Professional “Thank You” Not Required?

Quite often I receive emails from students in MLIS programs asking for advice. This can be as simple as help with a paper, a cataloguing question or long-term career advice. Sometimes these emails also involve in-depth questions regarding the future of cataloguing, areas of the profession that are growing, my professional opinion on certain topics or participation in studies, research or interviews.

Receiving these emails on an almost monthly basis, I continue to take the time to answer them, thoughtfully providing responses, direction, opinions or, when I have no answers, other resources or individuals that I believe will be helpful. However, what always stands out when helping these individuals is that I rarely, if ever, receive a “Thank You”. It’s easy to send an email. Easier than picking up the telephone or writing a letter. While I am not so long in the tooth, I had it drilled into me from an early age that a simple Thank You letter goes a long way. And, to me, it does. When a new professional wants something, how easy it is to send a quick email or text. And then — “ding”– their smartphone goes off when they receive a text or email back, providing them with answers to their queries. But how much effort does it take to send a simple “Thank you” in return? Apparently, a lot.

Within the past two weeks, I received two requests for assistance. And, given my ongoing experience with young professionals who are used to instant gratification (in this case, quick and “easy” answers with no thought to the professional’s time on the other end), my knee-jerk reaction was to say “no”. How terrible of me. Why should these students face the consequences of their peers’ actions? So, of course, I am taking the time to do it. Why? Because I am a professional who believes in mentoring and growing the profession through working together, sharing information and building relationships. Because, for every 1 out of 30 young professionals who take the time to say “Thank You”, I know that perhaps, one day, I will meet or read about that young individual making a difference in our profession. And, by some small chance, maybe I made a positive impact in their career choices and path.

However, I do find the lack of a professional “Thank You” troubling. Why are our young professionals not learning about how to conduct themselves professionally? Should they have to be taught about professional conduct (which in this case, seems more like common courtesy) at the graduate level? Should we be addressing this behaviour at conferences? In the classroom? While I am not sure where this needs to be addressed, we certainly need to take note of this or someday, an aspiring mover & shaker may write an email that is never responded to; never answered because the respondent no longer takes the time to respond to emails and is no longer interested in mentoring or sharing their expertise. What a shame that would be.

Qualities of Successful Managers

The Palinet Leadership Network recently posted a new article, Qualities of Successful Managers.  Part of the article consists of one of my earlier blog posts, Talking about Management to New Library Professionals.   The remainder of the article features additional bloggers and their posts, discussing management and leadership. 

This is a timely article, given that graduation is right around the corner and there will soon be a flood of new professionals looking for opportunities and learning experiences.  As leaders in the profession, will you choose to help them? Mentor them?  We are, after all, responsible for shaping the next generation of librarians. 

I am extremely fortunate in my current position.  As a relatively new professional, I have outstanding managers.  They continue to provide me with opportunities and encourage projects and ideas.  As a result, I have become a better manager.  I have also seen managers in the opposite extreme – professionals who are published and well-known but lack the desire to encourage and foster an environment for professional development opportunities and ideas.  What type of manager (what type of LEADER) are you?

Talking about management to new professionals

Several weeks ago I was invited to speak to the management class at Dalhousie University’s School of Information Management (SIM). This was my first speaking engagement as a professional librarian and I was honoured to be asked.

Although eager to speak to a group of new professionals about management, I wondered what advice and anecdotes I had to offer. Should I talk about professional conduct? Presenting yourself as a professional (even when you look 20!)? Managing staff as old, if not older, than your parents? How to go about gaining the trust and respect of your staff when you’re still learning and they’ve been in the field for years? What about making management decisions that aren’t popular?

How can I share what I’ve learned in 15 minutes? I wanted to highlight the most valuable lessons that I’ve learned as a new professional and provide the class with concrete examples. I also wanted to create a dialogue that the students would feel comfortable pursuing further.

Dr. Fiona Black, the Director of SIM, provided some guideline questions to all the guest speakers which assisted in shaping my talk.

1. What type of changes have you witnessed in organizations since you began your professional career and how have you been involved in “change management”?

2. If there is one thing about management you would emphasize to a new professional, what would it be?

3. How do you motivate your colleagues (now or in past positions) around learning new things?

4. How do you (personally) demonstrate accountability within your organization?

Using these questions as the foundation for my talk, I stressed the following points:

Always appear confident (or as I like to say, “fake it”)

Acknowledge what you don’t know.

Give credit where it’s due.

Praise your staff.

Be willing to learn from the ground up.

A first impression is vital, but so is maintaining a day-to-day professional appearance.

Graduating doesn’t mean that your professional development is over, it’s just beginning.

Respect your staff. An MLIS doesn’t give you the right to talk down to anyone – EVER.

Lead by example.

Be fair and be honest. Don’t expect your staff to do anything you aren’t willing to do.

Let your actions and achievements represent your commitment to the profession. If you don’t have library experience, or very little experience, look for opportunities. Volunteer to write book reviews for publication, join committees and become involved.

Perhaps I have a stronger desire to participate in the shaping and education of new professionals because it hasn’t been too long since I was in the classroom. But I think it is the responsibility of all professionals to take a hand in educating and mentoring young professionals. How will they learn the necessary lessons and skills without us?

Classroom perception of the profession and reality of the day-to-day requirements of the profession are all part of a new professional’s education. One of the best kept secrets that I realized early on is that new professionals and those professionals in the twilight of their career are not so very different. While more mature professionals have experience under their belt, twinges of anxiety still creep up when writing a report or making a major management decision. We don’t always know everything, even though we learn how to look like we do. And, all of us want to make a difference in the profession in some way.

In my limited experience, I have found that emphasizing the similarities between new professionals and mature professionals bridges the gap and takes away some of the fear of inadequacy young professionals face when starting their careers. It also opens the door for opportunities; opportunities for collaborating, mentoring and creating. Young professionals have incredible ideas but mature professionals know the rules and the processes. Long-standing professionals have the knowledge and young professionals have the drive. We all have a lot to learn from each other.

As information professionals, we’re all about access to information. Why aren’t more of us improving access between students and current professionals? We, as professionals, are the information that students need. We are the resources. Let’s work on the access. I urge all of you to get involved in your area information school programs – both at the college and university levels. Become a mentor or host a student. There are so many ways we can participate.

Not so professional behaviour

Meredith Farkas recently blogged about an unpleasant experience she had regarding a “professional”  who made comments on her blog.

While most of us don’t have experiences like this, or at least, don’t expect this type of behaviour from professionals, it does happen.  What, I wonder, would happen if we had a governing body that promoted professional ethics and had the authority to reprimand those who don’t behave according to an established code of conduct?

Librarianship: A job or a profession?

I suppose this is a bit of a rant that I’d like to share. As a disclaimer, I do want to state that I’ve met many amazing people in this profession. However, those individuals who really stand out to me are the ones devoted to librarianship.

Being a relative newcomer to the profession, I often hear remarks such as “you’re still young”, “wait until you get older”, “you’re not jaded yet” from staff. I have chosen to use my words carefully in this regard. These comments tend to come from staff and non-professionals, not librarians. It surprises me that staff members would concern themselves with how much time I devote to the profession. My profession.

When I’m met with sarcastic remarks, my first reaction is to say something like, “of course you wouldn’t understand, it’s just a job to you” or, “I chose to go to school for this”, or even worse “I’m a professional, you’re not”. I would never actually say this given that it’s not only inappropriate but incredibly UNprofessional. However, I am tempted.

I applaud librarians who have been in the field, those of you who are not so new, and yet who continue to contribute to our profession. I don’t just work in a library, I AM a librarian, and it is part of who I am. I enjoy contributing to the profession and am sorry that staff who work in libraries can’t appreciate that. I hope that when I become too jaded or “old”, that I’ll be wise enough to retire.

In the end, I guess it boils down to this: Do you see what we do as a profession and yourself as a professional, or is it just a job?

Robbing Peter to Pay Paul: That’s Not Professional Conduct

When we attend library school, we are united by our interest in joining the library profession. As a team of soon-to-be professionals, we work in groups to discuss current issues facing libraries; we collaborate on projects and talk about emerging trends. We are comrades and colleagues.

Unfortunately, when we enter library land, we tend to follow our interests and grow away from each other. Whether we choose reference, cataloguing, youth services or readers’ services, we follow our passion and feel that the area we have chosen is vital to the services that libraries provide. Because of this passion and dedication to our own area of librarianship, some professionals come to the conclusion that their interests and their services are more important to the running of the library than another area of librarianship. As a group of professionals, we no longer look at the importance of librarianship as a whole, but divide it into smaller parts, which results in an “us or them” mentality.

This problem is further exacerbated by budget cuts and library closures. In an effort to save their own job, librarians become even more divided as they seek to devalue another library service so that they remain “safe”. In essence, they are attempting to rob one area of librarianship to sustain another.

Unlike reference staff or readers’ services, cataloguing is a silent public service. As long as we are doing our job well, things run smoothly and therefore, we attract little to no attention. As a result, we are often forgotten. Most patrons are not even aware of our existence.  As such, we are hard pressed to defend ourselves to the public we serve when the services we are providing are denigrated by front-line staff. What is more disturbing is that many front-line librarians attempt to devalue our services and commiserate with patrons when they complain about Dewey or the library catalogue.

Is it really very professional to put down colleagues in order to make our own services more attractive? As professionals, we should be making ourselves aware of the importance of each service provided in the library – whether we like it our not. I have to admit, I dread the thought of sitting at a reference desk, and I certainly wasn’t interested in pursuing a career in children’s services. However, I discovered something while attending graduate school.  I may not like performing those aspects of librarianship, but they are a vital area of the profession and as such, it is important to understand them and why they exist.  Embrace the diversity of services that we offer – it is those services as a whole that we should be working together to protect.

As professionals, we should not be denigrating the services that our colleagues provide due to our own dislike or ignorance.  To bad-mouth one area of librarianship is to devalue the whole of our profession.  I suggest that in doing so, it exhibits a lack of professional conduct.

Information Ethics : Our Standards, Responsibilities and Duties as Librarians

As many of you are aware from reading this blog, my husband is a lawyer. One of the areas he is most interested in is professional ethics, discipline and self-governance. While his interests are mainly focussed on professional ethics surrounding the legal profession, much of what we discuss together involves all professionals, our responsibilities, and how we conduct ourselves. Like lawyers, we serve the public and, as a result, are public figures. We hold a position of trust in the public eye.

Having developed an interest in professional ethics through our discussions, I have been reading articles on our own profession, and our responsibilities. The following excerpt is from an article I recently came across called Information Ethics: The Duty, Privilege and Challenge of Educating Information Professionals – University of Pennsylvania.

In our increasingly complex, multicultural, and information-intensive society, many critical issues related to information access and use are misunderstood, inadequately considered, or even ignored. These issues may involve balancing individual and societal needs (such as in protecting both an individual’s privacy and the public’s right to know); resolving conflicting views about library collection policies between librarians and parents of schoolchildren; resolving disagreements between individual archivists and retention policies concerning electronic records; understanding one’s own view of what is ethical; or many other topics. In a growing number of instances, decisions concerning information access and use are placing information professionals in sensitive, and sometimes vulnerable, positions.

Knowing how to create, find, manage, access, preserve, and use information effectively provides a form of power to the information professional, whether it is through speed of access to needed sources, the ability to hack into a system, or complex skills to find and create new multimedia information resources. Information professionals, as well as those who rely on them to provide a wide array of services to help people work more efficiently, compete with others, or improve the quality of their lives, must recognize and understand that with power comes responsibility. Like those who acquired power from their knowledge of how to split the atom, librarians, archivists, and other information professionals must learn to understand the possible and real consequences of their actions, reflect on the alternative choices they may make, and determine how best to use their power and act responsibly.

Individuals seeking to become professional librarians or archivists, or seeking to work in other types of cultural heritage institutions or information-related organizations must first learn to develop and hone their own individual sense of ethics, live an ethical life, and be educated about ethical issues in their professional life. In addition, the information professional must learn how–and be ready–to make ethical decisions and take ethical actions (Hammond, Keeney, & Raiffa, 1998).

What I find most intriguing about this article is the emphasis on the creation, retrieval, management and access to information. I have specifically chosen this excerpt because of the current movement among cataloguers to push for a larger cataloguing curriculum in library education. Cataloguing is more than just a skill set. What we do requires a high degree of professionalism. We make decisions regarding political correctness versus access, censorship, labeling, personal opinions, and much more. Information ethics is heavily imbedded in cataloguing. Before the information is ever accessible or organized for the public, it passes through our hands. As a result, our profession carries with it a large amount of responsibility.

While I am hopeful that increasing awareness in our professional responsibilities, as well as our skills and knowledge, will assist in developing a higher level of education among current library students, I am also bringing attention to ethical standards because I believe this area of librarianship has been neglected. I also believe that in an increasingly information-centered world, our ability to outline exactly what our code of ethics is and how we govern ourselves will become even more important.

As a result, I hope to explore this topic further in future posts and look forward to any feedback from you in this regard.

Quality v. Quantity

I had an appointment with my doctor the other day.  When I arrived several minutes before my scheduled appointment, I checked in and was told to take a seat.  I ended up waiting about a half an hour before the doctor was able to see me.

She was running late, but I didn’t mind.  I usually expect to wait at any doctor’s office.  However, the doctor seemed to be very aware of the time.  In addition to apologizing for the delay, she rushed through our appointment.  I attempted to explain some symptoms I was having, at which point she began examining me, cutting me off and asking additional questions.

At the end of the visit, the doctor indicated that she would be referring me to several specialists.  Not indicating when or how these appointments were to be made, or if I could take the time off to attend them, she again apologized for running behind and began calling out the next patient’s name.

I felt rushed, unsatisfied and brushed off.  I did not feel that the visit that I had just experienced was professional or patient focussed.  Instead, I felt that the amount of patients that revolved through the doors and at the scheduled time was more important the the individual patients’ needs and at the expense of proper medical care.

In reality, my doctor did nothing wrong.  When complaining of certain symptoms, she performed a brief exam and, not noticing anything immediate, decided to send me to a specialist. That is the way to avoid litigation and medical negligence.  However, I don’t believe this visit was up to the standard that I expect of a professional.  When I visit a professional, any professional, I don’t want to feel like a number.  I want to feel as if the service I am being provided is of the highest quality.

Having had this experience, I began thinking about our own profession and the services we are providing our patrons.

Crunching the numbers
We hear statements like “It takes too long”, “What’s the delay, the book has been ‘in cataloguing’ for a week”, and so on, all the time.  There are articles, presentations and professionals who are always expressing concern over the turnaround time for getting the items out and on the library shelves. Many times, the solutions for increasing turnaround time involve harvesting other libraries’ records, or cutting corners and creating smaller records while ignoring cataloguing rules.

Stats are important, I will never argue that point.  Stats keep us employed and give us factual information to point to when budget time rolls around (in addition to many other things).  However, as cataloguing stats are climbing, are we sacrificing quality?  As professionals, our obligation is to our patrons and the service we provide them.  We have a professional responsibility to provide accurate records with proper punctuation and spelling.  If the name of a book is spelled wrong and we just “trust” the copy, how will that item ever be found?  What if it is a downloadable book and there is no physical item?

In my library, while we try to copy catalogue whenever possible, it is essential that we review the records when cataloguing the item.  I have never found a record that is perfect when imported.  There are misspellings, punctuation errors and, at times, terms or phrases that we either don’t use in our library or do not apply in Canada.  An example of this goes back to my Indigenous Peoples v. Indians subject headings posting.

In the end, even if the book is on the shelf, are we doing any favours to patrons who exclusively use the catalogue?  Aren’t we setting an example that we are not capable of handling the digitalization of information but can only provide proper service through a physical visit to the library?  Statistics show that visits to the catalogue are continuously increasing, while physical visits are down.  Isn’t that a good argument as to why we should be maintaining our professional standards?

While numbers become increasingly more important to justify our existance, we continue to have a responsibility to our patrons.  That responsibility includes providing an exceptional service.  This exceptional service is reflected in the accuracy of our catalogue, the ability to properly find information in our catalogue and the continuous updating of reading lists and new items.

I don’t believe in the saying “good enough”.  If you are aware that your standards are dropping to increase productivity, a review of procedures must take place.  We are professionals, we do not work on an assembly line where the only thing that matters is how much we produced that day.

While stats are good and helpful, I worry that the same squeeky wheels who complain the loudest about our turnaround will soon begin to complain about our poor, inaccurate records.  These records, created at their request, will further add fuel to the fire when questioning the role of the cataloguer.  If the turnaround is too long, sacrifice quality.  If the quality is poor and no longer adheres to any standard practice, what do we need cataloguers for?  It is a never-ending cycle.

What do we do?
Market, market, market.  It’s not easy, but it can be done. Besides cataloguers, who knows what we do all day?  Do they understand that we create electronic reading lists?  Make decisions regarding terminology?  Develop search tutorials? Create new restrictions and settings to make searching the catalogue easier (for both staff and patrons)?  Catalogue DVDs, CDs, Books on tape, Electronic documents, Reference materials, Books and Magazines?  And, by the way, where do you find copy for local publications?

In the end, we cannot compromise our professional responsibility to suit the needs of front-line staff or whomever our critics are.  Justify the time it takes to catalogue to management and make them aware of all of the factors that are involved in cataloguing an item so that it can be found. Electronically.

Privacy Agreements for Private Sector Cataloguers

In my previous posting, I wrote about conflicts of interest. I was discussing this post with my husband, who happens to be a lawyer. He commented that librarians in the private sector should consider privacy or confidentiality agreements between themselves and their clients. This would be similar to a solicitor and client privacy agreement.

What would a confidential or privacy agreement do? This type of an agreement serves several purposes. First, it guarantees a right of privacy to your clients. This will assure them that the information you are cataloguing and their own name as an individual or company will remain confidential. It will also provide assurance to our clients who may, perhaps, be competitors with other clients. They will have a contract that outlines the services we are providing and that the information will be not discussed with or available to outside parties, including their competitors.

Finally, it will protect us as professionals. Agreements such as these will protect our integrity and support our reputation as professionals. Providing an understanding of the services we provide and how their information will be stored and/or used will assure them that we are simply organizing information, not using it, reporting it or judging it. In essence, are an uninterested third party whose sole service is to organize and provide clients with access to their information.

I don’t know if the existing “cataloguing” firms out in the public sector are currently using such agreements. However, I think that those cataloguers who choose a career in the private sector need to accept that they are not only cataloguers, but businessmen (or women) and conduct their services accordingly. Given today’s litigious environment and concern over matters of privacy, we need to carefully consider our position and the roles we play both in the public and private sector. We should always adhere to highest principles of our professional ethics and take any precautionary steps necessary to protect our profession and integrity. We do not want to be accused of being in a conflict of interest or of failing to keep information confidential. This will hurt our reputations, our profession and our business.

When are we in a conflict of interest?

Cataloguers work in many fields. We work in libraries, in legal environments, universities and businesses. We are found in grassroots campaigns, political offices and special interest groups. Our career paths lead us to many things. This could be a former liberal cataloguing for the conservative government, or a former employee of one business now cataloguing for a competitive company. When this happens, should our expertise be called into question? Does our personal interest, perhaps even our past experiences lessen our credibility as an expert in cataloguing? Should our knowledge of one political party, business or event regard others to call our professionalism into question?

When I am cataloguing, I am only interested in content as it pertains to cataloguing. I catalogue numerous documents, books and CDs everyday. I create reading lists with hundreds of books. Can I recall their exact information? No. I require only enough information to catalogue the item so that others may recall the information when they need it.

A professional is someone who separates his/her professional responsibilities from their personal views and opinions. It does not matter who I worked for, what I did in the past or what religious view points I have. I am responsible for cataloguing fairly, honestly and without censor or malice. That is the role of a professional.