Karen M. Drabenstott
Associate Professor
School of Information
University of Michigan
Ann Arbor, MI 48109-1092 USA
Voice: (734) 763-3581
Fax: (734) 764-2475
karen.drabenstott@umich.edu
Many thanks to CRISTAL-ED members who paid tribute to Steve Wooldridge. We will continue to collect your tributes and issue them in subsequent issues of volume 83 of the CRISTAL-ED LISTSERV. I am heartened by so many kind remarks about Steve from frequent and not-so-frequent contributors. We will truly miss him.
I would like to introduce Maggi Seymour who will be CRISTAL-ED's interim technical moderator. Maggi is a master's student in the information science program at the University of Michigan. Her primary interests are in integrating technology into traditional information-seeking strategies, computer networks, and using the Internet to build communities. Thanks, Maggi, for stepping in so quickly and getting the LISTSERV up and running as soon as possible.
Keith Trickey is our guest editor for our new topic, entitled, "Discovering 'Our Singular Strengths': A Chance for Librarians to Meditate Together." Raised in Chester in North West England, he took a degree in English literature at the University of Leeds and a post-graduate diploma in librarianship at Leeds Polytechnic (now Leeds Metropolitan University). Keith then spent 10 years in academic libraries in Leeds and Durham before moving to Liverpool in 1986 to take up a lectureship in cataloging and classification in the then Library School. He was also chair of the Library Association Cataloguing and Indexing Group for six years. After a series of reorganizations, he found himself part of Liverpool Business School. He developed his interest in learning skills and personal development from promiscuous reading. This led to training in NLP (neuro-linguistic programming) both in London (1992) and Santa Cruz, California (1993).
Keith is a regular trainer for the UK Library Association (LA) over a broad range of topics -- MARC, basic statistics, cataloging and classification, authority control, performance indicators, and NLP. He also trains for LA groups, offering such delights as workshops on Dewey, AACR2, emotional management, and the popular mid-career crisis course "There must be more to work than this." He also trains for the Universities Institute of Health. All his training contains elements of humor and playfulness to encourage participants into more effective states for learning. His contributions to the profession were acknowledged by the Library Association Cataloguing and Indexing Group in 1997 with the presentation of the Alan Jeffreys Award.
He lives quietly in West Kirby on Wirral on the estuary of the River Dee (maintaining his link with Chester) with Carol and their six children (ages 18 down to 3.5) and spoils his ecological credentials by driving a long wheelbase series III Land Rover.
Please welcome Keith Trickey and join the conversation.
Keith V. Trickey
Liverpool Business School
k.v.trickey@livjm.ac.uk
The presentation of information for this topic is slightly different -- this will allow you to respond (yes, lurkers as well -- I guess they are really shy dreamers at heart). I got inspired to do this editorship after having my professional identity delightfully enhanced by reading Michael Gorman's recent book, Our Singular Strengths: Meditations for Librarians (ALA, 1998 ISBN 0-8389-0724-5). I actively encourage all professional colleagues to read it. It is one of the most powerful distillations of professional wisdom I have found. The presentation of such a fund of wisdom in such a delightful manner -- as meditations -- is the reason for this topic!
The questions I offer for your consideration are:
Let's explore Q1 through Q3 initially and then move on to other topics when the time is appropriate. Also remember that your first response may not be your final word on a topic. Sometimes the initial response merely clears the ground for a more considered approach to that topic.
I now offer you two options in terms of framing your response. The choice is yours, I would suggest you read both:
1. Direct route
I guess you either love or hate the questions asked and your keyboard fingers will be itching to make an immediate response -- which I encourage you to do in as direct a way as possible.
Keep a copy of your response so you can view it later as the dialogue evolves and perhaps you wish to reconsider what you said, or perhaps you see it in a new light.
2. Contemplative's route
My sincere thanks for Karen for permission to take this route for discovery out on the electronic network. I write this on a Friday afternoon, the sweet sound of Gothic Voices intone the choral works of Hildegard of Bingen (on the cassette player) -- it has been a real pressure-cooker day. The Supervisory Management course which I now lead went to validation this morning. No break and into an MA vita for the student whose dissertation I supervised. The week had been frantic up to Thursday! I feel tired but really happy: both events today got appropriate outcomes and that part of me which was feeling stretched like a drumskin suddenly relaxes and enjoys these moments! By closing the loop the positive feedback for my activity is there. More evidence that once again a useful difference has been made!
So what has this got to do with meditation and Michael Gorman? Let us explore this for a while.
How do you know when you have done something well?
Mostly we dash on to the next thing -- ignoring our achievements -- or we pick on the minor detail that did not go according to plan and give ourselves a quick dose of the hair shirt, curse our personal failings (yet again) and stumble on to the next task with both hands tied behind us.
How would it be if just for once instead of ignoring the good we did we actually acknowledged it and used it as giant's shoulders on which to stand to review what else needed doing?
How would you then approach the next task?
Librarians are notorious for 100 percent syndrome -- anything less being either not right or an abject failure. It is important we use this scale carefully when dealing with human rather than other resources -- particularly when that resource is you. I suspect what is needed is simply to treat yourself as you treat other people, showing the same care support and consideration -- just making allowances -- nothing as radical as personal forgiveness!
So how do we build toward this online effective self-evaluation and mentoring? This is where we return to meditation and Michael Gorman. In his recent book Our Singular Strengths: Meditations for Librarians, Michael has made available a delightful compilation of professional wisdom. For me this is the best codification of our professional wisdom as librarians that has been written. The formal constraints of the format used allows for the focused development of ideas. The other aspect of this is the discipline of the meditation which helps the mind to resolve concerns or issues that would other wise flap about causing distraction, like ragged flags in the wind.
This topic, therefore, has a two-fold benefit: it allows us to write artistically, thoughtfully, whimsically -- however is appropriate -- about that which is important to us and communicate it to the audience who will understand our insights or concerns. It also allows us to develop through writing a method for approaching topics which concern us with a structure that seeks understanding resolution. You can then take that approach with other concerns.
Doubtless at one stage in our communal evolution we would sit as a clan or tribe or community round the fire in the evening -- when the days work was over and repeat the significant stories and insights that helped us to know what was important in our world and what our part in it was, as evidenced by the activities of our own life. We spend so much of our life engaged in our specific profession -- yet we take for granted the sets of beliefs and values that we identify as significant both in ourselves and in our profession. How often do we pause to share them or pass our thinking on to colleagues? This topic gives us the space to do that!
So what is required for a meditation?
Taking the form that Michael Gorman used, the structure can be illustrated by an example:
Structural elements of a meditation
An example, based on my own experience:
A door opens
"I was free, as a child
but the smile got lost
in the growing old"
Mimi Farina
Between the ages of 14 and 18 I frequented the Cheshire County Students Library which was located in Hoole, Chester. The library was accommodated in a large wooden hut, with bookcasing round the walls and three or four rows of double-sided bookcasing ranged along the length of the space. There were no reader places in the area of bookstock. I would visit to borrow, return and renew books on a regular basis, at first cycling then when I had a drivers license using my parents' car.
The library nourished my craving for learning above and beyond the narrow confines of the English school examination system -- the stimulus of Steinbeck or modern European novels, which I didn't understand or railway history which I did, books on esoteric religions, mythology, or exotic cultures. As I browsed gently gathering new treasures, opening and exploring new seams of delight -- navigating by physical location -- the subtle use of Dewey was something I was oblivious to. At each visit the excitement once the school stuff was sorted of "what else."
Eventually I worked out that unlike a mountain or lake, sunrise, or rainbow that this wonder was created through the work of this special professional group called librarians. This amazing group had brought all this rich and diverse stuff together in one place to allow people like me (and not like me) to use it to spark off their imagination and to enrich their lives. From that day on it had to be libraries -- to be involved in a profession that simply by doing its work could radically alter an individual's perception of themselves and their life choices had to be one of the most rewarding ways of earning a living. To quietly go about doing good.
I will remember the real purpose of libraries at all times.
Starters guide to mediation writing
Just take a time out -- wherever you are, sit back and think about what an earth it was that got you into this profession -- could have been deliberate, could have been a happy accident. Then think of the events in your professional career that really mater to you, and about what makes them matter. Spend time thinking them through -- remember them as if it was now -- what do you see feel, hear smell and taste as you recall those events in all their special quality. Now do something different, putting these thoughts decidedly to the back of your mind to "cook" for a while.
When you are in the middle of doing something you may suddenly find that inspiration comes and suddenly you want to write. When this happens either sit down and let sweet inspiration flow, or make notes for future reference and write it up later. Sometimes the short essay will come first or a quote will trigger the writing. Assemble the meditation in the way that is most appropriate for you. Read it out loud to sense what it will sound like for your readers.
Do a little bit of editorial polishing and then E-mail it out -- send it direct to your colleagues as well!
HELLO AGAIN! Depending which route you've taken to get to this point your perception of what this particular topic is about will be different, your response will also be different.
I hope we will be able to tap into those roots (routes?) of professional and personal wisdom and share our meditations on what makes this particular form of life's work special.
Let me guess, you've forgotten what the questions are! Here they are again:
Print them out/pin them up by your work station, store them in the back of your mind, and let yourself meditate or fulminate and put your thoughts together in a form appropriate to you and send them in!
Fare forward, voyagers!
Paul B. Wiener
Man of Letters
Melville Library Special Services
SUNY at Stony Brook
pwiener@ccmail.sunysb.edu
How I'd love to respond to this appropriately. But alas, I don't quite know how. I'm not even sure if the name "Keith Trickey" is for real. Maybe it's the enormous length of his letter that worries me, especially as I'm reading it in dark blue type on a bright green background -- I know I've gotta change that display! Or maybe it's the Mozart violin-piano sonata playing in the background as I read and write from my silent, isolated, private, light basement office crowded with hundreds of tapes, books, magazines, letters, articles, note cards and computer paraphernalia that makes the letter just slightly loopy. Or maybe the prospect of printing out the post, which I fear may deplete my printer's ink which I may need for something more pressing, gives me pause. I don't know. I have a good friend who swears by NLP -- he's the least "successful" person I know, though possibly the most envied -- and it's the one thing about him I can't understand. That program's always seemed to me to be aimed at people who actually believe there are answers to life, a terrible delusion to have if you're a librarian. There are answers to questions, yes, but to life? At any rate, I haven't yet finished reading Mr. Trickey's introductory comments or his helpful hints as to how to responsibly and happily respond to them. When and if I do, I may have something to say, or I may not, which may be the same thing.
But just for starters, let me say this: I've never had a librarian role-model to base my behavior or goals on (unless you count negative ones); I have no idea how and when I'm being professional, though I have an idea it's probably not when my peers tell me how to be "professional" (a big issue here in the classless States); and the only thing keeping me in this profession, aside from my love of actually being in library buildings surrounded by books and cultural artifacts, and working autonomously in a stress-free environment on things it's so easy to imagine are important, a situation which feels like home to me for a variety of deep-seated, possibly neurotic reasons, is an inability to get out of it.
Paul B. Wiener
Man of Letters
Melville Library Special Services
SUNY at Stony Brook
pwiener@ccmail.sunysb.edu
A few more thoughts on how I "recognize professional wisdom in action:"
More to come.
Shirley Richardson
Catalog Librarian
Angelo State University
San Angelo, Texas 76909
Voice: (915) 942-2221
Fax: (915) 942-2198
Shirley.Richardson@mailserv.angelo.edu
Not being the "contemplative" sort, I suppose I'd take a more direct approach to questions such as these. The seeds of my interest in librarianship were sown when I was around seven years old, and my father took me down to the old Carnegie Library building in our home town of Brownwood, Texas. It was even then an old building, with cracks in the walls, and the coldest lobby in the winter of any building I have ever set foot in. To me, however, this small building looked enormous, with its high ceilings and seemingly huge windows. There was a pair of plaster copies of Winged Mercury (complete with improbable fig leaf) and Venus de Milo in the lobby, and a smell of old books, library paste, wet coats, and book dust/mold in the air.
The children's section was a fair-sized room, with large windows which let in more light than the sputtering fluorescent light fixtures could provide. The room was always a little bit dim, however. When my father led me into this room, and I saw all of the books sitting there, I was stunned. I had never seen so many books in one place, and I could take any of them I wanted home with me. Fantastic! (To my disappointment, I was informed that I also had to bring them back.) As I grew older the room seemed smaller, and I branched out into the adult section at a fairly early age, but that old library was one of my favorite places on earth. One or the other of my parents would sit out in the car under a shade tree and wait while I loaded my arms up with stacks of books to take home; in fact, my father said that one of his main memories of my childhood was of sitting under that tree, listening to the radio while I "shopped." In school, I haunted the school library at study hall time and managed to find more books to read. My physical education teacher was extremely generous with library passes, and I doubt that I spent more a few days in study hall during my years in high school.
When I went to college, I prepared to be a teacher of art and English, but worked in the college library. I taught in high school and junior high school for five years, but I realized that this wasn't exactly what I wanted. I decided to go to library school and was fortunate enough to receive a graduate fellowship at Texas Woman's U., which helped me to achieve my goal. I have always been grateful to Genevieve Dixon, the then-head of the T.W.U. library school, for that assistance. During my first semester, I had to take the undergraduate cataloging course, and it was love at first sight. Although I was not too fond of typing (and retyping) endless practice catalog cards, I found that the analyzing and classifying of library materials was exactly suited to my temperament. I took as many cataloging and technical services classes as T.W.U. offered, and knew that I wanted to work in cataloging upon graduation. That was in 1971, and I have been connected to cataloging ever since.
Of course, there have been many changes since then, and I have had to add computer skills to my repertoire. Also, in the last few years, I have had to assist in reference work, although I would have to say that reference is not my best area. My preference is still cataloging materials for the library's patrons. If I had to explain to a child what was important about what I do, I would say that my work makes it possible for the users of a library to find the sort of information they need as quickly as possible, and that it brings materials that are alike together, which makes it easier to locate and use them. In a very real sense, the catalog is the "heart" of the library, since without it the library's collection would be a vast jumble of books of various sizes and colors, without rhyme or reason. I feel that a well-constructed catalog record is a thing of beauty in itself, and I am sure that the time which I spend to create such a record is well spent. I find it disheartening that some administrators do not consider cataloging as important as they once did, and would even consider "outsourcing" the work to be done by nonprofessionals with no real understanding of the library's collection, while relegating talented catalogers to other tasks. This is one change which I feel certain is for the worse in the library world.
My path into the library profession was somewhat roundabout, but it is a job which I enjoy and believe to be important. Before future seven-year-olds can come into a library and carry away armloads of books, someone has to categorize and organize those books and make their contents known through a catalog of some sort. The exact form of the catalog may be subject to change, but it will need to be there in some format.
Carl Clayton SINTO -- The Sheffield Information Organisation sinto@shu.ac.uk
Serendipity strikes. A colleague introduces me to CRISTAL-ED and I find that very, very nice man Keith Trickey who I was talking to that morning is there passing on yet more of his wisdom. I've missed out on most of the discussion but I was inspired by the question about explaining to a child what was important about the work you do. Though its not children on the whole who need it explaining!
A story. Imagine you lived in a world without libraries. And then one day you wake up and libraries had appeared overnight. Just think how amazed you would be!! There in almost every community has appeared this building. This building has a name -- LIBRARY -- and amazingly almost everyone knows what this name means. And when you go inside the building it gets even more amazing, for the building is full of books and other neat things that will help you learn. And when I say learn I mean all sorts of learning. You can study a particular skill or area of knowledge, you can find a specific fact that you want, or you can learn by sharing other people's imagination (they call this fiction). And Hey! look here -- there are tools to help you find your way around and get what you need... and Oh, My! there are people here who are trained to set all this up and to help you... and WOW! these people have somehow persuaded the local community to finance all this from their local taxes so you don't have to pay to use it... and isn't all this ABSOLUTELY INCREDIBLE AND MARVELLOUS AND WONDERFUL!
And they all lived happily ever after.
Keith V. Trickey
Liverpool Business School
k.v.trickey@livjm.ac.uk
Whatever happened to our singular strengths?
Things have been quiet -- those of you who know Conrad's short story, "The Secret Sharer," will recognize my sense of heading toward the island fast, holding my nerve waiting for the wind from the shore to set us on our journey.
So you should be back on duty after the ALA conference, or returned from your meditative mountain top with greater clarity for the questions I opened with:
Paul Wiener got us off to a good start by taking me heavily to task -- quite so, who said life should be fun!
His "wisdom list" is worth further exploration -- I particularly liked:
"A librarian's behavior or decision making is based on love of the work, rather than personal ambition."
"A librarian demonstrates love for and knowledge of a particular subject, medium, collection, specialty."
This needs further hands to elucidate the nature of the professional wisdom here. The close association of the librarian with a subject / discipline / medium that includes and transcends the confines of the collection within which they are based.
Further questions to consider:
Yes it is Friday afternoon again -- this time with Van Morrison in the background, as I sit up on Mount Pleasant in Liverpool wondering if the network will work and messages (rather than the people) will come!
Of course my basic premise -- that there is a rich seam of wisdom within the profession could be wrong!
So over to you for the proof -- or otherwise.
Caroline Coughlin coughli@rci.rutgers.edu
It is hard to be concise on these matters, and lengthy answers do not fit well with E-mail discourse. Here are some snippets of ideas on topic.
If asked by a child what I (or other librarians) do, I would say I help people find dreams and ideas by sharing what I know about books and the wider world of information with them.
Three people come to mind as influences: A. Venable Lawson and Evalene Parsons Jackson, from Emory University library school time in the late '60s, and Ernie DeProspro, from my doctoral program days at Rutgers in early '70s. Venable and Ms. Jackson shared values, gave much encouragement to go out into field and change things, Ernie added the instruction, to study things, and then make change that would work. The combination of these approaches remains at core of my teaching and when I meditate on the field I think about its potential to freely support all learners; its socialist values which suit me just fine and the influence of the three virtues of faith, hope and charity on all we do in our reasoned and unreasonable moments.
Diane M. Lewis
Serial Records and Exchange Librarian
U.S. Geological Survey Library
National Center -- MS 950
Reston, Virginia 20192
Voice: (703) 648-4399
Fax: (703) 648-6373
DILEWIS@IGSRGLIB01.ER.USGS.GOV
Thank you for stirring the pot again, Keith. And especially for awakening us with something from the Polish-born Joseph Conrad, whom I consider to be one of the finest writers that America has ever produced. Sometimes in this work one does feel uncannily alone with one's thoughts and feelings.
I was not naturally drawn to this field. The silence of libraries had always halfway repelled me, but the books, ah, the books. They cast irresistible lures. And then there was the thought that perhaps I could help someone doing worthwhile work, assist with research, and find answers to impenetrable questions.
Growing up as a foreign service brat in posts that did not boast even a school, much less a public library, I have always known how much a book could change one's everyday reality.
My LIBRARY role models have been of the sort whom you swear to yourself that you will use as examples of what NOT to do. The libraries where I have worked have tended to have unenlightened management. In fact, at one point I wondered if I was deliberately choosing to work in badly run places. But that was before I realized that this problem of bad management was not restricted to libraries. Before my career is over, my hope is to work for a director who has a strong sense of mission and a genuine feeling for people.
In the wider library world, I admire the ideas and the outspokenness of Herbert White. One doubts that those with the actual power to change things are listening, but he is putting truth out there!
Pamela C. Sieving, MA, MS
Director of Library Services
W.K. Kellogg Eye Center
University of Michigan
1000 Wall Street
Ann Arbor, Michigan 48105
Voice: (734) 763-9468
Fax: (734) 936-9050
pcsievin@umich.edu
Shirley, I hope you see the op ed piece in today's (July 6, 1998) New York Times, which says much of the same thing, tho with a different focus!
Dr. Rosmarie H. Fouad
Coordinator of Library Instruction and Distance Services
Eli M. Oboler Library
Idaho State University
Box 8089
Pocatello, Idaho 83201
Voice: (208) 236-3047
Fax: (208) 236-4295
The theme of the 1999 ASIS (American Society for Information Science) Conference is "Knowledge: Creation, Organization and Use." The opening paragraph of the conference description reads as follows:
"Our ability to transform data into information, and then into usable knowledge, can change the face of work, education, and life. We have increasing capacity to generate or gather, model, represent and retrieve more complex, and cross-disciplinary data and ideas from new sources and at varying scales. The transformational power of information can only be capitalized upon through knowledge acquisition, classification, utilization and dissemination research, tools and techniques. 'Knowledge management' has a substantial and growing body of theory and practice."
As librarians, information specialists, or whatever we call ourselves, we take part within this dynamic process of information dissemination. For me, playing a part in this process, how ever small it may be, constitutes enough excitement to keep me doing what I am doing. As the coordinator of instruction within a university library, I interact on a daily basis with nonlibrarians who are also involved in that process. I see it as a challenge to introduce students to the complexities of contemporary information access and to demystify misconceptions, even among some faculty, about information tools and retrieval techniques.
My enjoyment in this work stems, I think, from my own path from the inexperienced discipline focused research I did as a doctoral student in English, to a broader understanding of the complexity of information dissemination. Yet it is precisely through research I did in literary studies that I was drawn to the academic library as a professional opportunity. One of my best professional memories is of the two months I spent during a NEH summer seminar at Stanford University, doing research on an obscure female author in the Stanford Archive collection. I remembered feeling privileged to be working in such a place of knowledge and scholarship. While I would have liked to pursue a career as a literary researcher, I joined librarianship for more practical reasons, yes ironically job opportunity reasons. But that is another story. The point I was leading to is that Paul Wiener's wisdom list certainly represents my reasons for staying on the job: it's not, the workshop appointments, the meetings, or the pay check, but probably my genuine love for the word and for knowledge, and my fascination with the information dissemination process that provide me with the needed dose of daily satisfaction in performing my job duties as a librarian.
Paul M. Gherman
University Librarian
611B General Library
419 21st Avenue South
Vanderbilt University
Nashville, TN 37240
Office: (615) 322-7120
Fax: (615) 343-8279
gherman@library.vanderbilt.edu
Let me begin by paying respect to those librarians (all retired) from whom I learned very important lessons. The first was Vern Pings, the director at Wayne State U., who taught me through example to question everything and never accept what one sees on the surface. Always question the status quo, and ask why. He also taught me, not through example, to be sensitive to people in the process.
Next Stuart Forth, the director at Penn State, taught me everything on a campus is political, especially when it comes to the faculty. Look for the other's agenda and make it yours. He also taught me that a sense of humor is the way to success.
Warren Kuhn, the director at Iowa State, taught me everything is the message. Make sure your message is clear and stick to it, and repeat it again and again. Say it long enough, and it will be believed.
Finally, Robert Heterick, the just-past-president of Educom and not a librarian, taught me to focus on the future, embrace it, and create it.
And this is what gives me the most pleasure about being a librarian. The opportunity to create the future; for we are lucky enough to live in a time of revolution, to be in the middle of the greatest and most rapid change humanity has seen. Every day is exhilarating and filled with possibility. I would not change places with anyone in any other profession.
Robert Bauchspies
Middleburg, VA
bauchspr@mediasoft.net
Responding to Keith's questions I offer the following comments:
"1. How do you recognize your own, or others' professional wisdom in action?"
Along the Taoist stream, professing oneself wise, one displays his foolishness. Recognizing wisdom in others, in this case, librarianship, is initially a demonstration of maturity, and then an ongoing receptiveness to appreciation, critical consideration, and comparative respect. To be wise professionally has more to do with timing and tact in the application of skills and knowledge acquired over time. Experience remains the teacher.
"2. What was it that got you into this library / information business?"
The book store manager and waiter job just weren't cutting it (although it was a lot of fun) -- plus, I've always admired librarians for their poise and depth of knowledge as well as the values underpinning what they do.
"3. What keeps you here?"
Everyone should do something. Librarianship, like many professions has extended purpose with ready connotation toward the social good. Social do-gooders then, can feel philosophically groovy, even if they starve in the process. The problems begin when altruisms clash with the representing institutions. If for example, a corporate librarian for a major beverage manufacturer has genuine concerns about the stated unhealthy aspects of the flagship product, then there is a conflict. If you're a peacenik but found that your career path landed you a job (for the money for example) working for a company manufacturing missiles, again there is a problem. All of us must address what is inherently Good (in a Platonic sense) about our profession in context. Hence rationalizations, compromises, and in some cases outright forfeitures of acted upon value sets are regularly made by all.
"4. Who made the professional difference for you, and what was that difference?"
Maurice Line motivated me to think about culture, Herbert White about "matter-of-factness" and the Into the Future by Harris and Hannah gave librarians presence in Bell's "post-industrial society" which genuinely fascinated me (and remains a must read for anyone contemplating this profession) -- granted IT sellouts continue.
"5. If you had to explain to a child what was important about the work you do what would you say?"
Importance is a dirty word. Saving lives? Saving souls? Adler's query, "what ought we do?" remains a watershed of inquiry into human existence. Considering again my earlier comment about context, we forget how much conformity we have made to pre-existing structures prior to our own arrival on this planet. I mean you, me, social order, laws of the land and so on. If I were to say something fuzzy and librarian like, of course it would be that I help others to know more. Ignorance however, is more than bliss, it is innocence that humanity lost a long time ago so today we all must distill some modicum of knowing, if for no other reason than to meditate upon the virtues of complete emptiness.
Keith V. Trickey
Liverpool Business School
k.v.trickey@livjm.ac.uk
Many thanks to the network members who responded up front to this topic.
To quote T.S. Eliot:
"These fragments I have shored
against my dissolution"
So the topic did not arouse great interest -- perhaps we are tired, leaning on our oars waiting for vacation time. Perhaps my thinking on this was a little previous.
The integration of information functions into knowledge management -- a wider industry-based concept -- the realization that as librarians we are only a part of a much wider information market place -- we do not hold any monopoly of employment or wisdom in this expanding market.
As the market expands others will wear our clothes, use our skills. Leading to Luddite cries of "Hey, that is our work you are doing -- and it is our skill you are using."
Until we know what the fixed points of what we do consists of (our wisdom) we will only have the technician's defense of "that's my work."
So, if you have been, continue turning over this topic in your mind, with curious intensity becoming slowly aware of the wisdom of that which you do professionally.
These concerns will return, in different contexts. What may happen is they will return as potential disputes in the work place, hopefully you will have time to reflect on what is happening. I must confess that in the UK this tends to be a firefighting process, which requires action rather than thought.
A series of quotes, gleaned from the last two weeks:
Paul B. Wiener: "I have no idea how and when I'm being professional, though I have an idea it's probably when my peers not when my peers tell me how to be 'professional.'"
1) A librarian's behavior or decision-making is based on love of the work, rather than personal ambition.
Caroline Coughlin (amended):
"We help people find dreams and ideas by sharing what we know about books and the wider world of information with them."
Dr Rosmarie H. Fouad:
"My genuine love for the word and for knowledge, and my fascination with the information dissemination process that provide me with the needed dose of daily satisfaction in performing my job duties as a librarian."
The question still remains, ticking away gently:
How do you recognize your own or others' professional wisdom in action?
If you wish to communicate further on this mater I will be delighted to hear from you.
Here's to Generation Next!
If you have been, thank you for reading.
You may join the discussion and look over the list of past and future topics.
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