Library Talk

Spring semester, I’m taking a course in quantitative research methods for my organizational communication program. I received the book a few days ago and was paging through it when I found a section in the “Searching for Previous Research and APA Style” chapter on working with librarians.

I admit to being puzzled at first, having never thought of working with a librarian as the type of activity that requires instruction. But I suppose that’s my bias from being one. And if there is anything that the #librarianstress incident has taught us (once again) is that our jobs are poorly understood by the general public and likely our students. I am glad that the text’s authors (which include the director of my program) thought to include a recommendation that students speak with librarians in their research process, especially in a methods textbook.

But some of the actual advice I found distressing, especially since it is supposed to have come from librarians themselves. In my text, the authors say that one of them wrote a previous book and asked “research librarians across the country…for tips and strategies for students working with librarians” as there isn’t very much out there on this topic already (p. 71). There is an in-text citation for the other book, but I don’t see it in the reference list. I think, however, that it’s this book on public speaking. There are 18 tips. Number 3 begins with “when we are in our offices we aren’t on reference desk duty. Whether an office door is closed or open, please knock first and wait to be invited in.” (p. 71) The tip continues with on to talk about how student’s aren’t bothering us when they ask questions at the reference desk. Another tip admonishes students to wait their turn at the reference desk.

Number 15 is about topics and questions: “Students should be as specific as possible in what they ask for, if they know their topic. Students who are struggling with identifying a narrow topic should seek help from their professors or librarians. We can’t help you find sources if your topic isn’t very clear” (p. 72). Students do sometimes need to talk to their instructors, I think doing general research is a good way to narrow one’s topic. Emphasizing the importance of having a specific question isn’t going to help those who are still trying to figure out there they are going.

And then number 17: “Students should understand that information can come in a variety of formats. If a student asks for a ‘book about’ something without providing any other details about the information needed, that student could come away empty handed. Instead students should get in the habit of asking about ‘information about’ something first” (p. 72). Wouldn’t a good librarian, upon realizing that there isn’t a good book about the topic the student asked about, probe a bit further and see if they really need a book?

Not all of the tips are bad. There are suggestions to meet with a librarian early in the research process and to expect us to follow up the initial questions with our own queries to help students get to what they really need. But these few (and a couple more) rubbed me the wrong way. We don’t come off as very friendly and the tone is more negative than I would prefer. Some of this is in the wording, I realize, but assuming that they accurately represent what the author’s received from the librarians, I’m disappointed in the tenor of the information provided by my fellow librarians. They seem…defensive? I’m not sure of the word I’m looking for here. Overall, they seem more annoyed with those who don’t ask questions in the “right” way rather than meant to providet genuinely useful advice.  I can’t access the book that these are supposed to have come from, so I can’t tell what the methodology was for collecting the tips from actual librarians. I’m hoping that something is just lost in translation here.

I think is someone had asked me a question like this, I’d say:

• Don’t feel like you have to come to the library with a specific question. It’s good to have a general topic in mind, but looking through resources on the general topic and talking about what interests you will help you focus your topic and decide what you want to research and write about. 
• Even if you think your question isn’t really about library materials or something a librarian would know, ask us anyway. Chances are good that we can either answer your question anyway, or direct you to someone or some resource that will.
• Feel free to return later with more questions, or just to discuss your research project. We love hearing what you’ve done with the information we’ve helped you find. Letting us know what resources were useful (or not) also helps us build a better collection for your fellow students.

So, librarians, what do you think? Am I reading too much into the tone of these tips after all of the defensive “our job is TOO stressful” comments on Twitter the last couple days? What sort of advice would you give for students working with librarians for the first time?

Photo credit. Used by Creative Commons license.

I saw a post about Slideshark on Profhacker recently and decided to try it out. It’s an app for sharing presentations from your iPod, iPhone or iPad. I so wish I had seen this before I presented at ALAO about the Maggie Boyd project, because I had to save all of those slides as images and recreate the document in order to make sure that I could use all of my custom fonts and not worry about formatting issues when I opened the Power Point on the presentater computer.

The app, which can link to Dropbox and Box, lets you download your slides and processes them in a way that lets you keep the formatting. Then, once you have hooked up your device to the projector, you can play the slides with notes in a presenter view. It’s pretty simple, really, but amazing to be able to just open the file and be able to project it right away. I tried this in the class last week and it worked great. I’ll probably go this route for my next presentation session rather than have to worry about bringing up the slides on the presenter computer.

I saw this Tweet come through the #AcWriMo Twitter stream last night, and it made me think a little further about the Pomodoro technique and why I think it works for me:

Don’t let smaller windows of writing time go to waste because of obsession w/ ’25min’ pomodoro. Use a stopwatch, count every minute #acwrimo

— Kate Devitt (@skdevitt) November 7, 2012

I agree that it’s important to not wait until you have a specific amount of time available to begin writing. But I think that the standard 25 minute time frame of the pomodoro technique works for so many people because it’s not actually that long. And the real value is that you commit to only doing one thing during that time frame. Not reading or answering email, checking Facebook, or looking at the latest Tweets. In my experience, it’s not the time frame that makes if effective, but the single-task focus. So, if you’ve got the kind of day where 25 minute periods are too hard to come by, focusing on a single topic for 15 minutes, for example, should still be effective in helping you get stuff done.

Ironically, I’m pretty sure I saw this while I was not pomodoro-ing and anxiously checking Twitter/election results last night. Also, the title of the post comes from what Jake has been calling the pomodoros, because it’s more amusing to imagine Italian tomatoes as a unit of work than a foreign word without much meaning.

Finally, to update on my own progress, I’ve been keeping with my 3 pomodoros a day goal, despite having acquired a pretty nasty cold. I think having the public goal has been helpful here too, because it would be pretty reasonable actually to say “I’m too sick to read” or something and give up for a few days. That wouldn’t be the end of the world, but I’m also glad to be still pushing through all of the work I need to do this month.

I’m a procrastinator. Or at least, I have been and am trying to kick the habit. I have actually been a pretty good one, especially as a tool for avoiding homework I didn’t want to do until the last minute. I have always been able to crank out a good enough paper or project in the last few days (or hours, as the case may be) and get good enough to grades to get into college, grad school and then into a real job.

But now, I’ve got that real job and also found myself starting an MA program about a week before I discovered that the I’d be having a baby near the end of the school year. So now, that baby is six months old and I have a long paper to write, a short “thought” paper to figure out and a final exam to study for. In the next six weeks. Procrastination isn’t really an option any more. And that’s a good thing.

I’m participating in AcWriMo this month, which is forcing me to do at least an hour and a half of work on the big paper each day (in three pomodoros, or 25 minute sustained work periods). This has been hugely valuable for me already, as I am feeling less anxious about the paper already, even though, being a a librarian, I’ve rounded up around 75 articles on the topic (gender and social media) and now have to read them and put them into some sort of intelligent argument.

I know this isn’t groundbreaking stuff here. Procrastination isn’t a great idea. But it’s taken the lack of free time that comes with having a baby to really push me to get over this habit. During the first year of my program, I was pregnant and working full time, but still able to come home and eat dinner, watch something on Netflix and get around to homework when I felt like it, without worry about messing with the sacred bedtime routine or wondering how many times I would be up in the middle of the night. I have about two good, post-bedtime hours each day, though, and this is still a pretty decent amount of time to do some work. But it’s definitely not enough time to write a whole paper in a few days.

This probably shouldn’t come as too much of a surprise. The best grades I got in college were during the semester my sophomore year that I was working two jobs and had limited time outside of class and work – though even those days seem ridiculously free now.

I’ve been on Twitter long enough to see people participating in NaNoWriMo, the group challenge to write a novel (or 50,000 words) in the month of November. I’m not a writer and can’t imagine writing anything like that, but I am now a graduate student who has a long research paper and a “thought paper” due at the end of November and early December. I don’t want to be spending the Thanksgiving weekend frantically writing my research paper, so I was excited to see the AcWriMo challenge announced at PhD2Published. This challenge is less about a word count and more about setting an ambitious goal for your academic work. As a habitual procrastinator, I could use some encouragement to stay on top of the work and do a really good job, rather than just “good enough.” Plus, I’m hoping to use some of the research for the paper for my final project in my graduate program. Getting to know the research better now will save me time down the line.

So here’s my goal: spend three “pomodoros” (dedicated 25 minute time frames) of time every day working on either of these projects. I’ve got a Pomodoro Technique app that lets me keep track of the content of the pomorodo, and my iPad is well set up to do reading so that I can try to fit in a pomodoro during my lunch break. I’ll be posting regular updates here to keep accountable and using the #AcWriMo hashtag on Twitter.

So, heres to hoping that the AcWriMo challenge will mean I can spend my first Thanksgiving with a baby contemplating the amusement of feeding him mashed potatoes rather than worry about writing a research paper. I participated in a blog every day in April challenge a few years ago and found that I was actually able to keep to that because I had a group of fellow bloggers to follow and keep up with. Maybe publicly declaring some academic goals will work for this too.

Photo credit:  Davide Restivo via Compfight