Connecting Librarian

It’s March 24th, making it Ada Lovelace Day and in memory of Ada – a woman who is considered to be the first programmer, I and many others have pledged to write about a woman in technology who inspires me.  Before I do, here’s some more about this day.

Ada Lovelace Day “is an international day of blogging to draw attention to women excelling in technology”.  I came across it on Facebook, where pledges from interested people were being sought to participate in what will hopefully be an annual event.  I say hopefully, because although I have chosen my inspiring woman for this year, I have others that I would like to write about in future years.  I made my pledge, so here goes.

My inspiring woman in technology is Helene Blowers, currently Digital Strategy Director for the Columbus Metropolitan Library, presenter, blogger at Library Bytes, creator of the Learning 2.0 program and 2007 Library Journal Mover and Shaker.

If that paragraph alone is not enough to show you how much she inspires me, then I’ll give you some more.  I have been fortunate enough to be able to spend time with Helene on 3 separate occasions, once at her former library – the Public Library of Charlotte & Mecklenburg County and twice here in Australia when she came out to present at various events.  I consider myself fortunate to not only be inspired by her, but also to be able to call her my friend.

She is inspiring because she is creative, innovative (with Learning 2.0 only the beginning), sharing (Learning 2.0 is shared with all libraries under a Creative Commons licence) and dedicated to advancing the profession and those of us in it (her presenting and writing are just two areas in which she does that). She looks at the way technology and library users are moving and then seeks to find ways in which libraries can lever that to meet the needs of our communities.  She takes risks, tries things out and moves forward with the lessons learned from each one.  She then shares those experiences and challenges us to do the same for our own developing communities.  She believes in the place of libraries in those communities, both now and way into the future.

On top of that, she is a dedicated mother who manages being there for her family as well as working fulll-time, has managed a relocation to another state and the continues to manage the many requests she gets to present at seminars, conferences and more, both in her US home and around the world.  She is generous with her time, her expertise and her experiences.  For all these reasons and many more, I am proud to write this post about her for the first Ada Lovelace Day. And to Helene, thanks for all that you have given to me and to the profession, I really appreciate it.

However, I also want to acknowledge some other women friends who are doing inspiring things with technology and libraries and who I would love to write about on Ada Lovelace Day in future years.  So here’s to you also Kathryn, Con, Fiona and Peta.  They, along with me and our great male partners in crime, Corey, Morgan and Snail, make up the team that write the Libraries Interact blog.  They all inspire me on a regular basis and for that guys, I give you my thanks.

I encourage you to read all their blogs, as well as Libraries Interact, to find out all the great stuff that is happening with technology and libraries in Australia.

In the meantime, have a Ada Lovelace Day!

I was reading an article not so long ago – How Google is making us smarter – which in turn was almost looking to counter a previous article – Is Google making us stupid? You can check out either or both at your leisure, but the former got me thinking.

In How Google is making us smarter, the author Carl Zimmer talks about the extended mind. This concept was first raised in 1998 by two philosophers Andy Clark and David Chalmers (an Aussie).  In their essay “The Extended Mind” they posed the question “Where does the mind stop and the rest of the world begin?” In it they posited that someone who keeps something in their memory and someone who keeps the information stored elsewhere, but at hand, (eg. on computer, in a notebook etc), are the same.  The external source that the individual uses to hold information is part of their extended mind.  Interesting viewpoint right?

So how does that relate to Librarians and evolution?  Librarians are phenomenal miners of information. We can find information on a vast array of topics and when we do, we somehow take note of the content itself or where it can be found.  Librarians have already taken the idea of the extended mind way beyond the boundary of where I am sure Clark and Chalmers imagined it would be.  How many times have friends and family been amazed at you knowing some amazing details, or being able to find out something in a very short time and with minimal difficulty. (I am notorious for finding the answers to retrospective questions – born curious and therefore a born reference librarian)

The article goes on further to comment about how humans are proving to be very good at merging mind and machine.  Look at how we drive cars – our perception of distance adjusts to the edge of the car, as it becomes an extension of ourselves.  Clark and Chalmers also argue that there is further evidence, in the form of study results that prove that our minds are constantly seeking to extend themselves.

If that is the case, then aren’t librarians at the forefront of that extension? And if that’s how humanity will continue to grow and develop, then as we are already out there on the cutting edge, doesn’t that make the librarian the next step for many on the evolutionary road?

Can you imagine it?  Evolution leads to a superhuman being – the librarian!  Gotta love the image.

Its been well over a week since I got back from Aurora and it will take a whole lot longer before I can say that I have gotten my head around it all.

I can’t tell you all about what happened there.  No point really, the old cliche really does apply here – ‘you had to be there…..’  Not only that, but at lot of what you get out of it is very individual.  Everyone has a different experience.  However, I will give you an idea of the sorts of things we did, but mainly I’ll write about what I got out of it and being a task type person, what I’m planning to do with what I got out of it.

We did a lot of learning. Learnt a lot about myself and about others and how to work with them. Learnt a lot about strategies and getting your point across to decision makers.  Learnt about getting the best out of a group of people and how to develop a team to achieve that. Learnt that climbing mountains is hard work and that cricket is not necessarily the game we see played so professionally on TV.  Learnt that to do all this is confronting, exhausting, challenging, inspiring, motivating and scary and requires a dedication to your profession that goes beyond your current position description.  And that’s just what I can think of from the top of my head at the moment.

Also learnt that my thinking on where I am and where I’m going professionally was pretty much on the mark, which was very satisfying. I also learnt however, that although I achieve much on a regular basis, I can do more. I also was reminded of a lesson that my son taught me, that being that my priority is not necessarily the first one. And that lesson equally applies to my work as well as my family.

I learnt about presenting business cases, about being open with a group of people in an amazing environment. I learnt about change management and change styles and discovered that I wasn’t always what I thought I was – an interesting exploration into self. I learnt about how to really look at the library environment, learnt a lot about SWOT analyses, took a trip into the big picture of our profession, talked vision, examined risk-taking, confidence and putting yourself out there and much more.

So what have I come away with.  First off I guess is the true realisation that we are a profession. And if that is truly the way of it, then I have to act professionally.  So my first forays into personal change are to get my act together as a professional.  I am starting to get some more ‘business-like’ clothes and think about my appearance a bit more – I’ve finally started the diet again, too much weight put on, some of it from the awesome food we had at Aurora, but also how I look when I go to work.

I have also taken the first step in refocusing myself at work and looking at how what I does fits in with my library’s goals and plans.  I guess its all about me becoming a better follower, before I can become a good leader. I am also starting to look at visioning for my library in the work that I do and setting some concrete goals for the virtual services for which I am jointly responsible. I have asked (and had accepted) one of my senior managers to act as mentor for me in this process.  And finally, I am preparing myself and my family for me to go back to full-time work next year, only with my family’s blessing however, after 9 years of working part-time.

A couple of staff members asked me today whether Aurora had changed me. I said to them that it hadn’t – what it had done was to refocus me and motivate me to do more – go higher I guess. Ultimately I guess that means I will change, but that’s the environment we live and work in, so I’m happy for that to happen.

For those of you who have heard rumours about Aurora, yes it did make me cry, but not everyone did. I never did discover the secret handshake and I would highly recommend it to anyone who wants to make the most of their career as a librarian – not only for yourselves, but also for our amazing profession.