Kate Sheehan's Posts

Anyone who has spent time with small children knows that "why?" is one of the best and most vexing questions people can ask. "Why?" probes for motivations, explanations, understanding. It demands reflection and clear communication, and I think it's safe to say that most people have a complex relationship with this tiny word.

Library techies can leverage "why?" to change how their organizations operate by questioning a ibrary procedure. Discussing workflow with coworkers and asking "why?" a lot, while offering ways to automate procedures, can offer value to your colleagues and your organization (and maybe wreak a little havoc). But "why?" is also a question library techs sometimes dread. "Why did it work before but not this time?" "Why is it broken?" "Why am I getting this error message?" Often the answer is straightforward: a setting has been changed, or a network problem is creating the error. But sometimes, getting to why would require an electrical engineering background and a path of inquiry beyond simply fixing the problem. Nothing is quite so frustrating as resolving a persistent error only to have your techjoy smashed to bits by a coworker disappointed because you're not quite sure why the computer stopped recognizing the printer, you only know that they're now friends again.
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This summer, I was fortunate enough to attend a leadership institute led by Maureen Sullivan. First and foremost: if you get a chance to attend a workshop with her, do not pass go, just sign up.

The workshop began in earnest with everyone listing challenges and opportunities facing their libraries. “Keeping up with technology” cropped up early on. It always does. In my inside inside voice (the one that stays in my head), I wondered why we haven’t figured that one out yet. Shortly after the workshop ended, I came across the WebJunction report on library staff’s use of online tools. Read More »

Does your library charge fines? For everything? I've been chatting with a couple of libraries that don't charge fines for books, but do charge them for DVDs and videos. One library finds that their books often don't come back. Or that they come back months late. Not so with the DVDs and videos. Fines, they conclude, are the way to get materials back.
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"Hi, I'm sorry if I spammed you" has been my standard greeting for the last several weeks. If you've ever had email contact with me, you already know some of this story: a few weeks ago, my gmail account was hijacked. I believe this is what they call a "learning experience."

As usual, timing is everything. In the middle of April, I spent two weeks at conferences, one of them driving distance from my house. On my way home from the first day of the conference, my phone chirped with the familiar text-message sound. Like a good driver, I ignored it. Read More »

What makes for a good conference? It’s tempting to reduce it to a simple equation: C+P+L=E. Content plus people plus location equals experience. I’m just back from three consecutive conferences and in addition to my annual sense of wonder at the librarian obsession with conferencing, I’ve been mulling over conferences in general, and technology-oriented conferences in particular.

Content, people, and location are all important, but I’d add expectations, technology level, format, and focus to that equation. Computers in Libraries was one of the first conferences I attended and it is, in many ways, my mental model for a conference. However, every year (and this year was no exception), I talk to an attendee who expected more “under the hood” tech. I’ve come to think of CiL as if it were a more tech-focused section of a large conference like ALA. The daily keynotes give big-picture “state of libraries and technology in the world” talks and the sessions focus on presenters’ projects and pet passions. It’s not a good venue for detailed technical discussions – the shorter sessions don’t lend themselves to it and even if the sessions were longer, the audience’s diversity is a complicating factor. Read More »

I’m pleased to report that I’ve found an easy way to beat jet lag – stay on the opposite coast for thirty-six hours only and try not to sleep too much. If my PLA experience is any indication, it works pretty well, so long as you don’t mind being completely exhausted – I didn’t even change the time on my watch.

I wish I could offer a full report on PLA, but my experience was something of a whirlwind, punctuated by Voodoo donuts, a lovely Oregon pinot noir, and coffee. Lots and lots of coffee. I made it to the Top Tech Trends (TTT) panel, (good thing, since I was on the panel) which was PLA’s first Top Tech Trends presentation. Read More »

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It’s hard not to make new friends at library conferences. This is doubly true in Boston, a city that redefines the term “lost.” The unofficial activity of ALA Midwinter 2010 seemed to be standing on a corner, smartphone in hand, trying to align the map on the screen with the streets (please note: I used to live in Boston, and think it’s a great place. Still, I accidentally went to the airport one morning on my way to the convention center). Post-conference, lots of folks are blogging about the great people they met, either through serendipity or at meet-ups, and I’m reminded that the power of conferences almost always stems from the people who attend. 

I’ve been jokingly referring to my time at Midwinter as “a weekend spent talking to angry librarians,” though I think “angry” is too strong a word. I noticed a pervasive sense of frustration among the people I spoke with, many of whom expressed some professional exasperation with their jobs, the profession as a whole, or both. Everyone I spoke to was passionately committed to their patrons, to librarianship, to libraries, but all felt they were swimming upstream in some way or another. Read More »

Technology makes us stupider. No, wait, that’s not right, is it? Technology lets us use our time, energy, and skills in new ways, which are inevitably called “modernity”...and modernity is inevitably chastised for being stupider then The Good Old Days. Cell phones have allowed us to stop memorizing phone numbers (they have also forced filmmakers and novelists to create a whole new genre of suspense clichés: the “my battery is dead and soon I will be too!” scene) and spell check allows us to find out the correct spelling of a word after typing it, rather than before.

But there’s always a kernel of fear when we feel a skill slipping away; a small, panicky voice that says we’re losing something essential. Anecdotally, it’s easy to back that feeling up – who hasn’t lost something to a data mishap that they would have had stored in another format in the past? Personally, I recently lost my entire phone book to a badly-timed sync. I still have the phone numbers of childhood playmates committed to memory, but all I could do to recreate my contact list was beg for texts on Twitter and Facebook.

Librarians are, naturally, more focused on teaching people how to acquire new skills that they need to navigate modernity. Showing someone how to apply for a job, file their taxes, get government information or socialize online are all daily public service tasks. Many libraries maintain two (or more) tiers of services, one for technologically inclined patrons and one for people without email. Read More »

What do four-year olds know that three-year olds don’t? In college, I took a class on linguistics that focused on brain development. The professor told us about an experiment done with small children. The children are told a story about Billy and his father baking a cake and leaving it in the cupboard to cool. Billy goes outside to play and while he’s outside, his father moves the cake to the fridge. When Billy comes back in, where will he look for the cake? The three year olds say he will look in the fridge, while the four year olds know that Billy will look in the cupboard.

Although we start to understand how to put ourselves into another’s shoes at age four, it’s a skill we continue to hone for the rest of our lives. It’s a fundamental part of a reference interview; when we ask our patrons about what they’re asking us, we’re probing to find out where they think the cake is. It’s a tough question to keep asking. We all drift towards assuming our experiences, perspective, and understanding of the world are shared and easily grasped.  We know where Billy will look for the cake, but how often do we assume that local practice is common to all libraries? Read More »