Ballad in Plain E

Karen over at Library Technician Dialog has just written a great post entitled “A Value Proposition“.  In it she explains something we’ve been thinking and talking about lately: why Winnipeg law firms don’t employ as many library staff as similarly-sized firms in other cities do. I’m glad she took the time to outline her ideas.

Ultimately, Karen wonders “is it the person in the position, or is it the position that has the value?”

I think it’s both, but in the end, personality matters more.  Personality plays a huge role in what an employee makes of a role. There will always be people who do exactly – and only – as the job description dictates, and that’s fine.  But here’s the problem. A lot of important library tasks (filing, shelving, processing) can be pretty boring if they’re the only tasks you have.   In Karen’s case:

“That wasn’t enough for me, however, so I started adding things that I could do, like creating a monthly newsletter …  expanding the current awareness offerings by reading blogs and other rapidly-updated websites and forwarding the appropriate material on. I kept asking for more to do, and when that didn’t work, I just took on responsibility. I looked for opportunities to go above and beyond what was expected.”

So, like Karen, another type of person seeks out ways to make the job more engaging, more useful – ultimately, they find ways to make the position more valuable. They need to make the work more personal, creative, and challenging to find meaning in it. I felt the same way as Karen. We realised pretty quickly that the status quo wasn’t going to cut it and wasn’t doing our employers any favours, to say nothing of our own career satisfaction!

I’m not trying to brag and say “Look at me, I’m so proactive and so motivated” – far from it.  All that really matters to me, at the end of the day, is whether I’m helping the firm run more efficiently, by helping get the right information to the right people at the right time. That’s what a law library is for. But in my books, to be good in your job – ANY job – you have to be proactive, you have to seek out challenges, you have to question to status quo.

I’m reluctant to play the recession card, but it’s true: these qualities are always critical, especially in these times.

I’ve been lucky – the boss I had in my old job was incredibly supportive no matter what crazy, newfangled idea I wanted to pursue to keep myself entertained. That’s one of the perks that comes with working as a team – there’s always someone to bounce ideas off of, to share the workload involved in big projects, and to commiserate with when the boring stuff just has to get done. In addition to that, we were each other’s biggest champions, and when we felt like no one knew what we did or appreciated us – which I think everyone experiences at some point, no matter how great their jobs  are – we could remind each other of the great things we’d accomplished and of everyone who did indeed appreciate our work.

But in this city, most of the law libraries are solo joints – and we definitely can’t exist in vacuums. This is one reason that informal mentorship and idea sharing could be a part of improving our profession’s collective profile (WALL, anyone?).

We can’t fault our users for not knowing what we’re capable of. Half the world thinks people who work in libraries are just obsessed with keeping their books all to themselves. No, we can’t fault them for not knowing what they COULD be asking us to help them with, which is why we need to TELL them!

We need to tell our employers that we can do a great deal more than process invoices and keep the library tidy. Aside from all the things they know we can do, we can also:

• Monitor the media and legislation
• Help with client development
• Do internet and social media searches
• Help keep the firm website up to date (we see a lot of bad websites and don’t want ours to be one of them!)
• Not only can we do research, but our time can be billed back to the client
• Save lawyers time by gathering materials for papers and presentations

It takes some guts to tell your employer “You’re paying me too much to file looseleaf updates all day. I’m capable of more!” But I did it. I think everyone can – and should.

I’ve been thinking all day about who I might write about for Ada Lovelace Day, the day that celebrates women and technology. I realised that it would only be fitting to write about two women who taught me during my two years doing the Library & Information Technology Program at SAIT. Without the program, I’m not sure where I’d be today!

Marg Anderson and Darlene Taylor are two women who instilled in me a sense of pride in library work, passion for technology, and confidence in my abilities. They helped me to develop a sense of curiosity and perseverance. They taught our about technology that wasn’t even really on people’s radar yet. They prepared us well to work with any type of ILS, and reinforced that technology is about the waterware as much as it is about the hardware and software.

They told us that library work was like getting on a treadmill, and that just when you think you’ve caught up, it starts going faster. I’ve always remembered that, and take it to heart when I start slacking on my own current awareness.

They made me proud that I choose library work as my career and were fierce advocates of the technician program. They were our biggest supporters as we went out into the world and started looking for work. I feel very lucky that I was able to study under these two excellent instructors!

Read Shaunna and Connie’s Ada Lovelace Day posts; and learn about the day at the Ada Lovelace website.