Prioritzing Assignments

Sometimes librarians, especially if doing the job well, will have more work than time to do it. Here, we mean on-demand work, the research and reference services that are seen as “our jobs”, never mind the long-term projects and daily tasks that actually take most of our time. Those tasks can, and should, be set aside when a patron asks for help.

The problem, of course, is that providing good service creates demand for the service. It’s a nice problem.

Still, when request pile up, we need a way to get started, or the avalanche can become overwhelming. This could be as simple as starting with the question on top of the stack, and when finished with that, starting with the question now on top of the stack. That should, eventually, get to everyone. But it may also miss a tight deadline or leave easy questions unanswered for far too long.

There is a better way.

First, take a moment to consider what makes one request more important to you than another. How do you choose which of two questions to answer first?

I find three factors go into my decisions: the assignment deadline, the requestor’s perceived status, and the anticipated requirements or difficulty of the question. The last of these includes determining what, ultimately, the client needs: is it a fact, a quote, an article or case retrieval, editing assistance, help using a research tool... how complex is the project, and how long will it take to complete?

The deadline is obvious. If a brief is due before close of business, it cannot be left to work on tomorrow. Each project has a different deadline, and those can provide an organizing method. This shouldn't be the only consideration, though. Just because an answer is due sooner doesn't make that the first question you should answer.

Status is a galling factor, since we're supposed to live in an egalitarian society. The fact is, though, librarians are support staff; our clients are the talent, and we're here to make them look good. And some of those clients are more important among their peers than others. We may not agree with it, but we must recognize it and at least consider it when making decisions.

Of course, the time it will take to complete should probably be the main concern. Giving ourselves time to complete a task before it is due can be a real challenge.

Each of these factors is on a sliding scale, from “ignore” to “URGENT”, and the weight given each factor varies, as well. For instance, if a new associate and a senior partner make otherwise identical requests, pleasing the partner is probably a priority. If the partner’s request is difficult while the associate’s will only take a moment, on the other hand, perhaps it is better to deliver the easy win before settling into the more demanding work.

None of this split-second internal calculation is possible, though, without communication. Begin with the reference interview, even if that means responding to an email (it's always preferable to simply respond to an email question with the answer, if possible -- it's just not always possible). This interaction lets the client know you’re on top of the question, provides you detail on what is needed, and lets you set delivery expectations. Managing expectations from the start, by knowing what else is in the queue and where this request falls on that list, helps avoid angry calls later and makes sure all responses are delivered in an appropriate, timely fashion.

User-Instruction Textbooks

The syllabus shows two types of reading assignments: textbooks and journal articles. Sure, textbooks provide structure and coherence over the length of a course, while article can delve deeply in specific spots, but there should be more. The readings should also bring forward some over-arching themes for the course.

This is more easily done through the textbooks choices, which makes it worth examining those choices more closely.

The default texts from last year’s syllabus, Transforming Information Literacy Instruction Using Learner-Centered Teaching and Engaging Ideas, give us different approaches to the same goal? each provides a method for moving beyond the lecture and engaging students. And each is a good method; used together, they can almost completely fill a class period.

The underlying theory, that we retain and understand new information better when we do something with it than when we, at most, make notes about what we’re told, seems evidently upon personal reflection. Incorporating increased participation and encouraging critical thinking seem like rational, responsible goals form instructors. And the ideas for individual activities, for group-work or writing assignments, are invaluable. These books are both keepers.

But they don’t explain how to plan a lesson, prepare for a class, or deal with the unexpected. This takes practice.

The Information Literacy User’s Guide is a text book, appropriate for high-school and undergraduate students, covering the basics of ‘information literacy’ as expressed by the Seven Pillars theory. It, like Learner-Centered Teaching, was an explicit nod to the academic instructional librarians for whom the course had been previously designed--but added as a writing assignment, not as a reading. The book, which wasn’t discussed in class, was the assigned text for an information literacy program the students would design. They could draw on it as much or as little as wanted. If they read it, even better. If not, they still had to practice presenting the content to an audience. Goal met.

Still, we’re left with big questions. What is this teaching thing all about, really? What do we (the students) wish to accomplish as (future) teachers? Who are we? Why are we here -- especially given the resistance academic library instruction programs sometimes face from those they’re trying to reach.

This is gist for in-class discussion, but nothing on the syllabus addressed these concerns in a meaningful way. We can discuss why teaching is an important skill, practice the routines of instruction, and consider methods. We should; these are important. We should also find a way to articulate the big questions, though, and begin groping toward answers that will keep our psyches healthy in an demanding and under-paid career. This is where Postman and Weingartner fills a need. It is a call for educational  reform -- from 1969. It states the question that Kaplowitz and Bean both answer, but the question still challenges us. More importantly, Teaching as a Subversive Activity creates an identity for teachers as those who help others ask questions and find answers, which should be a familiar identity for librarians. And forming this self-identity as a teacher, more than anything, is what students should achieve in this class.

John Bean, Engaging Ideas, 2nd edition. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 2011.

Deborah Bernnard, Greg Bobish, Daryl Bullis, Jenna Hecker, Irina Holden, Allison Hosier, Trudi Jacobson, and Tor Loney, The Information Literacy User's Guide: An Open, OnlineTextbook. New York: SUNY Open Textbooks, 2014.

Joan Kaplowitz, Transforming Information Literacy Instruction using Learner-Centered Teaching. NY: Neal-Schuman, 2012.

Neil Postman and Charles Weingartner, Teaching as a Subversive Activity. NY: Delta, 1971.

Library User Instruction

This fall, I was invited to teach a course on Library User Instruction at my wife’s iSchool. This lead to a question: what is library user instruction?

My first thought was that any client interaction is -- not can be or should be, but is -- user instruction, because that library user will learn something from the exchange. What the user learns depends on us. At a bare minimum, she ought learn that we want to help and that we try to help. If we aren’t conscious of this fact, though, what she learns may be that we don’t care, are too busy, or don’t have what she wants.

After an entire semester of readings and discussion, this is still my first thought on user instruction. The user will learn something form every interaction, and we need to make sure that what she learns is positive. That’s not what all the readings were about, though.

Turns out, my class had previously been focused on bibliographic instruction, and specifically the one-time ‘research lesson’ librarians often provide for freshman composition classes. These are, of course, an important example of instruction by librarians, but we also teach in many other situations. The textbooks weren’t going to cover that and it wasn’t baked into the syllabus, but I tried to make the point by discussing examples from my own career and the students’ work experiences. Still, the class was, of necessity, largely about teaching introductory college research sessions.

The problem, really, is that the course only accounted for the needs of academic librarians, and only for some of them. Public librarians and special librarians teach, too--even private firm law librarians sometimes teach. Sometimes teaching happens in front of a classroom. Sometimes, at the reference desk -- or in a fundraising letter to the local tax base. A cataloger is teaching us what each book is about, and saving us the time to read it. Other examples sound even more forced.

Which all circles around to my original point, so I’ll stop. The course focus should expand, and I’ll work on that if invited to teach it again. In the meantime, you can see my reviews of the primary texts, by John Bean and Joan Kapolwitz, on my other blog. Bean’s Engaging Ideas is about using writing to teach critical thinking across the curriculum; Kaplowitz’s about using learner-centered teaching methods in bibliographic instruction. Neil Postman’s Teaching as a Subversive Activity might be a good addition.

Marketing Practices

Once upon a time, legal publishers made their money by selling books. That all changed when databases became everyone's preferred means of accessing information, but publishers were loath to let go of that print-based income. This sometimes led to innovative marketing techniques among some publishing firms. What follows is my response to an unsolicited delivery from one of these.

Fortunately, I have not seen this sort of nonsense in several years. Let's hope letters like this aren't needed again.

8 June, 2009

Dear Customer Service Department,

Please refer your marketing staff to the following website, which describes the approved vendor practices of the American Association of Law Librarians (which comprises your primary market):

http://www.aallnet.org/about/fair_practice_guide.asp

Principle 3: Fair Dealing. Publishers should engage in fair dealings with their customers.

3.1 Customer consent. Publishers should obtain the customer's consent prior to making a shipment or initiating a transaction, unless such shipment is part of a standing order or subscription to which the customer has previously consented.

3.1 PRACTICE TO AVOID 1: Without prior customer consent, a publisher mass mails a new product to customers who have previously purchased an existing product.

3.1 PRACTICE TO AVOID 2: Without prior customer consent, a publisher ships a free unsolicited newsletter to a customer and then later sends an invoice for the title to the customer.

3.1(a) Where the content of a new product or supplement that is published as part of an existing subscription or standing order bears no direct relationship to the content of the standing order or represents a substantial expansion of the topic or purpose of the original subscription or product, the publisher should seek customer consent prior to shipment.

3.1(a) PRACTICE TO AVOID: Without prior customer consent, the publisher of a subscription service ships to subscribers of the service a pamphlet that includes content that has not previously been supplied as part of the subscription, where that content is not specific or closely related to the topic of the service, and charges customers for the pamphlet.

3.1(b) Where a new product or supplement is published as an addition to more than one existing title or subscription, the publisher should seek customer consent prior to shipment.

We are returning the unsolicited supplement received 5 May 2009 for the following reasons:

1)         Said item is deceptively packaged as part of a series--a subscription service.  Such materials are assumed by the customer to be part of the service for which we have already paid.

2)         Said item does not list a price, anywhere.  In fact, the packing slip--like all other subscription updates--indicates Total: $***** .  This is also deceptive, as the statement 'Invoiced Separately' again echoes other subscription updates--which are, of course, invoiced upon subscription, rather than when the updates are supplied.

3)         Said item is shipped in brown paper.  All documents except the deceptive packing slip described in 2) are packaged INSIDE this brown paper.  These documents, then, instruct that if item is to be returned, it must be shipped in the packaging which was NECESSARILY DESTROYED in locating the documents.  If not deceptive, this is certainly disingenuous.  We are of course ignoring your request to return the item in its original packaging.

While this shipment may not violate the letter of the American Association of Law Librarian's vendor guidelines (though I would argue that it most certainly does), it is clearly an effort to SELL an item for which no real market exists by making it seem like part of a series for which we have already paid, not providing the price of the material, and then making its return more difficult than paying for the unwanted item.

Such vendor practices are entirely unethical.  If one must resort to deception to sell one's wares, one ought leave that business immediately.

Sincerely,

Everett Wiggins

Reference Librarian

Deselection, again

Originally published in ALLUNY Newsletter (39.1),
http://www.aallnet.org/chapter/alluny/2014-01spring.pdf

In my last column, I wrote about the law library as a social space.  Before that was even published, I got word that not only would we not be getting comfortable chairs, we would be moving the library to a much smaller space.  This is a drastic, but reasonable, change for our firm.

A law firm library is unlike other law libraries.  We collect for a specific purpose—to support the practices of our attorneys—rather than in a comprehensive way.  History does matter, but not much: for what isn’t available through our database subscriptions, we rely on others, with more archival missions, to collect.  And finally, we are subject to the profit motive.  This isn’t to suggest that the library is a profit center, but we must be mindful that our space costs money, our books cost money, multiple copies of books costs even more money, and our databases allow for billing back usage costs to clients.

My job as a private law firm librarian is to provide timely access to accurate information in the most convenient, cost-effective way possible.  With multiple offices across several states, that means databases.  They are updated immediately, allow multiple concurrent users, and don’t require multiple copies for each office.

So the management committee has determined that our space can be better utilized as additional offices and conference rooms.  Our new space would be approximately one-third the current arrangement, and this would allow far fewer materials to be shelved.  I needed to begin culling my collection immediately.

Some of the decisions were easy.  Most of the deselected items hadn’t circulated for at least five years, and many hadn’t been updated in that time.  Large sets, like the NYCRR, which 1) cost a lot to maintain, 2) take lots of space, 3) are available for free online, and 4) can never be truly current, were among the first to go—along with shelves and shelves of New York case reporters that were housed in the basement.  Old hornbooks, outdated treatises, and back issues of periodicals were next.  The US Code and FCR, both available from the GPO website, freed another full run of shelves.  Digests, the NY Juror 2d, and a second set of McKinney’s Consolidated Laws also disappeared.  All told, the books we discarded left a stack of circulation cards nearly six inches high.

What did we keep?  Practice materials, mostly. Treatises, formbooks, and specialized case reporters from CCH. Historical material that is otherwise not online, like our Session Laws, Attorney General opinions, and Comptroller opinions collections. Local laws. Titles directly related to our current practice areas, or with particular enduring value. And some not available from our database provider because they’re published by the other vendor.

I am a librarian by trade, and an archivist by nature.  Tossing thousands of dollars into a dumpster is not my idea of fun, but I am better positioned to make these choices than anyone else in the firm.  I  know what materials we have online; I know what materials my attorneys actually use (as opposed to what they SAY they use); I know that keeping dated materials on the shelf so the shelf looks full will tempt one of them to use it without checking its currency, leaving him open to malpractice.  Clearing these shelves is an extinction event: the books are gone, and there is no bringing them back. Our library is now, of necessity, a lean, mean, internet using system, and our attorneys will need to adjust. On a more positive note, though, all that free shelf space has allowed me to start a DVD lending collection—so even in a reduced space, more people have reason to visit the new library.

The Library as Social Space

This post was originally published in the ALLUNY Newsletter 38.3,
http://www.aallnet.org/chapter/alluny/2013-03winter.pdf

The public library has a special place in popular culture as a safe, if somewhat un-cool, place for young people to meet and ‘do homework’.  It is public and supervised, but offers discretion and privacy; a place where we could sneak away without getting into trouble and spend time with someone special, even if all we could do was sit quietly at the same table.  This isn’t accidental, it’s just a fortuitous unintended consequence of the library’s mission to serve the community.

Law libraries don’t have quite the same cultural cachet, but we still have a mandate to serve our user communities, be they a Court, university, or firm.  So long as we have open stacks, we will have users in the space—which means that we have a social space.  This creates a wonderful opportunity.

Law school libraries are the most obvious example of this, because they are almost always full of students.  They come for the books, sometimes, but they often come for the quiet space between the books—law students spend a lot of time reading and writing.  Yet they also come because the library has group study rooms and here, the library becomes a social space.  The groups could meet anywhere.  They choose the library.

Court libraries doesn’t have such an obvious social component, but they are often the largest contiguous space in their buildings, which makes them good places to host parties and events.  They also provide space for impromptu meetings and conversations that would otherwise take place in hallways.

Firms lucky enough to have a physical library, likewise, will see its space used for informal meetings, for events, and for work that requires more space than an office desk.  Additionally, as print collections shrink, we will have more space to utilize in a social fashion.  This could mean adding a conference table to support large projects, individual study carrels for using the print resources, or even a couch and lounge space for more comfortable work.  Any of these might drive additional traffic into a more socially-welcoming environment.

None of this matters, though, unless we take advantage of the opportunity this social environment creates: people can meet in a conference room.  Why should they meet in the library instead?  The library as social space brings in potential users and creates goodwill; their presence allows us to unobtrusively promote our resources and services, and the chance to make new friends—friends who, in turn, can promote the library to others.  And it can all start with a comfortable place to sit.