goblin cartoons

As I said in my previous post, I went to a school in Kansas City called Loretto for 5th-8th grades. Loretto was a private school that promoted self-paced education, cooperative learning, broad educational study and free thinking. It wasn’t quite “anything goes,” but it was much looser and more open than almost any other school I’ve gone to, not too dissimilar from the Montessori method. I really enjoyed my time at Loretto, and I was very upset when it closed during the summer of 1984, but it didn’t really hit me until this past weekend, reuniting with old friends and teachers from the school, just how much Loretto helped shape who I am and what I do today.

The Library Society of the World, begun on a whim and a dare, is completely a Loretto thing. It’s nonhierarchical, loosely-structured, open, free, collaborative, sarcastic and often lazy about getting things done…just like my classmates and I were at Loretto. Library Camp Kansas and my fondness for unconferences in general, that’s also Loretto-inspired. My dislike of formal presentations, standing at a podium and lecturing to an audience, and my preference for free-flowing conversations and the equal exhange of ideas also comes from my time at Loretto.

If I can continue to bring the Loretto philosophy and style into my professional and personal life, I’ll consider myself very successful indeed. The world needs fewer squares and more circles.

I’m sure I have been guilty on occasion of complaining, “I didn’t go to library school to do this!” I know I’ve heard coworkers say something similar. This being something that at the time seemed trivial and simple, nothing like what we studied in grad school: clearing printer jams, unclogging toilets, sorting donated books, cleaning up vomit, chasing horny teenagers out of secluded bookstacks, and so on and so on. I went to library school and studied reference materials, collection management, cataloging, theories of information. I got a Master’s degree, for crying out loud! Surely such tasks as these are beneath me, right?

Well, here’s the thing. I went to library school to make libraries my career. And sometimes library work is clearing printer jams, unclogging toilets, sorting books, cleaning up vomit and harrassing horny teenagers. That work isn’t beneath me, it’s all part of the job, regardless of how much student loan debt I’ve racked up, regardless of what letters I have after my name. The abstract ideals and ethics of librarianship are all well and good, but if printers are jammed, toilets are overflowing and there’s puke on the floor, nobody gives a good goddamn about successful reference transactions.

And this is beyond libraries. Whatever job you have, whatever amount of schooling you have, work sometimes involves crawling around in dust and grime, cleaning up other people’s messes, doing repetitive and boring work, doing work that, in all honesty, a trained chimp could do. It’s all important. None of it is trivial. And if you think some work is really beneath you…well, I’d say you need your diaper changed and a new bottle of warm milk, because you’re clearing not mature enough to handle adult labor. You’re insulting the good people who regularly do such work. To riff off of Oscar Wilde, some of us are looking at the stars, but we are all in the gutter. And we all need to do our part to keep the gutter clean.

Yesterday, I drove to Wichita to present at the Kansas Library Association/Mountain Plains Library Association conference on “Impractical, Unfeasible, Unfundable Ideas for Libraries.” This was a presentation based on one of the best sessions of Library Camp of the West that I participated in. I expanded the premise a bit to be: in these times of economic uncertainty and hardship, now is not the time to give in to despair or to play it safe. Libraries should be daring, bold, willing to dream big, take risks and make mistakes. Rather than stand up and babble for the entire session, with Powerpoint slides to illustrate my blather, I threw out some wild ideas I would like to see in libraries and then solicited ideas from the attendees. Which was easy, because librarians are full of wild ideas they’d like to see.

Here are the major ideas we came up with:

Libraries stop rolling over for vendors

* For ILS vendors, aren’t libraries their only customer base? They should roll over for us!
* What about database vendors? Why don’t they give us more of what we want? (And what DO we want?)?

Libraries go completely open source

* Open source software isn’t always an easy solution or an easy change
* But the ideals of OSS match librarian ideals
* Going open source could push more librarians to be computer problem-solvers

Bill Gates gives computers, software & money to libraries…

* Why not other companies, like FedEx & UPS?
* Why not other entrepreneurs who may share library values? Like Mark Shuttleworth, the sponsor of Ubuntu Linux.

Librarian travel by pneumatic tube to wherever they’re needed!

Databases controlling the space.

Hybrid engines for library vehicles! Or biodeisel engines from Willy Nelson.

Partner with Meals on Wheels.

Choose something in the catalog & the item starts blinking. Spot where item goes blinks when it needs to be reshelved.

Staff-driven climate control.

Like Loews–patrons push a button & “Help wanted!” would sound out, alerting librarians.

Abolish the reference desk! Reference staff should walk around the library, not sit at a desk.

Everything with a number & up to date.

Magic button that reorganizes furniture and puts it back where it belongs after patrons move it.

Streamlined ILL!

Librarians out of the library! Have librarians on cruise ships! in coffee shops!

Technology that decodes “I want the book with the blue cover” question patrons often have.

Flashing neon signs to direct people to restrooms.

Creating added entries in MARC records for “red book” & “blue book”–tagging items in catalog–browsing by cover.

On www.etsy.com, you can browse by color. Why not in library catalogs?

Abolish the Dewey Decimal System!

Culture shift to play with things that might not work.

Combine libraries with laundromats & the DMV.

Bars in libraries!

Check out an audiobook at one Kansas library & return it to any other Kansas library.

Nationwide library cards. (Or just get rid of library cards.)

Anything marked as library materials goes through the mail for free.

Heather Braum of NEKLS was one of the attendees who also tweeted during the session.  She posted great notes and got some interesting responses.

What wild, crazy, dreamy ideas do you have for libraries? And how can we make these ideas a reality?

EDIT: The notes from the LCOW session have great ideas, too.

My fellow Library Society of the Word carping nerdboy Steve Lawson has done a wonderful thing. He took an offhand joke I made about an award given out by the LSW and turned it into a real thing: the Library Society of the World Shovers and Makers Award. How do you win an award? You nominate yourself! And so I have. I’ve also added an LSW S&M badge to this blog, which you can see in the sidebar.

Are you a shover and maker in the library world? Than give yourself an award!

Yesterday was the second Library Camp Kansas. We had a slightly smaller turnout than we did last year, but everyone was just as enthusiastic and engaged, and we tweaked the format a little–for the better. And while we had attendees from out of state, just as we did last year, we also had an international attendee: my Australian friend Kathryn Greenhill, who is ferociously smart and adorably energetic.

Last year, we had three breakout session, one of them being lunch. This year, we left lunch as just lunch, and had one breakout session before lunch and two sessions after. Before the first breakout session, we had a session of “lightning talks,” where attendees could come up and talk, in 5 minutes or less, about a particular computer app or website that they really liked. The lightning talks proved to be a great icebreaker, a great way to get people talking and sharing. People liked them so much, they said they want two sessions of lightning talks next year.

The breakout sessions I attended were really good. The conversations could have gone on and on. A lot of different perspectives were shared, and I learned a lot. There was one session I was supposed to moderate, but nobody showed up for it. My feelings weren’t hurt at all, though. I spent the time chatting with my pal Bobbi Newman.

Once again, I came away feeling that I get more out of unconferences than I do from formal conferences. (Although I didn’t get an ugly totebag. Is that better or worse? You make the call.) I’m really looking forward to next year’s Library Camp Kansas.

In just a little over a month, the second Library Camp Kansas unconference will take place. Last year’s was such a success, I’m really looking forward to this year’s unconference.

It’s going to be in Manhattan again (that’s Kansas, not New York, dig?) at the Hale Library. It’s free, it’s fun, it’s educational. So, if you’re a library employee in Kansas (or heck, Missouri, Iowa, Nebraska, Colorado or Oklahoma, if you can drag yourself here), sign up and come join us for loosely-structured learning! What are you waiting for, an invitation? Oh, OK, fine.

The drive to and from Denver was long, but not as boring as I thought it would be. Western Kansas is flat as all get out, but it’s still beautiful to drive through. Denver itself is, from what I saw, a beautiful, vibrant city. The unconference was brilliant, and I’ve written about it on the LSW blog.

I had a great time hanging out with my library pals, but it’s good to be home.

Life has kind of been kicking me in the tush lately (which is one of the primary reasons I haven’t blogged much lately), and to be perfectly frank, I wasn’t looking forward to Tech Day this year. I just wasn’t feeling up to it. I was actually feeling pretty blasé about libraries in general (which is another reason why I haven’t been blogging much lately).

I’m happy to say I had a terrific time at Tech Day, and I’m very, very glad I went. In fact, I think this was the best Tech Day I’ve been to yet. Props to Sharon Moreland, newly established in her position at NEKLS, for her first time at organizing Tech Day. I expected Michael Porter to give a good keynote, but it was even better than I thought it would be, full of inspiring enthusiasm, curiosity and love for libraries, freedom, open source technology. Power to the people!

I had a good time hanging out with my coworkers and friends like Bobbi Newman and Royce Kitts (who deserves many congratulations for finishing library school and getting the job of Director of the Tonganoxie Public Library–both at the same time!), chatting with librarians from all over Kansas, playing video games and talking about the future of libraries. Tech Day was exactly what the doctor ordered for me.

It’s been almost a month since I last posted here (and I said I intended to post more, ha ha!), but the fact is, I’ve been feeling…well, bored with Libraryland. I still love libraries, I still love being a librarian, but I don’t have anything to say about libraries or librarians.

So, don’t expect to see much posting until I get all fired up about something. In the meantime, if you’d care to, leave me a comment telling me what’s getting you all excited or angry or ecstatic about libraries. Or, hell, leave a comment about what’s getting you all excited or angry or ecstatic about anything.

Congratulations to fellow Kansan David Lee King, who has been named as one of Library Journal’s Movers and Shakers for 2008. David is doing amazing stuff at the Topeka & Shawnee County Public Library (and inspiring others at the library to do amazing stuff), as well as blogging and speaking nationally about library progress. Thanks for representing Kansas progress in Libraryland, David!

Congratulations to all of the other 2008 Movers and Shakers, including the Lady of the Rebel Yell, Michelle Boule, New Jersey Transformer (more than meets the eye!) Peter Bromberg and LibraryThing mastermind Tim Spalding. Well done, all of you!