Oh, the humanity!

What do you do when you have to work with someone who you think know doesn’t like you?

Multiple Choice:

a) approach said person; slap her on the cheek with a glove and challenge her to a duel to the death! After all, the 2 of you simply can NOT co-exist in such an environment

b) approach said person with a menacing look; shake her, then grovel at her feet; burst into tears and cry “why don’t you like me!!? WHY???”

c) grin and bear it. You are a professional. You can peacefully co-exist with said person. You don’t need to be liked by everyone (right?). You …ARE.. A …PROFESSIONAL!

I know answer c) is the best choice, but in my head I know that I would probably like to enact the b) scenario. I am aware that not everyone will like me, but so far I’ve never really encountered anyone that didn’t really (that gives away how youngish I am!!). I’m sure the search committee reflects on how a potential candidate will get along with the rest of the department/office. Group dynamics is really important, but I have to learn to shake it off and not care so much what others think about me. (Although I’m not sure how this would work since part of the tenure process involves feedback from your colleagues about your performance). My fear is that personal relations might cloud such feedback. If colleague A is hostile toward me will that impact my review? I worry about these things; perhaps unnecessarily. However, a representative from the union remarked that it wasn’t so difficult to achieve tenure (for librarians) but it depends on who you know on the tenure committee! What a disaster!

A thought on “A thought on the library literature”

I stumbled upon this interesting post by the Gypsy Librarian about the state of library literature today.

“It is the dirty little secret that a lot of the library literature is pretty much written by people who just need to write something to get their tenure…Instead, what we often get in the library journals are the articles detailing how X library did Y project and how cool it was. Or we get the article that starts, “we did a survey of 200 students, 50 filled it out, 35 filled it out correctly, and the results, which may not be generalized by the way (but we will generalize anyhow) are. . . .” We don’t need any more of that. We need serious, reflective research and inquiry. Maybe that’s why, in my case, I don’t like the idea of librarians on a tenure line. I don’t see myself having to churn out little pieces of “my library is so cool because. . .” in order to earn my living.”

I have to admit that I might be guilty of this “dirty little secret”. Now that I’m on the tenure track I’ve re-examined my CV and realize that now is the time to start publishing (or perish!!). I’m racking my brain thinking of what to write about. I’ve signed up for one article in a non-peer-reviewed online library-related newsletter, but it is not a serious inquiry into anything. It is a practical how-to-do-it article for working librarians. I think that the Gypsy Librarian is right about needing serious library literature, but there is a place for literature outlining practical approaches to our everyday responsibilities as information professionals. Remember information professionals also suffer from information overload too!

The Gypsy Librarian does make a great observation about her learning more from blogs than from published journal articles because of its timeliness. However the reality for a tenure-track librarian is that publishing or other forms of contribution to the profession is a necessity. Perhaps after we achieve tenure we can devote our sabbatical year to devote to “serious, reflective research and inquiry”. Many of the librarians at my institutions are involved in exciting initiatives in their everyday professional lives that finding time to sit down and write a serious, in-depth paper is challenging. It would be interesting to see how the reading of blogs replaces the traditional methods used by librarians when seeking information.