…how true this is:
How you know you are in the right place – or – slime and substance
July 23, 2010 By
How do you know you have chosen the right profession?
Back in my communications days, my boss and I decided that a good way to give our investors the increasingly voluminous amounts of information they demanded was via a CD. While everything the investors were looking for was on our website, they often wanted to have something physical (I know – I don’t understand it either. But this was also more than three years ago. Much has changed in the intervening years. Or possibly much has not, but one of the things I learned in communications was that giving people what they wanted in the format they wanted it in was infinitely more effective than giving them what they wanted in a format they weren’t particularly interested in).
Since we already offered a standard information kit – a two-pocket folder filled with sheets of 8.5 x 11″ paper – the trick was how to get the CDs in their hands. We didn’t want to abandon all of the paper, since you don’t need a computer to read paper, and an investor who grabbed our kit at a conference out of curiosity wasn’t going to boot up his or her laptop in order to find out if we were interesting enough to merit a visit to our presentation. So we would stick with our folder and some of our paper. But then what? The heavier, odd-shaped CD was likely to slide out of the folder, leaving the meat of our information in some hotel hallway or Manhattan street.
Trust me, we’re getting to the library part soon.
So my boss and I had a conversation that went something like this:
Me: “What we need is some of that sticky goop that peels away.”
Boss: “What sticky goop?”
Me: “You know – the snot they stick plastic gift cards to the cardstock enclosure cards with.”
Boss: ”…” (Here I imagine that if he did not know me better, he would be thinking, “What kind of lunatic have I hired?” Since he knew me quite well, he was probably thinking, “Yep, that’s our lunatic.”)
Me: “That way, the CD will stick to the folder, but the investors can peel the snot away and put it in a file if they want to [edit: I meant put the CD in a file - I am sure nobody wanted to file the snot].”
Surprisingly, this plan was decided to be sound. Here’s where the library bit came in: I did not know how much the snot cost. I did not know how the snot was dispensed. I had no idea who to source the snot from. I did not know what the snot was called in order to find out the answers to any of these questions. But the prospect of finding out was one that intrigued me. I knew this was something that was something, just as a young law student might know that a party-giver who lets someone drunkenly drive away from his home has a possible legal problem on his hands but not how to begin researching it in legal sources until he has learned its name.
I did not know, but found out by a process of iterative searches that the snot is called fugitive adhesive. The law student would find out that their issue is one of social host liability. I hope two things for that imaginary law student: 1.) that he enjoys the process of finding out, and 2.) he does not bore his friends and colleagues with delight from the aptness of the term as I am liable to do to this day.* But I do know that my love of the search and my delight in its result tells me (and not for the first time) that I have chosen the right profession.
*I mean really – how can you not love the term “fugitive adhesive”?
Greetings, Law Librarian Blog visitors
July 16, 2010 By
I had the good fortune to meet Joe Hodnicki last week at the blogger meetup at AALL in Denver. I had the bad fortune to not get a chance to talk to him at all – rather I just summoned up some hubris, slid him my card and pointed at the door signifying that I had to race off to yet another event. Such is the way of conferences.
So, what did this noob think of AALL? Let me preface by noting that I am, as the British would say, a “mature student.” I’ve not been to this rodeo before, but I’ve been to analogous events in my prior career as a corporate communications professional. I am also not by nature a “joiner.” All of this means that I look at conferences with a somewhat jaded eye, but I have to say I was favorably impressed on my first outing. Here are a few thoughts:
- CONELL: if you are planning on going to AALL for the first time, do this. It makes the biggest difference in the world to have a cohort of people that you can get to know on that first day. It is so worth it: for the rest of the conference (and probably the rest of your career), you will be running into familiar, friendly faces. My “freshman class of 2010″ is a group I am proud to have begun to know.
- Two excellent presentations I attended – “Library Videos: Getting Blockbuster Quality on an Indie Budget” and “Starting Off on the Right Track: Avoiding Mistakes Common to New (and Not-so-New) Instructors” were both fantastic. I generally feel if you get one decent presentation out of a conference you are ahead of the game (see above re: “jaded”). These two surpassed my expectations by miles.
- The keynote presentation by Dr. David Lankes of Syracuse was entertaining and thought provoking (note to AALL – couldn’t you have made this embeddable? You can get it at the link above – he starts about 15 minutes in). I especially liked his notion that our value is not in our collections but ourselves. We are the resources that should be valued, and that valuation needs to start in our own behaviors and attitudes.
- I demonstrated Zotero with Jennifer Duperon of Boston University. (The online handout we created is here). I don’t know how the entire “Cool Tools Cafe” event went: we were absolutely mobbed with people who were interested in learning about this fantastic citation manager and I barely had time to look around.
One thing that stood out for me that was categorically different from the other groups I have been a member of was borne out of a quality that I believe is inherent in most librarians. I am not sure what to call that quality, but I can illustrate it:* with most groups, there seems to be a sense that if I have something then it is something that must necessarily be taken away from someone else – or perhaps a group of someones. The competitive edge is strong in many professions, and seeing someone new creates a sense that there is now one less opportunity for the rest. But librarians just don’t strike me that way. It seems to be our nature. Where a law student might say to him or herself, “Oooh – I found the resource. I must hide it so I have the edge,” a librarian will excitedly say, “Hey – did you see this resource? It’s really cool – let me share it with you!” That collaborative, sharing spirit seems to extend to the entry of the profession as a whole. Our CONELL class was welcomed with open arms by the existing membership.
So, again – to all who are visiting for the first time from Law Librarian Blog, greetings to you and thank you for being such a great group of people. I am proud to be joining you.
*And I admit it is a variation on one of my pet themes.