Of 2.0 and staff workloads

When I was on the University of Nebraska, Lincoln east campus last week there was one thing I heard that I'd not mentioned in my previous blog post about the day; "re-staffing". Please allow me explain.

Often, especially during my Library 2.0 or Social Web presentations (both of which I was giving that day) I inevitably get the question "but how can I do my job and do all this new stuff too?" It's a legitimate question yet I dread it all the same. You see, it's my job to do all this new stuff. I don't have to pull a reference desk shift or meet with students. I do have to travel, teach, and present, but all the "new fun 2.0 stuff" I do is in complete support of said travel, teaching, and presenting. So, how have I answered the question?

In the past, and on that day, I mumbled my excuse about how my time is spent and then proceeded to mumble a bit more about "working it into your existing workflow" and "letting the decision of which 2.0 things to use/do be an 'organic' process". Both are legitimate answers but aren't very satisfying ones to either me or the audience.

But over lunch, after my social web presentation, one of the campus librarians said to another, "maybe we need to consider some re-staffing" in order to be able to do some of this stuff." At the time I don't recall reacting to the comment that much but it stuck with me enough to blog about it a week later.

Maybe at an institutional level adding the new social tools onto an already overloaded workflow isn't the answer. Granted, I firmly believe that some of the new tools can be integrated successfully and streamline the existing workflow, but what about larger tools like blogging. Instead of expecting staff to blog for the library in addition to their existing workload, how about redistributing the workload so the staff that will be blogging on behalf of the library have a little less of what they did before and now have the time to blog?

I'm not saying this would be easy, nor could I possibly claim to have a "plan" for something like that that you could implement in your library. (How could I, each library's solution would be completely different from every other.) However, maybe we should not look at this as an addition problem, but more of a rearrangement problem.

Your thoughts?

Academically speaking

Yesterday I had the pleasure of giving two talks at the University of Nebraska Council of Libraries Spring Staff Development Meeting, Let's Get Social and Library 2.0. (The linked Library 2.0 presentation is a slightly older version than the one I gave yesterday but the differences are minor.) My presentations and points were, judging by the lunchtime and end-of-day comments, well received and it sounds like I've given the University of Nebraska librarians a lot to think about and discuss amongst themselves.

One interesting suggestion I heard about over lunch was that they hire a "librarian at large" who would not be tied to working in the library but would make themselves available all over the campus in a roaming manner; today in the student union, tomorrow in a dorm lobby, the next day in a popular eating establishment near campus with free WiFi, etc. I'd say this is a wonderful idea and even know someone locally who I think would be perfect for the position. If you follow through on this idea please let me know.

At one point during my Library 2.0 presentation one librarian who stated that he was a fan of Andrew Keene and was a self-described "elitist" do make the argument that in some cases we're dumbing things down to meet the needs of newer students. (Please keep in mind that I'm paraphrasing here but I believe I've got the gist of his statements right.) I don't want to continue the debate here but I do have two short follow-ups. One, I am rarely in support of bringing things to the lowest common denominator and you can ask several of my co-workers for confirmation of this. However, I don't believe that offering such things as IM-based reference (the topic I was addressing when the issue was raised) would be considered dumbing things down, merely opening an additional access point for a different type of library user. My second follow-up is to point those interested to this blog post in which I respond to the writing of Mr. Keene in some detail. (Also, I just found a blog post by Librarian In Black Sarah Houghton-Jan regarding her attending a recent symposium which included Mr. Keen.)

I'd also like to point out that I attended the other two talks of the day one on Mary Bolin's project with Open-Access Online Peer Reviewed Journal "Library Philosophy and Practice", and Paul Royster's Digital Commons project which is the university's institutional repository. I'd previously not known much about either of these topics but from what I can tell both of these projects should be considered as models for other institutions interested in pursuing either of these types of projects.