You Can Find Books at the Library!

Today I was working on a presentation, and I realized I needed some more information. After a quick check of the online catalog and a brief browse of the stacks, I turned up 8 books on the topic I was researching. This took me less than 15 minutes.

Despite the committee meetings, the endless complaining about lack of resources, and all of the planning that seems to go nowhere, working in a library does make me happy.

Friday: Things That Make Me Happy

On Fridays I will post some random things that make me happy and might make you happy too:

• Blog: decor8–Nothing to do with libraries or happiness research but full of beautiful pictures that will inspire you to make your surroundings a little more beautiful, and I’m sure that will make you happier.
• Book: The Thirteenth Tale–My husband bought me this book for Christmas. I’m glad he did. “Settle down to enjoy a rousing good ghost story with Diane Setterfield’s debut novel, The Thirteenth Tale. Setterfield has rejuvenated the genre with this closely plotted, clever foray into a world of secrets, confused identities, lies, and half-truths. She never cheats by pulling a rabbit out of a hat; this atmospheric story hangs together perfectly.”
• Music: Beirut–Someone (I forget who) mentioned this band on a blog. It combines elements of Eastern European and folk songs. You can listen to the band for free at their Web site. I would like to know why the band, which I guess is really just one guy, is called Beirut, though.
• TV: Lost–I’m so excited that Lost is back. Check out Sawyer’s nickname generator, so you can get your own nickname from the TV hunk. Although I really prefer Jack!
• Movie: U23D–My husband made me go see this. But it was actually pretty fun. The 3D is pretty freaky; you feel like you’re actually close enough to touch Bono and The Edge. But it’s also just a really good concert movie and after awhile you sort of forget about the 3D (except for the Bono-like glasses you are wearing.)

Hope you all have a great weekend.

A Time for Change in Leadership

I read an interesting post at ACRLlog called Dissin’ the Director. The blogger made some points about what library directors and library staff could try to do to get along a little better. I’ve been thinking a lot about what makes a good library director. It seems like sort of an impossible job, and I do think that the staff of most libraries don’t really understand what the job entails.

The blogger asked the question “Are we experiencing an unprecendented wave of out-of-touch, incompetent and power hungry library directors or are frontline library workers increasingly less respectful of the library administration than in the past?” I started thinking about this question again when I heard Chris Matthews, a political commentator, (yes, I’m obsessed with the presidential primary race) say that Hillary Clinton was losing because she had applied for George W. Bush’s job and the voters are not interested in someone new (even someone much more competent) as the President, they are interested in having a totally new job description for the position. Therefore, Clinton’s argument that she’s the candidate with the better resume is not carrying a lot of weight with the voters.

We can certainly argue whether or not that is an accurate assessment of the political climate, but I’m willing to say that he has a point. And I wonder if something like that is going on in libraries. Libraries, like the country, are living in a time of huge change. Because of the Internet and companies that have taken advantage of its capabilities, libraries now have a lot of competition in providing information to users. In order to compete and better serve our users, libraries need make some really big changes. It is possible that a lot of library directors are quite good at the traditional library director job. But maybe it’s time to rethink the position. I’m sure some libraries have already done this, but maybe ACRL should put together a group to make sure that library director position descriptions are really keeping up with the times.

Professional Development is Good for You

This week I am working on a presentation for a women’s leadership conference on campus. The conference is pretty small, and the audience will probably just be people from our campus. But I decided to submit a proposal because it has been awhile since I’ve done a professional presentation.

For both professional and personal reasons I have not been actively doing presentations or research for quite a few years. I think now is a good time for me to get back in the saddle.

This is definitely not a requirement for my job, so why bother creating extra work for myself by presenting at a conference? I’ve been asking myself this very question!

As librarians, we are often in a gray area when it comes to presentations and publications. Teaching faculty don’t really have this dilemma. It’s publish or perish for them. But requirements for librarians seem to vary greatly between institutions, and I think sometime it’s not even clear within the institution exactly what the expectations are. But the requirements for my position are quite clear. I am a professional staff member, not a librarian (although I do have an MLS), so I don’t really have to do anything except show up from 8 to 5 and do my work.

So the first answer to why I am pushing myself to work on presentations and eventually write some articles is so I can get another job someday. That seems pretty obvious. But I also think that presenting at a conference will do long-term things that will make me happier at work (even if I have to go through the short-term aggravation of preparing for the presentation). One, I will get to learn something new. I am not presenting on something I am already an expert on. I’m presenting on something that I know a little bit about, but because of the presentation I am going to need to learn a lot more so that I don’t make a full of myself. Learning new things definitely makes me happy, and I think that is true for most people. Two, I will get to meet new people. Some people call this networking. But for an introvert like me, the word networking makes my skin crawl. So I prefer to think of it as relationship-building (I guess that’s better). But I’m sure that by attending and participating in this conference I will meet some like-minded people, hear about some interesting stuff, and get enthused (at least for a little while).

If you have to give presentations, check out the great Presentation Zen blog.

Happiness Research?

In my first post, I mentioned my interest in happiness research. That may not be a concept with which too many people are familiar. A few months ago I started stumbling across all of these references to happiness research or positive psychology, basically academic research that tries to explain who is happy and why. Probably the expert on positive psychology is Dr. Martin Seligman. He has a great Web site that has all sorts of questionnaires and resources about finding “authentic happiness.” This may sound new-agey to some of you, but Dr. Seligman is a professor at the University of Pennsylvania and was the president of the American Psychological Association. Another Ivy League expert on the subject is Tal Ben-Shahar, who teaches “Positive Psychology” at Harvard. (They, of course, both have books, which I read. Seligman’s is called Authentic Happiness and Ben-Shahar’s is Happier. I would recommend Ben-Shahar’s as a good starting place, although they are both good.)

Anyway, I started reading everything I could get my hands on about this topic of happiness, and I have become sort of obsessed with the idea.

Of course, we all want to be happy ourselves, and it turns our that there are some pretty specific things we can do (or try to do) to make that happen even if our personalities do hamper (or help) us in our quests. But what about our workplaces, and in my case, what about libraries? What can we do to make them happy places? I don’t know. But I’m willing to do a little investigation, and I hope some other people may be interested too.