Interview angst Part II

After spending six weeks submitting resumes, working on some projects (both for pay and for love of the work) I fly back to the east coast for an interview next week. This one is located over 2.5 hours from the nearest airport and it is rural. Really rural.

Maybe the "universe" is trying to tell me something. Nah, I don't think the universe tells us anything personally but chooses to deliver messages in terms of natural disasters. I mean, really, how many more humans can we crowd on this planet and how many more ways can we destroy the environment? Well, probably many more. Maybe rural America is the place to go?

So, another presentation. My presentation skills haven't improved since the last one, however, this one is a brief talk of how my experience and background could be applied to the position. No PowerPoint. Maybe some really low-tech handouts. I may even leave the laptop for my blogging cat Huxley…. Of course, I will still be searched. It's inevitable. Every flight since 9/11 I have been searched. Considering I'm 5'0 and 90lbs and a woman of a "certain age" I can only think I'm on some terrorist suspect list, possibly the IRA? I've become quite jaded about it but it does slow down the line and these flights are at 6:00 a.m. Laptop withdrawal seems prudent.

As an unreformed idealist, I always think the best will happen. Truthfully, since graduating from the University of Wisconsin in May 2005, I haven't worked as a librarian, but I would hope the skills I've gained over 20 years in libraries will not fade so quickly away. That keeping up with the literature and being involved in committee work will serve me well.

So much talk these days in the library world (or some parts of the library world) of Library 2.0 and Web 2.0. I believe, after examining this university's website, strategic vision documents and other materials, these 21st century "hot topics" won't be the focus of my interview questions. A good place for a semi-techno librarian, I would think. Though, again, that's the idealist writing.

I believe that special collections and archives should adopt the new technologies. Not wholesale adoption, by any means. But, judiciously looking and evaluating the best way to provide our materials to our users. I also tend to call everyone our users. Information is what librarians disseminate. To anyone who asks. We help find it, we (hopefully) help evaluate it and we are open to ways of providing it to all manner of folk. From the 80 year old World War II veteran searching for genealogy resources on microfilm to the millenial accessing WPA photographs from LC. If we can open those doors, show the way to search effectively and efficiently for good results, then everyone is our patron, our user-base.

This job prospect may not suit me or I may not suit them but I relish the opportunity to visit another special collections (it's my favorite way to vacation, after all) and learn from the experience.

Do we keep score for job offers vs rejections?

If we did keep score, I would be even. I've had two solid offers of positions, both of them were quite interesting and both were located in a part of the country that seems to require a "two-income" household to make it on a new librarian's salary.

I've had two job interviews that got to the final cut stage and both of them chose another candidate. These jobs were not on the opposite sides of the continent where I live. However, they were not exactly the area of librarianship I would most enjoy. That is rather a moot point since at this time, employment is becoming quite the necessity!

Options to employment is my graduate assistantship. The second master's degree avenue of pursuit. The offer has been tendered and accepted. Financial aid has been offered and the assistantship comes with full-tuition, out-of-state tuition remission (whew!) and a job in a library for the duration. No housing allowance but… It seems to be the avenue I will be traveling and it may very well be the best option.

I like the idea of pursuing another master's degree, although, admittedly, at my age it seems a bit….daunting to hang out with undergraduates again. I enjoy academia. I enjoy the free exchange of ideas, reading and discussing theory. Hopefully, my presentation skills will get better in this setting and, damn, my writing skills have to improve, eh? Attending class with Millenials might be more of a challenge than I'm up to but….whatever. At least, I can dress way down in jeans and t-shirts everyday. That'll be cool.

The interesting thing is deciding upon a research topic to eventually prepare a thesis or either a project. I'm leaning toward rural medicine in this rural, way rural, Pacific Northwest state. That might change depending upon the resources available and the advisor I choose. Class enrollment doesn't begin until August 16th for me and school doesn't start until September 20. So, I have a couple of months to find a suitable habitat for the cats and myself and move to a city of approximately 12,000 people.

That is the most interesting aspect now to me. The fact I would be living in a town so small. Hell, I've been to concerts and football games with more people.

Books as objects?

As I wait to hear about job interviews that I have recently had, I keep busy reading a plethora of library-related blogs. T. Scott has a very cogent post on Kevin Kelly’s “Scan This Book” in the Sunday Times Magazine article last week.  

This is a topic that I am interested in and many in the library/Google world are interested in and yet, not a lot of interview questions address it in the way to open an in-depth dialogue about it. It is a complex issue.

Books. On a recent job interview I was questioned about my enthusiasm regarding the book as object  vs. the content of the book. I replied that it depended upon the content and the book. Very clever, eh? Not really, no.

I was ill-prepared for the question. After working for so many years with rare books and developing an appreciation for fine bindings, illustrations and the hallmarks of provenance, I imagine I do give the impression that I consider the book as object more important.

However, it is not always so.  As Scott points out in his blog entry, many of the electronic journals, the “born digital” materials can remain digital and well they should. That doesn’t mean that we scan a 16th century copy of Vesalius’ de Humani Corporis Fabrica and discard the original. The content of that particular book is key to the revolution of medicine in understanding the structure of the human body. The title translated is On the Fabric of the Human Body. Also, the book has incredible illustrations (after Titian, the illustrator has never been named to my knowledge) that provide another avenue of discovery. If one takes those illustrations and the content, what does one have? A book. A book that is valued as an object and one that is valued for content.

So, Google can scan texts and we can search them. A universal library may or may not be realized before I die. It will not replace the convenience of the object of a book. Portable (well, de Humani Corporis Fabrica wasn’t portable but….); no electronics necessary for access and annotatable.

I had the privilege of taking care of two editions of Vesalius’ work. Both in contemporary bindings, blind-stamped pigskin, with lovely 17th century bookplates and ownership marks. I can’t imagine giving up the option of using the physical object in place of the digital one.

I love this illustration. The folio version is quite impressive. The screen view, not so much.

 

Vesalius. de Humani Corporis Fabrica. 1543

Academic library interview

Just returned from my first academic library interview. I was flown out (way out) to a small, liberal arts, private college to interview for a special collections/archivist position. The campus was lovely. The town, not so much. This rain and cloud loving librarian does not like hot, dry and sunny.

However, the job is a really nice one. I had to give my first presentation to a search committee and library staff. The only good thing I can say about that is that my first one is over! It is a fact of academic library life that one provides a teaching demonstration for the onsite interview. I created a quick Webpage with Google Page Creator, inserted a PowerPoint presentation and added some useful links. 

One positive thing (possibly the only positive thing to come out of the presentation besides the conviction that I should join Toastmasters!) is that a couple of search committee members and librarians were not aware of these extremely useful archival online resources. So, it's always good to be be able to demonstrate some of what is "out here" since there is such a plethora of good sites and many more bad and unreliable sites.

As the Web grows and digitizes, and blogs, wikis and social networking sites proliferate, I believe we humans are so totally on information overload. One of the reasons I believe librarians will never become obsolete. In the 21st century, knowing where to find information and how to evaluate information and use resources will become the "new normal" for us, the information brokers.

As to the job. Well, it is certainly out of my hands. I continue to apply for the positions in the area I know but the area I feel most comfortable with, history of medicine, well, those positions are very few and far between. I guess one would classify those as sub-sub speciality librarian positions.

Another masters degree or am I totally out of my mind?

I applied for a graduate library assistantship and was accepted. It is totally unfamiliar territory to me. Starting with the location (rather rural) to the concept of getting that masters degree for tenure and other purposes (mostly tenure). I know, usually master degrees have some degree of funding but my MLIS did not. I so totally enjoyed the process of obtaining my library degree that I never even *thought* about getting funding (other than student loans) for it.

Since graduating last May (2005), I have been applying for professional positions and I have been offered two, both in the Northeast and, although both positions had very positive aspects (I really enjoy big cities), the cost of living was just out of reach for a single, over 40, newly-minted (!) librarian.

Lately, I've been looking at positions that are closer either to where I grew up or to the places I enjoy living in or think I would-not necessarily less expensive than some but certainly less expensive than my previous two offers.

So, to become an on-campus student, taking a master's in history, probably a history of medicine or some aspect of health, since the area is rather scarce on history of the book–at least the period and area (16th-18th century, typography, publishing) that I would want to pursue but, on the other hand, my focus on that particular research area is not very focused at all.

An area I find fascinating is how the past 10-15 years has changed the way we learn, the methods we use to retrieve information and how we assimilate it and use it. Not really history, is it? Seems more psychology, sociology or educationally related.

Whatever.  I sent my acceptance letter yesterday and now must determine if there is some way I can live on the stipend without taking out so much student loan monies that my heirs (the cats?) will be paying off after my inevitable demise.

Photographs I took (and I know they are not the best :).

 Downtown is quaint, less than 12,000 people and less than two hours from a major metropolitan area….. Quite expensive in terms of renting but… college towns. What are you gonna do?

 Dry, sunny and windy. Needless to say, incredible views of snow covered mountains and foothills. Wide-open spaces and an extremely friendly town.

Librarian as vocation?

I always think of a vocation as a calling….rather like, well, like a nun or Thomas Merton’s conviction that he was to always be a monk of Gethsemani. A calling, something above and beyond a 9 to 5 job, beyond a career. A vocation.

However, the longer I look for employment I realize I don’t just miss working (and a paycheck). I miss the *books*—I miss the “atmosphere”, the presence, the essence, of just being in a library environment. I actually miss the smell of books. Especially in a rare books collection or archive. There is a distinct smell. Of old books..of history or something…. 

Whether working with books or archives, staffing the reference desk or designing a web page, I miss the library environment. It is palpable. It is an ache that I have difficulty describing.

My first library job was in a branch library in Birmingham, Alabama in the early 1980s. I was 24 years old and I was a half-time library clerk. I learned how to sort the overdues with this device, although I can’t remember what it was called, it was a metal rod that would be inserted in holes that were in cards that were used to track books checked out. From those cards, I would know which books were overdue and I would take the microfilm reader and search for the titles of the overdue books. These were images taken with a machine of the patron’s library card (back then, we called them patrons, not the tacky term “customer”) and I would type the overdue reminders on our one electric typewriter. That was how I spent a portion of my half-time job. I also checked out books. We had a camera that used microfilm to shoot an image of the back of the book, where the pocket was located, with a card that was removed and put in a large cavernous well arranged by date due. The bibliographic information was typed on the pocket and we laid the library card next to it and then shot the image, stamped a due date (or later, inserted an already stamped due date, all done manually) and handed the book to the library user.

Needless to say, that was the extent of our technology. I had a wonderful library branch manager who introduced me to the New York Times Book Review and other publications and allowed me to make recommendations for purchasing. I was at the circulation desk for the majority of my day so I became quite familiar with the regulars. Being a small, Southern branch library that was frequented by three primary types of library users (the elderly who lived in the neighborhood, the homeless who needed a place to escape the elements, and the high school students) who wandered down two blocks after school to either read, study or just mess around until their parents picked them up. It was the 80s. No iPods, no laptops, and if the students were loud or had food, the branch manager made them leave. Surprisingly, in retrospect, he never had to argue with them, of course, they were typical high school students but they were also typical Southern high school students of the time. Southerners tend to not make too much of a fuss in certain public situations when told by their mama’s “this is the place you behave”.

I went on and began working in a school media center out in the way far west. I did cataloging. On the job training and I absolutely loved it. This was 1985. I cataloged a multi-media collection using Bibliophile that had MARC records I could search and download. These were sent to us on CDs. I downloaded the record then I would upload it into the ILS. Although, the ILS wasn’t searchable by any of the school libraries at the time. Since there wasn’t an infrastructure in place for searching an online catalog, yet. However, that quickly came about and I ended up being asked to apply for a technical services position at a new county library. Way cool. To be continued….

What about preservation?

I really like Flickr.

I have an account, admittedly with very little, if any, substance (cats, some British Columbia and Oregon Coast photos) but I’ve connected with a group in my hometown of Birmingham, Alabama that has done a great job with posting some incredible images of downtown buildings. My kind of photography–architectural, landscapes…capturing the essence, if you will, of the “place” one is photographing.

I’m an amateur’s amateur photographer. The photographs I have on my walls (and they are covered with photos) are print photographs. And I like that. Except, of course, to post them on Flickr I need to not only scan them into my computer but it would be nice to have a good editing program such as Photoshop to “tidy them up” a bit. That’s the preservation part and, albeit, the integrity aspect, as well. I know a little bit about the history of early photography and I know the greats such as Stieglitz, Adams, Steichen, all manipulated their images as they developed them. So, is there a difference in taking a digital photo or scanning a print and tweaking it in photoshop? Would that be considered the same type of artistic license that the noted photographers exercised in developing their prints in the darkroom? Probably. Is it what the photographer “sees” or is it what the phtographer shoots and the interpretation is left to the viewer to make? I think a bit of both but I think I lean toward the latter view.

How does this fall under the heading of preservation? What happens to those photos, the ones that are really well done (and I won’t include the myriad shots of my felines in this query). I assume the photographers are keeping copies, as I do, on CD/DVD and, possibly prints as well. But, one hundred years from now, if those images are not donated to an archive or if that archive decides to digitize each image to save time and space by scanning to certain specs (600 dpi TIFF, for example) and the original is lost, how can the future historian know what has been changed? How can they compare the original with the digitized image?

I don’t know. It is an issue that I think about these days as I apply for jobs in archives and special collections. Some are on the “digitize everything” train and others are not even going down that track. There is the issue of money, server space, the fact that many images are “born digital”. Indeed, most of the images I’ve shot are digital images–how many of the everyday images that will, in the futre, reflect this time and place in our history? These will be a document to this period of time and it may be lost or important ones may be lost. Of course, how many were lost in the past? My point is that there seems, due to the popularity of digital cameras, software and sites such as Flickr, that our time may miss a greater proportion than in the past.

There is, of course, always, the cost of maintaining such technology. Content management systems, staff and the addition of skilled metadata technicians mean that many small town historical societies will be left with prints. And, that may be a good thing in the long run.

I’ll be interested to hear how others are addressing this particular issue (photos are not as easily preserved as incunabula or 16th century books, well, at least in most cases). The book is a medium that, generally, was built to last (unless dropped in a bathtub or burned or disbound and razored, among many other hazards). For some reason, photos seems more ephemeral and thus, in need of more attention, at least as much as old and rare books.

 

WordPress

Last night I decided to switch from Blogger to WordPress. Why, coming from a Google devotee? Blogger seemed kind of clunky. No expert on blogging or the software (although I know what I like when I see it, for example, Typepad ), but the subscription programs are out of reach for this recent MLIS school graduate (currently under-employed). Although Blogger seemed fine in most ways, WordPress has more appeal. Maybe I’ll blog about that when I have more experience. One nice thing that WordPress offers is the option of importing one’s post from another blog. Nice.

So, this has a nice feel. One of my cats has a Xanga account. That is nice for him, he can put all of his current reads and popular media selections in his blog. But Xanga really is limited as to posting. One has to be a member to post to other sites and it does seemed aimed at a certain age demographic (which, my cat, BTW, falls under).

So, WordPress it is.

One thing I think about, having worked in special collections and archives, is the permanance of all of this social networking. I believe much of it should not be preserved, my cat’s, for instance….

However, there are some valid reasons for those of us in the preservation/library/archival community to question this issue and look for answers. Blogs seem similar to me to the broadsides and ephemera published since the 16th century. Many or most did not survive but the ones that have display a snapshot of an age. Invaluable for understanding the social context of that particular generation and time. I’ve heard this comparison many times, that the advent of the printing press has ushered in a “shift” in learning, perception and, indeed, in our lives that is quite similar to our own. We are confronting, adjusting, making profit, from a new type of technology. The printing press 500 years ago and the Web 15 years ago.

I look at the amount of traffic myspace.com has, the various blogs that are being produced by people in the information technology field and the library field, not to mention education, politics, entertainment. Some of these are worth saving. Where does WordPress, Xanga, Typepad stand on backups? Is it incumbent upon us to save our postings to our own, albeit not always stable, operating systems, hard drives, etc? Or do we print them out (as a noted research scientist at UAB told me how he preserved his papers and email correspondence, he printed them out and it would be up to the archives to copy those onto acid-free paper for his eventual collection). At least he was thinking of the permanence factor and preservation.

The phrase “born digital” bothers me, for some reason. Maybe because I just don’t know that all of the avenues of saving these born digital documents will be available 100 years from now, or hell, even 25 years from now. Maybe because I wonder who is going to determine what is “worthy” born digital material to be saved? Will the Millennials know? Are we educating librarians, information professionals, anybody, in terms of how important it is to preserve information in a permanent form? Perhaps. If those of use us in the information fields provide enough information, convincing information, that not everything will always be accessible on the World Wide Web, will that be enough to make those making decisions to stop and think before they compose a ground breaking manuscript in WordPerfect and then crash their computer leaving a “born digital” copy on a server somewhere? I find it hard to convince my students of this. How to teach them the importance of preservation, of history, of the rich legacy manuscripts, books and incunabula hold for them and their future?

Just some random thoughts of things I’m thinking (and blogging) about on a Saturday night after a day of writing cover letters and essays for job applications (between helping my genius feline update his Xanga site).

Firefox

This is the first time I’ve used Firefox to compose. Not so bad. I have to admit, I am so assimilated with IE, it really is shameful. Firefox seems so slow compared to IE. Is that only a subjective, perceptual reality or is it truly slower? At Oregon State, Microsoft products (although used daily), were so “un-pc” that everyone used Netscape when I arrived in 2000 and eventually migrated along over to Mozilla. I found that extremely peculiar. This is Microsoft country, right? But, not so here. There was blatant dislike of Microsoft at UAB but, nothing like the self-righteous fury I saw displayed at OSU. Interesting to see how two academic institutions respond to current technology. I had my students use Google, they had never heard of it in 2000. Another interesting thing to me.

Since this seems to be turning into a technology I have used in the “good old days” post…..

I acquired my first email address back in 1992 when I was working at the University of Alabama at Birmingham. It was damn cool, those first heady days of email. At Lister Hill Library all of our addresses began with LHL and I still remember mine, LHL0016@uabdpo.dpo.uab.edu. Rather long and it was difficult to actually email others because of the routing mechanism or something (“dpo” was an acronym for data post office?).

However, I managed to subscribe to the c18th century list (I worked in the Reynolds Historical Library) and we were compiling a print bibliography. That list, along with Exlibris (both of which still survive and thrive) were instrumental in helping us identify specific bibliographic details, translation of obscure Latin and German titles and post queries regarding scholarly library subjects.

Not so for the elect Bill Clinton president list. What a fun thing to subscribe to in those days. Of course, it was all in plain text, we were using Pegasus for our email client, and, of course, nobody was sending attachments, at least, not successfully. Interesting list that was small enough to feel comfortable posting to and yet, engendered good debate from both sides.

Then a year or so later, Mosaic came along and again, wonderment. We could actually telnet into the British Library and try to search their catalog (myself and the head of reference) did this one afternoon and thought it the coolest thing since, oh I don’t know, email.

Information technology has changed so much in such a short time. I’ve read “Fire in the Valley” about the beginnings of the Arpanet and Gates and Jobs, but I assume someone is writing a history of the more “recent” Internet and the Web. That history, and specifically how it has changed the way librarians and library users is one that will be useful for those coming after us. Hell, it will be useful to those of us that were there when it began and perhaps provide a perspective of how it went from a simple blank screen and blinking cursor to, oh man, myspace.com and all the other good and not so good things that have come from this.

As technology has progressed, it seems that the wonderment that many (some?) of us felt in a new way to communicate has been lost.

And the job hunt goes on

In the past three weeks I had a second interview at a job in a prison library that interested me and a telephone interview for an Archivist position at the library in the city I grew up.

Needless to say, the latter position appeals to me more even though it pays somewhat less. That library was the library I went to just about everyday after school. My school was located in the downtown area and we all spent time at that library during our lunch break and waiting for our parents to pick us up. This was the 70s, so I suspect options for after-school students to hang-out at the library are…. different. The old building, the Carnegie Library, was and is an incredible piece of architecture. Murals painted on the walls surround the old main reference reading room. I fell in love with libraries spending my time there, so for sentimental reasons I rather hope that position works out. However, it seems I am only being offered positions in the DC area. The two job offers I had were located there and although both were marvelous opportunities, the cost of living was prohibitive with a single-income family. Damn, I need to get these cats to find a job. As a good friend told me, some jobs are just 2-income jobs. It appears that way in the Northeast Corridor!

The murals in my library were painted by an artist during the 1920s who was commissioned by the library board. An incredibly impressive large, marble staircase is prominent when one walks in the reading room and the walls next to it are lined with the past directors of the library. In my dreams, that library is always "The Library". I've been to others in the U.S., Boston Public Library is beautiful and their special collections is incredible; The NYPL is great but….they aren't *my* library and this one was and still is, even though I live 3,000 miles away. Even when I go home to visit, I usually drop by to visit the library, just to say "hey".

Admittedly, I'm a library visitor to every place I visit. Museums are great and all but lead me to the local public library and I'm happy. One can discern quite a bit about a city or town from the public library it has. Public libraries are so fascinating to me. The way the are constructed, the technology they are using, the staff (always the staff), the books on their "new books" or "new arrivals" shelf can give one a sense of the city that few other public areas can offer. Have they remodeled to the point that the original (if there was one) is completely obliterated? Or have they modified the structures and kept those memories bibliophiles, libraryophiles (is that even a proper designation for someone crazy for libraries?) carry with them? Much can be learned about the priorities of a city or town by just examining the public library.

The other job, the prison library, does not have murals. In fact, it has extremely old computers, three I believe, and two typewriters. And, many law books. Were that job offered and I took it, I would enter my office each day by going through several locked checkpoints with guards outside my office constantly. Still, information access is so important and especially so, to my way of thinking, to those who have limited access to it, that this job is equally important to the preservation of archival materials.

Information literacy must be addressed in the prison population. Education must be offered and I believe Internet access should be allowed to offenders (there is none in the state this position is located). How can the recidivism rate be reduced if we lock our offenders up (primarily for drug and non-violent crimes) and then let them out without the tools to obtain employment in the 21st century "information age"? They are doomed, I am afraid, to menial jobs and low pay and no opportunities for advancement, for that "new lease" one hears so much about when ex-offenders leave institutions.

All the good intentions of AA and NA and job skills to learn how to write and read, although important, will be for low-paying jobs in most if not all cases. To succeed, these people need opportunities for education and for training. I know the arguments well. They did a crime, they must "pay". But who really pays? Society pays by the prevalence of repeat offenders. Their families pay by not having the opportunities that the those who attend school and acquire relevant skills, obtain. It's the revolving door scenario and people who are under-educated, living in areas not adequately funded for optimum or even better educational funding will often not have the incentive or acquire the motivation to raise themselves from the mire of America's warped self-sufficiency "Horatio Alger" mentality. Society blames the indivdidual and I believe it is society's fault, the government's fault, that so many socio-economic factors plague this particular population.

I said some of this in my interview and I suspect I came across as the bleeding heart liberal that I am.

So, I wait to hear if I will be offered either, both or neither of these two very different positions. That's the hard part but, it is part of the dance we do. I cannot imagine working in an environment that brings me as much personal satisfaction as a library–public, special collections, academic, prison, they all represent an essential part of the person I am or think I am.