Drift Continued

Having finished Rachel Maddow's Drift, I can say with all confidence that I was right to recommend it yesterday.

The first eight chapters of the book, which discuss the decisions and actions that led to us becoming "a nation 'at peace with being at war'" (Maddow, 2012, p. 246), are disturbing. But the final chapter, which discusses our nuclear weapons program - past and present, is downright horrifying. Funny too, but in that if-I-don't-laugh-I'll-cry way.

One would think that, having spent eight trillion dollars (that's a lot of zeroes) on our nuclear arsenal, the air force would take better care of it. Or at least be more careful with it. (Side note: The air force base in Minot, ND comes up quite a bit in the chapter. I've known such a base existed for almost a decade, but I had no idea that it housed a lot of our nukes. You see, Minot is also home to a call center for the insurance company I used to work for; every once in a while one of my contacts would leave because his or her spouse was transferred.) At least the 21st-century stories are funny in their ineptitude. (Although the fact that I'm using the word "inept" to describe the airmen who work with our nukes is chilling.) The stories from the Cold War are just scary. It is something of a miracle that we haven't unleashed nuclear annihilation unintentionally.

Maddow's not all doom and gloom, though. In the epilogue she proposes a to-do list of items that could walk the country back to a place that is more in line with the founders' intentions. Although she suggests that the items on her list are actionable, I am less sanguine. The thing I know for sure, though, is that nothing will get done if the public doesn't start paying attention and asking questions.

Maddow, R. (2012). Drift: The unmooring of American military power. Crown Publishers: New York.

Book Recommendation: Drift

I'm currently reading Rachel Maddow's Drift, which I've wanted to read since it was published earlier this year. I even bought a copy with an Amazon gift card I received for my birthday, but it languished on my bedside table while I re-read Jane Austen this summer and then read 24 YA books for my YA literature class. It's not a particularly sad book (unless you consider the systematic dissolution of every structural, legal, and legislative impediment to war in the United States to be sad), yet at one point I found myself with tears in my eyes.

I realized the culprit was the following sentence fragment: "...and thanks to public relations triumphs like the Bush administration sparing us the sight of the flag-draped caskets of dead American soldiers deplaning week after week at Dover Air Force Base...the American public has been delicately insulated from the actuality of our ongoing wars" (Maddow, 2012, pp. 206-207). More specifically, it was the vision Maddow conjured of dead American soldiers being flown into Dover AFB. It's a sad image, but that's not what struck such a chord with me. No, what moved me to tears was the connection I drew between Maddow's words and a fact I just learned about my late grandfather.

My paternal grandfather was career Navy; he's even buried in Arlington National Cemetery. He was a pilot. Later in his career he was a flight instructor, but he flew bombers in World War II and Korea. He mostly flew cargo planes during Vietnam. I've known all of this for years; what I just learned was that his cargo planes were flying in and out of Dover. According to my dad and aunt, he never told anyone that he was flying dead kids into Dover, but my grandmother could tell. How could she not? How could such an assignment not take a toll on anyone?

I'd never paid much thought to how those flag-draped caskets get to Dover AFB, but now I don't think I'm going to be able to see a picture of them without thinking about the flight crew that got them there.

I have not finished the book yet, but I feel very comfortable recommending it. Maddow makes her argument in a very compelling way. Some readers won't appreciate her argument, but I believe one of her goals in publishing the book is to inspire national debate about America's war-making capabilities.

Maddow, R. (2012). Drift: The unmooring of American military power. Crown Publishers: New York.

Coming Up: Book Recommendations

I've probably read more books in the past year than I had in any other year since I was a kid. In fact, if I'd read nothing but the 24 YA books I read for my YA Literature class, I'd probably still come out on top. After all, this lack of reading was the impetus for my New Year's Resolution to read every day. A resolution that, I'm happy to say, I have kept thus far. (In fact, it's the only one of the four that I've managed to keep.)

I've discovered a lot of great books this year while also re-reading some old favorites. It shouldn't be any real surprise, then, that I want to share some of the notable books with you. But not tonight. No, this project waits for another day.

Book Recommendations: The Uglies Series

As I indicated in my last post, I was completely entranced by the world Scott Westerfeld imagined in his Uglies series. I was so into it, in fact, that I read the entire four book series in 15 days. That's even more impressive when you consider that I was in grad school for more than half of that time, which meant that I couldn't just curl up with these books regardless of how much I wanted to.

The Uglies series takes place several hundred years from now. After humanity nearly destroyed the planet and itself by wantonly using up resources and being dependent on oil, it finally got its act together. Everyone lives in population-controlled cities (capped at one million people each) that are spread across the planet. Most consumer goods are made of plastic and recycled after use. A metallic grid under each city provides the magnetic power needed to allow the citizens' hoverboards and hovercars to fly.

These future people didn't just fix humanity's need to destroy the earth, though. They also ended prejudice. Every citizen undergoes a major operation at the age of 16 that allows him or her to fit the biological standard of beauty (symmetrical face, large eyes, full lips, clear skin, etc.). Since everyone eventually looks the same, there's no reason to hate other people for being different. In fact, the only real differentiation that happens in this society is along age lines: children are called littlies, 12-15 year olds are called uglies, once you turn 16 and have the surgery you join the new pretties, middle-aged people are called middle pretties, and the elderly are called crumblies.

The series was originally intended to be a trilogy: Uglies, Pretties, and Specials. The heroine of those three books is Tally Youngblood and the trilogy does a really good job of wrapping up Tally's story. At the start of Uglies, Tally is counting down the days to her 16th birthday so she can have the surgery and join her best friend Peris and all the other new pretties. She meets a girl named Shay, who just so happens to share her birthday. After they become friends, Shay tells Tally about a mysterious place called the Smoke; it's outside the city and the people who live there don't get the pretty surgery. It sounds horrible to Tally, but Shay is determined to run away to the Smoke. Tally refuses to leave with Shay but what happens next changes Tally's life and, eventually, Tally's world.

Like so many other dystopian sci-fi stories, the trilogy doesn't end with "and they all lived happily ever after," but it does have a hopeful ending. After having read Extras, I wish I'd ended with the original trilogy. Honestly, I wish Westerfeld had ended with the original trilogy. However, several years after writing Specials, he had an idea for a story in a world with a reputation economy. He realized he could set it in the world of Uglies several years after the end of Specials. It made a lot of sense.

I'm not saying that Extras is bad; it isn't. I just wish I'd bothered to look into it a bit before I started reading it. Had I realized that it really isn't a story about Tally, I probably wouldn't have read it. I think that was really my problem: I care deeply for Tally and several of the other characters of the original trilogy and Extras is about none of them. Sure, a bunch of them show up (eventually), but they are peripheral characters. Plus, I didn't really like Aya Fuse, the heroine of Extras. She was annoying and not Tally (and she didn't have enough redeeming features to cover up those two sins). There was also the weird sense of disorientation that came from reading a book set in a world that was not what I'd expected. (If that makes sense.)

In conclusion, I highly recommend the original trilogy of Uglies, Pretties, and Specials. However, I would probably wait a while to read Extras after finishing those three. For what it's worth, I want to buy paperback copies of the trilogy but have no intention of buying Extras.

Checking In

I have been remiss with this blog and I apologize. School and life and whatnot made me forget it even existed, but I'm glad I remembered it because I want to share a very brief story.

One of my friends lent me some YA books because I took a YA Literature course this semester. I've read four of the seven books so far, including the one I finished last night, Uglies by Scott Westerfeld. I knew that Uglies was the first in a series when I started it, but I had no idea how badly I would want to continue the series when I finished it. But, man oh man, I really want to continue Tally's story. (This is the same way I felt when I finished The Hunger Games in March.) I started writing a Facebook message to my friend this afternoon to ask if she had any of the other books in the series, Pretties, Specials, and Extras, but then I realized that I could look online to see if my local library had it. After all, borrowing it from my local library would be much cheaper and quicker than borrowing it from my friend a thousand miles away. So I looked online and not only were all three books available in the Hillsborough County Public Library Cooperative, they were all available at the Brandon Library. There was even at least one copy of each book sitting on the shelves! So I hopped in my car and drove to the library :)

I did try to talk myself out of going because I have final papers to write, but I'm glad I was unsuccessful. I now have the continuation of Tally's story sitting on my dining room table, just waiting for me to finish those papers and dive in. That's a pretty strong incentive.

Recap

I haven't been as good about keeping up with this blog as I would've liked.  There were so many times in the past month that I got inspired to write a post, but then got distracted and ended up not posting (the infographic on children's literacy is a good example of this).

I shall try to post at least once a week going forward, but I make no promises.

More Book Recommendations

I had a lot of fun writing yesterday's post about The Rotation, but it's not the only good book I've read so far this year.  One of my New Years Resolutions was to read every day and I've managed to do so thus far.  I'm pretty proud of that and of the 10 books I've finished.  Below is a selection of those books, listed in the order I read them.

• Death Comes to Pemberley by P. D. James - Pride & Prejudice is my favorite novel and I love the veritable cottage industry of sequels that has popped up recently.  I don't care what genre a novel is, if it's a Pride & Prejudice sequel I will read it (and probably like it if it's any good).  I'd heard good things about this sequel by acclaimed mystery author James and it didn't disappoint.  If anything, it made me want to re-read Pride & Prejudice for the sixth time.
• The Magician King by Lev Grossman - Thankfully I really enjoyed this even after the clusterfudge that was my attempt at borrowing it from my local library.  Of course, it would've been helpful if I had still remembered most of The Magicians when I read this.  Do you need to have read The Magicians to follow this story?  Not at all, but I kept getting annoyed at myself for not remembering things that I knew I should've.  These two books are often called "Harry Potter for grownups" and that's a valid description, but these books aren't as derivative as that makes them seem.
• The American Heiress by Daisy Goodwin - This is another book I'd heard a lot of good things about.  The novel takes place during the latter part of the Victorian era, at a time when it was incredibly common for rich American heiresses to marry into old English aristocratic families.  The English family got an influx of money and the American wife's often nouveau riche family got respectability.  The heroine is the richest heiress of her generation (and a Jane Austen fan, so I can't help but like her) and she is determined to make a love match, regardless of her mother's wishes.
• We Two: Victoria and Albert: Rulers, Partners, Rivals by Gillian Gill - I've been fascinated by Queen Victoria's relationship with Prince Albert since Victoria showed up as a character in an episode of Doctor Who.  Shortly after that episode aired I read a very positive review of this book, which I later asked for and received for my birthday.  Unfortunately, I didn't get around to reading this book for several years.  But the Crown Prince Bertie (eventually King Edward VII) was a character in The American Heiress, which somehow reminded me of this book that was still in a moving box.  I don't remember learning much about English history after the American colonies won their independence when I was in school, so I learned a lot from this book.  And the material is not presented in a dry, textbook sort of way, so that's another plus.

Other books I've really enjoyed this year include Stephenie Meyer's The Host, Shannon Hale's Austenland, and Suzanne Collins' The Hunger Games.  (I read The Hunger Games in about seven hours at the beginning of Spring Break.  I can't wait for the semester to be over so I can read Catching Fire and Mockingjay.)

Book Recommendation: The Rotation

With all of my recent talk about reading, I figured it was high time I talked about the book I'm currently reading.  The Rotation, by Jim Salisbury and Todd Zolecki, is a behind-the-scenes look at the 2011 Phillies with a focus on the much vaunted pitching staff (the Legion of Arms, the Four Aces, R2C2, whatever you wanted to call them) and I highly recommend it.

The book came out on March 6, just as spring training games were starting, and I wasn't sure if I really wanted to read it.  As a Phillies fan, the end of the 2011 season was (and still is) a bad taste in my mouth.  Why would I want to torture myself by reading about all of the potential and the excitement and the ultimate disappointment?  Didn't I just live it?  But then I kept hearing (reading) good things about the book.  And I knew that I was a fan of both Zolecki and Salisbury, two longtime Phillies beat writers.

In the end, a combination of things convinced me to buy the book.  I suppose you'd call the first thing morbid curiosity.  The second was an overwhelming desire to read a baseball book because Opening Day was fast approaching (and I mean actual Opening Day, not that series in Japan that barely counts because most people don't know it happened).  Unfortunately, I didn't have any unread baseball books.  But then my college roommate randomly gave me an Amazon gift card, solving that problem.

Regardless of why I decided to buy the book, I'm glad I did.  It is fascinating.  The peeks into the clubhouse that fans can never hope to get without somehow becoming baseball writers.  The full story of the Cliff Lee deal that brought him back to the City of Brotherlee (yes, that's intentional) Love and set up the whole crazy 2011 season.  Honestly, the Cliff Lee story alone was worth the price of the book for me.  Like most Phillies fans, I can still vividly recall Cliff Lee Day, December 14, 2010; it was a very good day.  But even knowing that the story had a happy ending, I found myself getting stressed out when reading the full tale.  I'd had no idea just how many stops and starts there were in the negotiations.

It's also fun to be reminded of things I'd read last year.  Roy Oswalt accidentally electrocuting himself and, he believes, magically healing his shoulder.  How Vance Worley began to transform himself into the Vanimal by writing "f*** you" inside his cap.  Carlos Ruiz's excellent talent for mimicry.

The book is even proving a balm for my frazzling nerves.  It's funny now to read about the Phillies' anemic offense last April.  "Their 3.25 runs per game in that 16-game stretch [from April 10-27] ranked second-to-last in the National League" (Salisbury & Zolecki, 2012, p. 138).  Of course, last year's team still managed to win ballgames and stay over .500.  They were even in first place on April 27th.  This year's team is currently 3-5 (and being under .500 is a very strange thing in this Golden Age of Phillies Baseball).  The lesson, of course, is that it could be worse (I remember being so frustrated with last year's team).  And when we get Ryan Howard and (hopefully) Chase Utley back, things will only get better.

Like I said, I highly recommend The Rotation to all baseball fans in general and Phillies fans in particular. I think there's even something in it for people who couldn't care less about baseball.


Salisbury, J., & Zolecki, T. (2012). The rotation: A season with the Phillies and one of the greatest pitching staffs ever assembled. Philadelphia: Running Press.

Reading Books Can Save Your Life

I stumbled across this blog post by A.J. Jacobs, author of Drop Dead Healthy, today.  In the book, Jacobs tries "to become the healthiest person alive" (Jacobs, 2012, para. 1).  Part of his quest involved determining whether activity X was healthy.  According to Jacobs, meditating, napping, and petting dogs are all healthy activities.  Sitting, on the other hand, is "definitely not" (Jacobs, 2012, para. 2) healthy.

One activity not covered in his book is reading, so that was the focus of his blog post.

Is reading healthy?  Well, it isn't bad for your eyes, so there's that.  Jacobs also discusses Annie Murphy Paul's New York Times piece that I discussed here and points out that reading is good for your brain and makes us better human beings.  Unfortunately, there are piles of research that show that sitting is bad for you, "like a Paula Deen bacon doughnut bad" (Jacobs, 2012, para. 10).  Since most people sit while reading, that's a bad thing.  Jacobs advocates reading standing up (or even walking on a treadmill), but realizes that most people can't or won't follow that advice.  He recommends fidgeting while reading.

I have to wonder if Jacobs has spent any time with a fidgety person.  A friend and former coworker of mine is the most fidgety person I have ever met.  It's like he has daytime restless leg syndrome.  I love him to death, but his constantly moving legs are distracting and often annoying.  (Of course, he's also one of the skinniest people I know, so maybe there is something to this whole fidgeting thing.)  I can't imagine working in an office full of fidgeting people.  As for myself, it turns out that fidgeting doesn't come naturally to me.  While writing this post I've had to make a conscious effort to fidget in my chair.  I think the only hope for me is to listen to music while sitting, because I catch myself dancing in my chair all the time.  But I don't think librarianship will offer me the same sort of opportunities to spend entire workdays with earbuds in and iPod on that I had as an accountant.

The most interesting parts of the post to me, though, were the stories of reading saving lives.  Teddy Roosevelt suffered a flesh wound in 1912 after being shot in the chest at point-blank range.  How did he survive?  "The bullet was slowed by his reading glasses case and the manuscript of the speech itself" (Jacobs, 2012, para. 5).  Additionally, Ernest Shackleton took the entire Encyclopaedia Britannica on his trip to Antarctica and "ended up burning the volumes to keep from freezing" (Jacobs, 2012, para. 6).  Personally, I'd be much more interested in knowing why Shackleton took such a heavy and seemingly unnecessary thing as an entire encyclopedia to Antarctica.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, Jacobs comes to the conclusion that books are good for your health.  I have to say that I agree.


Jacobs, A. J. (2012, April 12). A.J. Jacobs on why reading books can save your life [blog post]. Retrieved from http://www.omnivoracious.com/2012/04/aj-jacobs-on-why-reading-books-can-save-your-life.html

Children's Literacy

Apparently March was National "March into Literacy" Month.  My college roommate posted an infographic on Facebook during March that I had meant to include here, but I kept forgetting.  It may not be March anymore, but that doesn't mean children's literacy is any less important.  Actually, since Harry Potter is a large part of the graphic and JK Rowling's next book was announced today, it almost seems fitting to write about this today.

The infographic, below, celebrates the most loved children's books and was put together by the Master of Arts in Teaching program at the University of Southern California.

My friend shared this infographic because she thought it was pretty awesome.  I agree, but at the same time some of the facts really make me cringe (see, for example: 2008 - only 24% of 13-year-olds and 17-year-olds report reading on their own for fun).  When I mentioned that, her response was that it was up to the future librarians and reading specialists (in other words, us) to save the world :)  I get her point, but that's a little too much pressure to put on me (at least).  Maybe that's why I have no real interest in being a school librarian.

Regardless of what type of librarian one is, I think all librarians believe in the importance of literacy.  And some of the facts included below are good to have in one's back pocket to quantify just how important literacy really is.

 
Via MAT@USC: Become a Teacher

Your Brain on Fiction (article)

This morning I came across a link for an op-ed that appeared in Sunday's New York Times entitled "The Neuroscience of Your Brain on Fiction."  In the article, Annie Murphy Paul gathers the results of several recent neuroscience studies in which "brain scans are revealing what happens in our heads when we read a detailed description, an evocative metaphor or an emotional exchange between characters" (Murphy Paul, para. 2).  She cites several studies that have found that certain types of words activate more than just the language-processing areas of our brains.  For example, words with strong odor associations ("cinnamon") activate the primary olfactory cortex, metaphors involving texture ("the singer had a velvet voice") activate the sensory cortex, and words describing motion ("Pablo kicked the ball") activate the motor cortex.  Even more amazingly, with motion words "this activity was concentrated in one part of the motor cortex when the movement described was arm-related and in another part when the movement concerned the leg" (Murphy Paul, para. 5).

All of these findings from the neuroscience research are fascinating in and of themselves, but the real appeal of the article for me was the way Ms. Murphy Paul used the research to support reading fiction in general and novels in particular.  In fact, the article's pro-fiction stance was the reason I read the article in the first place and then sent the link to my college roommate (who is currently studying to become a reading specialist).

The article almost made me feel guilty for the fact that I'm currently reading a biography and not a novel :)  In my defense, though, it's a biography of Queen Victoria and Prince Albert and I have been fascinated by the two of them for years.  Plus, I (finally) just read The Hunger Games in a matter of hours, so it's not like I've been neglecting fiction.  On the contrary, I'm far more likely to read fiction than nonfiction.

The last pair of studies cited in the article found that "individuals who frequently read fiction seem to be better able to understand other people, empathize with them and see the world from their perspective" (Murphy Paul, para. 9).  Ms. Murphy Paul closed the article by noting that "these findings will affirm the experience of readers...who have found themselves comparing a plucky young woman to Elizabeth Bennet" (Murphy Paul, para. 11) and in doing so managed to combine my love of novels in general and Pride and Prejudice (and Lizzie Bennet) in particular with my fascination with the human brain.


Murphy Paul, A. (2012, March 17). The neuroscience of your brain on fiction. The New York Times. Retrieved from http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/18/opinion/sunday/the-neuroscience-of-your-brain-on-fiction.html?pagewanted=1&_r=2

Ten Ways to Make Yourself Indispensable (article)

The title of the last article in the current issue of Information Outlook, "Ten Ways to Make Yourself Indispensable," caught my attention.  In fact, it almost brought me up short.  For the simple fact that I've read countless business articles that give the same advice: avoid becoming indispensable.

In the business world, the logic is that your boss won't promote you or support your quest for a new position if he or she considers you indispensable.  After all, who else could possibly perform your (current) job as well as you do?  I don't know how often that really happens.  I've been lucky to have bosses who supported my efforts to climb the corporate ladder (and believe you me, I was pretty much indispensable).  Now that I think about it, though, maybe that's the reason my former director (boss's boss) refused to promote me: she thought I was indispensable in Suspense.  (Yes, I know it sounds weird, but I promise you that suspense is an accounting thing.)  I even had a boss who kept trying to push me up the corporate ladder by encouraging me to apply for a job I really didn't want.  Instead, I quit and moved to Florida (go figure).

Whether the assertion that indispensable employees don't get promoted is true is beside the point.  I've read it quite a few times (all in the four years since I moved to Florida) and it stuck with me.  So you can see why I found an article that not only promoted becoming indispensable but also gave tips on how to do so surprising.  But then I thought about it in the context of libraries and the current economic downturn and I could see the logic behind making one's special library indispensable.

Except that wasn't Abram's point.  "Remember, this isn't about protecting the library, but about communicating your value as a librarian" (Abram, 2012, p. 30).  Several of his tips boil down to keep your skills current and, if possible, become a SME (subject matter expert) in something that will distinguish you from your coworkers.  He also suggests taking on new tasks as a way of networking within your company and "excel[ing] in an area in which your boss is weak" (Abram, 2012, p. 31).  I suppose I can see his reasoning for advocating that librarians become indispensable to their organizations.  But I'm having trouble seeing the difference between making oneself valuable as a librarian and making one's library valuable.  Especially since this article's audience was special librarians and many (if not most) special librarians work in one-person libraries.  I don't see how the powers that be at a company can separate a librarian from his or her one-person library.

Whether or not one is able to promote one's value independently of one's library's value, I think Abram's main point of becoming indispensable is a good one.  In an Information Age, it seems almost silly that a librarian has to prove his or her value, but that is the world we live in.  If we want libraries (especially small, corporate libraries) to continue, librarians have to become indispensable.


Abram, S. (2012, January/February). Ten ways to make yourself indispensable. Information Outlook, 16(1), 30-31.

Library Fail

Over the summer I started visiting my local public library, the Brandon Regional Library.  After all, I'm in library school, it seemed only natural to get a library card (especially since I can't really afford to buy books right now).  The first book I checked out was Lev Grossman's The Magicians.  I loved it and read it in two or three days.  In fact, I had to force myself to stop reading it the first day.

Naturally, I was dying to read the sequel, The Magician King.  Unfortunately, it was brand new and there was a waiting list to check it out.  But that wasn't really a problem since I could place a hold on it from the  Hillsborough County Public Library Cooperative's website and add myself to the waiting list.  Isn't it wonderful to be living in the future?

So I placed my hold in the summer (I think it was August, but I don't remember exactly) and waited to be contacted when it was available.  And waited.  And waited.  Eventually I just forgot about it.  Once in a while it would pop into my head, but I just assumed that the people in front of me were slow readers and forgot again.

This morning it popped into my head again and I decided to check on the status of my hold.  Well, it turns out that the people in front of me were not slow readers because the hold expired on 9/23/11.  I assume that means that it became available to me a week or so before that date.  I just checked my cellphone and there are no missed calls in the entire month of September.  Nor do I have any unread emails dated September.  This means that no one contacted me to let me know that the book I was dying to read was available to me.  Good job, Brandon Library and HCPLC, you've given me every reason to distrust your ability to provide me with books I can't take from the stacks myself.

Now, to play devil's advocate, it is possible that it was my responsibility to monitor the status of my hold.  But I checked and, nope, the Hillsborough County procedure for requests and holds states that customers are notified by phone or email.

Personally, this isn't a big deal.  As a matter of fact, I walked into the Brandon Library this afternoon and walked out less than five minutes later with a copy of The Magician King.  But as an aspiring librarian, it bugs me.  For one thing, this is a process that should clearly be automated.  But the much bigger issue is that this is not a good way to encourage customer loyalty.  I have no idea if other people have ever experienced this issue (and I dearly hope not).  I want to be a librarian.  I have a vested interest in the survival of libraries of all types.  But even I have no intention of ever requesting or reserving a book through the HCPLC again.  I can't imagine how someone who doesn't really care one way or another about libraries would react to this.

All of that being said, I will continue to frequent the Brandon Library.  Provided that I know ahead of time that the book I am interested in is in the stacks.

Interacting with Senior Management (article)

I found Cindy Sullivan's article, "Interacting with Senior Management," very interesting.  In it, Sullivan discussed how and why she developed "a series of workshops that would focus on interacting with the senior management in an organization" (2011, para. 3).

Some of the things I found most interesting were her reasons for focusing on interacting with senior management.  For example, she believed that "it was necessary [for the library] to be perceived as a partner in order to contribute to the strategic direction of the organization and demonstrate the leadership qualities that are valued by management" (Sullivan, 2011, para. 4).  Furthermore, she felt "it was extremely important for library managers to be perceived as being on the same plane as their senior team in terms of management techniques, thought leadership, and implementing the overall organization's strategic plan" (Sullivan, 2011, para. 5).

The techniques Sullivan espoused in her workshops are all about face time and "[providing] regular, personal interactions with the members of the senior team" (2011, para. 8).  Such interactions are essential to "1. demonstrate business acumen; 2. exhibit expert knowledge; and 3. build a relationship" (Sullivan, 2011, para. 8).

Elsewhere in the article, she gave examples of how other SLA members were "providing library services to [the executive] segment of their client base" (Sullivan, 2011, para. 8).  The one I found most interesting was a public library that provided "proactive research and reference services to prominent individual in different types of organizations and fields (e.g., lawyers, medical professionals and business professionals)" (Sullivan, 2011, table 1).

Sullivan's basic premise, that it is more important than ever to make sure that the powers that be in an organization understand the value they receive from an in-house library, is nothing new.  It is, in fact, an idea that has been beaten into my brain in my 2+ semesters of library school.  However, rather than simply state that fact and move on, Sullivan took the initiative to create a way to help her fellow librarians show their value to senior management.  For that, I applaud her.  I also applaud the unnamed public library she mentioned that adapted an approach that feels very "corporate library" and applied it to its public setting.


Sullivan, C. (2011, September). Interacting with senior management. Information Outlook, 15(6). Retrieved from http://www.sla.org/io/2011/09/1050.cfm

The Information Partnership: Recognizing a V.I.P. (video)

I found this video interesting, though I admit I had to force myself to pay attention to what people were saying.  I kept getting distracted by the terrible fashion (especially the glasses).

Each of the four companies profiled seemed to really prize information as a resource and that led to an appreciation for the library.  I believe it was Dave Printz, the VP of MacNeal Hospital, who said that "we don't use the term library because it really is a resource for us."

For their part, the libraries all considered themselves an integral part of the company.  Timeliness of service and quality of information provided were of the essence at each library.  One librarian even said that timeliness was most important because if information was too late it was too late.  Each of the librarians acknowledged that it was important to position the library as a value-added service.

This video made me wonder about my previous employers and whether or not they had libraries.  I imagine at least two of them did since they were giant multi-nationals, but I never heard a word about a library (or information center).  Of course, you could make the argument that accounting shops are a form of information center, albeit one that only contains information about the parent company.  But if I had ever wanted to know something about the budget, I knew the people who put it together.

I'm also curious about what happened to the companies profiled in the past 20 years.  Do they still exist?  If so, do they still pride themselves on their libraries?  I think it would be fascinating to find out.

Hello World!

I started this blog as part of a homework assignment for my Seminar in Special Libraries.  I haven't used Blogger before, but it seems pretty simple so far.  I might experiment with the layout for a while until I'm happy with the look and feel of my blog (although I am partial to red).

I intend to use this blog as part of my personal brand while I try to land my dream LIS position (not that I know what that is yet).