For a while now, I have felt guilty for not having a professional blog. I consider myself a creative and forward-thinking librarian and while my library has had a
teen blog and I read several blogs daily for my own professional development, I have resisted starting my own blog for rather lame and slightly self-deprecating reasons. Finally, I have decided to stop thinking of a blog as an option but rather as a professional necessity. So, what do I do and what should I write about? I am the senior librarian for teen services at the Pikes Peak Library District in Colorado Springs, Colorado. My daily tasks include community programming, reference services, instructional design, outreach, management, team leadership and planning for the future. These tasks are wide and varied and not every blog post will be of interest to every reader. More importantly, I do not care to have any of these topics be the subject of my blog. But thanks to a recent discussion in the
Library Society of the World Friendfeed room, an elegant post by the
Pegasus Librarian and re-reading the book
Leadership and Self-Deception by the Arbinger Institute, I have decided not to concentrate on any of these tasks but instead to write about the reason for them, the human element. Why create community programming, offer reference services, attempt to bridge the gap to our public schools, create research classes or dedicate myself to becoming a better team leader and manager if not to better serve the people in my community? Why plan for the future of teen services in my library if not to ensure that we are connecting with our teen patrons, meeting their needs, and making their lives just a little bit better? I see no greater justification for libraries than serving people.
A few weeks ago, Iris Jastram posted a question to the Library Society of the World Friendfeed room repeated from a conference (ACRL?) session, “If the one-sentence definition of a doctor is ‘one who practices the art of healing, what is your one-sentence definition of a librarian’?” The very first response came from Kathryn Greenhill, “one who connects information and people.” This response resounded quite well with me and I’m sticking to it. Of course, as in every discussion there were those who had differing views of this response for that is what makes a discussion. Examples of library work that does not connect with people included curation, preservation, digital infrastructure work and education. But I disagree. Why do we preserve if not to preserve for the benefit of future people, to allow people for years to come to see whatever is being preserved and to learn from it? Why do we create digital infrastructures if not to make this digital information easier for people to access? What is education but the valuable institution of developing knowledge within people and helping them be able to learn and create? All of these library jobs revolve around the central point of connecting information and people and this connection will be the subject of my blog. I might discuss a teen program or an attempt at outreach. I might question my management abilities or ponder the future of reference services but all of these topics will most definitely contain that essential human element and ask the simple question, “how will this service/program/management style benefit people?”
