The Joy of Networking

I have been in my new job for two and a half months.  It is going great.  The folks there are really nice.  I work with about ten people at headquarters and then have about 25-30 folks who work in the districts and divisions.  Most of those folks are Librarians but there are some Library Technicians too.

There is a lot to learn.  The librarians in the field have been with the agency longer than I.  Some have had their entire careers with the agency and they are true experts.  My role is to give direction and policy.  But shortly after I got started on the job I was approached by a couple folks who want to review the structure of our libraries.

Help!

It isn't that I'm not up to the challenge - I just know I cannot do this on my own.  Let the networking begin!

I have been reaching out to other military librarians and federal librarians.  In the past couple of weeks I have spoken to Librarians from Veterans Affairs, Library of Congress, NOAA, the Federal Reserve Board.  Next week I will talk to the head of the EPA Libraries and another with Homeland Security.

Eventually I will need to put pen to paper, rather fingers to keyboard and start working on the plan for my libraries.  Before I do that I need to continue my outreach to the librarians at my own agency.  Whatever plan I come up with isn't just my plan - it is our plan.

I also realized that I need to communicate in a more regular fashion.

Several years ago in a staff meeting at a different agency our boss was talking about changes at the agency.  He couldn't tell us everything that was going on but he shared what he could.  I said that it would be good to have regular communication because if we aren't told what is going on, we're quite capable of making things up.

I don't want any of my folks fretting and making things up and listening to rumors.  I can't stop that, but the only counter to that is to provide them with the information that I have.

Not all networking is serious.  Last week I went to reception for the DC/SLA and got to see some good friends.  They were also reading tarot cards and I got a positive reading.  I'm happy with that - I still have to do the work - but at least I have some good energy as I forge ahead.

Veteran's Day - Victory Celebration

It was a long time ago that our men (mostly) fought in the Great War - the War to end all Wars. Sadly that war did not end all wars. More than anything WWI ended a way of life in much of the world and created the 20th Century. I would have liked that way of life - a time when there was more time to be with other people. It wasn't perfect - there was more disease and death and few modern conveniences. Still - read Shaw's Heartbreak House and you get a glimpse of that way of life.

This article was printed in The News - the Democrat newspaper - in 1918 describing what happened in my hometown of Berkeley Springs, WV when word came that the Armistice had been signed and there was peace and that the sons of many would be coming home.

Mr. P.R. Lawyer mentioned in the article is my great-grandfather. His older son (Herbert Lawyer, left photo) served in the army (and played euphonium in the band) in France during WWI.

Many thanks to our veterans who have served over the years and a continued prayer for peace everywhere.

VICTORY CELEBRATION!

Early on Monday morning the ringing of bells and blowing of whistles proclaimed the confirmation of the signing of the Armistice and very soon the streets were thronged with happy people.

The pupils of Mt Wesley and North Berkeley schools, with their teachers formed in line and about ten o'clock marched up Washington Street and back to the square with waving flags and banners. They were joined in line of march by numbers of autos whose occupants were waving flags and blowing horns.

As the parade came around the grass plot on Fairfax street, Mr. P. R Lawyer came out to the street, and with tear dimmed eyes, played "Joy to the World" on his cornet, a most touching incident.

A number of speeches were made from the Court House steps, one gentleman saying, We will have our big celebration when our boys come home, and the applause was deafening.

During the afternoon flags and bunting were displayed everywhere: electric lights were strung across the square and by seven o'clock the town was alight. All business houses and private homes were illuminated and streets full of people.

A parade formed at the depot led by the City Band, supplemented by members of the Greenwood Band and marshalled by Messrs, J.A. Proctor and W.O. Hughes. Miss Portia Sallade, in khaki uniform represented “A Girl of Today” and Miss Maude Bechtol represented "Joan of Arc." The Red Cross and Y.W. C. A. were well represented by young ladies carrying banners and were followed by the Boy Scouts. Bunting and flag trimmed autos, trucks with occupants in fancy costume, all tooting horns and waving flags, and a Red Cross-float, with Miss Pauline Sallade as a Red Cross nurse, supporting a wounded soldier attracted much attention.

At 8:30 a huge bonfire was lighted on the level in front of Mr. F. R. Reed's residence.

Everyone was joyous and yet through it all ran a strain of sadness, in the thought of those whose loved ones will not come home. It was a great celebration and a day long to be remembered.

What was I thinking???

So last week I started my new job.  I feel that I am off to a good start.  Slowly getting up and running on the agency network - something that is a little trickier than it has been other places.  I'm meeting people and slowly starting to get a handle on the scope of my new job.

Some of the librarians who support my agency HQ stopped by to see me and rescue me.  With no network access I was reading whatever I could find.  I was delighted to see two friendly faces who led me through the labyrinth to the satellite library.  I even checked out a book!!

The next day I met another librarian and then another.  I finally talked to the librarian who has been holding the fort on the policy work that I will be doing.

Among other things I learned that word has gone out to all the agency librarians and other staff that I have been hired.  And, of course, they did what I would have done and most any of us would do - they searched me out on the Internet.

So they have seen my linked-in profile and looked over my past positions and that would have led them to this blog.

At the very least they should have a feel for the range of my experience and I trust some evidence of a sense of humor poked through.  Fortunately I don't reveal everything in the blog or linked in so I may be able to surprise them on occasion.

So far everyone has been really great and I look forward to meeting the rest of my colleagues at the agency and seeing how we can work together.

I had a new boss once who in our first conversation stressed that she wanted to have collaborative working relationship.  The hairs on the back of my neck bristled and, in the words of Han Solo, I thought, I've got a bad feeling about this. 

Well - my instincts proved me correct.  I look forward to working with and learning from the librarians in the districts etc. and we'll take it from there.  At this point they certainly know a lot more about the agency than I do!

Happy Labor Day!

Successful Job Hunt

Greetings all -- it has been a while since I have updated this blog.  All has been going well in my current post as a Research Librarian for a consulting firm.  This has been a temp-to-hire position that they have never offered to actually hire me.

So after an initial month on the job where I didn't actively pursue any job openings - I started up again - that was last November.  During that time I applied to federal government jobs, public and academic jobs and private sector jobs as well.  Despite my 5+ years of providing legal research at one agency - that wasn't enough to satisfy several law firms.

I had a couple of interviews including one for a prison librarian post in DC.  I actually thought it might be fun.

During this time I was regularly checking USAJobs, Indeed.com and I Need a Library Job.  I looked over my resume and updated that, wrote and re-wrote cover letters.  As most anyone will tell you - looking for a job is a full-time job!

Recently I applied for a federal job only to get an automatic response that my application was incomplete - I had failed to submit some of the required documents.  So I checked the online application (yay technology!) and it looked as though I had everything.  I emailed the HR office and asked about it.

Time passed - I didn't hear anything and I finally decided, Okay, that job was not meant to be.  What else is out there?  That very day I got a phone call that turned out to be my interview for the job.  No prep, no nerves, just a pleasant phone conversation.

The next day I got a phone call from the HR Specialist who told me that on review my documents were in order and I should have been refered for the position - and obviously I was.

Next I got a tentative job offer and they needed a couple of updated forms.  One form I submitted was valid - just not the most recent one.  It took me some time and few phone calls but I was successful.  They also needed an official copy of my transcripts from library school.  Imagine that!

End of story - I was offered the position and I will start on August 27.  My current boss on the temp-to-hire job is very happy for me.

My sister is a great proponent of creating your own success.  She always said - picture and describe what you want your new job to be (or house or car etc.).  Be as precise as you need to be.  I could do that - but I had trouble of just letting go of it - so I asked her about that too.  She said I don't need to worry about how God/karma/fate will make it happen - I just need to apply for jobs and prepare myself.

That's what I did - One day I finalized what I wanted:
minimum salary of x dollars
commute no farther than Farragut North
ideally with the federal government (or with similar benefits)
starting by September 1
some travel would be nice
a job that is interesting
a job that I can do well

I got all that I asked for - well, I have yet to find out about the last two - but the job certainly looks interesting and I'm hoping that I can do it well.  To that end I am lining up some people I want to interview to get some ideas about approach etc.

Many thanks to all those who offered prayers and sent good karma in my direction.  I'm really excited about this chapter in my life.  I feel as though I have learned from the past and ready to embrace something new!

Seeing my research in print!

Usually as reference and research librarians we do our work - hopefully our efforts are acknowledged - and that is the end of it. Our patrons or clients are working on their own project and they forge ahead. That is great - I'm glad to help.

But occasionally when working at government agencies I would see a new item and know that I had contributed to the research that went into my agency's response to the issue being discussed.

Today I saw a copy of a new publication by the company where I am working. It is a big deal book Climate Change: What You Can Do Now. Two of my colleagues as well as a former librarian from my company are acknowledged.

What I noticed is two quotes at the beginning of Chapter 1. I helped verify the citations for the quotes and one of them was tricky. I call it library serendipity!

The quote in question is an axiom that Canadian Hockey player and coach Walter Gretzky taught to his son Wayne The Great Gretzky, "Skate to where the puck is going to be." The quote is often attributed to the son and I could only find passing references to this as being something that Walter had said to coach and train his son. I checked the Wayne Gretzky Foundation website and couldn't find anything.

Then I happened to think, "There's got to be some librarian out there who is a hockey fan!" Heck, if SLA can have a Baseball Caucus, then some Librarian is a hockey fan.

So, with a little searching - I found her, Jennifer Smathers at SUNY Brockport. She helped me to confirm that the quote should be attributed to Walter Gretzky.

As I have always said, being a librarian doesn't mean I need to know everything; it means I need to know where to find the answer to anything.

Resources for Mobile Devices - Recap of SLA/DC Presentation

Context, Content, Contraptions – Resources for Mobile Devices

Paulette M. Hasier, PhD, Manager Research Services, Advanced Resource Technologies, Inc.

Last week the DC/SLA Chapter organized a great presentation on how the Research Services team worked with their IT folks to test, acquire and make available a variety of information resources on company-issued mobile devices.

The key is Context, Content and Contraptions:

Context:

Patrons want things to be simple:

• Easy search
• Single device
• One-stop shop

Patrons want services on better technologies using multiple devices in the workplace.

Content:

Public libraries are overwhelmed with demand – there are waiting lists for the ebook versions of latest best sellers. Corporate libraries are seeing increased demand for ebooks.

Contraptions:

The number of ebook readers doubled over the recent holiday season – 29% of adults now have some kind of e-reader and that number will only increase. At the end of 2011 smartphone sales surpassed PC sales.

Pitfalls & Solutions for adopting new technologies:

Goals:

• Make subscription resources mobile.
• Make news updates dynamic
• Maintain integrity of scientific data

Why is mobility important? Our patrons travel a lot for work – business trips, offsite meetings, testimony.

Rather than guess what the patrons needed – they conducted end-user interviews – not just surveys. They learned that their patrons wanted resources for the smartphone or a tablet – not laptops and not blackberrys.

Pitfall – Product primacy. Right now Apple rules the market so people are requesting those products – but will all the resources run on Apple products? One company got a top-down order for resources for the iPad with no prior discussion or consideration of what content was available for the device.

Other challenges:

• WiFi vs. 3G service – building wasn’t configured for WiFi – so 3G is the solution.
• authentication method – IP doesn’t work on mobile devices so in the end they went with username and password. Company IT is still working on some kind of pass-through connection that is seamless like IP authentication.
• Monitoring agency-specific news RSS feeds not working for mobile – solution – using social media to bridge the need for the short term.

Some lessons learned:

Don’t assume you know/understand what the users’ needs are.

Patrons want things to be simple – but they want the content that they want/need.

Science staff doesn’t want humanities content.

Patrons were happiest with an A-to-Z list of journals they could select from.

There was an expectation of more content being available – so provide information about what is and is not available.

If you are tied to a product, i.e. iPhone or iPad, aim to use applications and resources that are optimized for those products.

Dr. Hasier and her staff will give the following presentations:

Better Websites: Agile, Teens & Duct Tape! Computers in Libraries, Washington, D.C. - March 22, 2012

Impact of Technical Standards on Vocabulary & Metadata Projects - SLA Annual, Chicago - July 18, 2012

Gov on the Go: Mobile Apps - SLA Annual, Chicago - July 18, 2012

Genius and Innovative thinking

Recently I attended a presentation on original and innovative thinking given by Dr. Alan S. Gregerman.

In today’s interesting and challenging business environment, innovation is more important than ever. Companies of all shapes and sizes need to do a better job of tapping the real genius in all their people, by unlocking their curiosity and openness to a world filled with possibilities. That can also be applied to librarians and information professionals as we support our clients in government, business, academics and students, and the general public.

Alan is internationally known for his expertise in business strategy and innovation. Over the past 15 years, he has helped more than 300 teams create important innovations—with a 90 percent success rate.

Author of Surrounded by Geniuses, Alan takes his audience on a fun-filled journey to discover the keys to innovation and business success—one sure to challenge your understanding of your own potential, the sources of brilliant ideas, and the value of innovation to customers.

Dr. Gregerman was introduced by way of mentioning that he is an accomplished geographer and:

1. Loves to travel
2. Spends part of each year in a small Swedish fishing village
3. Is certified as a referee for both soccer and swimming

How do we enhance the services that we offer? How do we improve and innovate? This generally doesn’t happen in a meeting room just by a leader explaining the need for people to think outside the box.

In order to come up with new ideas or take other ideas and adapt them, improve ideas – we need to take what we know and reach out to others and combine our knowledge. We also need to get out and take a look at the world around us – nature, people, and commerce, and learn.

We need to focus on

1. My potential to be brilliant!
2. Where do ideas come from?
3. What does it mean to cast a wide net?

Curiosity is the key!

Innovation requires change over time and sometimes getting rid of the old, clunky stuff even though it is/was cool at the time it was new.

Dr. Gregerman pulled out something that made him the coolest guy at his college campus in 1979 – a Sony Walkman! At that time, with the Walkman (walkperson?) he was able to take his music everywhere – 12 songs! And if he had a backpack he could carry multiple cassette tapes. He was a party waiting to happen! But along came digital music players and with Apple technology and marketing – the ability to have thousands of songs available on multiple gadgets – iPod, iPad, iPhone, etc. With all that – the Walkman is a breakthrough relic of the past. It was wildly innovative – but it is a relic.

Observe nature part I

I studied Philosophy at one point and one of my professors said – If you want to be a good Aristotelian, then you need to observe nature! That’s what Aristotle did!

Dr. Gregerman told a story of how engineers at Nissan wanted to develop cars that won’t crash into each other. The tackled the problem from many angles but weren’t getting the results they wanted. One day, one of the engineers observed that bumblebees and schools of fish travel in tight formation and change directions suddenly and yet never crash into each other. They brought in experts who explained about the fish – fish continuously emit three kinds of signals that indicate location and keep them from colliding and allow them to signal turns.

Here’s how Dr. Gregerman tells it in his blog – Fishy Business.

Nissan has developed the EPORO Robot Car that is so far testing with great success.

Working with Geniuses

We often don’t know much about the people we work with. We probably doubt our own potential for genius so we don’t really expect the woman down the hall or the guy we see on the subway each day to be a genius. But many of them are, or could be if they tapped into their genius.

Why are they geniuses? They may be subject-matter experts. What makes a genius in business? They are people who hang out with customers and listen and work to understand the customer needs and interests.

Each day we pass by people, places and things that, if we were to stop and experience them could change our lives.

Observe nature part II

Swiss engineer, Georges de Mestral was out walking with his dog and noticed how burrs clung to the dog’s fur. He was fascinated – he studied; he talked to others; he imagined; he adapted. He invented Velcro!

Listen to Customers

Enterprise car rentals didn’t invent the car rental business – but he did take it from the travel sector to the local clients. Then he asked customers what they needed. The response was something like, Come pick me up at the mechanic after I drop off my car – and I’ll rent a car from you.

So Enterprise took the market lead simply by picking up their customers at the point where they needed the car.

Open the windows!

Expertise is good – but we need to stay open-minded. It is great to be well-grounded in a field – but we need to be open to the possibility that other fields can enlighten our own field of knowledge.

Curiosity is the key to our becoming remarkable!

What knowledge gaps exist with my customers? I need to stay with my customers to learn those gaps and learn how I might fill in those gaps.

To be effective – we need to stand behind what we do in a compelling way. LL Bean offers a lifetime guarantee of all of its products.

R. Adams Cowley Shock Trauma Center – University of Maryland Medical Center, Baltimore, MD.

The center runs 24/7/365.

The doctors realized that if they can treat a victim of serious accident within an hour, they have the strong likelihood of returning that person their normal, pre-accident life. There is a commitment on the part of the state of Maryland to have regional heliports that can transport patients and get them to the Medical Center within 40 minutes.

Further, the Medical Center is staffed at all times with expert staff and specialists trained in any and all areas that might be needed. That is on all three shifts, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year.

Now – my business may not be saving lives – but how important is my customer? How important is it when s/he is on hold waiting to speak to an associate or technician or professional and listening to a looped recording telling how important this call is to us?

Is it any wonder that customers lose patience and are angry by the time they talk to the associate, technician or professional?

Concluding:

Life is funny. For over 10,000 years people all over the world were swimming the free-style stroke. Only in Northern Europe, where they only knew the breast stroke – the slowest swimming stroke – did people care about competitive swimming.

Most of us are stuck doing a variation of the breast stroke. We stay in our comfort zone. We may tweak our product or service a little bit – but we will stick with the breast stroke.

It is time for us to get out of that comfort zone. Take a field trip! Go to a zoo, a museum, a park. Visit a factory or a laboratory where they do/make things completely unrelated to what you do.

Follow up:

I was able to get a copy of Dr. Gregerman’s book – Surrounded by Geniuses. It is full of stories like he told in his presentation. The book is only as good as the reader is – indulge your curiosity. Get out of the office. Take a field trip. Read an children’s book and imagine what could be!

Observations:

As someone who gives presentations from time to time – I was impressed by the way Dr. Gregerman gives his presentations.

At the front of the room was a table with an array of props – a stuffed dog, a teddy bear wearing a lab coat and stethoscope, a Spiderman doll, a UPS truck, other toy cars, a grocery bag from Whole Foods.

The props were excellent visuals and helped him to illustrate his stories. And that’s the other key – he was telling us stories packed with content. He wasn’t just telling us about sales and marketing effectiveness at a half dozen companies.

Gives me lots of ideas for the next time I get to give a presentation. There will be props! There will be music! There may even be dancing!

DC Librarians - meet me for dinner and let's dish!

Please join me on Thursday, February 16 along with other DC area librarians and information professionals at Cafe Leopold located at 3315 M Street, NW in Georgetown.

I will be your host and the folks at Cafe Leopold will have their usual array of delicious continental-style cuisine and yummy cocktails. This event is part of the DC SLA Dine Around series.

Topics will include - blogging, librarianship, people who aren't there and current affairs. We'll have a veritable Algonquin Roundtable!

If you haven't got anything nice to say about anybody, come sit next to me. - Alice Roosevelt Longworth (1884-1980)

Contact me to reserve a seat! Arrival Time is 6:30 PM

The Week that Was

It has been another busy week and I'm ready for the weekend!

A productive week at work that ended with a couple of completed research questions. One a biography for an executive at my company. We don't have access to Who's Who so I did some Internet searching and searched a couple databases for news stories and found enough to go on.

The other success at work was a meeting with a couple of staff members who were looking for some data. We have an excellent resource for the data and I have had to come up to speed pretty quickly. Fortunately the company rep is really nice and very helpful and just a phone call away. I sat down my clients and talked about the database a little and then ran a search similar to what they wanted. We looked at results and I played with the search and they were happy. That's when they asked a couple of questions that I couldn't answer.

Technology to the rescue -- actually - the database rep Molly to the rescue!! I called her up and she had a few free minutes to answer our questions and explain a couple things. We all learned something.

So, by the end of the day my clients had their data and we are ready for the weekend!

The lesson here:

• Prepare
• Present
• Listen
• Respond
• Get help as needed

In other professional news - I met with a committee of the DC Chapter of SLA. I am on the committee developing an employment portal. We have a new chair of the committee and she wanted to meet with everyone and keep the ball rolling.

We all got our tasks and mine is to revise the work I did previously and share it with everyone. Almost there! I will get that done this weekend and we will be one step closer. The thing is, I volunteered to do this at a time that I wasn't working. Then I started working and haven't had the free time to give to this project. But it is important to the chapter. So - back to work on that!

Fortunately Monday is a holiday for me. Time to remember Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

A fun website I just discovered!

Greetings readers!

Today I happened upon an interesting site. Primer - the Online Men's Magazine - Lifestyle of the Millennial Man. The article that brought me to the site was one titled - 10 Words You Mispronounce That Make People Think You’re an Idiot.

I have long cringed as perfectly nice people who are otherwise smart will order an expresso. It is actually spelled e-s-p-r-e-s-s-o and it is pronunced es-presso. So here the helpful author of Primer provides some useful tips on pronunciation.

Sometimes I just give up, as when someone wants to axe me a question.

One friend from college is a self-appointed grammar policeman. I don't go out of my way, but given the opportunity I will advise friends and acquaintances. But one doesn't need to be rude. I previously worked with a woman who had some odd ideas about pronunciations. What drove me crazy was her misuse of I instead of me as in Send a copy of the bill you Sylvia and I.

There was a delightful skit on Saturday Night Live with Phil Hartman as a man who ends up leaving his wife in some soap opera style scene for using expresso and several other commonly mispronounced words. I cringed throughout the sketch but laughed heartily!

Growing up there was a friend of the family, a good ole country boy who was a businessman and went on to serve as Sheriff and later County Commissioner. He said once that he likes to use big words but is afraid he'd use them out of pretext. (That was the joke - he knows the appropriate word is context - it is a pun.) Similarly, if was oblivious to something he would say he was walking around in Bolivia. My favorite word that he would purposely mispronounce is d-e-b-r-i-s. He would pronounce it derbus. I like that pronunciation - and think that de-bree sounds way too fancy for stuff that is just, well, derbus.

My dad was another wit. He had a secretary whom he would madden by referring to CDs as Compact CD Disk Records - those round shiny things you play in your Compact CD Disk Record machines.

Ah - that's fun. But that's different from people who don't know any better and will say nuke-you-lur instead of nu-clee-ur. My personal pet peeve is folks who use an ATM machine. No - just use the ATM - the M stands for Machine!

New Year - New Beginnings!

Happy New Year! I have wondered before how long do we get to use that greeting. The year is still pretty fresh and new at least into February I should think. But it really only works when we are seeing friends for the first time in the new year. Still, if I don't see someone until April I don't think my opening salvo would be Happy New Year!

It must be very different for our Aussie, New Zealand, African and South American friends who greet the new year in the middle of Summer. Here in Washington, DC we start the new year in some of our coldest days. I think we'd extend the celebration if it were beach weather!

Nothing on the horizon at the moment for 2012. But the best way to commit to a blog is to get started. For now it is good to be at work. Despite the cold air outside, it is a lovely, sunny day. The commute to work went smoothly. So far at work it is quiet but I expect business to pick up soon. The folks here remain friendly.

Once again I am reminded and thankful to working with people who aren't crazy! As my sister says - that's not something I will take for granted again!

May we all have a successful and productive 2012 - and may we be prepared for the road ahead!