Will Unwound

NOTE FROM WILL: It has come to my attention from my mother (and others) that the subscription function of this blog has been wonky lately.  In fact, Mom just sent me an e-mail with the dreaded four  letters: “R U ok?”  I immediately called her and asked her the cause of her concern about me.  She said she hadn’t received an email subscription blog notice from Will Unwound for two days and wondered if I was ill or dead.  After reassuring her of my good health and happiness (I shot par yesterday), I realized I should let all of you Unwinders,  who subscribe to this blog, know that I blog every single weekday and once on the weekend. If you do not receive a subscription notice on any given day  by email, just go too www.willmanley.com and you will get my daily blog post. I try to post my daily blogs at 5PM Pacific time, but sometimes I get behind a slow foursome on the golf course and get delayed.  I have found in the year and a half that I have been doing Will Unwound that the subscription function is not all that reliable.  Anyway, I am still alive.  Rumors of my death are premature.  But if I really don’t post a blog for 48 hours, you may safely assume that I am dead and engaged in the ultimate performance review with the Higher Authorities. Take care, Mom, and all of you Unwinders who subscribe to Will Unwound.

HOW TO WRITE A RESUME

Wednesday’s how not to do a resume post got really, really heavy traffic.  Most of the comments were positive, but there were some naysayers…not as many as I expected but there were some skeptics about my approach. 

Just in the last half hour I got challenged by three people to go from the negative to the positive.  Now that you have told us what not to do, it is only fair that you tell us what to do.  Of course there is a delicious irony to this because one of my “do nots” is do not consult a how to write a resume book.  You can spot a canned resume a mile away. 

When it comes to a resume writing, I can’t do it for you.  So let me show you the resume that I use as a way to promote myself to get hired to do presentations at staff development days and state library conferences:

William L. Manley

RETIREMENT YEARS

Current Obsession – To perfect my golf swing in order to represent the library profession in a respectable way on the golf courses of the San Francisco Bay area.

Hobbies – Hiking, golf (hiking gone bad), living a green lifestyle, listening to Mozart, reading Finnegans Wake, and rehabbing a raccoon infested property.

Continuing Library Interest – To spread good cheer to librarians everywhere.

PRE-RETIREMENT YEARS

Education – BA- Notre Dame;  MLS-Univ. of Denver;  MPA – Arizona State.

Work Experience – 30 years as a public librarian and 7 years as a city manager.

PAST LIVES

700 BC – Reference Librarian at the Alexandrian Library

950 AD – Monastic Scribe at the Lindisfarne Library

1867 AD – Janitor at the Library of Congress

PUBLICATIONS

9 Books - None of them appeared on the New York Times bestseller list and none of them were translated into other languages, but all 9 got rave reviews from my son Stephen on Amazon.com. They are all out of print and out of stock but there are still boxes of them in my mother’s attic, and you can get several of them for less than a quarter from ebay.

628 Monthly Columns 

 1980-1992 – “Facing the Public” – Wilson Library Bulletin

 1992 to present – “Will’s World” – American Libraries

  1992 to present – “The Manley Arts” – Booklist

How to contact me:

 Click on:  speaking engagement to find out how to hire me for a presentation.

In summary here are the things I tried to accomplish in my resume:

• Create something unique to me.
• Create something unique to me.
• Create something unique to me.

Has it been effective?  Yes, I have gotten plenty of speaking engagements since I retired.

Would my resume work for you?  No, of course not.  You have different strengths, talents, and experiences than me.

However, if I were a newbie coming out of Library School this year, here is what I would put on my resume.

• Will work every night and weekend.
• Will make it a point to get along with all co-workers, supervisors, and patrons.
• Will not say one word about what I learned in library school.
• Will spend the first six months listening, listening, and listening to others on staff.
• Will empty waste baskets, clean toilet rooms, take care of sick kids, and shelve books.
• Will bring in 2 dozen donuts every Friday.
• Will sign a contract committing me to indentured servitude for the first year.
• Will  not mention the words “social media” for at least six weeks.
• Will not wear purple lip gloss, more than one nose ring, or an orange streak in my hair.
• Will play Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny for the first 3 years of my employment.

But that’s me.  Your mileage might vary.

Been struggling with what to write for Banned Books week and so I kept procrastinating, which is one of my core competencies.

As often happens,  my procrastination was productive.  Yesterday an Unwinder (who prefers to be unnamed) sent me a link to a new beefcake calendar of librarian hunks in various phases of undress.  I clicked on the link…Men of the Stacks…and instantly smiled.  Then I chuckled.  Then I laughed.  Then I laughed out loud.

Here’s my take on the calendar.  It has just the right ratio of skin and irony to make it something that I thought was impossible: another beefcake calendar that is not a hackneyed cliché.

The reason behind the calendar is expressly articulated with these words:

We know what people think: Dewey, glasses, shushing, books, hairbuns, Party Girl and card catalogs.  Yes, we know what people think.  We know that the American, library profession is approximately 80% White and 72% female; and we know that tens of thousands of librarians are expected to reach age 65 in the next 5 years.  We also know that this is not us.

There is an entire population of professional librarians out there who disagree with the way the library profession is perceived in contemporary media outlets and in the historical consciousness of the American mind.  Different people and different associations will use different means to try to change those perceptions.  This is ours.

The Men of the Stacks project was first conceived a couple of years ago after learning of the publication of another library-themed calendar.  Our first reaction to that calendar?  “Well, cool but…where are all the men?”  There was another, earlier calendar that featured only male librarians, but we felt it didn’t quite capture the way we saw ourselves.  In both cases, either the stereotype was reinforced or it didn’t go far enough in breaking free of it.

One of our models, Von, captured the spirit of this calendar beautifully:

“We can’t just leave it to others to tell the people who we are; that’s why the stereotypes about librarians continue to flourish.  We have to be the ones to go out there and tell people who we are. It’s not enough to complain about inaccurate images of librarians; we must be able to present alternative, positive images in movies, books and, yes, blogs.” — Filipino Librarian

Now, he adds, calendars should be added to the list.  So, who are we?  What do we want to tell you about who we are?  What are these alternative images?  Easy.  We are, or course, professionals.  We are educators, programmers, project managers, entrepreneurs, program coordinators, contractors, consultants, and speakers.  We are academics.  We are authors, diversity officers, historians, administrators, deans, professors, and researchers.  We are creatives.  We are musicians, bakers, painters, and storytellers.  We are athletes, yogis, gym-rats, runners, and hikers.  We are passionate.  We are dog-lovers, radicals, conservatives, Christians, and Buddhists.  We are in our twenties.  We are in our forties.  We are in relationships.  We are perpetual bachelors.  We are privileged beings who try to use their advantages to better the lives of others.

Who are we?  We are The Men of the Stacks.

So why do I like the calendar?  Simple.  I like it because it is an image buster with a sense of humor. 

Questions of the day:

1. Who is your favorite model?
2. Do you like the calendar and why or why not?
3. Do you think it is appropriate to display on the bulletin board on the staff lunch room or on the bulletin board in the public area next to the reference desk?

Have fun.  What better way to celebrate Banned Books Week than to ogle librarian hunks?

Oh…I almost forgot…as lead lab rat in the Unwinders Tavern (and by the way as I write this Boris is hanging the calendar up behind the bar) I’ll answer the questions first.

1. I like Mr. September the best because his dog looks exactly like my old dog Hansie who chewed up my baseball glove and gave me a dog complex for life.
2. Yes, I like the calendar because it doesn’t take itself too seriously.
3. Both!  The public should have some fun with this too.

Yesterday’s comments were quite interesting.  Jeannine suggested that perhaps my proclivity for writing in bullet points has something to do with the fact that as an administrative lifer I was subject to the torture of reading thousands, perhaps tens of thousands, of resumes.  Maybe.

Actually …yes!  Jeannine is right. I do have a thing about resumes.

The fact is that the words punishment and resume are for me synonymous. Those terrorists in Gitmo?  I say forget waterboarding. Make them read librarian resumes as the preferred form of enhanced interrogation.  When it comes to best practices, you can’t exceed resume reading for torture.

I don’t think I ever really saw a resume I liked.  Every resume I ever read had at least one flaw.  Most had many flaws.  Here is the list:

• Balderdash -  Balderdash is by far the most common and most egregious resume flaw.  I don’t know which is worse – nuanced balderdash or obvious balderdash.  Both insult your intelligence.  Obvious balderdash is an insult for obvious reasons.  Nuanced balderdash is an insult because the resume writer thinks he/she is smart enough to slip one by you.  No, Mr. New MLS, I am not that stupid. Your six week internship in the reference room did not provide you the opportunity to “engage the community in new social media innovations.”

Note: All the flaws listed below are variations on the theme of balderdash:

• Fancy covers – Can you say 9^th grade?  Everyone who ever attended an American public high school knows that the time worn way to try to trick up a really mediocre research paper is to put a flashy cover on it.  It didn’t work in high school, so why do you think it will work in the library job market?  Do you really think library administrators are that dense?  Sorry, dudette, your flashy cover goes into the recycle bin.  I don’t even need to read the resume to know that you’re a dunce.  Thanks for saving me a few extra minutes of pain.
• Multiple pages – There is a second problem with fancy covers: they bind up more than one page.  Whoever heard of a fancy cover binding up a single page?  How flagrantly stupid are the multiple page resume writers?  Do they not know that their resume is one of 300 for a measly part time cataloging job?  A resume is not an autobiography.  Yes, we are in an age of narcissism, but duderinos,  no one really cares about the summer job that you worked between your junior and senior years of high school.   Keep your resume to one page if you want to be considered.  If you can keep it to a half a page, you might even get the job.  
• Fancy job titles – Good grief: a reference librarian is not an information services coordinator;  a cataloging assistant is not a “Metadata Specialist;”  a shelver is not a Library Collections Organizer; an Office Clerk is not an Administrative Systems Supervisor (although I like the acronym); a tech grunt is not a “Transliteracy Instructior;” a receptionist is not a “Maker of First Impressions:” and a library director is not a CEO.
• Career Goals – Tell your career goals to your library school professors.  I don’t care if you want to devote your life’s work to bridging the digital divide in Central America.  I want you to work the reference desk  two nights a week and every other weekend right here in River City.
• Life Goals – Please.  It’s nice that you want to reach the apex of Maslow’s hierarchy by attaining a functional sense of self actualization, but how are you at showing someone where the men’s room is?
• GPA – No, no, no, a thousand times no.  No one cares.  In fact straight A students make me very nervous.
• Mover and Shaker – Think twice before you start reciting a litany of your honors and awards.  There’s a good chance that your hiring authority casts a jaundiced eye at librarians who love to self promote.
• ALA Committee Work – How clueless are you?  If you are deeply involved in ALA, how much time do you have left to fix printer paper jams?

Finally, here’s the first (and last) word on resumes:

• Manley’s First Law of Resumes – There is an inverse relationship between the length of the resume and the strength of the candidate.  Obfuscation is the tool of the marginally qualified. Flagrant obfuscation is the tool of the completely unqualified. 

A very observant Unwinder (Steven) made a comment yesterday about my pronounced proclivity to use bullet points.  I was wondering when someone would notice this and call me on it.

First, a little background.  I am not inherently a bullet point writer.  I didn’t pick the habit up until my 8 year stint as a city manager which didn’t start until I was 50.  One of the reasons I got the job (against all odds) was that I decided to embrace my background as a librarian rather than to downplay it. 

Who ever heard of library science as a proper preparation for city management? That’s what my city council wanted to know.  So I gave them my list:

• E-government Experience – You want to implement e-government?  The library is way ahead of all the other departments.
• Cost Effectiveness – You want the biggest bang for your buck?  The library has the lowest of all the departmental budgets but serves more people, and is the most heavily trafficked municipal building by far.
• Community Involvement – You want someone who knows the community?  The library is in the middle of the city whereas city hall is downtown on the northern fringes of the city.
• Diversity – You want a government that connects to all points of the diversity spectrum in the city?  Unlike every other department, the city serves all constituencies on a daily basis – the well educated, the poorly educated, the rich, the poor, the middle class, the young, and the old. 
• Service Effectiveness – You want positive approval ratings from your constituents?  The library was second only to the fire deparment in the last citywide survey (sorry but we don’t save lives and deliver babies).
• Information and Communication – You want an improved flow of information between the departments and the council?  Library science is really information science, and a city manager is really an information broker.  He doesn’t make the important policy decisions, but his job is to provide the information the council needs to make intelligent, rational, and data driven choices.

Of all these points, the Council was most interested in the issue of “information and communication.”  Here were their concerns:

• Snow Jobs – They felt that some departments were snowing them with a blizzard of data, charts, and verbiage.
• Bare bones – They felt that other departments were giving them too little information.
• Rubber Stamping – They felt that they were not getting enough realistic options and that departments were skewing their information to a pre-ordained recommendation.

In essence, the Council felt that senior staff was running the city, not the council.  The problem came to a head when a public works employee made a presentation that consisted of two illustrations on a street repair issue.  Picture #1 showed the street in a beautiful, functional form.  Picture #2 showed the street caving into an 18 foot sink hole.  Somehow the council didn’t feel they really had any options in between.

In fixing the problem, I told staff to do two things:

• Restrict reports to one or two pages. Anything else would rightly be considered a snow job. 
• Crystallize data points and action options with bullet points in bold, italicized print. Bullet points are the perfect format for busy people to read and digest information without having to wade through verbal camouflage.   Bullet points basically jump out at you, which is precisely what elected officials need.

So that is how I became addicted to bullet points.  How do you find bullet points:

• A concise, no nonsense way to get your message across.
• One more inelegant method of communicating in our twitterpated world.
• A way to reach the modern reader who no longer reads but scans.
• Sometimes appropriate; sometimes just too impersonal.

Before you answer that, consider Elizabeth Barret Browning’s famous poem in bullet form:

HOW DO I LOVE THEE?

• To  the depth, breadth, and height my soul can reach
• To everyday’s most quiet need
• Freely
• Purely
• Passionately
• With breath, smiles, and tears
• Even better after death

Had a birthday over the weekend.  A milestone birthday to boot…#62.  I now officially qualify for social security.  Here’s where a library background comes in handy.  To take social security or not to take that is the question.  There is a lot of research involved in making the decision.  Basically it’s a crap shoot in which you are betting against your life expectancy.  Essentially this is what I discovered after playing with all the numbers : if I live to the age of 90 I should hold off taking social security until I am 70.  If I live to the age of 78, I should hold off until I am 66.  If I have less than 10 years left to live I should take the money now and begin a 10 year party.

While I was playing with dollar signs and life expectancy numbers, my phone rang.  It was my son Dave: “ Happy Birthday.  We are going to the Berkeley Public Library.  Meet us there in two hours.”  My son David is a genius.  He knows that my idea of perfect birthday is to visit a library I have never been in. 

Birthdays are among other things a time to reflect, and as I was reflecting, it occurred to me that Berkeley was the perfect place for a person of my generation to enter into the social security phase of life.  In essence, Berkeley is the epicenter of the baby boom generation.  The Berkeley Free Speech Movement in 1964 changed everything.  It’s the place where the famous 1960s really got started. It basically shaped a generation that would change the world by questioning authority and challenging tradition.

I was intrigued to see that Berkeley hasn’t changed much over the years.  Its core streets are still a carnival of human activity.  It’s also a place where independent bookstores not only survive but thrive.  My big takeaway was a street vendor selling posters proclaiming that THE REAL TERRORISTS WEAR SUITS.  Although I must admit that I felt naked walking around without a beard. Naturally the library itself was a beehive of activity.  A good number of people were congregated around the Banned Books display.  I can’t imagine any book being banned in Berkeley.  Dave and his brood gave me a much coveted Heritage Press edition of Call of the Wild, but in reality my best present was being read to in the children’s room by my grandson Liam and granddaughter Audrey. 

My birthday weekend ended with a card from my son Stephen written by him on behalf of my other two grandchildren, Connor and Sophia.  Here’s what they had to say:

Dear Grandpa,

You’re 62 years old which means you know so many things to teach us.  For example:

• How to dial a rotary phone
• How to wiggle a t.v. antenna
• How to read a roadmap
• Why seatbelts are a bad idea
• The virtues of a flat-top haircut.
• Why movies are better without sound
• How to work a modem
• That microfiche is not something that swims in an aquarium.
• How to use a card catalog

Yes, Grandpa, it’s good to know that you’ll help us figure out how to survive in a complex world.

The topic around the household this week was poetry.  My grandson Connor had to memorize his first poem for kindergarten:

• I’m Glad

I’m glad the sky is painted blue

And earth is painted green

With such a lot of nice fresh air

All sandwiched in between.

No, it’s not Shakespearean but it is a start, and he did very well with it.  In reading to my grandchildren,  I have discovered that little children have a greater feel for poetry than most adults.  It’s all about words.  The little ones love to learn new words and explore interesting ways to string them together.  That’s why Mother Goose will always be popular.  Her poems are simply irresistible.

Dickery, dickery, dock;

The mouse ran up the clock;

The clock struck One,

The mouse ran down,

Dickery, dickery, dock.

I am paging through the Jessie Willcox Smith edition of Mother Goose and irresistible is really the best way to describe it.  Who cares if the words are old fashioned and the images are of another century…there is a kind of genius to the way rhyme, meter, and message all come together in snug, little packages bursting with verve.  And isn’t that a good definition for what a poem really is…a snug little package of words with verve.

Which brings me back to Shakespeare, whom I have always thought was Mother Goose for adults.  Just as the poems of Mother Goose will never fade away, Shakespeare’s poetry  is the North Star of our literary firmament.  He is the author against whom all other authors are measured.  No one else even comes close.  Consider for a minute the Shakespearean body of work: tragedy, comedy, and history.  Try to name another author who was the master of all three emotions.  He can make you laugh, cry, and ponder. If that’s not enough,  consider his ability to turn a phrase.  What other author created so many quotations that have become an integral part of our everyday idiom?

Okay, you may want to pit God against Shakespeare if you believe that the Bible is the inspired word of God.  It has characters that are just as compelling as Shakespeare’s, it has language which is every bit as elevated and eloquent as Shakespeare’s, and it has stories that are even more absorbing and meaningful than Shakespeare’s.  Where Shakespeare gets the edge over God is in the humor department.  Yes, the Bible has it’s Seinfeldian moments (remember Sarah’s laugh over learning that she would bear a child in her 90s) but not nearly as many as the Bard. 

Another thing that the Bible and God have in common is that they both can appeal to children if properly presented.  With the Bible that is fairly obvious: the garden of Eden, Noah’s Ark, the Tower of Babel, and the miracles of Christ have all the otherworldly elements of wonder that children love and understand. 

But Shakespeare for kids…that’s not so obvious.  Well, let me tell you a little story.  Today I was spending two full hours alone with Connor when he requested that I repeat my litany of scary stories.  These are all tall tales taken from youth: Witchy Witch who lived in a little cottage at the end of my street, the “Wiggle Lady” across the street who some people in the neighborhood thought was a ghost,  and old man Thompson who turned into a werewolf if you put a foot on his lawn.  These stories are good but they really don’t hold up so well after 20 or 30 tellings.

So today, knowing that Connor was proud about memorizing his poem, I decided to pull out my Riverside Shakespeare and show him what poetry and what scary really are.  I introduced him to the weird sisters of Macbeth … the witches of doom.  He was immediately drawn in with these lines:

• By the pricking of my thumbs,

 something wicked this way comes.

Then I drew him in even further with these lines which I like to think of as the dark side of Mother Goose:

• For a charm of pow’rful trouble

Like a hell-broth boil and bubble,

Double, double, toil and trouble,

Fire burn and cauldron bubble.

Now that I had him hooked I chanted the ingredients of the witches’ brew: fillet of snake, eye of newt, toe of frog, tongue of dog, lizard’s leg, owl’s wing, finger of babe, scale of dragon, tooth of wolf, root of hemlock, and eyeball of boy.  Very, very tasty…no?

As I chanted the ingredients in my most nefarious voice, wide eyed Connor drew closer and closer to me and finally said, “Grandpa, maybe you should tell me the story of the Wiggle Lady.”

Swearing has become a regular topic in the Unwinders Tavern lately.  It’s time to address the issue head on.

Pros:

• It is the idiom of the day – Let’s face it.  Times change and language changes.  I can remember a time –  the 1950s – when language was a part of morality.  Bad words, dirty words, and swear words were considered not just crude but also immoral.  In fact the “f” word was banned from publication because of a variety of obscenity laws.  That all changed in the 1960s when because of VietNam,  young people lost respect for authority. Now our societal moral code is basically “anything goes.”  As a result, swear words are an integral part of our everyday idiom.  Rare is the movie, cable television show, or Sirius radio program that is not peppered with words that were once deemed obscene by law.
• Verbal Forcefulness requires a full arsenal of swear words – Ever visit a construction site?  You don’t get your point across if you don’t drop the “f” bomb, take a pot shot at someone with the “a” word, or backstab a man with the “p” word or a woman with the “c” word.  For better or worse, the work world is becoming one big construction site, and so even in the most polite venues of employment (including libraries), swear words constitute an aresenal of weapons to be unsheathed and deployed if you want to be taken seriously as an alpha male or female.
• The library profession is all about freedom of expression and intellectual freedom – Banned Books week is upon us.  Yes, many books have been banned in libraries across the land, but for many decades publishers, fearing retribution from obscenity laws, censored the f word in their publications. Therefore, by using obscenities we are upholding our rights to freedom of expression.
• Swearing is good for our uptight image – Is there a better way to be a Marian buster than to swear like a sailor?

Cons

• Swear words are still very offensive to many people – You may feel that using the f word as a noun, verb, participle, and gerund is cool for our image, but many people are still offended by the word.  Why alienate a good chunk of your user base?
• The librarian stereotype is actually quite positive and distinctive in this day and age – What’s wrong with serious, structured, staid, and silent?  These four qualities are as rare as gold in today’s out of control culture.  Cherish them.
• Why tempt fate – The word “blasphemy” is as out of style as the word “morality.”  But using the Lord’s name in vain is a violation of the 3^rd Commandment.  You’re putting your mojo in jeopardy when you put God in the gutter.  Very bad karma.  For a good confessor I highly recommend Father Bob at St. Michael’s.
• Swearing is a manifestation of a limited vocabulary – We librarians are well educated, smart, and quite inquisitive.  Why surrender our smart card by limiting our vocabulary to the lowest common denominator?
• Swearing no longer shocks – The biggest value of the well positioned swear word has always been that it grabs the attention of your audience.  Not any more.  Not swearing is actually more captivating today especially if you can come up with colorful phrases that have that special ring to them.

Conclusion

• Personally, I think not swearing is more effective today than swearing for the last reason given above.  Swearing has become boring and hackneyed.  Much more effective is the turn of phrase that sparkles and stuns without the assistance of obscenities.

Question of the Day

• My favorite phrase is one that my old high school English teacher, Mrs. Wells, used to use to great effect.  To show displeasure she would say: “Oh, for cracking ice!”  I’ve never forgotten it and I’ve never heard it from anyone else.  So I use it all the time.
• What is your favorite way to voice displeasure without resorting to the alphabet soup of obscenities?

How do you deal with a bully boss?

First, we must define a bully boss. I worked for two of them in my tenure as a public library director and a city manager.  Their distinguishing characteristic was that they both used the following weapons to get their way:

• Fear, intimidation, and threats
• Ridicule
• The silent treatment
• Ostracism
• Organizational  terror
• Lying
• Backstabbing
• Sociopathic behavior
• Public humiliation
• Enhanced interrogation techniques
• Psychological warfare
• Yelling and screaming
• Swearing

Working for a bully boss is a nightmare.  The nightmare does not end at the conclusion of the work day.  It is a 24/7 agony.

What is the best way to deal with a bully boss?  Here are some strategies:

• Out of sight/Out of mind – Avoid this person at all costs.  Sit in the back row at meetings.  Keep a very low profile at staff social events.  Use the bathroom farthest away from his/her office. Park in the outer parking lot.  Have a variety of disguises (shades, mustaches, etc.) available in your desk drawer for emergencies.
• Become a Yes Man – Suck up to the bully with flattery, unconditional support, and a total surrender of your free will and self esteem. In short become a toady.
• Go Under Cover -  Offer to be the bully’s staff spy.  Bullies like to have their own personal KGB agents to keep tabs on what everyone is saying at the staff water cooler. If you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em!
• Establish a connection with a good labor lawyer – Find out who the bully’s spies are and casually mention to them that you have a legal barracuda on retainer ready to charge the bully with a hostile work environment.
• Keep current with your monthly union dues – Bullies absolutely hate unions.  Hate them!
• If you have to have daily contact with the bully get wired – Bullies are pathological liars so it’s very helpful to tape record your conversations with them.
• Stand up to the bully – Then dust off your resume.
• Vodka
• Prayer

Thoughts?

Random Thoughts from the Road

I’m back from my East Coast speaking tour.  Here are some observations from the road:

• The e-book count was way down on airplanes and in airports.  In a complete reversal from my last trip, real books outnumbered e-books 10 to 1.  Are people getting tired of ebooks?  They do have their disadvantages when you are in a holding pattern for two hours (fog over Chicago…where else…the home of the Cubs) and you are not allowed to turn on your electronic devices.  I had a brief case full of books and had several ebook readers ask me to lend them books during our circling of the windy (foggy?) city…once a librarian always a librarian.  Also at the airport book store in Oakland, when I asked the head employee how to turn on the model ebook reader, she shrugged her shoulders and said “Beats me.  I hate the thing.”
• My audience at NEFLIN (Northeastern Florida Library Information Network) was awesome.  They even gave me a new stupid reference question: “Do you have the book Oranges and Peaches by Charles Darwin?
• On my travels I checked in to see Mom at her home in my favorite place in the universe…Pitman, NJ.  Happy to report that Mom seems to have put the aging clock in reverse.  She’s sharper than ever and looks great!  Her cheeseburgers are still the best (of course I had to clean out the gutters to get them).  At breakfast, lunch, and dinner we continued our ages long debate on what the phrase “Jesus died for our sins” means (Mom’s Episcopalian; I’m a Catholic).  Will pick that thread up this weekend.
• Didn’t make it, however, to my favorite library on the planet…the McCowan Memorial Library in downtown Pitman.  They were having a mega arts and crafts festival downtown and the library was closed.  Can you imagine 3,000 people lining up to use your bathroom?  Don’t blame them one bit for closing.
• So…I got back in Mom’s car and just kind of drifted.  I needed a library where I could use a computer.  I love Mom but not her antique Apple.  I think the only thing she uses it for is email and Will Unwound.  After drifting several blocks I saw the wimpy international library sign and followed it to the Gloucester County Library in nearby Glassboro.  “Could I use your computer?” “You need a library card.”  I handed the librarian my Livermore, California library card.  She looked twice at it and then smiled and said, “Cool!”  Love that kind of service!  Love it! Kudos to the folks at Glassboro.  Never thought I’d say that.  They were our archrivals.  My high school coach told us that if he ever heard that any of us bought gas in Glassboro we would be benched.
• A very sad note.  Pitman has a war memorial now in their downtown park that I had never taken the time to visit until Sunday.  They have memorial markers for all the local boys who were killed in foreign wars.  Was shocked to note that Pitman (population 8,000) lost 8 boys in Vietnam.  I was sad to recognize 3 of the names as guys I went to high school with.
• Got home and my granddaughter Sophia gave me the biggest welcome home I have ever received.  She ran into my arms and exclaimed, “Grampi I missed you so much.  From now on I go where you go.”  Two hours later I picked her five year old brother Connor up at school.  He looked at me and said: “Where’s Grammy?”  Gotta love it!
• Hope everyone behaved themselves in the Tavern while I was gone.  I will check with Boris and Maggie later.  Drinks on me today.

If you are a worker bee you have to be adaptable to change.  Not only do you have to master the latest new application on your library’s integrated system, you have to do it with enthusiasm.  No one likes a grump or a whiner in the workplace.

If you are a manager you have to be an innovator.  In today’s world innovation is a component part of  leadership.  You have been hired to make things work better, faster, smarter, and cheaper.  It is your job not just to introduce change but to motivate the employees to embrace the change. 

The question of the day is what kind of organizational culture best supports change – the stable organization that promotes from within and has very little turnover or the organization in which personnel from top to bottom are constantly coming and going and new blood is expected to bring in new ideas?

I am solidly in the camp that believes that a library that is oriented around a culture of positive, constructive, and successful change must be a stable organization led by a manager at the top with whom the workers have trust, confidence, and comfort. 

Yes, I said comfort….not complacency.  They are completely different concepts.  Complacency means that we are okay and there is no need to rock the boat. Comfort means that I can advance new ideas within my organization and not have to worry about being fired, disciplined, or blamed when these new ideas don’t work out as planned.

A library organization in which the culture is dominated by fear is an organization in which employees will shut up, keep a low profile, and just try to keep their noses clean.  Job retention is the key motivator.  Sure, a whiz kid may have been brought in from the outside to shake things up but if you don’t trust the whiz kid, you’re not going to stick your neck out for her just because she won the Librarian of the Year award two years ago.  You may not necessarily resist the coming changes but you won’t embrace them either. 

I’m always amused by management gurus who preach the benefits of “creative anarchy.”  Anarchy never really coalesces into anything but organizational dysfunction especially in public sector organizations like libraries which attract risk averse employees.

Why do some people prefer to work for government entities?  For the most part they are risk averse.  They want the steady paycheck, the good health benefits, and the prospect of a livable pension 35 years down the road.  I once asked a very talented reference librarian why he didn’t apply for promotional opportunities in other libraries.  His answer was very telling: “Because I don’t want to lose the seniority I have vested in our retirement plan.”  This guy was 27 years old and he was already thinking of retirement! 

Risk averse people are not necessarily resistant to change.  They will champion change but only in an environment in which they feel safe.