Core Value: Cooperation [April, 2011]

On April 6, 2011, I attended a meeting of the Technology Services Team (3:15 p.m. in Room 421).

Unfortunately, I didn't get my reflections on this meeting posted in a timely fashion, and I'm writing from memory; so my apologies to TS folks if anything is incorrect.

• The meeting had a relaxed, comfortable, and informal style, both in its structure and in team members' discussion style
• The meeting was brief, but a good many items were discussed, including the checkout system for group study rooms that was in development, and a possibility of increased interaction between the library's electronic classrooms and other labs/tech support on campus.
• As far as enhanced inter-team collaboration as a result of my attending the TS meeting: 

--I came away with a better sense of which colleagues are members of this relatively new team.
--I enjoyed seeing colleagues that I've worked with for many years, in their "regular team meeting" environment. Usually, when I see them, they're helping me puzzle through a software or hardware dilemma, fixing some of my office equipment that has malfunctioned, or simultaneously solving a problem in one of the classrooms and getting me calmed down at the beginning of an instruction session. So, this was a nice change of pace.
--It was also good to see colleagues who came on board more recently, some of whom I didn't realize were part of the TS Team.
--I have been working more closely with Jonathan Priest since this meeting, so I think the meeting helped me begin to get a better sense of his job responsibilities.
--I also had a brief conversation with Paul Orkiszewski after the meeting that, in like manner, helped me better understand the TS Team.

Core Value: Communication [March, 2011]

To learn more about this core value, I attended the Effective Communication Workshop, conducted for the library on March 1, 2011, by Micah Fairchild, Associate Director of Human Resources--Organizational Development and Workforce.

I will highlight some of the things that, after reflecting on the workshop, I found most useful:

•  Micah asked how many of us in attendance were managers. Several raised their hands. Then he  commented that we are all managers—of ourselves and our own communication; and that we need to ensure that our communication is clear and that it sends our message in a way that aligns with the four Key Principles he went on to describe.

• Micah gave an example of the importance of “managing” our communication by asking us if we’d ever said, to someone else at work, something like: “So-and-so is driving me crazy.” He said that the result of this comment might be the creation of a “negative bond” with the listener, who agreed; and then that “negative bond” might be spread to other people.  Or, the result might be that if the listener disagreed, our comment could be repeated by the listener to others and/or to the person we were talking about, reflecting badly on us. Either way, it's best that we "manage" our communication by avoiding this kind of comment altogether. When I thought about this example that Micah gave, I found myself recalling times in the past when I did what he was describing, and was sorry that I had done so. The workshop made me resolve to be more self-aware and avoid the potential of hurting others with this kind of comment.

• I also liked Micah’s descriptions of the four key principles of communication (esteem, empathy, sharing, and involvement) and the characteristics of the four styles of communication (passive, passive-aggressive, aggressive, and assertive). 

•  Micah provided some "tips and tricks" for effective communication

1. Assess who you are speaking to: a peer, a library user, a student, a supervisor, a family member
2. If possible, plan for the communication beforehand
3. Check your nonverbal communication and try to avoid simple errors in this arena
4. If the communication involves conflict, focus on the problem, not the person
5. Listen and be honest with yourself

Core Value: Accountability [January, 2011]

My work-related goal for this year:

Use Things software for my to-do lists on most days (4 or more) each week. Track how many weeks I meet this target.

Things is a Mac program for managing projects; Next Actions and other to-do items related to your projects; errand lists; phone-call lists; Areas of Responsibility within your life; etc. It's based on David Allen's Getting Things Done work/life management system. I started using Things over a year ago, but haven't been as consistent as I want to. I find that, when I get really busy, I start to-do lists, or jot down things I need to do, all sorts of places--note pads, legal pads, notebooks, Sticky Notes on my computer monitor, the little pad I keep in my purse, my Backpack home page, etc. I then have to decide whether to keep a list going (wherever I started it up) or transfer that list, or those to-do items, to Things. Before I know it, I have multiple lists, as well as errant to-do's scattered all around.

Things does a beautiful job of keeping all your lists in one place. It lets you move to-do items from one list to another, helps you track whether you did something, allows you to schedule a to-do, and more. As best I can tell, it's capable of anything I would ever want to do with to-do lists. Probably the best feature is that you can put work-related, personal, and household projects and to-do lists all together in the same place. I just need to use Things more consistently than I have been. I have a copy for my desktop Mac and an app for my iPad; and I can sync one with the other.

This goal fits the Core Value of Accountability, as described in the library's Strategic Plan, in that the Core Value asks us to "demonstrate commitment to accomplish work in a(n) ... efficient ... manner" and to "efficiently monitor progress on projects."

Now that I've put my goal on this blog, and publicly stated that I'm going to do it, I know I'll be shamed into doing it much more likely to reach my target this year.

Facebook

1. Facebook account:
I already had an account.

3. Things the library could do with Facebook:
I'm deviating a little bit from the directions here. My suggestions are broad areas, rather than specific things to do. 

They relate to two themes: 
(1) for faculty librarians, using Facebook to address the other two spheres of our responsibilities, outside of our library-related work: scholarship and service. Because we're required to make contributions in these areas, promoting what we do in our scholarship and service also promotes the Library as our home department.


(2) for all librarians, letting people get to know us as "a whole person"--our interests, our concerns, our activities. 

Teachers are encouraged to include, in their classroom sessions, information or anecdotes about themselves, to personalize their teaching and to relate themselves to students on a more genuine level. Librarians should do this, also, to create opportunities for more social connections with our users and with our librarian colleagues (those inside and outside the library).


Facebook's social nature is a perfect way to enhance the social nature of the library, whether as a physical space or a virtual space. If users and colleagues know more about all of us, and have more ways to connect with each one of us, that can lead to more connections and interactions with the library.

• Discuss or promote our scholarship
Library faculty could do this from our personal Facebook account, from some other Facebook forum, or both.

• Discuss or promote our community involvement or other non-library-specific service
Post about groups in the local community that we're involved with, in an informal or a formal service capacity. Use Facebook to let people know about professional service work we're doing that might surprise them, because it's different from our usual library roles that are familiar and widely known. 

• Promote libraries, reading, and information literacy by posting about things you've read, enjoyed, or found interesting
Post not just in the usual way we might think of as librarians, but in ways that let people get to know us better and see the whole person. The social aspects are in the forefront of these posts. Then, adding a URL to the library catalog, or an Open WorldCat URL, etc., would indirectly/subversively promote libraries. 

Core value: User/Quality Focus [December 2010]

1. Something I intend to do, to increase my user/quality focus:

This is actually something I've been working on for awhile, and intend to continue. The topics I'm writing on, for two scholarly article manuscripts, fit the characteristics of user/quality focus as defined in the library's Strategic Plan. One manuscript is related to instruction, and it describes a "pedagogical exploration" that I undertook in order to finds ways to increase the relevance, for students, of my instruction sessions (especially one-shot sessions). Another manuscript describes my Lumbee bibliography work--from my 1994 book-length bibliography to the current bibliography Web site. It, too, relates to user/quality focus, because the Web site makes the bibliography references more widely available to users. The work I'm doing (with help from several library colleagues and student assistants) to make the Web site database-driven and to add all the items from my 1994 book to the database (and, thus, to the Web site) will also improve the site for the user.

2. Suggestions for things the library can do to enhance this core value:

• Institutionalize the SACS standards that the library is responsible for meeting.
All of the standards we're responsible for meeting affect our users. To be found in compliance with them, we must assess our work in relation to each one (thus, determine what our current level of quality is). If we institutionalize the standards, that means we discuss our efforts in relation to each standard regularly and at many levels (from individual librarians, to committees, to teams, to library faculty meetings, to library-wide meetings). We also use the data from our assessments that relate to each standard, to plan and to make decisions at many levels. If we institutionalize the SACS standards, we will automatically be maintaining and enhancing our user/quality focus. If we institutionalize the standards, we will also find it easier to be sure we're keeping in compliance with them. Anything that's done regularly or habitually is easier to do, as opposed to not really getting geared up for it it until we start planning for the next SACS reaffirmation of accreditation.

• Ask, "What's best for users?"
In our meetings and discussions, we sometimes talk about what's the easier or faster or simpler way to accomplish a task or goal. Or--we talk about what committee, task force, or person that task or goal should be assigned to. Those are necessary discussions, and we can't accomplish things without having them. I'm not arguing that we can't arrive at a way of doing something that's easy, fast, or simple as well as best for users; or that what team/group/person undertakes a task doesn't relate to what's best for users. But, if we want to enhance our user/quality focus, one way to do so might be to keep the question, "What's best for users?" at the forefront. If we answer that question first, and keep our answers to it ahead of other considerations, I believe we'll ensure that we're making the best decision for users.

3. Link to a useful resource related to User/Quality Focus
For some time now, I've been very interested in Positive Psychology. An offshoot of this field is Positive Organizational Scholarship, which extends Positive Psychology to the workplace. Jane Dutton, at the University of Michigan, has done extensive research and writing in this area. Her writings on positive (or high quality) connections at work certainly offer promise for enhancing our user/quality focus. If we have high quality connections with each other at work, the energy created by those connections will improve our decision-making, our work, and our services for users. It will also energize us in our connections with users as we deliver services to them. In her book, Energize your Workplace, Dutton says,

...The energy and vitality of individuals and organizations alike depends on the quality of the connections among people in the organization, and between organizational members and people outside the firm with whom they do business. . . . [high-quality connections are] marked by mutual positive regard, trust, and active engagement on both sides. In a high-quality connection, people feel more engaged, more open, more competent. They feel more alive. High-quality connections can have a profound impact on both individuals and entire organizations.

. . . HIgh-quality connections do not require personal knowledge or extensive interaction. Any point of contact with another person can potentially be a high-quality connection. One conversation, one e-mail exchange, one moment of connecting in a meeting can infuse both participants with a greater sense of vitality, giving them a bounce in their steps and a greater capacity to act. [Kindle locations 109-16]

Here's a link to Jane Dutton's page at the Center for Positive Organizational Scholarship at the University of Michigan, Ross School of Business. See item 2, "The power of positive (high quality) connections."

Core value--November--Inclusiveness

My activity is not one of the ones that was suggested for this Core Value, but I believe it fits well with Inclusiveness.

I recently attended the OASIS annual planning retreat for Board members and staff. I am a Board member with OASIS, our local nonprofit agency which provides shelter, support, and services for those whose lives are touched by domestic violence or sexual assault.

Inclusiveness is integral to the mission of OASIS. People who experience domestic violence or sexual assault--women, children, men, college students--are members of our community. If we support them when they need us--by providing a safe place to stay, or help navigating the legal system, or short-term counseling, or financial assistance--then our community is stronger, safer, and healthier for all of us.

What's my "piece of the pie"?
During our retreat, we did an activity (towards the end) that fostered our sense of inclusiveness as an organization. We were each given a piece of construction paper shaped like a large slice of pizza. Our assignment was to think about what we plan to do to support OASIS in the next 3 to 6 months, write the most important items on our pizza slice, and then discuss them with another person present at the retreat. [The person we talked with could not be the person we had worked with on the previous activity, or the person we talked to during the lunch break.] After discussing what we wrote, some of us modified or added to our list, because the conversation had generated ideas.

Then, we each shared our "piece of the pie" with the whole group. As each slice was shared and discussed, it was taped up on the board at the front of the meeting room.

It was really interesting to see the ways in which ideas were "cross-fertilized," because one person thought of a way to contribute to, or better promote, something another person was doing. I think we all improved our understanding, and value, of the work others were doing--or planning to do. It was fun to watch the "OASIS pizza" grow, piece by piece. We had enough people present, and enough slices, to make two pies! This activity, and the visual evidence that we're all "a piece of the pie," showed us the value of consciously building inclusiveness into our planning activities as an organization. The activity also paralleled the OASIS mission of promoting inclusiveness in our broader community.

My Twitter account

• I set up my Twitter account and posted my first Tweet.
• Here are some of the interests and people I'm following:

1. Suze Orman Show, because I like her down-to-earth advice, enjoy her humor, and admire her contributions to financial literacy.
2. The Dalai Lama's official Twitter page, because his Tweets are inspiring.
3. Kindle Today, a news stream about Amazon's Kindle e-book reader
4. Malinda Maynor Lowery, to keep up with news about the Lumbee Tribe
5. Nouriel Roubini, to keep up with the global financial situation from a perspective that some call realistic and others call "permabear"
6. Political Humor--for fun!
7. New York Public Library, to see how they're using Twitter
8. Kevin S. Clarke, because he Tweets a lot and has a wide range of interests.

• How can libraries use Twitter? There are innumerable possibilities. It's useful for librarians to follow Twitter, even if not posting Tweets that often, to be aware of the possibilities and to engage both work-related and personal interests. We never know what might spark a creative idea. For me, though, moderation is the key. It's so easy to get fascinated by setting up interests and people to follow, and figuring out how it all works, and before I know it, there goes two hours :)