I have a new job! I've been offered and have accepted a position as a reference librarian at the Jefferson County Community College in Watertown, New York. I'm very excited. Actually, ecstatic is probably a better word. The truth is, I really didn't expect this to happen so soon. After hearing about the difficulties my peers had been having landing academic library positions, I figured it would take a few tries. As it is, we're rushing to get the renovations on our house completed (like I said, we really didn't expect this to happen yet). My official start date is September 22. My husband is probably going to have to stay behind to finish off the renovations while I fly up with my mom and two year old. My husband will follow with the car and our two dogs in the weeks following. We'll be staying at my in-laws house until we find our own house in Watertown, or a rental, depending on how long the house hunting takes. I tell you what, this has been one of the most complicated moving adventures I've ever had to plan. In fact, the plan keeps changing daily. All I know is that September 22, I'll be at the Melvil Dewey Library, meeting new people, learning new things. Life is good.

If Nobody Speaks of Remarkable Things by Jon McGregor

My review

rating: 4 of 5 stars
This was McGregor's first book. It was nominated for the Booker prize. The story begins on a quiet urban street in England where a community of neighbors have just witnessed a horrible accident. Without revealing any details, McGregor leaves the scene abruptly and continues his story in a split narrative. With vivid detail he describes the events leading up to the accident, taking his readers behind closed doors into the private lives of the residents who occupy each house. The second narrative follows the story of one of these residents three years later as she still struggles to come to terms with the horror of what she saw that day. A chance meeting introduces her to the twin brother of one of the neighbors also present at the accident and it is through this relationship and a strange twist of events that she is able to find some closure.



McGregor immediately draws his readers in with his poetic writing style and well-drawn characters. The pacing of the story is slow, however, it is still a page-turner in the sense that the details of the accident remain a mystery until the very end. The two narratives alternate chapters and are related from different points of view. Sentences are long and densely written but chapters are short. The author goes into great detail describing the mundane activities each individual participates in, but despite this readers will find themselves enticed by the many diverse characters and how so many people with so little in common will remain forever connected through this one traumatic experience.



The only character with a name in the book is the twin brother, Michael. Everyone else is identified by their physical traits and house number. Although this can get confusing at times, it does help to create a realistic atmosphere given that neighbors often related to each other by location, appearance, as opposed to name. Although the two narratives come together nicely at the end, McGregor still leaves a lot of room for thought and discussion. Strong language is used and the novel does require a lot of focus and patience from the reader but the rewards are well worth it.



Quote: "Even the traffic scattered through these streets: the taxis and the cleaners, the shift-workers and the delivery drivers, even they are held still in this moment, trapped by traffic lights which synchronise red as the system cycles from old day to new, hundreds of feet resting on accelerators, hundreds of pairs of eyes hanging on the lights, all waiting for the amber, all waiting for the green. The whole city has stopped. And this is a pause worth savouring, because the world will soon be complicated again." p. 5


View all my reviews.

I can't explain how wonderful it is, not to mention motivating, when a non-librarian writes passionately about libraries. Granted Kate Carraway is all the way up in Toronto and I'm all the way down here in Oklahoma but still...it just warms my heart to read this stuff.

The public library is among the last real democratic institutions. The Holds shelf is an exemplar of the social contract. A library applies systemic order to cacophonous wilds of ideas, and the librarians who make it happen are eternal sex symbols. "Quiet" and "books" are intoxicating signifiers, but more than that, the library loves its patrons with Aslan-calibre benevolence. It wants to help you. It wants to enrich you. It will indulge your fiendish relationship with the Gossip Girl novels, and when you need some Joseph Conrad, it's there
for you, too. Such wholesome majesty is rarely found in a governmental, community-oriented kind of place.

The interview went well. I've never been so nervous about anything in my entire life, however, much to my delight it turned out to be a really enjoyable experience. The search committee were very easy to talk to which helped put me at ease immediately. It was a really cozy community college located in a nice area. The city itself wasn't very big but there were a lot of communities ten, fifteen minutes away that were very scenic with lots to do. I'm hopeful, but also realistic. I've gone over all the details of the interview in my head and realize that there were some areas where I should have elaborated more and others where I should have focused my answer elsewhere. At any rate, it's my first experience interviewing for an academic position. At least now I know that I can do it, that I can get my foot in the door. If this one doesn't work out then I'll try for the next one.

In the meantime, I'm starting on a few new projects at work. Our library recently purchased a subscription to Book Letters, a service that makes it super easy to provide our community with e-newsletters on our website. They can subscribe to the newsletters through email. In addition to creating book lists, you can also create a simple list of links, which means, essentially, that I can make pathfinders on our website. Much more convenient considering the hard copies we've made rarely get used. We've also decided to do a Staff Pics newsletter. Each month I'll be pestering one of our staff members to create list of suggested reads for me to post.

I've also been working on bookmarking a lot of our states digitized government documents. Right now our del.icio.us account isn't really being marketed to the public. It's more or less only used by staff. My intention is to simply bookmark them now and hope that we can feed the links into our website in some way or another in the future. We've been hoping to do a redesign of our website for awhile, but unfortunately everyone is already swamped with other job duties right now. Anyway, I'm bookmarking the digitized gov't docs as an alternative to cataloging...at least for the time being.

I'm also hoping to get a little more involved with teen services this fall. I thought I would actually give a Teen Advisory Board a shot. Most of our staff have always been skeptical about TAB's simply because there's a belief that teens in our community are already "over-programmed" with school activities, but I figure it never hurts to try.

I turned thirty today. Yup. Three. Zero. I don't know why but I've been dreading this birthday for two years, despite everyone's assurance that thirty really is the new twenty. I can tell you that I don't feel like I did when I turned twenty. I don't feel bouncy with new energy, excited with anticipation about what the years to come will bring me. Instead I feel stagnate, stale and jaded. It takes everything I have to blog nowadays. There are times when I wonder whether there is anything meaningful coming out of my mouth or whether I should just keep it shut and prevent any further "dilution" in the library blogsphere. I know I'm not the only one feeling this way. I had a short twitter conversation with a librarian a few weeks ago where he freely admitted that he hadn't even finished his masters yet and already felt "professionally lost". I look at some of the blogs I used to read and notice that they too are blogging less and less. I don't blame them. Who has time? The blogging experience seems to be loosing its luster, not to mention the whole library experience. At least for me anyway, and because I don't want to start my third decade filled with so many jaded thoughts, I think it's time for a nice fresh kick in the butt.

So, where do I start? Well, you start by looking forward and only forward. Forget about all the negative experiences you've had in the past, either on the job, in school, personal stuff, anything that might leave you feeling low about yourself or your place in this world. This is something you have to keep up on a daily basis, constantly letting go of past negative experiences. It isn't easy, trust me, I'm still learning how myself. In fact, I just had a negative experience this morning concerning a potential job interview. Very nice person, wonderful sounding job but they wanted me to come down for an in person interview this Friday and do a fifteen minute presentation on, well, anything pertaining to the job I was applying for. It was far too overwhelming to think about. I would essentially only have two days to plan the presentation. The added dilemma was that I simply didn't have the vacation time to take off to do the interview. I ended up asking them to pull my application because I didn't think I was right for the job. I completely lost confidence in my abilities. I beat myself up about it for good few hours before I realized that I just had to learn from this experience. Since I am applying for academic positions and since the call backs I am getting seem to be skipping over the usual initial phone interview in favor of the in-person full blown presentation interview, maybe I need to design a presentation that I can tweak so I can be ready at the drop of a hat for the next opportunity that comes along. Or maybe it wasn't the right job for me afterall and I did the right thing. Who knows. The point is, it's over. Onword we go.

Next on the list? Getting organized. This means learning how to use tools like blogs, twitter, friend feed and rss feeds to your advantage without cutting into your productivity. You need to set your own realistic expectations for yourself. From a realistic standpoint, how often can I blog? Weekly. How will I use twitter? To post updates from my blog. To post articles of interest. To connect personally with people I know online. How will I use friend feed? To compliment twitter and provide a place where all of my contacts can connect with me online. How many blogs can I keep up with on a weekly basis? Should I set a limit? Should I have a top ten from each field and when I add one delete another so I don't end up swamped on Monday morning? That might be a good idea. Will I miss something? Probably. Will it be detrimental if I don't know about the 31 day compent challenge until after it's over? Meh, not really. I can set my own challenge. Most importantly, you have to enjoy using these tools. Don't just blog because you want exposure. Blog because you want to, because you enjoy writing and expressing yourself. Use twitter because it's useful, not because everyone else is doing it. Create your own little space online and make it useful and productive for you.

What about writing articles? Knol would be a good place to practice this. Maybe in an effort to refine my writing skills so I'll be more prepared for a possible tenured position I can choose one subject every two months to write a more in-depth researched article. It can be about anything, not just librarianship. Then I can keep my blog entries short, to the point, more focused on casual thoughts and experiences I've had during the week. Little less pressure on the blogging side. For extra professional development, perhaps I can scope out opportunities for teaching a workshop at ODL, getting more involved with state library and educational associations. I recently noted that I wanted to practice writing book reviews. Perhaps LJ has some opportunities. Of course, I also need to find the time to read the books I'm reviewing.

Which brings me to my next point. Navigating the balance between work and family. This is an important one for me since I have a young son who's turning two in August. When I come home from work, I look at him and wonder what I missed seeing him do that day, hearing him say. It crushes me when my husband repeats all the new words that he's added to his vocabulary, all the cute interactions they had together. Like most working parents, I suffer from mommy guilt and because I suffer from mommy guilt, it's difficult for me to set aside time just for me, to read books, craft and simply spend time with my own thoughts. Why? Well, because if I'm not working, I want to be with my son and husband. I don't want to miss anything else. But I became sharply aware a few months ago how much this attitude was beginning to affect my health. You ignore your needs long enough and your body starts to fight back. It seems like many librarians are becoming more aware of this given the Workplace Wellness workshop that ALA offered this year. I've been working to change a few things in my routine. I used to go home at lunch time so I could see my son before his nap. I now stay here to eat lunch in our kitchen lounge. I shut off the lights, turn on the lamp and sit in a comfortable lazy boy where I read for the duration of my lunch hour, stopping about fifteen minutes before it ends to do some breathing excercises (I'd do the whole yoga thing but I'd feel kinda funny if someone walked in on me when I was in the middle of doing the pigeon pose or something). To do well in the workplace you have to take care of yourself, be kind to your body, feed it good hearty food, be gentle with your head, don't stress it out too much with un-neccessary anxious thoughts.

As for getting things done while trying to work a busy reference desk? Not an easy thing. I'm using Remember the Milk right now and trying to set five goals to get done per day. I don't always complete all five, but RTM is easy to use for this reason because it allows me to postpone a goal for a later time. I'm only allowed to postpone an item twice (my own personal restriction), unless it's some long term project that's taking longer for a specific reason. At any rate, it helps me to stay on track of things and then see my achievements at the end of the day, allowing me to leave the building on a positive note.

It's easy to loose ourselves in this field, to feel overwhelmed by everything we need to know. It would be simple to just ignore how fast our world is changing, give in to all the negative feelings generated by all the corruption, superficial realities, and horrible things we read and see happening around us. These things affect us too and for me at least, make me wonder what my purpose is in this universe. I started out wanting to change the world, to make an impact but it's hard to see that happening in my life when I tend to spend a large part of my time rebooting computers. It's in these moments of disillusionment that we need to take a step back and remember our original inspirations, the things that got us here in the first place, and use them to reignite our passion for what it is we do. I have repeatedly revisited issues concerning burnout on this blog, but it isn't because I mean to be repetitive. I'm doing it because I've been experiencing it for the past year and the only way I know how to fight it is to look at my life and my career from differing, fresh perspectives. Writing is the best way to do this. I am literally blogging my way through the woods and wires of library land.