Will Unwound

In this blog over the past month we’ve talked about the pain index with 1 being a pin prick on your pinkie and 10 being a nail hammered into your forehead.  We have also talked about the humor index with 1 being a slight courtesy chuckle and 10 being a falling down on your backside non-stop ten minute laugh riot.

But how about the stupidity index?  How does that work?  How about 1 being when you forget where you put your reading glasses when they’re propped up on the top of your head and 10 being locking the bookdrop in the middle of a snowstorm in Wisconsin?

Okay, that puts me solidly in the very stupid category. For 3 years in the mid 1970s I directed a little village library in the middle of Wisconsin.  This was 20 years before global warming.  It was very, very, very cold and very, very, very snowy.  Actually I could add about 3 more “very’s.” What did people do in the winter there for fun?  They went ice fishing.  Maybe someone in Wisconsin can explain the allure of that “sport” to me.  Wisconsin is the only place where when you go to a restaurant in the winter and ask if the fish is fresh or frozen the answer is always “yes.”  I went ice fishing once, froze my you know what off, and made a high level career decision to seek warmer climes.

The worst part of the Wisconsin winter was getting the bookdrop.  Our warm and cozy little Carnegie library sat on the corner of main and 1^st streets right in the middle of town.  The big metal bookdrop sat out by the curb.  You could deposit your books right into the drop without getting out of your car, which is what everybody did in winter.  Consequently, the bookdrop was always filling up and needing to be emptied. I had a staff of six people – two high school pages, two library aides, and two librarians with masters degrees in library science.

Talk about staff bickering.  It was terrible.  No one wanted to get the books out of the bookdrop especially in the middle of a snow storm.  I came up with 3 plans.  Plan #1 was that it was the job of the pages to get the bookdrop, but that didn’t work because they were in school  8 hours a day.  Duh…good thinking, Will.  Plan #2 was that we would all take turns, but this didn’t work because the two “professional” librarians felt that this was not in their job description and one of them was married to an attorney.  Plan #3, which I called my “thinking out of the box” solution,  was that we would lock the bookdrop while the library was open.  This meant that the patrons would have to walk their books into the library. 

Plan #3 worked for let’s see….maybe 3 hours.  That’s how long it took for the Mayor to call me up and say, “Will, my phone’s been ringing off the flippin’ hook (he didn’t say flippin’).  People are madder than blazes (he didn’t say blazes) about your flippin’ new bookdrop policy (he didn’t say flippin’).   You’d better get your butt (he didn’t say “butt”) out there and unlock the goldarned (he didn’t say goldarned) bookdrop before I get four Council votes to fire your flippin’ butt (he didn’t say flippin’ butt).

Guess who spent the entire winter getting his flippin’ butt out there to empty the goldarned bookdrop every morning, noon, and night?   That was plan #4.

What’s wrong with this picture?  My staff did not act as my eyes and ears and advise me about the consequences of my stupidity because they had a vested interest in keeping the bookdrop locked.  As a result  I almost got my derriere canned.

Fast forward a decade to an older but stupider director.  This time yours truly was directing a library in the middle of the hot Arizona desert.  Same situation, different temperature.  No one wanted to go out to the parking lot bookdrop and touch the little metal door in 120 degree heat.  So Mr. Moron decided once again to put the patrons to the test and lock the bookdrop during library hours.  In this case, the staff pulled his buns out of the oven within an hour of his folly.  That’s right within an hour the new bookdrop policy generated 30 complaints.  Thanks to a staff that marched into his office and advised him of his stupidity, our hero was saved the embarrassment of a phone call from the Mayor or City Manager.

Unwinders, this is where I have been coming from with regards to the frontline staff serving as admin’s ears and eyes.  My long administrative experience teaches me that there is nothing more valuable to a director than a frontline staff that has its finger on the pulse of the community and communicates this pulse to the director.

That’s why I emphasize that frontline staffers have 3 basic functions: a) provide great personal service, b) find a way to say yes by bending the rules without totally breaking them, and c) communicating with the patrons and reporting this information back to the director.

Every library where I have worked has long, frequent, and tedious meetings that are held supposedly so that admin and frontline can interact. 

Unwinders, this is not rocket science.  I don’t get the resistance to staff acting in an “eyes and ears” role.  Why do so many of you think this is inappropriate and even oppressive?

Your turn.  Have at it.

Unwinders, I am proud of you.  In my post, Visiting Guest or Illegal Alien,   a number of you really took me to the woodshed.  In a nutshell the issue was how libraries, especially libraries in convention cities, treat visitors.  I gave a vignette about how I was denied access to a computer in a downtown library in a major convention city because I was an out of state visitor who did not pay local taxes.  My rebuttal was that I did pay local taxes – bed tax, sales tax, and car rental tax.  Some of you called me out for bullying.  I didn’t think I was bullying the staffer but bullies often are the last to know.

So here are my issues:

• Shouldn’t frontline staffers be the eyes and ears of admin?  My point here is that in engaging the staffer in a dialog about the best practices of convention city libraries, my hope was that the staffer would take my point of view back to the director.  What’s wrong with that?  Is that badgering?
• Should frontline staff be given the flexibility to, in the words of one Unwinder, “find a way to say yes.“  Or are frontline staffers simply automatons who must always toe the admin line? 
• Is it really good public relations for a frontline staffer to say “I’m just following orders.”  Personally nothing makes me angrier when a government employee says that.  History is filled with all kinds of follies, tragedies, and fiascos where government employees just followed orders.  Nazi Germany is a very good example.
• What’s wrong with a patron taking the time to point out the flaws in a library’s policy.  It’s the height of insanity for convention city libraries to stiff visiting patrons especially since libraries are wonderful places for visitors who don’t want to truck i-thingies past airport security to check up on their e-mails and blogs.
• Aren’t all libraries inter-connected into some large library ecosystem, and so if you treat me like an illegal alien isn’t there a good chance I will get ticked and say something like “all librarians are petty bureaucrats with miserable lives and a need to wield petty power in a way that will annoy patrons?”  The point here is don’t librarians have an obligation to the larger profession to approach patrons as human beings and not just as local tax payers?
• If libraries see their future role as a bridge to the digital divide, isn’t it very important to provide that bridge to all patrons, irrespective of where they live and pay property taxes.

Do I sound ticked off?  It’s because I am.  This issue really resonates with me and while I was happy to see so many of you have the courage to take issue with me I think you guys are all wrong.  Now…it’s your turn and thanks for the vent.  I needed that.

I’ve have a question for your readers, if you’re interested in posting it. I’m an occasional unwinder but read regularly. I’m in a time of transition, and need some advice!

I’m currently the Head of Reference at a city library with a total of about 45 employees. I’ve just been offered the Assistant Director position, and I’m going to take it. Good news, right? And I really am excited about the possibilities. The problem is that I love my current position, and there is a real sense of loss at leaving it. I’m involved not only in reference desk work, but collection development, programming, and managing employees. It is diverse and busy, and I love it. But in our library, the Admin types are typically fairly removed from the rest of the staff – something I wouldn’t want.  I’d love to at least do some time on the reference desk every week,  but no administrator has stayed working the desk before. As I make this transition, I’d love your input, Unwinders: What makes a great administrator? If you could describe them – how involved are they with the various departments? Do you see them much? Can you just walk in and talk to them anytime?  

Thanks for your input!

Frontline Librarian (who is about to not be quite so frontline).

I love books about the early Middle Ages.  To me this is the most interesting part of the history of Western Civilization.  Why?  It’s because the period that preceded the Middle Ages – the fall of the Roman Empire  - is the closest thing that we have in history to an apocalypse on a large geographic scale.

How do people recover from an apocalypse?  When  the political and military institutions that hold your world together crumble and die, and when the economic and physical infrastructure that bind your population centers together deteriorate and decay, how do you go about the process of rebuilding something resembling a civilized society?  That’s what the Middle Ages were all about.

So what institutions sprang up in the post apocalyptic Dark Ages?  There were basically two: the feudal manor (which became an enclave of political, military, and economic security for the hierarchy of its members) and Christendom (which became an enclave of educational, spiritual, and charitable security for the hierarchy of its members).

The interesting thing about the Middle Ages is that as a period it seems more foreign to our modern sensibilities than does the ancient world.   To buttress that point it’s instructive to consider that according to just about every reputable historian the modern world did not emerge from the dark shadows of the early Middle Ages until there was a Renaissance of ancient learning.

It’s precisely because the early Middle Ages were such a shadowy period that have left us little in the way of enduring architecture, artifacts, historical documents, and literature, that such a rich and speculative literature has grown up around it.    I’m thinking of authors like Tolkien (The Ring Trilogy), Sir Walter Scott (Ivanhoe), Tennyson (Idylls of the King), and Lewis (the Narnia books).  They have mined the shadows of medieval myth and legend to bestow some wonderful stories upon us.

It is in this rich cultural milieu that Ellis Peters creates a first rate mystery series featuring a Benedictine monk named Cadfael who tends his herbal garden and says his prayers at the Shrewsbury Abbey in western England.  The first book in the series, A Morbid Taste for Bones, sets the pace for the other mysteries to follow.  In a word I loved this book. 

Peters does a meticulous job of capturing the swirling sense of chaos that prevails in the early Middle Ages.  The book takes place during the period in England that historians have dubbed “The Anarchy” because it was characterized by the ongoing struggle for the crown by two warring factions representing King Stephen and Empress Maud.

It is within this chaotic framework that Cadfael serves as a steadying force of reason.  As a veteran of the Crusades, he has seen the world and learned a great deal.  As a herbalist/healer he approaches the chaotic conundrums of his abbey and his society with a much needed dose of rationality and skepticism.  

The problem at hand in this book is the attempt by the overbearing and holier than thou Prior Robert to seize the bones of Saint Winifred from her resting place of two centuries in Wales and transport them to Shrewsbury where they will basically serve as a tourist attraction for wayfaring pilgrims.  The murder of a rich Welsh noble who vehemently opposed the Prior’s nefarious plot, sends Cadfael  into overtime as a homicide detective and a diplomat of peace in an increasingly volatile setting.  That he is able to untie the Gordian knot of the murder and diffuse the Saint Winifred crisis at the same time is a testimony to both sides of Cadfael’s personality, the logical thinker and the faithful believer.

As intriguing a character as Cadfael is, I was more impressed with Peters’ depiction of the inner workings of the Benedictine Monastery in Shrewsbury.  Here we see the main occupational hazard of the medieval church hierarchy – pride and sanctimony.  Fortunately it is balanced by the humility and good will of Brother Cadfael.

A Morbid Taste for Bones gets 5 shining stars (out of 5).

Today,  Unwinders,  is Fantasy Friday, and today’s topic is “what one little thing can libraries do to make the world a better place?”

Speaking of fantasies, in my travels this month I ended up in Brigadoon.  Oh, you could also call it Shangri-La or even Eden if you like but for me Brigadoon fits best because my hometown, Pitman, New Jersey, is the place where time forgot. 

Pitman is nestled comfortably in the middle of the picturesque South Jersey truck farming region.  This is the area that produces many of the tomatoes that go into Campbell’s soup.  What could be more wholesome and heartwarming?  Whoever named New Jersey the Garden State must have lived in Pitman because practically everybody there has a flower or vegetable garden in the backyard.  You can probably guess the town’s motto: Everyone Loves Pitman.

Fortunately, I get back to Pitman from time to time to visit my mother.  I’m always amused to read accounts of writers who travel back to their hometowns after years of absence.  Inevitably they are disillusioned by all the changes.

Whenever I visit Pitman, however, I marvel at how it sparkles anew with a freshness that shows off its past in a timeless way.  Quite simply, the town is a living time capsule.  To me it looks almost exactly as it looked 40 years ago.  The houses are in apple pie order and the darkly shaded front yards are neatly clipped, trimmed, raked, and manicured.  Some of the stores in the downtown may have changed, but Broadway Road remains the busy, vibrant soul of the town, and the beautifully restored Broadway Theater still does a big box office business.  How many places still have that?

In the middle of the downtown is the public library.  During my boyhood, this modest building was my second home.  I spent many a long summer day there leisurely browsing the stacks and then eagerly reading the books that caught my eye.  It’s the first place I visit when I’m back in town.

Today the library is directed by Sharon Furgason a dynamic woman who definitely has her finger on the pulse of the community.  She coordinates a staff of friendly people who treat visitors with respect and consideration.  You have no problem getting on a computer in the Pitman Library!  For free! Huzzah!

But they also have one new little feature that at first didn’t really intrigue me when I entered the doorway.  They have placed one of those zillion piece jigsaw puzzles of a landscape on a table near the entrance.  On leaving, however, I sat down and fiddled with a few pieces, filled in some of the landscape, and then left with a smile on my face.  I felt like I had accomplished something wholistic with my day.

The next day a bit more of the puzzle had been completed and again I sat down and fiddled with a few more pieces.  A light bulb suddenly went off in my head.  In our era of twittering and texting, when libraries are in a race to keep up with technology, my hometown library has discovered something important:   It’s not all about technology…it’s really about people connecting with people.

 Here’s my point: the allure of the puzzle is not fiddling with the pieces, it’s actually joining into the fun of a funky community project.  What a brilliant idea for a library.  I felt like a Pitmanite again.  Brilliant.

Now it’s your turn: what one little thing can a library do to make the world a better place?

Happy Thanksgiving everyone.

Recently, I spent five lovely peaceful days at my mother’s rambling old colonial house in southern New Jersey.  She has a lovely yard and an even lovelier wooded nature preserve behind her house. 

Usually when I visit my mother I spend time exploring the big old house and looking through artifacts and photographs from my past.  This time I was content to settle into my departed father’s old recliner and look out the window at the falling leaves.

Yes, you young people, there will come a time in your life when you won’t need anything but a blue sky of falling leaves to make you happy and contented. 

Well, that’s not exactly true.  A sky full of falling leaves means nothing  if there is no one there to share it with.  That’s what I’m thankful for this year.  I have a wonderful mother who is just as contented as I am to sit quietly and watch the leaves fall.

What are you thankful for?

I am back home in the paradise that is also referred to as Livermore, California.  The great thing about Livermore is that it is not all the places where I have been.  It’s home.

Over the past three months I’ve been all over the country…north, south, east, and west.  My wanderings were fun and adventurous while they lasted, but now they are over for a while. 

What did I learn?

The number one thing I learned is that librarians have their act together.

You need to know that I am an unconventional traveler.  I am Mr. Technolite when I’m on the road.  I don’t carry a cell phone, ithingy, laptop, walkie talkie, or can with a string.  A big part of the fun of traveling is being out of the loop.  The Odyssey would have been totally ruined if Odysseus had a blackberry.

When I do want to be in touch there is the local public library.  What better way is there to go from sea to shining sea than to follow the yellow brick road of libraries?

Most librarians “get” the whole visitor/traveler concept especially if they work in cities that cater to and thrive off the convention/conferencing industry.  I visited seven different libraries and with one exception was treated as a real human being with real informational needs when I asked to sign up for some computer time.   I might have had to leave some i.d. at the reference desk or sign up for a temporary library card, but these were hassle free experiences.  These traveler friendly libraries made me feel good about all libraries.

But there was one library where I was treated as an alien, not a visitor.  Maybe it was just the shrew whom I happened to encounter, although she repeated over and over again that she was simply implementing library policy.  Here is a snippet of our dialogue:

“Hi, I’m speaking at a conference in town and would like to use a computer for a few minutes to check my blog and my e-mail.”

“Sorry, if you don’t have a library card from this library you can’t use a computer.”

“But I’ll only be a minute and I see that there are five computers open right now.”

“Sorry, it’s library policy.”

“But it is okay for me to browse through any books, magazines, or newspapers, right?”

“Right.”

“So why can’t I browse through the internet?”

“Because we have a limited number of computers that are always in demand and you don’t pay local taxes.”

“Au contraire.  In the past two days I paid taxes on my hotel room, my meals, and my souvenirs.”

“Those taxes don’t go to the library.”

“How do you know?”

“Sir, if you don’t leave now, I will call security.”

So I left feeling bad about this library and this librarian but feeling really good about the other six libraries where I was treated as a visiting guest and not an illegal alien.  You don’t really appreciate good service until you are the victim of really bad service.  This encounter made me embarrased to be a librarian.

How do you treat visitors at your library?

Note from Will: Long time Unwinder Jessa has done it again.  I got home very late last night from my long journey to the east coast and did not relish composing a post for today.  So…I opened up my inbox and what to my wandering eyes should appear but a new cartoon from Jessa.  Was this an accidental coincidence or a metaphysical connection?  It’s your call.  I will tell you that before I went to bed I prayed that someone (not necessarily Jessa) would send me a guest post.  Hmmmm.

Anyway, if you missed part one of  the saga of Jessa’s hapless but determined library school student you can find it by clicking on guest post #14.  If you have already seen part one then by all means go directly to part two by clicking on Jessa.

Enjoy some dark humor on a cold November day.  All I’m going to say is that I think this cartoon is freaking hilarious and gives new meaning to President Obama’s notorious declaration that the 800 zillion dollar stimulus bill would result in a lot of  “shovel ready jobs.”  Who knew he was referring to library school graduates.  I give Jessa’s new cartoon a solid 10 on the humor index.

By the way, Jessa Neiweem holds a B.A. in Rhetoric and an M.S. in Library and Information Science, both from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. She most recently worked as a Young Adult Services Librarian in Cody, Wyoming. Her writing has been published in Mayday, Tarpaulin Sky, Hayden’s Ferry Review, and 27 rue de fleures. When she isn’t writing or pillaging thrift stores, she enjoys hooping and vegan baking. She lives in Seattle with three cats and a long-distance runner. 

Dear Unwinders,

My letter to you is in part a vent.  I admit that.  But it is also a sincere request for information.

I am what is called a “Library Aide II” at my public library.  I have a B.A. degree in sociology from our state university, but I do not have a Masters Degree in Library Science.  Therein is the rub.

I have been a Library Aide II for 20 years.  In that time period I have broken in probably 15 or 16 newly minted, wet behind the ears “professional”  librarians who have the good fortune to have the MLS degree.   Some of these novices have been high and mighty poseurs who have treated me like their ugly step sister, while others have been sincerely appreciative of the help that I have given them in introducing them to the real world of librarianship as opposed to the phoney baloney they got from out of touch library school professors.

I am an honest person.  My 20 years of experience easily trumps their graduate library degree and yet their paycheck trumps mine.  Am I resentful?  Of course.  It would be hard not to be.

On the other hand, I am realistic.  I know the rules of the game.  I did not make the effort to get my MLS.  I put family first.  As a single mom, I had never the time nor the money to go back to graduate school.  I get that.  I have paid the price for making a bad husband choice in my early 20s.  It’s my fault and I admit it. 

Still, I feel perfectly accurate in my assessment of my skills versus the skills of the rookie “professional” librarians.

My question is this: really in this day and age what skills, talents and abilities does library school give you that you can’t learn on the job?

That’s my question.  I guess I have to satisfy myself one way or another, and I truly want to hear from all of you with degrees.  Did your degree really make a difference in any way other than as a union card that gave you entrance into the grand caste of professionalism?

Sincerely,

Just Curious

Writing a daily blog is an exercise in discipline.

I have my deadline – midnight Greenwich Mean Time or 4PM Pacific time. 

Sometimes I’m pleased with what I write, sometimes not.  Consistently, however, I am pleased with the Unwinder responses.  You are the folks who motivate me to make that daily deadline.  I can’t wait to see what your reactions will be.

Our Sunday meditation session is easily the weekly segment that I most enjoy.  If there is an area that has become very difficult for folks to talk about in this country, it is religion.  Emotions run high on both sides of the fence.  But it’s an area that librarians need to be able to discuss because of the fact that libraries are often in the middle of the crossfire in the cultural battleground where the flag of religion often waves.

What bothers me most is that it doesn’t have to be a battleground.  The war of words that goes on between religious and non-religious folk is ultimately futile, counterproductive, and not really representative of the vast majority of people on both sides of the great spiritualistic/materialistic divide.

Most religious people that I know are sincere and earnest in their beliefs, but they do not want to be ridiculed as being irrational, illogical, superstitious, medieval, or deluded.  Most non-religious people that I know of are sincere and earnest in their beliefs, but they do not want to be damned as being evil, possessed, selfish, angst ridden, or inherently unhappy.

Within the library profession, I have felt the vibrations from both sides of that divide with a great deal of intensity.   Hence my desire to create a forum where we can talk things out honestly, forcibly, but respectfully.

This week my message is an easy one.  We are entering my very favorite week of the year – Thanksgiving week.  Why do I love Thanksgiving?  Simple… it is a day devoted to giving thanks, which is if not strictly speaking a spiritual concept is at least a metaphysical one.  It is a concept that everyone on both sides of the God divide can celebrate. 

It’s a holiday that allows us to reflect upon the meaning of our lives without the pressures of gift giving and without the prompting of a particular sect or religion.  It cuts across all belief and non-belief systems and ethnicities.  It’s a day when we can all join hands, forget about our root differences, and appreciate each others company.

Enjoy.