Transferable Skills and the Librarian

With the job market the way it is, I am almost sad to send students out into the horrible job market. And, honestly speaking, Seattle's economy is no where near as bad as most other places in the country.

Students often, before graduation, ask us librarians for help in finding jobs. The short answer is, beyond showing them the places to look, helping them write resumes, and pointing them to some (?hopelessly outdated?) books on interviewing, there is not much we can do.

That is why this post, "The Power of Transferable Skills," from The Simple Dollar caught my attention.

Though not a simple, quick fix, it does give some excellent advice about how one job or one skill is a brick in your wall. That, through cross training and creative thinking, you are making your future career all the more achievable.

This started me thinking about my career path - basically, why am I employed today? In my current position, paraprofessional in the User Services department of an academic library, I use the administrative skills learned from being an office assistant in a law firm, the customer services skills I learned from working in a large bookstore, the marketing skills from years networking as a babysitter/nanny, and the library-specific skills from four years as a Tech Services student assistant in college and as an intern in a public library's archives.

More importantly, however, how will I be using the skills from this job in the future? The most important thing I am learning is management, and that is a skill that will only become more important as I move on (and up).

So, I hope that this article will help people, as it helped me, see the bigger picture. And though this will not help my patrons today, maybe it will be a comfort when they look to the future: the crap job of today is a transferable skill of tomorrow!

ASK

I think this is a great video and would look good on any academic library's website - something short, simple, and cute that the visitors could see.

In this year's evaluation, one of the comments we saw was that there was no assistance if there was not a librarian at the reference desk. But, as the video says, all they have to do is ask.

Civil Politics - Helping Students with the Dialogue

Despite which side of the political fence you fall, one thing we can all use (myself included) is a more balanced approach to the political dialogue we find all around us. An interesting op-ed piece by Nickolas Kristof led me to this website: Civil Politics.

You cannot "win" an argument without listening, which is something that we rarely do. But there is another important aspect of this: To listen, we need to understand the ideology and logic behind our opponent's perspective. Civil Politics is a group of people who are trying to understand the ideology.

Why am I bringing this up in a library blog? Easy!

I work with students, students who are being asked to defend their believes - political, spiritual, etc - for the first time. What I have noticed is a surprising inability to see that behind most arguments there is logic, there is a life, there is an understanding, however flawed, of the world.

I think that this site, especially the helpful links in the Resources section, would be a great way to get them to dive into their papers, speeches, and lectures a little deeper. Though they may not get the person to change their opinions or have their opinions changed, any discussion where there is a bit more understanding between the parties can only be helpful.

(If you are interested: the Kristof's piece, "Would You Slap Your Father? Then You are a Liberal," is well worth a read!)

Fun Blog of the Day: Awful Library Books

How have I not seen this blog before?

Awful Library Books - the name says it all!

I've worked exclusively in older, academic libraries and this is a common problem. I've seen books that should have been weeded in the 1970s, let alone in the 2000s.

Luckily most of those places have been eager and willing to weed out the stacks; however, I remember working for one librarian who was intent on keeping some of the most racist, sexist, and un-literary material in the collection - simply for "reference points."

Granted, I am anti-censorship of every type and if your library's focus is on counterpoint materials and you have the time and resources to keep this material available, that is a different story. However, when the institution is an academic, research library that prides itself on being up-do-date and valid, you have to actively weed materials that only cheepen your collection.

Get these things out of our libraries! Now! Because women can be doctors too!

(Image from Awful Library Books Blog)

ILL-ing eBooks

In a staff meeting, just the other day, we were discussing the changing focus of the library - evaluating the benefits of eBooks. For once we were all in agreement that our students want more eBooks and better access to the ones we have. However, one thing that we did not consider is the importance of ILL and how this move to electronic resources will affect our ability to lend to other libraries.

It was not until I read Steven Harris' blog post called "Interlibrary eLoan," in which he discusses the possible benefits and the many road blocks we face in approaching ILLing in a library with more and more eBooks, that I gave this pitfall any consideration.

How are we going to continue to have the ability to help other libraries when we cannot loan out our eBooks? The DRM and other copyright considerations are mind-boggling, but Harris points out a few ideas - incorporating eBook reading devices into the equation and getting the licencers of the eBook databases (NetLibrary, etc) to change their licencing plans - would work, but their implementation is far beyond us and the immediate needs of our library.

The promising answer, though it too is not an option... yet, is to provide what Harris calls a "DRM-protected PDF" that "[e]xpires after a given time period."

I like considering the scanned PDFs of articles that we send out: they are understood to be imperfect, temporary, one-time copies of particular resources that we own which are to be used for educational and academic reasons only. If we could get that concept and apply it to the ILLs - we'd be ready to go!

There are a few implementing problems - well, more than a few. The eBook databases we use make creating a PDF of the file nie near impossible, not to mention the part about making the files temporary.

But, my biggest concern is that we do not own the eBook in any sense of the word. We lease our materials from the database. When we stop paying for their services, we stop being able to access the information. It is not for us to make a copy, no matter how temporary, because we are not seen as the owners of the material in the first place. Until we get the mp3s or buy the actual eBook without the assistance of the database, our hands are tied.

Book Care - Great Tutorial for Students and Patrons!

Book care is a love of mine - ever since my college days where I had to tape curriculum back together for the Ministry Resource Center.

Here is a lovely video, put together by GMU, that illustrates the proper book-handling technique for students. I think this would make a lovely addition to online tutorials for students/patrons and will be a great aid in training Student Assistants!

Wolfram Alpha... and other searches

The big tech/library news lately, it seems, has been asking one basic question: Can anyone beat Google?

My answer: Nope... wait, should I have sugar-coated that one? I'm just confused about why anyone would try, let alone claim that it has been done!

Until you can give the public a search engine that works as well, that builds a niche as well, that fulfills a need as well, you are not going to upset Google.

The latest to try, Wolfram Alpha, is an interesting concept and a nice try, though, ultimately, it does not live up to all the hype. Google gives you everything you could possibly need/want/never want in a link providing search. Wolfram Alpha, on the other hand, sets out to interpret the data and give you only the information you need - often creating a page that never existed before you did the search.

This is great when you have a calculation to make or need some background information. However, I share Farhad Manjoo's concern that Wolfram Alpha is too bug-laden and too narrowly defined to work well as a Google replacement. Some searches work well - like my birthday search (who knew I was born during a full moon?) - but too many others - like my search for the closest QFC to Northwest University - fail.

What does this mean for Librarians?
~ Yet another tool in our arsenal! Though some of the random searches I did failed, I am very refreshed by the ones that worked. The first thing I thought of when I saw its interface was how similar it was to an encyclopedia or a world fact book. If you are looking for specific, concrete data, this is where you should go - hands down. Like Wikipedia, it would be a great electronic resource to use in identifying search terms, figuring out general statistics, or planning a research survey.