I’ve had several conversations with close family members and friends over recent years which have been shocking to me, for they have revealed a complete lack of understanding of what I have spent 34 years of my life doing. ‘Why don’t you get into technology’ was one comment from someone trying encourage me to use Snapchat. ‘How do you know about this stuff?’ from another who saw me set up my bluetooth speaker with no instructions (by the way, not hard!) and ‘Hashtags? that’s a bit modern for you’. (um, hashtags are just a public way of doing keywords or subject headings that libraries have been doing for yonks!) ‘Are you tech savvy?’ from someone who has known me for over thirty years.
I’ve been completely thrown at these comments as what do these people think I’ve been doing all this time? The above things are all on the incredibly simple and unsophisticated side of technology. Technology of a far more complicated kind is what librarians have been doing for years, so we are loving that simplified versions are now available to the general public. Collectively we have been part of this movement, we’ve trained people for it, we have advocated for it. Access is our thing. We are behind it, not behind with it.
So rather than feeling insulted and getting angry about people not understanding what librarians do I realised it is probably my fault for not talking about my jobs much. For letting people hear the word ‘librarian’ and allowing them to go with their own picture of what that entails, which could be that I help people find the best books to read. So if that’s what people think I’ve been doing, no wonder they look surprised. The job they are imagining doesn’t exist. Nobody can work in a library successfully without a high level of digital literacy and they certainly can’t have the roles I’ve had.
So here goes – an idea of some of the key technological things I remember from my 34 years providing information services. This is not everything I’ve done in these roles – just a reflection on some of the tech tools I’ve used – it won’t be everything, as when tech is part of every single thing, it is like breathing and you don’t remember every breath you took.
1987 Manukau City Centre Library – computerised library system – first in the country – offices were just starting to think about moving away from paper-based systems, but libraries were doing it. Libraries are often at the forefront of tech advancement – they are early adopters of technology. I was fortunate for my first library job to be with one of these.
1988 Hamilton City Libraries -ditto – computerised systems.
1989 Using the Apple Macs at Victoria University for my librarianship diploma, learning to create databases, information organisation, management and access. We learned that something was coming that would change the world and would allow us to order what we needed from home due to ISDN cables. Yes, we heard about the internet revolution before you did. Library training was not about books, folks. Note, the qualification is now called Masters of Information Studies.
1990/1991 School Library Adviser – assisting school libraries with decisions about computerising their school libraries and advising them on decision making around this as they became wooed by companies wanting to sell them their products. Our role was to guide them to purchase the best software for their needs. Information literacy for the children was a huge factor that we advised on.
1992 Lothian and Borders Police HQ, Edinburgh – my experience of automation and understanding systems got me a job transferring their HR records to an online database.
1993 Waikato Polytech library. Fully integrated library management system. I was the 2IC staff member, and made many recommendations for improvements to this reasonably new company. I found I had the ability to extract information from the system effectively which meant we could run useful reports and get appropriate statistics and data about the collection. Very satisfying as they hadn’t been able to do this until then.
Personal life: With husband, set up Eureka Information Systems, at home. Challenging at that time. Dial up internet.
1994 – 1999 University of Waikato. Librarian role was focused on linformation literacy. Learn basic html coding so we can add our guides to the library Web page. Teaching students how to use online retrieval, expert online searching techniques, database tutorial development, designed a teaching lab room fit for purpose, argued against a video being made for training purposes, and that it should instead be a CD-ROM. Worked with university’s web design dept to create interactive CD-Rom resource on how to use citation tools. Information literacy tutorials developed.
2000-2002 Completing Masters degree part time – using latest Word products to complete essays etc at home. Database searching online and CD-ROM.
2003-2005 Living remotely. Everything is done online.
2006-2010 Chch City Libraries. This library is at the forefront of Web 2.0 in NZ. Strong website, blog and social media. Free WiFi in libraries. Trains its staff in Web 2.0 so I learn a multitude of new apps: Twitter etc Become one of their bloggers. Also using very sophisticated library management system. Also trained in Any Questions, and become an operator for its national chat system for online homework enquiries. Push website, screen share. The software is new so they are constantly working on it to make this work. Pioneering stuff.
Became reference librarian for Christchurch City Council. Pioneered the shift from email based forwarded newsfeeds to individual customised feeds using Google Reader and RSS feeds, maximising latest technology instead of manual approach. Council staff therefore informed via tech of latest trends.
2010-2018 University of Auckland largely a teaching and consulting role involving database use, research, in a computer lab most days, how to use a range of tools and apps for research and biblioinformatics, plus building webpages for course reading lists. Started a social media presence there, collaborating with others in the Faculty to maximise its use. Not officially sanctioned but we knew we needed to reach students. Got a bonus for my work in this area, and was sent to social media training. (funnily enough this was a time that someone in my family told me I should really get up to date with technology – bit ironic considering I had got OOS from building numerous course webpages at that time)
2018-2020 manage 6 public libraries who offer WiFi services and public access computing, scanning, copying. Make the decisions on our computer upgrades so need to understand the technology and user needs. For checking out books we use RFID (radio frequency identification) technology and self loan kiosks, which requires three point liaison with our IT and external provider in Australia. Library app available to customers and make yearly decisions on our online resources and electronic ebook platform. Continual research on best providers. Provide guidance to our team re Social media. With staff in different locations I have been encouraging online meetings, which was useful when we moved to Lockdown Level 4 as it meant staff had some experience of this already. Liaise closely with our online developer at council to move more online eg. Last year moved our summer reading programme to Web based registration and recording. App planned next year. Online chat planned for enquiries. In lockdown we immediately push to online delivery options maximising out IT channels. Fortunately I have the tech background to think of our options.
Overall, I estimate I use about fifty systems for my work (budget monitoring, health and safety, book orders, databases, stats, library management system,..) so I have to use a password monitor application to keep track of my passwords. There are probably that many optional ones outside of that. (twice as many as most people because I cover two districts, two councils)
In many of the above roles, we had computer labs where we trained people and had to fix things on the spot in the middle of a session. IT Support would talk us through things on the phone sometimes but often we did it ourselves. We trained in all sorts of places so became adept at setting up projectors and laptops in the blink of an eye.
In my personal life I research my technology needs confidently and have made sound purchases for the past 15 years on limited budget, I set everything up myself, fix it myself and do my own upgrades.
I am so over-technologied that I often wish I did not have a smartphone. So any reluctance on my part is about my tendency to become addicted to always being on a screen. I therefore sign in and out of Instagram, Facebook, Snapchat and Twitter according to my life at the time – it is a deliberate act from someone who is logged in to systems all day every day at work, teaches other staff and the public on how to use these, and wants to make some choices in her life. I use apps for just about everything in life, from paying bills to meditating. These things are basic and don’t mean that someone is especially knowledgeable anyway.
And yes, my daughters can work the TV remotes better than I can. But my daughters also know and have commented on how funny it is that their old mother is the one who has the tech knowledge.
So this rant is all to help clarify – libraries and librarians are crazily techy whether they want to be or not. They are at the forefront of technology and we’re the early adopters of things that the public didn’t really get till later. I guess many of us just don’t talk about it. Just like doctors don’t talk about their drugs and don’t flaunt them in their own time, it’s just what they use to help people and to get the job done. My tech services librarian is a 68 year old grandmother. She often solves problems that the IT team can’t solve. Don’t for a minute think this knowledge is the realm of the young.
I guess part of the problem is that people are blinded by the misleading belief that a library job is about books. I have had about 4 years strongly associated with books in a 34 year career. I’ve spent at least 15 years in training roles specifically teaching technology. Yet if I do know something about books they say ‘ trust a librarian to know that’. Aaargh! No! I am likely to know that because I’m person who has had an interest in books from my childhood, through uni study, and things I’ve taken up in my spare time. If I’d become a lawyer, journalist or teacher, I would probably still know that. My booky stuff is me. My techy stuff is my job.
Please may the surprise and misunderstandings stop.
Nuggets of Purest Green 