Signing off

It’s been quite a ride since I started writing this blog back in May of 2007.  I turned the corner on a new decade of my life.  I resettled on the other side of the country.  I became a librarian.  Veni, vidi, vici (for the most part).

I am excited that I will finally be realizing my long-standing dream of pursuing my MFA in art history at the University of New Mexico.  Being a grad student again means a lot of things to me, but unfortunately one of them is that I will again find myself stretched a bit thin.  I plan to focus on my intellectual pursuits, my book reviews, and finding new challenges in my work.  Though my adventures will continue, I think the life of this blog has run its course. 

So…I’m taking just a moment here to wax philosophical.  I’d like to reiterate the fact that my career path has branched out in unexpected directions, and I know it will continue to do so in the future.  These unexpected circumstances can either be hugely liberating and full of opportunity or rife with anxiety and second-guessing.  It’s a choice to say that an alternative career path is just as successful and perhaps even more exhilerating than a traditional one.  This is an exciting time to be an information resource professional in large part because of these non-traditional paths.  It’s a trying time as well.  The state of the economy means that jobs are being cut or left unfilled and cultural resource institutions are being asked to do more with less.  Job hunting for new professionals can be extremely stressful and daunting in the best of circumstances.  I really feel for my colleagues who are just beginning that search or facing the frustration of months of unsuccessful applications.  Some do not have the luxury of choice and just have to settle for a paycheck.  To those people I would only advise taking everything as an opportunity to add new skills and experiences.  Who knows how these things will come together in the future? Even in trying times, I believe it is true that by doing what you love the money – i.e. the career – will follow.  Stay creative, innovative, excited, and always feed your passions.  In other words (the words of my favorite fortune cookie fortune), “Listen often to the quiet voice within.” It’s the only one that really matters.

Under the Hood

Some recent blog posts on learning programming languages and a thread on the VRA listserv about prioritizing too many professional responsibilities got me thinking.  I absolutely agree with the idea that – along with all other continuing education efforts – it is important for professionals to become more technologically proficient.  It makes me cringe a little when I read about library staff who don’t know the first thing about word processing, let alone developing a website or programming languages. 

What strikes me is that librarians seem to fall somewhere along a wide spectrum in this regard.  There are those who want NOTHING TO DO WITH I.T., NO WAY, NO HOW, there are those who get that gleam in their eyes at the mere mention of SQL or Ruby on Rails, then there are those (like me) who really want to learn new things and make databases more accessible and user-friendly and enhance the digital world with more and better information and all that good stuff, but….well….don’t get pumped up by the system side of things.  Maybe it’s a bit of intimidation, but really it’s more that there’s so much else to focus on, especially in a small institution. 

In much the same way that I could easily learn some basic car repair and yet choose the peace of mind of my trusty mechanic, I like to know I can make a call to my friendly local I.T. guy or gal.  I would just rather be spending my time focusing on the things that excite me about information management, such as collection development, cataloging, and reference.  And after all that, there’s just not much time left in the day to tweak the database.

Hanging Together

I found a great blog called hangingtogether.org, described as “the hangout spot for libraries, archives and museums”(LAMs).  A group of people OCLC/RLG created the blog to look at the issues relating to these groups, and they’ve been pretty active over the past couple of years.  The publication “Beyond the Silos of the LAMs: Collaboration Among Libraries, Archives and Museums” is an especially interesting look at the various projects and intersections emerging between institutions.

“Maelstrom over Metadata”

I couldn’t resist the drama of this title of an article published on insidehighered.com.  The “maelstrom” in this case refers to a possible conflict of interest between a new OCLC policy that sets to place a notice of WorldCat terms and conditions in each record and the libraries that created said records in the first place.  The contention is that such conditions could potentially threaten the free use of records for purposes such as print-on-demand services and individual library revenue sources.

 The online bibliographic world is turning increasingly open source with entities such as OpenLibrary.  The idea of metadata ownership is therefore increasingly anathema to a community that believes that information wants to be free.  For OCLC to place stipulations on the use of WorldCat records is to claim a sort of ownership to the records themselves.  The indignation expressed in comments to the article highlight the conflict of OCLC’s business model and the mission of libraries to disseminate information openly and freely – as well as the fact that it was individual libraries that created the records in the first place.  As Glenn Bunton, Head of Systems Development at Old Dominion University Libraries notes, “In the end, the heart of the issue lies in the conflict between a commercial, economically driven organization (OCLC) and non-commercial, service driven organizations (libraries).”  Though we tend to think of OCLC as an indispensable and altruistic partner in our noble information dissemination efforts, issues such as these make it clear that’s not quite the case.

Kudos, Virginia

Taking an Adult Services course in library school got me thinking about programming and how it tends to be lacking in public libraries.  It seems like there’s so much more potential for really cool programs – especially those related to the arts.  It’s much easier for many people to visit their local public library than a museum or art lecture, so why not combine the two? This is a great way to collaborate with museums and enhance those all-important community partnerships.  Maybe local artists could show and give talks about their work – they get the public exposure, the public gets the art appreciation.  Win win.

So I was glad to see that this idea has been embraced by the Williamsburg Virginia Regional Library in a series called “Centuries of art @ your library.”  Through a partnership with the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, they have scheduled a series of lectures on topics such as “The History of Soviet Realism,” “and “American Realist Painters of the Early 20th Century.” Hopefully other public libraries will borrow this idea.

Learning from Uncertainty Round 2

I find myself wondering how anyone really manages to swallow the fear of unknown outcomes and take on huge, dangerous responsibilities such as mortgages, car loans, children, etc.  Sure, as a country, as a global economy, we were riding on a credit high for the past couple decades and are only now seeming to come back down to earth.  People are losing their houses.  People are losing their jobs.  Until now, I have largely avoided the ill effects.  I live well below my means and I am a compulsive saver.  I do not take on consumer debt.  Thank goodness I remained cautious and did not take on a mortgage, despite lots of advice that it would be a great financial move.  Regardless of my good intentions and careful planning, the recession is starting to nip at my heels.

The art market is a strange and unpredictable bellweather of economic conditions.  In government employment, you know pretty immediately when things have taken a turn for the worse.  But art sales are part commodity, part investment, part consumer-driven emotion.  They’re like a microcosm of the larger capitalist system, playing by unique rules.  For months the lower end of the market has slowed precipitously.  I’ve seen galleries representing emerging artists struggle and fail.  Yet the high end of the market has remained strong.  The wealthiest investors continued to buy up the priciest art on the market.  In the same way that investors were turning to stable commodities such as gold, so were they turning to long-term investments in art.  Then the stock market fell off a cliff, and nobody’s buying anything.

I’m seeing the effects of the recession in all areas, which makes sense in a period of 6.5% unemployment.  The hiring process for the university VR position has been suspended due to budget concerns.  It may or may not be reopened next year.  I think the same is true for the state of NM, and my friend in Colorado said there is also a hiring freeze there for government jobs.  My brother works for a retail distributor and could lose his job any day.  If art sales continue to slide, my job is very much in jeopardy.  This means putting all my plans on hold until I see how things work out.  That’s a disappointment.  From several choices I have gone to just hanging on by my fingernails, like just about everyone else.  But like any challenge, this will be a learning opportunity if I stay positive and avoid panic.

Good News for CCO and the VRA

It’s exciting to see how during the past few years the VRA community has become more collaborative and standardized.  Initiatives such as CCO, CONA, and the new cataloging wiki are all part of a process that has been evolving since before I became aware of these issues, but just in my short experience with visual resource management there have been many new developments. 

The larger cultural resource management community is paying attention.  Just recently the Getty Foundation awarded the Visual Resource Association Foundation a grant of $26,400 to use towards “Implementing CCO:  Standards and Best Practices.”  The idea of this project is to develop an international standard that will provide training and guidelines for combining with existing standards.

This obviously signals a greater interest in cross-institutional standards, and the support, means, and interest to implement them.

Wikicatalog

I posted recently about some of the efforts in the visual resources community to create a more collaborative cataloging environment.  One of these is the Wikicatalog, now in beta-testing.  The creators of this site have asked me to make some comments about the current configuration and make suggestions.

This is an example of a professional and effective use of the wiki model.  It’s publicly accessible, but actually editing records is limited to members of the visual resources community.  It is a way to have a record created by one author looked at and vetted by many professionals, theoretically enhancing the level of expertise each time.

The beta model has the record templates in 3 formats: 2 lists and 1 table.  I personally prefer the table format in terms of visual presentation and ease of entry.  Each work element of VRA Core 4.0 has been input with areas for data to be added.  The examples in the beta model have thumbnail images with corresponding URL to a larger jpg, along with descriptive VRA work metadata.

What I like best about this wiki is the easy accessibility of the fill-in-the blanks templates and standardized tools at hand.  This became even more of an obvious benefit in reading over my internship journal from the IAIA when I had to create all that metadata.  I sort of did the same thing – created a template/spreadsheet and used the authorized standards (AAT, ULAN, TGN, LC) to input the metadata.  It was time-consuming.  This wiki seems like the first step towards a time in which each institution involved in each metadata/digitization project does not have to start from the ground up. 

Wikicatalog does not claim to be a union catalog.  For now, it is a way to have all the VR cataloging tools in place – a template for cataloging in VRA Core, links to standards, examples to use for those who need to see how it’s done.  Maybe someday there will be enough involvement to make it a repository for sharing work records.

How could this model be improved? Honestly, I think it’s a wonderful start.  Once VR professionals do become involved with the project we will see how effective the collaborative effort can be.  Until then, in theory I think this is definitely the direction we should be headed.

Heart and Mind

Sometimes I have a sneaking suspicion that by following my heart I might be getting less than I deserve, in terms of salary, opportunity, and respect.  I guess that’s a common affliction of LIS professionals.  But whenever I’ve tried to talk myself into seeking more highly compensated tenure-seeking positions, I feel like I’m locking myself into a small box with too little air, from which I may never emerge.  I feel like I will be compelled down a certain path, a prescribed direction, FOR THE REST OF MY LIFE.  I don’t really want to sign on to do anything FOR THE REST OF MY LIFE, but as long as I keep just moving along incrementally, making improvements and adjustments and trying out different paths, then I don’t feel like I’m signing a deed in blood.  This is a little melodramatic, but I know how people can get pigeonholed.  I’m sure this is already the case with my career, to a certain extent.  But I really want to think that my options will be open in the future, whether I want to work in visual resource management, art librarianship, or even museum collections management or curatorship (that’s part of the idea behind the MFA).  In my mind they’re all related, and my experiences over the past few years have been preparation for a variety of paths.  I see myself more as an information professional than a librarian.

With these thoughts swirling around, I recently put my name in the hat for two positions that are both very similar and very different.  Their similarity stems from the motivation I have in seeking them – i.e. my goal to get cracking on that MFA.  They are both university positions, and I know very well how much easier it is to pursue a degree with the support of university employment (besides the perks of the benefits and time off).  Other than that, the differences are pretty big.  One is a generalized faculty position of the type of tenure-track librarianship I’ve been avoiding, but gosh, it sure does pay well.  It’s also a bit of a longshot that I will even get an interview for this one (I’ve seen how many applications these kinds of positions get).  The other is a visual resources library position that would require me to take a pay cut.  This feels counter-intuitive, but could possibly be balanced out by better benefits, flexibility with classes, tuition remission, cheaper cost of living, etc.  Obviously the biggest plus would be experience doing something I would like to do – image cataloging and reference in a really great visual resources library.  I think it would expand my possibilities in the future, whether I want to go the museum route or the more traditional library route.

Heart says: “Wow! That VR job sounds REALLY cool!”

Mind responds: “Why are they offering such a low salary and still advertising it as a professional position? Wouldn’t I be contributing to the trend of deprofessionalization?”

And around it goes.  Finally I listened to the heart and accepted a phone interview with job #2.  But I appeased the mind by promising to be rather more hard-nosed than usual in my approach, in terms of what they have to offer me.  I don’t see any real harm in venturing a ways down this path to see where it might lead me.

Lessons from the financial meltdown

In times of political and social turbulence, I find it increasingly difficult to focus on the long-term big picture without serious doomsday instincts to hunker down, save money, and avoid any major life changes until the dust settles.

Of course, new dust is continuously being kicked up, and to give in to such survival instincts is to avoid what may be the best time for opportunity.  Most financial advisors are saying the same thing about the stock market.

With this thought in mind, I’m doing my best to keep the anxiety at bay, ignore my Fidelity statements, and limit my exposure to NPR.  I have decisions to make that require a longer view…sort of like how we all have to think about our retirement savings in this age of anxiety.