such as present at a workshop where you’re on the slate with seasoned veterans like Stephen Abram and Michael Stephens.
i would say that i am fairly comfortable presenting in front of a group. we do a lot of teaching at my branch, so i have had a lot of practice explaining somewhat complicated things to folks.
i also read up on presenting (slide:ology and presentation zen are two recent faves) and while i don’t consider myself as proficient with powerpoint as Larry Lessig, i certainly don’t force my audience to suffer “death by powerpoint”. or as Dorothea puts it, “i don’t think i’ve ever wasted the audience’s time”.
so though i’m okay speaking to people, and know that my presentations are, for the most part, not-so-bad, being asked to speak at this workshop was still scary.
scary because…
both Stephen and Michael know how to engage an audience.
i wasn’t presenting at some far-off conference to peeps that i will only ever see again at another conference. i was presenting to local librarians and library school students – my colleagues and friends!
i didn’t get to rehearse nearly as much as i had hoped (note to self: your procrastinatory skills are epic. you must fix this).
but scary is good. scary makes you try harder. scary makes you prepare better (plz to disregard my 3rd point above). scary makes you try things. scary pushes you to do something!
and then the next time you do it, it’s less scary. and then the next time, even less scary. and so on, and so on…
so how have you scared yourself lately? (alright alright, use “challenged” if that sounds better in your head.) i am well aware that it is easier to say you are going to do something new than to actually do it.
this story came through my RSS reader courtesy of the lovely Sarah Hougthon-Jan (the Librarian in Black).
last summer the folks at NASA’s Johnson Space Centre created a team to address innovation within the organization. the results of the analysis were presented in the form of a video, which was shown to managers last month. one of those managers has since uploaded the video to YouTube.
two things struck me after watching this video.
the first – kudos to NASA for investigating this within their organization and actively evaluating how innovation is being blocked.
the second – much of the behaviour in this video directly affects the information-sharing and knowledge management of the organization. No wonder they lost the original moonwalk tapes!
CBC’s Spark (i love Nora Young!) had a recent episode discussing the value of offline formats of communication: basically, stuff printed on dead trees.
hearing about Ben Tennett’s project Things Our Friends Have Written on the Internet, where he selected blog posts and published them as a newspaper, made me think about the things that i prefer to read in print. (bias: i worked in the newsroom of a major metropolitan daily newspaper for 8 years, so i like pretty much everything about newsprint, from the smell to the inky fingers. also, i am an EXPERT at refolding a newspaper so that it looks unread. talents, i haz’em.)
thinking about my love of newsprint, i looked at all the paper on my desk: memos, catalogues, course outlines, to-do lists, and a bunch of pieces of paper which i don’t remember putting there but which have magically appeared on my desk.
how many of these bits and pieces could be delivered in a different format?
maybe more importantly, how many of these pieces of paper should be delivered in a different format?
would i treat them differently if they weren’t printed and in a pile on my desk?
with my inbox (all of them) already overflowing, do i want previously-printed items to be delivered electronically?
do we feel differently about things we read in print? things we read online?
while blogs serve many purposes within an organization, they can’t do it all. i worry that some of us are jumping on the blogging bandwagon because we think that it will solve all of our communication problems.
how often does your organization evaluate your communication needs and address which can be met best with online vs print information?
no one tagged me but we all know how much i love a bandwagon – there’s a meme going around…
here are seven things you might not know about me.
i can sing the alphabet backward as easily as i can forward. i was a bored child and took to reading books backward once i had read them the “proper”. if you buy me a beer i’ll even serenade you with “mary had a little lamb” backward. if you want me to do this on karaoke night, it’ll cost you more than one beer.
i can read hebrew (with the vowels, pls) and russian but have no idea what i’m saying.
i was in a “reverse-integration” (holy gawd i hate that term) program in grade five where i was lucky enough to go to Mackay Centre with kids with various physical disabilities as well as share a building with a deaf school. my sign language, at the moment, is atrocious.
my cousin is a bit of a rock star in quebec. for the record, i hated him between the ages of 9 and 13 because he was always being told how awesome he was for being able to sing so well. now, however, i think he’s a big sweetheart.
this was the first gizmo i ever used to get on the internet. (actually, my uncle had a coupler so i could get on it at his house, but this was the first thing we had chez nous.) my parents had no idea how to work it. i won a samantha fox cassette answering a quiz on a bulletin board.
i was on the opening crew of the Disney Wonder and loved everything about it. i trained at Disney World for a month (working in the Magic Kingdom). then was flown to the Fincantieri shipyard in Venice to pick up the ship and sail it first to Southhampton (where Sir Richard Branson sponsored an “open ship” event and we had the most amazing fireworks EVER), then to Porta Delgada in The Azores, then across the Atlantic Ocean for a week (sans guests) to home port in Port Canaveral, FL. i sailed through hurricanes and worked with 3 year olds. i consider this some of the best management experience i’ve ever had and actually feel the company gives (some of ) their employees an awful lot of autonomy to make people happy. cult-like corporate culture, i eats it up.
due to my diastema, i have amazing accuracy when spitting water out through my two front teeth. i love knowing that i share a bar trick with the Wife of Bath, Cleopatra, and Madonna.
according to the rules of this meme – i have to tag seven peeps. so here ya go!
actually becoming a business librarian. sure i like to play with emerging tech and figure out how to use it in my library, but i plan on spending 2009 developing my knowledge of business databases. Bloomberg, Datastream and WRDS – i will master you!
The Trotsky a movie written and directed by a friend from high school. (well, we were kinda friends then, and everytime we bump into each other we have a good laugh, but i guess mostly i’m friends with his sister.) other than the cast being terrific, the one thing i will always remember about Jacob, and definitely why we still seem to have a good laugh whenever we bump into each other, is that he is a frickin’ smart and funny guy. the movie is about high school days as seen through jacob’s eyes, with Jay Baruchel as one of the main characters. i’m fairly confident this will be hilarious.
spending more time outdoors NOT playing rugby. the mister got me a pair of very fancy snow shoes two winters ago and i have yet to use them. (i suk. i know.) i plan to rectify this situation this winter. Mont Royal has lots of great trails for snowshoeing, what am i waiting for? (and Mont Royal Park was designed by the same dude that did Central Park in NYC).
also, there are at least five outdoor skating rinks within a 10 minute walk of my house (that is when the streets and sidewalks are not, in fact, skating rinks themselves) so i’m going to pick up a pair of second hand skates. i used to love skating at midnight in the winter – everything is so peaceful.
(this being said, i can’t wait to play rugby this summer. taking last summer off was good for me – and the first summer in 17 years that i didn’t play – but i missed my team mates, and the tackling. mostly the tackling.)
open access awesomeness. i really want to learn more about open access issues as they relate to publishing and libraries. i’ve worked in publishing a looong time (this is year 14) and i used to edit and now publish an open access journal (which i think more academic libraries should get involved in – i’ll talk about this at CiL2009) but i really want to know more and get a better idea of all that is involved with it.
meeting more librarians. social networks have been essential to my development as a librarian. i have no idea where i’d be know if i hadn’t hopped on second life two years ago (and yes, i do think that on top of everything else going on in SL, that it is also a social networking tool) where i met librarians from all over the globe who were quick to support me through my degree. and twitter, well twitter is still THE BEST THING EVAH as far as my professional development. (though friendfeed is proving to be a very close second – anything that almagamates all the different networks into one screen, is a good good thing.)
i also got to “meat” a lot of librarians this year thanks to all the conferences i managed to hit up – OLA in february (toronto), CiL in april (arlington), SLA in june (seattle), IFLA in august (quebec city), Access in october (hamilton), IL in october (monterey). next year will see less travel since i now have a full-time job which won’t cover ever single conference i want to go to (though they’ve definitely been good to me this year), but i will be at CiL in late march (arlington, encore), SLA in june (in DC), and i’ll be at the CLA emerging tech preconference at the end of may (montreal) since amanda and i organized the bad boy. “meating” librarians is always the best part of conferences and i’ve made some pretty networks – especially with my fellow recent grads who ended up in academia. and to all those of you that i met this year – i am one lucky girl to know ya.
Things you’ve already done: bold Things you want to do: italicize
Things you haven’t done and don’t want to – leave in plain font.
1. Started your own blog. 2. Slept under the stars. 3. Played in a band. 4. Visited Hawaii. (my aunt lives there!) 5. Watched a meteor shower. 6. Given more than you can afford to charity. 7. Been to Disneyland/world. 8. Climbed a mountain. 9. Held a praying mantis. 10. Sang a solo. 11. Bungee jumped. 12. Visited Paris. 13. Watched a lightning storm at sea. 14. Taught yourself an art from scratch. 15. Adopted a child. 16. Had food poisoning.
17. Walked to the top of the Statue of Liberty. 18. Grown your own vegetables. 19. Seen the Mona Lisa in France. 20. Slept on an overnight train. 21. Had a pillow fight.
22. Hitch hiked. 23. Taken a sick day when you’re not ill. (hellz ya) (to current employer: i mean, NEVER) 24. Built a snow fort. (i live in montreal. our country place is an igloo.) 25. Held a lamb. 26. Gone skinny dipping.
27. Run a marathon. 28. Ridden a gondola in Venice. 29. Seen a total eclipse. 30. Watched a sunrise or sunset. 31. Hit a home run. 32. Been on a cruise. (well, i was working, but i was on it.) 33. Seen Niagara Falls in person. 34. Visited the birthplace of your ancestors. (been to ireland and england. still have to hit scotland.) 35. Seen an Amish community. 36. Taught yourself a new language.(taught myself to read hebrew.)
37. Had enough money to be truly satisfied. (this is a weird one.) 38. Seen the Leaning Tower of Pisa in person. 39. Gone rock climbing. 40. Seen Michelangelo’s David in person. 41. Sung Karaoke. (just not at IL2008.) 42. Seen Old Faithful geyser erupt. 43. Bought a stranger a meal in a restaurant. 44. Visited Africa. 45. Walked on a beach by moonlight.
46. Been transported in an ambulance.
47. Had your portrait painted.
48. Gone deep sea fishing. 49. Seen the Sistine chapel in person.
50. Been to the top of the Eiffel Tower in Paris. 51. Gone scuba diving or snorkeling. 52. Kissed in the rain. 53. Played in the mud. 54. Gone to a drive-in theater. 55. Been in a movie.(when i was 8 i was an extra in Street Smart.) 56. Visited the Great Wall of China. 57. Started a business. 58. Taken a martial arts class 59. Visited Russia. 60. Served at a soup kitchen. 61. Sold Girl Scout cookies. 62. Gone whale watching. 63. Gotten flowers for no reason. 64. Donated blood. 65. Gone sky diving. 66. Visited a Nazi Concentration Camp. 67. Bounced a check. 68. Flown in a helicopter. 69. Saved a favorite childhood toy.
70. Visited the Lincoln Memorial. 71. Eaten Caviar.
72. Pieced a quilt. 73. Stood in Times Square. 74. Toured the Everglades.
75. Been fired from a job.
76. Seen the Changing of the Guard in London. 77. Broken a bone. 78. Been on a speeding motorcycle.
79. Seen the Grand Canyon in person. 80. Published a book. 81. Visited the Vatican. 82. Bought a brand new car. 83. Walked in Jerusalem. 84. Had your picture in the newspaper. (once for being part of a stamp club [pic of me holding a stamp with a rugby player on it - i was 7], then again at 18 for playing rugby!)
85. Read the entire Bible.
86. Visited the White House.
87. Killed and prepared an animal for eating. 88. Had chickenpox. 89. Saved someone’s life.
90. Sat on a jury. 91. Met someone famous. 92. Joined a book club. 93. Lost a loved one. 94. Had a baby.
95. Seen the Alamo in person. 96. Swum in the Great Salt Lake.
97. Been involved in a law suit. 98. Owned a cell phone.
99. Been stung by a bee.
note: this is a verrrrry long post. i don’t know who i think i am, cuz as far as i’m concerned only dorothea and meredith can really pull this off – but here goes. grab a beer, cuz if you choose to read the whole thing, you’ll be here for awhile. (i wrote a summary so you can skip to the guts).
i’m en route to internet librarian in monterey. [well i'm here now.] plane rides always make me pensive. well, they make me pensive after i’ve checked out the movies. (gotta say i’m pretty impressed with air canada’s canadian movie offerings. less impressed with the fact that even a headset now costs 3$ and that during the safety demo, the lifevest of the flight attendant was branded with the logo of the long-defunct canadian airlines.)
so much has happened over the past few months and i really haven’t had anytime to blog about it, but i promised to talk about library school and interviewing for jobs in a post, so here it be.
back in may i graduated from mcgill. i think i’m still in shock that it’s over. the decision to go back to school to become a librarian meant that i had to finish my bachelor’s degree, something that i had left years before in favour of full-time employment. i had 5 semesters to finish before i could go to library school, which i completed in 2 years by going to school full-time during the summer. it was brutal, and my rugby playing suffered immensely, but my grades didn’t and i managed to hold onto a job a the same time, so i considered it a success.
applying to library schools was more of a shenanigan than i would have liked. i had planned to go to mcgill. i wanted to go to mcgill. and i thought mcgill would want me to go there. but i was wrong (kind of). after sending out applicatoins to university of toronto and university of western ontario (just to cover my bases) i heard from mcgill that i was accepted… to be on the waiting list. utoronto and western both gave me early acceptance spots, but mcgill, part of “the dream to become a librarian” had me on a waiting list. less than thrilled, i was. thankfully it all sorted itself out and i didn’t have to do my library degree sans hubby (as i would have at western) or while going catastrophically into debt (as i would have at utoronto). and i think in the end, mcgill is happy they accepted me, and i’m certainly happy to have gone there. (note to alumni association: though i am now gainfully employed, i am not ready to be giving you any money. plz do not call me for a few years. kthxbai.)
just prior to graduating there was a posting at a university in montreal for what i (then) considered my dream job: digital services/outreach librarian. not only would i get to play with new tech and figure out how the library could use it to improve services, but i would be involved in lots of instruction and general outreach to the university community. (note: there was no possibility of relocation – we had just bought a house in montreal. yes. i bought a house before finding a job. everyone who freaked on me – i hope you’ve since relaxed.)
i spent days on my cover letter and curriculum vitae. (at the beginning of my final semester of school, i called the directors of both anglo universities in town and asked if i could have an informaitonal interview with them. i highly recommend this. both directors were very willing to meet to discuss what they are looking for in a candidate, what my c.v. should look like, and what to include in the cover letter. both of these directors were looking for very different applications, so i was pretty stoked that i had done this.) having worked in publishing for quite awhile, i had prepared resumes before, but never a curriculum vitae. the experience is both exhausting and exciting as you catalogue your qualities and accomplishments and tweak them to shine for the selection committee.
back to dream job. i get an interview. once i stopped jumping up and down and “w00t”ing myself, i realized that i now had to prepare a presentation which was open to the staff, and get ready for a marathon interview with the selection committee.
the presentation prep was fairly easy as the question was obviously not a stumper: how could the library make use of some emerging technologies? (actually, now that i think back, i think this was the univeristy’s way of swiping ideas for whoever ended up with the job. SCAMMERS!) i tried to make it as unpowerpointish as possible, but must admit i just couldn’t do it without some slides. ick. i know. and the best resource for this prep was definitely my twitter peeps. (ya ya ya, i’m all about the tweep love.) some folks told me what they thought of their discovery tools, others gave me the dirt on tagging (can you really do it in your catalogue? YES), and others just gave me buttloads of support.<
the presentation itself went pretty well. i was pretty nervous but managed to keep it together and deal with the 15 (OMG!) questions at the end.
on to the interview. the panel had four people on it – two associate directors and two librarians. everyone was wicked friendly and disarming. then i saw the stapled stack of papers each had in front of them – it was the list of questions they were going to ask me! ZOMG!
suffice it to say that i don’t remember many of the questions. i remember being given lots of time to formulate answers, and when asked for clarification the tone was never “what the hell are you talking about?” so i was feeling okay. they asked the traditional “if we call your references, what will they tell us is your worst quality?” (my answer: i don’t easily say no so i frequently find myself juggling more balls than i should be. though i rarely miss deadlines – first real job was in the newsroom of a metropolitain daily = homey knows about deadlines – i can become a big ball o’stress if i don’t keep myself in check.) but they also asked some fun questions like “what do you think about the semantic web?” (my answer: i babbled something about information no longer living in boxes and then got really into it and tangential and totally needed to be reeled in.)
three hours later (by which time my stress had actually manifested itself in a string of zits across my forehead – apparently i’m still 15 years old) we were done. everyone said that it went well. much relief was felt by me, and my bladder cuz you know i needed to pee from the moment i sat down in the interview.
up next? interview with the director of libraries. now since i had already done an informational interview, we had some rapport already. i was asked what i considered my biggest accomplishments in life (the decision to go back to school to become a librarian – and actually complete it, the M&S honour, and being the youngest and first female president of my 50 year old rugby club). we then talked about my future, the future of libraries, and where those two might intersect.
and then it was over. and i went home and drank some beer and fell asleep.
and then i waited.
and i waited.
and still i waited.
i knew they were interviewing six people for the position, so i wasn’t surprised to only hear eight weeks later.
i didn’t get the job.
i found out while in seattle at the sla conference and i was severely bummed. but the LSW and SLA peeps that were there snapped me right out of that. and so i was not sleepless in seattle. (joke fail!)
i let the dust settle and then emailed some of the interview panel members and asked for feedback on what to work on for the next interview (didn’t get much help there – “both your interview and your presentation were strong, but we decided to go with another candidate.” uhhhh, okay. but, why?)
so i took a short-term contract at mcgill (which had been offered to me before i graduated) because i had been working there for my final semester and i really enjoyed the work and the people, and though it wasn’t permanent, i had my fingers crossed.
finally there was a posting for a bunch of liaison librarians. again i spent days on my cover letter and curriculum vitae. again i get an interview. again i w00t myself.
i get to the interview where the director says that usually they get the presentation over with right away and then proceed to the interview. and then it dawns on me – they think i have prepared a presentation, but no one sent me a topic to prepare! [insert quiet internal freak out HERE.] so like oh-so-many thing in my life, i winged it. again, not a hard topic (what do you think about roving reference?) so i wasn’t that worried, but this was to the senior administrative group of the library so… un peu stressant.
anyway, they bought whatever i was selling cuz i got a gig at mcgill.
summary
spend time on your cover letter and c.v. – it should echo (with the same vocabulary) language used in the job posting
show them to people – both fellow students and those already working (you’d be amazed at how friendly librarians are and how much they are willing to help)
like in that glorious movie “The Librarian”, everyone will know HTML, LCSH, all about Kuhlthau’s ASK, and have an MLIS – what do you have that makes you different from everyone else? (and you do have something, trust me. i bet it comes from your non-library life. *gasp*)
if possible – ask for informational interviews with directors/associate directors in charge of HR to find out what they are looking for
if you’re not comfortable presenting, figure out a way to make yourself comfortable. I know it sounds harsh, but you will almost certainly be doing this as a librarian, so if uber-preparation makes you feel best, then do it
there are LOTS of jobs out there if you are geographically mobile. if you aren’t, expand your horizons, baby. think special libraries, think records management, think competitive intelligence, think of all the berloody information needs out there and how you can help out with them!
but i just want to publicly thank a bunch of people without whom my degree would NEVER have been possible.
first, naturellement, to my hubby™ who loved me when i had no idea what i wanted to do with my life (and was doing very little), and who continues to support me now that i think the world is my frickin’ oyster and i am invincible. (i even have a superhero – you should too!)
second, to my bestest ever friend, who will remain an online-enigma, save to say that if Alexander McQueen ever went straight, she would be first in line to marry him. and he’d be one lucky dude to have someone so intelligent and creative at his side. velouria FTW!
third, to my rugby posse. who tonight surprised me not only with sushi and molson export (YAY!), but earrings from the Frank Gehry collection at Tiffany (love me some Frank) to celebrate my graduation. the card read:
with so much love & pride.
congratulations on everything amy.
love cathy, shelly, gij, susy and jess
given the accomplishments (leaving their rugby achievements aside) of these women (anyone need an accountant, social worker, teacher, graphic design firm owner, or philosophy professor? just holler) i can’t believe they have the time to look out for me – but i know they always have my back.
and to my online network of librarians and ed tech folks. [i was thinking of linking each of your blogs to a word in the following paragraph - but i don't have enough words to thank everyone...] you played a significant role in my success in library school. i couldn’t find all the components of the professional network that i wanted to create from the peeps i knew in Montreal/at McGill, and all of you have managed to answer questions, lend support, tell me when i’m doing something stoopid, and share your lives. you are all part of one of my fundamental beliefs, that knowledge requires collaboration.
finally, there are many folks from grad school who made academia WAY more fun – you know who you are, JJaCL. the day-to-day would have been excruciating without you. i am forever in your debt.
