My library is moving!

I just got out of an administrative meeting to discuss moving the Hospital Library to a new room. I’ve been planning and preparing for a week not knowing how far along the process was or when I’d be moving. I created a proposal with time frames and a full room layout based on everything I might want to get.

I get there and the architect has already drawn up four possible floor plan, none of them with enough room for the existing collection, let alone room for expansion.

My boss told me to hang onto my proposal, saying that it wasn’t time for it. But as the meeting went on, the doctors on the medical education committee kept raising the very questions I had addressed in my proposal. I motioned to my proposal, started to pick it up, and my boss says, “Brett’s done a proposal.”

I pass it out, and it turns out everyone loves it. The VP of Administration/COO even agreed, on the spot, to fund the compact collapsible shelving I’d proposed, a $27,000 project! She EVEN made it a point to tell the meeting coordinator that this move was a great opportunity to upgrade all of our computer equipment to flat screens and new system, and to purchase more so there will be plenty of stations for everyone.

I got everything I could have hoped for!

I owe so many thanks to the doctors on the medical education committee and to the Senior VP/COO. Without them, no one would have listened to little ol’ me. But with their support, my proposal was seen as a solution rather than an idea.

Wow. What a morning.

Instead of a video, I’ve attached the proposal I submitted to this post.

I got a raise!!!

It’s official. As of Monday, I am directly employed by California Hospital Medical Center as a Library Associat, and I got a raise of $3 more an hour on top of it. (I’m not posting my salary here though, lol.)

Hot damn!!

I am learning SO MUCH in this job, and I am simply amazed at how supportive most folks there are. I had a feeling this would be a good job, and it is. By the time I leave this place I think I’ll be ready to run just about any library anywhere. (Or I’ll kill myself out of frustration and stress at everything I have to do in 20 hours/week.)

Next step, get hired full time!

And now, for your viewing pleasure…

Where am I?

I can’t believe how stupid I feel.My laptop died, and I lost all my log ing information for my own blog. Talk about being tied to the machine! I realized that not only have computers altered my life, they’ve altered the very way I look at information, at how I store it and remember it. One system crash, and my entire life went topsy turvy for 4 weeks. (Yes, I have backups, but not current enough – doh!)

Today’s video should help give you an insight into how I view technology and its affect on our lives.

And now for your viewing pleasure…

Web 2.0 in under 5 minutes.

I hate playing the heavy.

I had to send out an email to my staff admonishing them for not doing their jobs. It makes me feel like a bad guy for telling them to shape up, but the fact is that they simply have not been performing up to snuff lately. Hopefully this will nip any problems in the bud. I guess sometimes being the boss means beign the boss. The text of the email follows.

Sorry, no fun video this week.

***

It is with great dismay that I send this reminder out to you, but I believe it is necessary. Over the past month I have observed a patent decline in the level of professionalism displayed by Student Reference Desk Assistants while on duty. While this admonition does not apply to all student staff, it is important that we all remember that we are here to do a job, and to do it well.

Particular incidents have involved student employees leaving the desk un-staffed to have lengthy personal conversations on their cell phones, extended tête-à-têtes with their friends, leaving at shift end without assuring anyone – staff or student – is at the desk, abandoning the required shelf-reading at the beginning of each shift, not checking printers for paper, ignoring books that need to be shelved, neglecting basic room maintenance, and, most disturbing, an obvious absorption in homework to the exclusion of checking if patrons might require assistance.

While I realize that the desk can often be a less active job than say, The Cooler or TeleFund, it is an important one, and one that demands a certain level of skill, attention, customer service and, as mentioned above, professionalism. As I expressed to all of you when you were hired and trained, you are here because you are the best of the college. Students come to the desk for help because they know they can count on you to provide it and to do your jobs well.

I ask you, without pointing fingers at anyone, to help turn this image of neglect and casualness being displayed to our patrons back into the one we have maintained for over two years now – that the Reference Desk is a place where students, faculty, and staff know they can be recognized, welcomed, and helped without feeling like they are intruding or being dismissed. If you have forgotten what job duties are required during each shift, take a moment to read the Daily Shift Responsibilities page in the Reference Manual. They are listed there because they need to be done, not because I have any desire to give you busy work.

I encourage you all to use downtime to catch up on your studies; I believe I have made that abundantly clear. However, please remember that studies do come only during down time – after all of your regular duties have been performed.

Thank you for your attention to this issue, and for addressing it before it becomes a problem.

***

Promotion! (sort of)

Good news on the job front. My supervisor has apparently convinced the hospital administration to convert me from a contract employee to a permanent regular employee. Not only does this mean that I will start receiving benefits (for the first time in about 8 years!), but he’s also angling to get me a small raise in the process. They’re spending $20 per hour to the placement agency, but I’m only getting $17 per hour of that. With any luck, by next week I’ll be making something closer to the full amount they’re currently paying Library Associates.

Guess I’m doing something right here.

And now, for your viewing pleasure…

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Gimme an “L”!

God bless whoever came up with The Library Cheer.

And now, for your viewing pleasure…

Score one point for scientific authority

There’s a blog posting making the rounds this week that claims eating soybean products will make kids gay.

There’s a slow poison out there that’s severely damaging our children and threatening to tear apart our culture. The ironic part is, it’s a “health food,” one of our most popular.

The claim is that the “estrogens” in soy essentially feminize kids. The irony is that this author claims over and over again that research has proven this (and quite a few other allegedly detrimental things, too.) Nowhere does he give any citations or even state who the “researchers” are. It’s a nice little bit of hoopla “supported” by “scientific research” to make it seem believable. (I avoided using quotes that time.)

Well, a blogger for Scientific American has come out with a resounding “hooey!” in response.

Soy contains phytoestrogens. The overwhelming evidence is that these compounds, and the protein in the soy, are very healthy for you, and may reduce the risk of breast cancer in women. At the very least, beans are good plant food, happy for you, happy for mother earth; happy happy happy.

He is also kind enough to provide a link to a source which can back up his competing claim.

Now, regardless of who is actually right on this issue (although it should be pretty frickin’ obvious, I think), what upsets me most is the absolute manipulation of information literacy the original blogger is engaging in. This fag hating minister has tried to pull the wool over his readers’ eyes by invoking “research” and not bothering to back it up. The worst thing? A ton of people will fall for it. I’m all for open access and redefining the concept of authority when it comes to publishing, but not when it gets abused for personal, damaging tripe like this.

It also proves just how incredibly important it is that we teach our kids – and adults – how to sift through the overwhelming plethora of garbage out on the net and teach them the skills to pick out what is and is not worth believing. In this case, Scientific American wins because they provide genuinely valuable information and the resources for the reader to folow up the claim themselves. Even Wikipedia, the site that basically began this whole debate on authority, provides opportunities to prove or disprove claims in its pages.

The point? Don’t trust everything on the internet, even if it is backed up by “research.” And it’s okay to eat soy.

Creating something out of nothing.

A patron called me at the desk the other night asking if I knew anything about a “Merry Browne” whom the patron had found a quote on google by. After a good 15 minutes of fruitless searching, I found nothing, and put out a stumper to the Library Reference listserv. Thanks to responses from Laura Ewald of Greenville College and Marcine McCulley of the Rockwall County Library, I found out that she had several books published from what was apparently her own organization, the “Merry Browne Institute of Ontology” (now defunct).

The truth about life by Merry Browne (Unknown Binding – 1971)
The ladder of life by Merry Browne (Unknown Binding – 1971)
The truth about life: Textbook by Merry Browne (Unknown Binding – 1971)
Advanced seven steps to truth about life,: With counseling process self analysis checklist and instruction sheet of the Merry Browne Institute of Ontology by Merry Browne

What’s wierd is that less than 10 libraries in the country actually have these books, yet a google search for “Merry Browne” quotes brings up 2,320 hits!

Amazing. An author practically no one can actually read, yet anyone can quote. Sometimes I wonder about the value of Google. Here is an example of how the web has made it appear that something is important because of the number of hits it brings up (her quotes) when in fact it seems as if this was merely a self-congratulatory excercise on the behalf of Merry Browne and her institute (the few holdings in print available.)

Nevertheless…full circle

I came across this posting on teh wonderful (yeah, I just discovered it) Nevertheless library blog. I was so touched by the comment Katie U. posted, I simply had to write something.

Katie wrote:

Hello Miss Harris.

I’m a senior in high school, and I have read the section on your old blog “So You Want To Be A Librarian?”, but I still have questions.

I know I need to get my Masters in Library and Information Science, but I’m not sure about what to do before that. What is best to study?

It scares me in a way, because I don’t want to be rich, but I want to be stable finacially if and when I did become a library, and I don’t want to wait forever to actually get hired.

Basically, I’m looking for advice and guidance.

If you are too busy or just don’t want to respond, I will understand. But thank you for you time.

Sincerely,
Katie U.

Brett VanBenschoten wrote:

It’s amazing to me how many people feeel so passionately committed to this field, for all sorts of reasons.

I know this is late, and I know you may have responded, but I felt a need to say something to Katie.

Do what you love. Nothing is more valuable in the world of librarianship than a love of learning – of *any* subject. It is wonderful that you want to advance yoruself – I work constanly toward becoming a Library Director myself very soon – though I’m still in my first year of grad school – but the best way to do that is through applying your own experiences to your career. Librarians often get a start late in life. I used to think that was because it’s a quiet career. Now I know better. It’s because we bring our life to our work, and vice versa. *That* is what makes a good librarian – not what he or she studies.

Well yet another librarian (or library technician, in my case) decides to post a blog. Woohoo…

Seriously, I figure it’s about time someone who only wants to be a librarian has a library blog, so here I am. Anything interesting in the library world – from the viewpoint of someone who is ultimately convinced he has no idea what he’s doing – might go on these pages. I will likely throw in things that have nothing to do with the library world, but which I find interesting, but hey, it’s my blog, right?

And now, for your viewing pleasure…