Library Blogger Stephen Abram Spoke with iSchool Community

This post originally appeared on Information Space, the blog of the iSchool at Syracuse University, on 24 September 2011.

On Wednesday, October 5^th[2011], the Syracuse University School of Information Studies will host librarian, author and blogger Stephen Abram for “Ten Questions with Stephen Abram”. Abram is known in library circles as the author of the blog Stephen’s Lighthouse, and is the VP for Strategic Partnerships and Markets for Gale Cengage Learning.  He is a past-president of the Special Libraries Association, and the Ontario and Canadian Library Associations. He is in demand as a speaker internationally, and has written for Information Outlook, Library Journal, and others. He has received numerous honors, including the AIIP Roger Summit Honor, and the Outstanding Teaching Award from the University of Toronto, Faculty of Information Studies, where he is an adjunct professor.
“Ten Questions”, hosted by the iSchool, will give faculty, students, and community members the chance to talk with Abram about his work, his impressions of librarianship now and in the future, and any other topics of interest.
Why Should You Attend?
As a new student at the iSchool, I’m excited about this event for a number of reasons.  Mr. Abram is seen as a “mover and shaker” in the library world; he’s been listed by Library Journal as one of the top 50 people influencing the future of libraries. I’m interested to hear what he’ll recommend for students just entering the field. The library field is changing rapidly and Mr. Abram’s blog offers many insights on those changes.
One thing I have already noticed about librarians is that they tend to be dynamic, passionate people, and I’m sure this event will continue that impression. Stephen Abram’s lectures and keynotes have catalyzed many people in the past, and no doubt will continue to do so. In a recent column for Information Outlook, Abram offers a strategic look at staying current. This is a reminder to everyone—even new library students—that libraries are always shifting, and that librarians need to lead the charge, not just keep up with the times. As an aspiring librarian, I know that the field I’m entering will look different once I’ve finished my degree, but the speed at which things change in libraries is one of the most exciting parts of my career path.
Not Just for Library Students!
The curriculum of the iSchool strives to create leaders in the information field, and “Ten Questions with Stephen Abram” will help any aspiring information leader get a bead on the conversation.  In the column mentioned above, Abram reminds us of the value of differing perspectives; sometimes the very best ideas can come from outside the field we know. That said, this event is open to any interested parties—including the Information Management and Telecommunication and Network Management Master’s students, undergraduates & doctoral students and members of the public.
What: Ten Questions with Stephen Abram
Where: Innovation Studio, 011 Hinds Hall
When: Wednesday, October 5th from 4:00-5:30pm
Meet Stephen Abram and enjoy stimulating conversation over light refreshments.  Hope to see you there!

Memory Lane

After a rather embarrassing lacuna, I'm back on the blogging scene. Still, with only eight weeks remaining in my masters program,and a job hunt in full swing, I don't have nearly enough time to write. Because of those demands, the posts that I've chosen for the next month or two are reposts of my writings from other places. Thanks for tuning in!

Where we're coming from; where we're going.

This semester has already been quite a journey, and as far as I can tell will only continue. As I've gotten busier, this blog has started to languish. I have every intention of getting back to it, but for now, expect to see a transition over the next month or so as I attempt to turn the blog into my portfolio. Chances are quite good that most of the post content you'll see will be my writings from other places: I write for InfoSpace, and am both writer and co-managing-editor for Hack Library School, and over the next few months will be trying to gather most of my work from those sites here.

I'll also be adding content to the other pages on the site. One of my ongoing projects this semester has me thinking a great deal about portfolios, and a personal take-away has been the importance of presenting my work to the outside world. At least until I'm gainfully employed, and probably beyond, I want to share my work publicly, and this is one of the best forums for me to do so.

So it will be interesting. I'll be working hard on it--stop by and check out the new info!

...so what the hell. Jump!

About to get started with the second day of R-Squared, the Risk & Reward Conference. I'm almost acclimated to the 9,500ft-plus altitude, after spending Sunday exploring the towns of Telluride and Mountain Village, Colorado. The location couldn't be better for a retreat-style conference, and more than 350 librarians have come into town lately to prove just that. In and amongst the mountain peaks, we've been tackling the thorny questions of risk and reward in the library setting.
As a library student, I've been fortunate to participate in a bunch of library conferences, and all of them have their own themes and undercurrents. R-Squared is proving among the most closely aligned with my own interests in the library world, with its focus on flexibility and risk, entrepreneurial thinking, and creative solutions to age-old problems. Even nicer than that, though, is the population that chose to attend. Every person I've talked to - and they're a diverse bunch - proves through their interests and actions that the library world is changing. As a personal affirmation that I'm not crazy for caring about this stuff, it was worth attending, but more exciting than that is the chance to engage the conversations I care about in a proactive way, avoiding the endless explanations and justifications that "yes, these are issues we should be talking about."
I'm fairly sure I'm the only student here, and I think the lessons I'm learning apply just as much to me as they do to any of the librarians working in the field. To whit:
Stay curious! It's simple, but vital, for information professionals to stay just as curious as we wish the members of our communities would be.

Ask engaging questions! Question design can make all the difference between engagement and apathy.

Work publicly, fail big & often, and don't be shy, even when you aren't certain.
All of these have been said before, but they're worth saying again. We're entering a changing field, and we have the privilege- and the responsibility- to change it for the better.

Keep it up!

Heads up!

Wowzers, this semester started with a bang! My blog updates have suffered a little-here's why:

The summer flew by, what with an internship at Frederick County Public Libraries, and a trek to California for ALA Annual. Suddenly, it was the end of July, which meant it was time to get packed for three weeks abroad!

I spent the first two weeks of August in Florence, Italy, studying librarianship in the global context as part of a pilot program from the Syracuse iSchool. I had a fantastic time, forging connections between my understanding of librarianship and the Italian approaches we saw.

From there, I made my way to Helsinki, for the World Library & Information Congress, IFLA's annual conference. The city was astounding, and what a climate for libraries! Finland was a blast, the conference was a great place to network, and the conversations I had are helping me define exactly what it is that I want to do with my degree.

Arriving stateside with less than a week to spare to move, get settled in Syracuse, and prep for classes made for an exciting end-of-summer. Now, though, I've gotten a handle on my classes and have started to look ahead. This semester is filled - finally - with the content that inspired me to apply to LIS programs: Information organization and architecture. I have a nice mix, with the introductory/core Information Resources: Organization & Access class, an in-depth Information Architecture for Internet Services course, and a tech-heavy Social Web Technologies class in which I'm learning to program and design web interfaces and smartphone apps. The classes I have this semester are more related (and as such, jive better) than either term last year, and I'm excited to see them all coming together.

It'll be a good year, I think--I'm currently in Colorado, getting ready for the next adventure, and between conferences and job hunting and finishing all that pesky coursework, I'll be sure to stay as busy as I like to be.

Can't wait! I'll keep you updated.

Inside::Outside

I struggled for a while with the topic for this post. While in Florence, my personal attention was on all the myriad implications of space and place—while there was no way to do more than just scratch the surface in a place as storied as Florence, it was useful as a guiding lens to help me focus. The experience of place in Italy was overwhelming, and I’m still processing, connecting new dots and reaching new conclusions.

One of the things I believe to be true (and I thought this long before my current trip) is that librarians need to be laser-focused on outreach. No matter how fantastic the collection, if no one is aware of it, or willing to come to the library and engage with it, the collection will languish. In Florence, the libraries are clearly centers of culture, learning, and history—one can feel the weight of the centuries simply by walking into any of the historic libraries we visited. I realized, though, that in the bulk of cases I hadn’t seen or been presented with any efforts that showed the librarians leaving their libraries. Certainly, we saw libraries that made a great effort to welcome the world into their spaces, and we saw libraries that were truly leading the way in terms of digital access, making their collections available to anyone with an internet connection be they scholar or curious schoolchild. I’m also very aware that we spent relatively little time in all of the libraries we saw—while the librarians were very generous with their time throughout the city, it’s difficult to make any sort of blanket statement about library services after just one day’s tour and experience of a library.

Still, with all of that said, I think I’ve finally hit upon the reason I was always a bit unsettled in Florence. In the last year, I and my classmates have spent a great deal of time considering exactly what it means to be a librarian, and for me, the answer almost never had anything to do with the physical space of the library. Even in those possible futures in which I’m working for a traditional library, I’m outside of the building, working with project teams and holding steady as a mobile librarian, accessing library and internet resources from my station in the local café or community center. I’ve said that I’m not a rare-books librarian or an archivist, and I think what I may have meant is that I’m not a collections-focused librarian at all; rather, I’ll forge ahead with my communities and the people within them even if we don’t have a well-stocked research collection backing us.

In direct opposition to those ideals stand the great Florentine libraries, which have for centuries served as havens for learning, and as the repositories for the information in physical form. When faced with buildings that housed—or STILL house—some of the finest collections in Europe, what am I to do with this notion that ‘the books don’t matter’? For most of the libraries we saw, clearly the books not only matter, but are paramount. The librarians, then, are servants to the collections, carefully, skillfully adding to and conserving them regardless of the world outside. If people want to come to the library and use the collections, so much the better, but outreach was never high on the list of priorities for the libraries we saw. 

The oddest piece of it all for me is the realization that there’s something to be said for their approach. I still can’t see myself in that role, not really, but on some visceral level I think I “get” some of the notions that motivate the archivists I know. Bringing it full circle, I think, now, that I understand the unadulterated joy of creating the physical place of a library, and filling it with materials that will help distinguish the space. While I will likely focus my efforts on outreach, I now see the value of the other side of the coin.

Persistent Spaces, Flexible Collections

While in Florence, I and my colleagues have visited a number of libraries that were originally designed to house a specific collection. I was continually surprised to find that these collections—dating from the 16 and 17th^th centuries—not only had their own cataloging schemata (not very shocking), but also that the spaces holding the books were designed specifically to accommodate the collections in question.

The implications are staggering.

Imagine a library in which the architecture of the physical space reflects the underlying logical design of the collection. Suddenly, interactions with a collection become more than simply finding the relevant materials, and expand to include an entire vocabulary of information-seeking behavior. Admittedly, the aforementioned Florentine libraries only showed the connection to their collections with built-in ornate shelf labels, designating precise location for the books in question, but the expansion of these ideas could mean anything from museum-style planned interactions with materials to full discovery-driven browsing in rooms that invite library patrons ever farther into the building, and into the collection.

Some might argue that libraries are already starting to borrow ideas from the fields of museum design and education for these sorts of interactions, but I think that the act of keeping space multi-purpose negatively affects the opportunities for planning this type of experience. The rooms in Florence were successful in part because the collections were very defined, circulated only a little to a relatively small audience, had a specific purpose, and grew very slowly, if at all. No matter the size of a collection, if the exact contents are stable, creating a space that will maximize the potential interactions with that collection will be easy. In modern libraries, however, the need to leave spaces that can be changed at will, because a collection is being weeded, because the film club is coming in and needs chairs set up like an auditorium, because new acquisitions are constantly growing (but changing the focus of) the collection, or because of any one of dozens of other reasons, is preventing the creation of specific, single-purpose spaces in many libraries, even if those spaces would otherwise be successful.

I admire libraries that display a great degree of flexibility. Until these two weeks in Florence, I would have argued for dynamic spaces with modular furniture every time. Now, though, while I still think that flexibility in librarianship is vital, I recognize that libraries with the luxury of designing for a defined collection may have a better deal. When I return to the states, I want to spend some time looking into this type of question: I know there may be answers I simply don’t have time to find at the moment.

Still, I wonder what possibilities might be out there that can address the need for flexibility while still customizing a space for specific interactions. The libraries in Florence that inspired me also serve as a sort of warning; They were customized for collections that in the intervening centuries have moved or been broken up, and now the customizations mean very little. While we might be able to design phenomenal spaces for fantastic experiences, if we don’t succeed in making them relevant into the future, how long will it be until they’re simply an unused relic?