not to do (Oh, having an RSS feed means that if I publish something then change my mind and amend it there are still some people who have read the first version in their RSS reader???… Ah – check, check, check then publish). I learned to sit on posts that didn’t feel quite right, even if I was unsure why. I learned how to pre-write posts, breaking them up if necessary and to schedule them for later so I didn’t flood my feed. I learned my own limits for personal and professional sharing, Drawing the veil, which on reflection stills feels sensible and like a good fit for me.

I blogged very regularly for about four years. This lead to a lot of opportunities.

People in the profession, who I did not know, knew me. Sometimes I could approach them to ask for advice or information and feel far more comfortable about doing so, because we had “met” and, due to a positive comment on a post, I was confident that they would not think me a total idiot. It worked both ways, people approached me for information/favours and I was delighted to know that I could contribute.

I was invited to speak places. At many events, and in many places I traveled to, I already “knew” a crowd of like-minded and interesting people. That broke down my usual social hesitancy and unsureness so I felt like I didn’t need to get on a similar page with a group of strangers gradually, but I could dive in and play straight away. I have had people come to stay in my house and stayed in other people’s houses on the strength of a blogging relationship. I met people who transcended the “blogging relationship” and who I now consider personal friends rather than “people from the internet”.

The best, best, best thing was connecting with sharing, generous and questioning minds. I was stimulated by watching other people explore and “think out loud” about some topics I was puzzled by, and other topics that I hadn’t even considered. I saw the elegance and tact with which people skirted potentially divisive issues and were able to say “I disagree, for these reasons” with an elegance and grace. I would consider myself lucky if I learned a skerrick of how to do this.

I developed a lot of my own ideas and found out more clearly what I thought. To make claims I needed to think through things, express myself clearly and provide evidence. Very often I was able to present a point in a professional meeting, or writing in my job, extremely clearly and quickly because I had privately (?) done the “grunt-work” earlier in my blog.

All through this, I have been using the term “blogging”. In my next post, I am considering how I define “blogging”. Writing a blog, right? Well, for me, not exactly. It’s more.

Those kinds of posts make me want to RUUUUUUUN.

I usually just want to hear what you have to say about whatever your blog is about, not about the whole blogging process, why you are doing it so much, not enough, less, more or where your blog fits in the cosmology of blogginess…

City Center Reflection, Las Vegas. (n.d.). Retrieved June 14, 2015, from https://www.flickr.com/photos/dawilson/4978421628/

Which is why I am writing this apology post as a precursor to a few posts about just that, blogging… stimulated by many of the discussions that are happening for #blogjune ( particularly some posts from snail, Con and Kate ). Turns out that I had a lot to say, so I am turning it into a series of posts…

Read on over the next week for scintillating meta-bloggy topics such as:

• What has blogging done for me?
• Blogging and being a node in conversation
• Professional blogging and imposter syndrome
• Collaborative blogging
• State of the biblio-blogosphere
• If not blogging, then what?

Sometimes I am inspired by an article that states the obvious that, well,  I need to have pointed out for me to see…

college.library. (2012, February 7). Wendt WisCEL: students collaborating. Retrieved from https://www.flickr.com/photos/collegelibrary/8596551768/

Hunter Rawlings, president of the Association of American Universities beautifully considers the value contributed to a degree by the “buyer”, the student. The whole article is worth reading.

…If we are going to treat college as a commodity, and an expensive one at that, we should at least grasp the essence of its economic nature. Unlike a car, college requires the “buyer” to do most of the work to obtain its value. The value of a degree depends more on the student’s input than on the college’s curriculum. I know this because I have seen excellent students get great educations at average colleges, and unmotivated students get poor educations at excellent colleges. And I have taught classes which my students made great through their efforts, and classes which my students made average or worse through their lack of effort. Though I would like to think I made a real contribution to student learning, my role was not the sole or even determining factor in the value of those courses to my students.

A college education, then, if it is a commodity, is no car. The courses the student decides to take (and not take), the amount of work the student does, the intellectual curiosity the student exhibits, her participation in class, his focus and determination — all contribute far more to her educational “outcome” than the college’s overall curriculum, much less its amenities and social life. Yet most public discussion of higher ed today pretends that students simply receive their education from colleges the way a person walks out of Best Buy with a television…

I have been working in libraries for about 28 years and been professionally qualified for about 25.

Here are some things I have done in my career that we don’t do any more.

1. Found pictures of (insert name here) .

Working in a Fine Arts and Architecture specialist library in an academic library, and in a public library, I was often the only person with the resources and training to satisfy a request for a “cow grazing” or “picture of Anais Nin”. Often the request was from a trainee teacher who absolutely needed this for a class. I presume that school libraries have felt the change in this demand even more…

Mammals-7-147 – Zeby or Brahmin Bull, Alderney Cow, Scotch Cattle, Durham Cow. (n.d.). Retrieved from https://www.flickr.com/photos/artvintage1800s/15908916478/

2. Found phone numbers, street directions, names of specialist professionals, statistics about countries, names of local government representatives.

All these were common questions on reference desks – not just from people with issues with functional literacy, but almost anyone who wanted to find non-local information.

3. Maintained a collection that would answer all the queries in 2.

Keeping electoral roles up to date, Australian Bureau of Statistics pamphlets in order, street directories re-shelved, seeing in an article in the daily newspaper that the Dental Association had issued a new directory and ordered it.

4. Taken a student’s library card while they used the University Handbook to find the units that they may want to study, or to photocopy a record of the units they previously studied.

If the University Bookshop had sold out of recent handbooks, or it was night time, or the student had the financial position of most students and could not afford to buy a handbook each year – then the library reference desk was the place to go. Of course, if not carefully guarded by library staff or students were not forced to hand over something of value, then the items would surely walk, so at least one query each night involved this transaction of suspicion.

5. Public library. Car service manuals. Driver’s licence, See 4. above.

6. Advised people about the author of a book, when it was published and how to get hold of it

Once upon a time libraries had copies of “Books in Print”. Librarians knew how to use them. Booksellers did too, but did not necessarily do so for members of the public. Members of the public had to go through one of us to find out bibliographic information

7. Photocopied indexes of recent journals, stapled a circulation list to the top and sent them around the in-trays of professional staff in the office.

… and called it “Current Awareness”. I suspect this still happens in some places where older members of staff expect this – but I could be totally wrong.

8. Showed a student how to use a printed Citation Index to find academic papers on a particular subject.

Once upon a time the path to a relevant journal article was far more of a tiger safari than it is now. Students would get an article from the unit reading list, look at the references at the back, physically go to the shelves and hunt down the next journal article and leap frog onwards and onwards toward on-topic nirvana. Citation indices were about finding the information needed not just about bibliometric impact.

Microform Readers. (n.d.). from https://www.flickr.com/photos/kapungo/1697320296/

9. Advised a dizzy patron to just sit down, get a drink of water and then turn the knob on the microfilm reader more slowly next time.

Microfilm readers were like a long strip of film with negative photographs of pages from articles, books and newspapers. Each frame could be magnified to display on a screen and (in really flash ones) print out a smudgy copy of the page. People would get a page reference (if lucky) and then turn a knob to view the right part of the filmstrip. Those who just knew the item had been “in the Times in February 1975” would have pages and pages to look through, and did so by whizzing the filmstrip, stopping, looking then whizzing on to the next page … and usually did so too fast and ended up getting motion sickness. Microfische? – even worse because you were dealing with a grid of pages on a flat plate and could whizz in all directions all over the page, and still had to keep an eye on what you were seeing so you knew when you hit the right spot.

10. Re-spliced the tapes and joined the ends together in an attempt to keep an audio cassette circulating for a little longer.