Losing My Magical Powers? How to Provide the Best Content

Libraries are often considered places of wonder and magic.  The association is made with stories that live there, particularly those of literal magic and fantasy such as Harry Potter.  Sometimes, the very concept of writing and literature is felt to be magical.  Both apply: libraries are special places, in part because of the content they offer. Some of that content is hidden by paywalls or other restrictions to the “free web.”.

Occasionally, too, librarians are viewed as magicians, when they obtain hard-to-locate sources within the “Invisible internet” or demystify the complexities of advanced database or Google searching techniques.

These are all valid and helpful associations.

But, increasingly, I feel as if our powers are fading and outside forces are casting a spell upon us.  I am speaking, in this case, of our databases and journal articles and the content we provide to our patrons in this manner.

I have tried to offer access to the richness of mainstream periodicals and journals with our library services.  I do not want any patron, faculty or student, to have to pay for The Washington Post or Atlantic Magazine or even most journals.  Essentially, with the help of our library databases, I try to offer an internal, miniaturized version of the best of the web. Or, that is my intention anyway, perhaps naive.  This is a radical, even magical, idea that all libraries, from public to academic, offer to one extent or another.

However, I am increasingly stymied in this ambition.  I speak specifically of the increasing supplemental and interactive content.  I do not expect to provide access to the New York Times games, although that would be great.  But I do want to offer interactive maps that accompany articles, for example.  But my biggest conundrum is access to the proliferating “newsletters” and bonus content offered by magazines and journals, from The Atlantic to America Magazine.  Too often, these are not included or offered too late to be of much value to my patrons.  

At the same time, I believe such features will only expand as media companies try to entice more personal subscribers.  With that, the power of the library fades, as more content is out of reach.  So, the big question, what can I/We do about this?  Accept that more patrons will need to purchase content on their own, will that make libraries less special, magical?  Suggestions and ideas are welcome.

School librarians — Fiction.

My students love books about school librarians, especially those that are unconventional – think the protagonist from The Librarian from the Black Lagoon, or Mrs Roopy from the My Weird School series. We often discuss how they would fit in at our library, and whether their methods and quirks would add to or detract from the library program we already have. Strangely, my own reading this summer has also led me to discover some school library-focused books, some of which get every detail of a school librarian’s day correct, and some which…don’t. Below I share some of these titles, as well as some fun independent school-set reads which I have enjoyed this summer. Happy reading, all!

The Overdue Life of Amy Byler by Kelly Harms

This novel opens with the main character, Amy Byler, arriving in New York for a conference (not entirely dissimilar to an AISL conference). The details of this school library conference experience are uncannily accurate, and the discussion and details of the topic she is presenting on ring true. However, it veers into ‘really?’ territory when Amy decides to stay in New York for the rest of the summer, effectively abandoning her family in rural Pennsylvania. So, five stars for the first part, but from a library perspective, it really loses its way (doesn’t Amy need to get back home to set up her library for the start of school? What about all those books that have to be cataloged and those displays that have to be created?).

Quiet, Please by Brea Brown

Failed Public Librarian Kendall Dickinson decides she needs a do-over, and takes a job as a librarian at a small North Carolina School. She does not like children, or noise, but figures the job will be a good distraction from her other worries. The usual characters show up: the quirky kid obsessed with reading, the colleagues who nod knowingly across the auditorium during assembly, and the flighty principal who spends more time at the spa than at the school. And of course, there’s a complicated, brooding Kindergarten teacher who makes Kendall’s life more… complicated. The details of the school librarian life are pretty accurate in this novel, but it must be said that if you don’t like children or noise then this probably isn’t the profession for you.

What You Wish For by Katherine Center

Katherine Center was due to be the Skip Anthony speaker at our conference in Houston, and I would have love to have heard about her research and her perspective on school librarians! This novel features Sam, librarian at the Kempner School on Galveston Island, TX. After a tragedy involving the long-standing principal, a new principal is appointed who Sam knows from her previous school (well, you know how everyone in independent schools knows each other). But on the first day of school, Duncan Carpenter is not the man Sam remembers. The details of the school librarian’s life are accurate, and her observations of young readers (and their over-invested parents) are spot-on. In particular, the description of the library is wonderful, and I would love to know if this is based on a real school!

The Lending Library by Aliza Fogelson

OK – no school libraries in this one, but the main character is an elementary art teacher, and her best friend is the school librarian. When her local public library closes, Dodie decides to open a replacement in her home’s sunroom. As the members of the town pass through, picking up books and sharing their secrets with Dodie, it becomes clear that the town misses not only its books but the sense of community that the library brought. There is a subplot involving Dodie’s ticking biological clock, and to be honest, the way in which Dodie ran the library made me feel a bit anxious; thankfully, no one suggests that she leaves her art classroom and heads to the school library instead.

In addition to these books about libraries, I’ve also read three great books set in schools this summer. In The Gifted School by Bruce Holsinger, four families will do anything to get their child into an elite new school for the very gifted & talented. Anything. In Tiny Imperfections by Alli Frank & Asha Youmans, we meet Josie Bordelon, admissions director at the exclusive Fairchild Country Day School in San Francisco, CA. You will not believe (well, maybe you will) the tactics used by parents to gain a coveted spot at this school. The story also focuses on Josie’s aunt, one of the longest-serving kitchen workers at the school, and her daughter, Etta, who is a senior and has very specific ideas about where she wants to go for college. Finally, Minor Dramas and Other Catastrophes is a wonderful novel by Kathleen West, an Independent School teacher here in Minnesota. This book is a fast-paced read about helicopter parents, social media and what it’s like to teach in an elite high school bubble, where the teachers are mostly liberal, and the parents are mostly not…

If you’ve read something good recently, school-related or not, leave a comment! And I’m looking forward to the first school-related novel featuring COVID-19: “She opened up her computer and logged on to her Google Meet. There were three students there already…”

What’ll Be?

Maybe it’s because summer vacation is tantalizingly close, or maybe it’s the warmer weather, but I sure could go for a cold adult beverage. Anyone else? As I considered my libation choices, I realized, through a conversation with my office mate and work spouse, Beth, that our library is, in many ways, not unlike a bar…minus the alcohol. Those beverages are, at least for now, still not allowed in the library.

Cheers!

Our circulation desk – like yours, perhaps – is situated near the front door. When we’re stationed behind its high counter, we are in prime position to greet our patrons. We have a trivia desk calendar, which people stop at regularly and predictably. When patrons come in, they look around, see who’s where, and decide where to gather. Sometimes it’s up at one of the counters, sometimes it’s a more secluded table in the back, or a table by the windows, well suited for people watching. There are certain patrons who come in at certain times of the day. We have our morning crew who are often in their seats before we arrive (students have keycard access during off hours – ask me about that if you’re curious how that works). Students come in when they have an hour to kill or don’t feel like going back to their dorms. Others roll in after their last classes, eager to take a breather after a full day. And, of course, there are our night owls, who seem to only wander in after the sun has set. There are many (too many?) parallels between the local tavern and the local library.

Being Alone. Together.

If the library feels like a favorite corner bar, that makes us librarians the bartenders. Patrons come in, often not sure what they feel like having. They ask us for a suggestion. Sometimes they’re not in the mood for certain offerings. Sometimes they feel like something different, something new. Sometimes we barkeeps not only serve patrons their usuals, but are asked to surprise them with something fresh or with a classic. Sometimes they see something that someone else enjoyed and ask for the same. And don’t you know, we sometimes have some featured items, the specials of the day or the week or the choice selection of the bartender, our signature go tos. But there’s more than just what’s on the menu.

The Specials

We all know the trope: the melancholy soul, down on his or her luck, who wanders into the pub. The bartender wanders over, mops off the bar, pours a drink and asks, “What’s the trouble, pal?” And wouldn’t you know it, the same sort of thing happens in our office all the time. In our library – maybe as in your library – the librarians’ office is just behind the circulation desk. There are two large panes of glass that lend us zero privacy, but invite people to join us. We are fortunate to have two comfortable wicker rattan chairs, which invite people to come in a chat. And come in they do. They come in, sit with a sigh. Beth or I will then begin our therapy session. What’s the trouble, pal? And we hear it all, the woes, the tribulations, and the struggles. And it’s not just the trials we hear; we are also often the place to come when there’s big news to announce or an event to celebrate. We offer sage advice and attentive ears, and, invariably are thanked for our confidentiality, excellent listening skills, and our kindness.

When it’s all said and done, we know all the information, but we keep secrets a secret and share what we’re able. This is what a good bartender does and it’s what a good librarian does. We are the neighborhood gathering spot. After all:

Sometimes you want to go
Where everybody knows your name
And they’re always glad you came


Some bars from TV shows are below, but what bars from literature would you put on a list?

Cheers – Cheers
Three’s Company – Regal Beagle
It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia – Paddy’s Pub
How I Met Your Mother – MacLaren’s
True Blood – Merlotte’s
Simpson’s – Moe’s

And now, It’s Closing Time

Affective Labor is Real: A Librarian’s Guide to Navigating #NeverAgain

Guest Post by Elaine Levia

Emma Gonzalez with mosaic of slogans (art by Serena May Illescas) uploaded by Flickr user Vince Reinhart, shared under a CC-BY 2.0 license.

Here we are.

It is hard for me to write that only the most recent events at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida have inspired this post. We’ve been inundated with stories of  gun violence in and out of schools far longer than we care to admit.  I was in elementary school when the Columbine massacre took place. Even in relative safety, I grew up learning to regard gun violence in schools not as incidents isolated by time and space, but as looming threats that would eventually happen to me or someone I knew.

Now, as a school librarian, I feel favorably positioned to approach the work of compiling resources for general and practical support in the current unfolding of violent events. We sit in a favorable seat because of our roles, adjacent to students as teachers are, but also as de facto counselors, confidants, advisors, and affective laborers of all stripes. Affective labor is the critical feminist term for work in the service or care of others, either emotionally or physically. It came about as a response to the invisibility of immaterial labor, and has even been explored in the context of academic libraries. You might be wondering, as I have wondered recently, how to broach the interconnected pieces of school shootings with students in a clear-cut way. How might we balance responsible reactions to unthinkable trauma within our training level and expertise? How might we support students in a time of anger, sadness, political fervor, and need?

I am reassured by the old refrain, shared often as comfort with me by my own mother, who also happens to be a librarian. We don’t need to have all the answers. We just need to be the connection. Today I want to share some thoughts and resources that have helped me figure out my personal role in the sea change, and I will ask for your help with one small action: consider this the crystallization, the reification of all the emotional, seemingly invisible duties of a school librarian. We’re already tasked with doing more with less, but I hope that the following few tips and resources provide a wide variety of inclusive practices for the toolkit. Moreover, I hope that a dedicated space for support and discussion within our community proves fruitful and restorative. The care of minds and bodies of others, particularly our students, is a borderless, ever-expanding pursuit. We can only do it so well when we’re able to lean on our community for support.

Additionally, I’m interested in your resources. I’ve started a public document, which you may notice at the time of posting is still in its nascent phase. Please feel free to contribute books, podcasts, training resources, tech tools, or timely articles.

Read on for some ideas about the connections we can make between the prevalence of gun violence, mental health, activism, and diversity & inclusion work.

Continue reading

Citation Theory – A recap

Thanks for all for your help last week as I prepared a block class on citation theory for our three AP Language classes. It was surprisingly the most fun that I have had with a class all year because it wasn’t just a crunch of time to answer panicked questions about individual sources. I think that I learned as much from the students as they learned from me. We opened with 5 minutes of writing reflection on the following questions.

1. With what documentation styles are you familiar?

2. What are the important parts of any citation?

3. Why are there different standardized citation styles?

4. What challenges have you faced with documentation?

We split our libraries at grade seven, so I’ve been working with some of these Juniors for the past 4 1/2 years. Each year there is a research project that contains some sort of citation component. Loosely speaking, here are the four biggest research assignments they should have completed:

7th grade History – Native American history and culture presentation – Modified MLA

8th grade History/English – Boston, Early America, and the Industrial Revolution presentation and paper – MLA

9th grade History – Western Civilizations research paper with thesis – Chicago

10th grade History – World History research paper with thesis – Chicago

And now we come to 11th grade…

Students’ answers to these open-ended questions made me realize that the one-shot sessions that we’ve done in previous years have taught them how to follow directions well. This is a good first step but it isn’t enough in a college preparatory school. I love Debbie Abilock’s description of our role in “adding friction” to the process. In discussion, students focused almost exclusively on the anti-plagiarism component of citations. Both the teacher and I stressed that this was the reason we needed to discuss the least, especially in an AP class. He used the analogy of a science experiment, where the purpose of the lab report is to allow others to recreate your experiment to see if they reach the same conclusions. I come from a slightly different angle, most enjoying seeing how students use the ideas of others. Where are they summarizing, where are they synthesizing, and most interestingly, where are they using source data to draw different conclusions? You could see the students’ engagement increase we treated them like rising scholars whose ideas are worth considering, rather than children on the verge of stealing someone else’s work. For the first time, I felt like students “bought into” the idea of citations. Since the AP curriculum only mandates that you teach students skill with a citation style but doesn’t specify which one, we all had a frank discussion about the strengths and weaknesses of MLA and Chicago. Students thought carefully about which was more appropriate for their paper, a synthesis on citizenship using the ideas of Plato, Thomas Jefferson, Martin Luther King, and an additional primary source and secondary piece of criticism. Making this decision individually certainly added friction to the research process. The teacher and I spoke honestly about our frustrations with all style guides in the digital age. Students accessed Plato’s “Crito” on a pdf hosted by MIT’s Internet Classics Archives site, where they had to consider the translator and had no stable page numbers. “The Declaration of Independence” is located on the National Archives site. It neither follows the standards for a government document nor for a website. We all hypothesized ways that style guides might continue to evolve as more documents are either born digital or accessed digitally. I think it’s important that students aren’t just completing citations by rote, but thinking about the reasoning behind them, and this kind of critical discussion opens the possibility for that.

As I go into underclassmen research season this winter, I’m going to think carefully about how I present citations. For starters, we will talk openly about online citations generators and the differences between web-based ones like easybib and eturabian compared with automatic generators in our online subscription databases. This is a classic example of a time when technology should  assist thought, not supplant it. It is not important for students to memorize style rules, nor should they blindly follow the instructions of an online citation generator. I don’t mind if they use one to help them get the right format, but they need to read it over afterwards to see if it makes sense. (Real example: If you see this and only this, you should backtrack! “L.” Etter from a Birmingham Jail. Web. October 27, 2014.) The ultimate goal is that students won’t be stressed out by citations but will know where to go for assistance. This leaves the bulk of their brain power for reading, search, analysis and writing.

When I’m preparing for a class, I tend to take notes as I read and consider how to present a subject. If you want to know the gist of everything I read and see notes for further learning on citations and style guides, open the following document on Google Drive. There’s some surprising trivia in there!
https://drive.google.com/file/d/0BzHAd969884zQ040OUJ5ejdRazg/view?usp=sharing

I hope you’re given the opportunity to “just talk” about citations at some point in the future. These three classes impacted the way that I’ll be teaching citations in the future and gave the kids a chance to think about them as more than a completion task for an individual assignment. As a bonus for the library, about a third of the students came to see me individually to talk about their specific needs for their papers. One-on-one time with students is generally the most effective time with them, and this is a higher-than-average rate of return for the invitation. Please share below if you have had a lesson on citations that worked particularly well. If you’d like to continue the conversation, I’d love to hear from you!

Top 10 Reasons to be happy to go Back to School

shooting star

10.      You can finally drop last year’s experimental “Let’s See If It Works” project (“Lesson learned!”).

9.       You can start up a new experimental “Let’s See If It Works” project (“This will work GREAT!”).

8.       You get to hear about everyone’s summers and catch up with old friends (see item 1 below before attending that first Back To School BBQ)

7.       You get to see how much last year’s sophomores have changed now they’re this year’s juniors (often triggering thoughts of time travel and /or suspended animation because there is NO WAY these changes happened in just 3 short months!)

6.       You get to implement that one fix that came to you out of the blue while stargazing in the Sierras. Finally, the solution to that one thing that has been pestering you for years. It’s really so simple!

5.       You get to meet this year’s new students. They all look so young and eager.

4.       You get to meet this year’s new faculty, and have the wonderful chance to make a great first impression.  Here is your chance to implement that new project you’ve been wanting to try!

3.       June is ONLY 9 short months away!

2.       After collecting up all your notes from the summer, now is your chance to make those practical changes to library office, general layout, front desk, workflow, and start out with a fresh new landscape.

1.        You finally get to talk BOOKS to your hearts’ content, finding out what students have been reading, what faculty are recommending, how they like what you’re reading, making those matchups with the right book and the right person. Social media, GoodReads, anonymous reviews—there is no substitution for face-to-face real time interactions about the wonders of books.

Top 10 Challenges of Going Back to School

1.       Remembering Everyone’s Names: I mean… EVERYONE’S names. Including those in your immediate department. Solution: review last year’s Yearbook—the photos are especially helpful. Spend extra time on faculty names and faces. There is no exemption for those oldest and dearest friends on staff. ALL names are suspect after a truly relaxing summer.

 

Okay, I couldn’t come up with 10 real challenges of going back to school. We are lucky to be in a profession where we get to participate in that annual renewal process known as Back to School, and actually be part of the excitement of getting to start fresh, with a clean slate and new opportunities—each and every year! Somehow the smell of new school clothes and the thought of that exciting shoebox with brand new Hush Puppies are popping into my head. And for me, the smell of those lovely pink Amaryllis known as Naked Ladies is a sure sign of the melancholy end of summer inextricably tied up together with the thrill of First Day of School.

What does ‘Back to School’ look, sound, smell like to you?

amaryllis