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• Title: Quiet, Please: Dispatches from a Public Librarian
• Author: Scott Douglas
• Publisher: Da Capo Press
• Year of Publication: 2008
• Pages: 330

Quiet, Please by Scott Douglas is a memoir of a twenty-something male librarian in Anaheim, California. It aims to be humorous and anecdotal, but fails to do either well.

As a recent graduate of library school, I took offense to most of what Douglas has to say. His stories about working with the mentally disabled, physically disabled, elderly, and teenagers are, for the most part, loathsome. They are loathsome because of his attitude towards, and ignorance of, those groups of people.

If a tag cloud was created using all the words in this book, I’m sure that “hate” and “hatred” would be two of his most used words. How can someone work in a public library that hates so many different kinds of people? How can someone who publishes a book about hating so much still keep a job working with so many different kinds of people?

There were parts of the book where Douglas says something like: “[Being a librarian] is my life, my passion. I look ahead and see the road is long, but the road is bright” (p. 318). He makes these statements after pages upon pages of either complaining about his career choice and making it sound like a job for people beneath him, or telling a story filled with ignorance and arrogance about a patron he did not understand or bother to learn from.

Additionally, Douglas employs footnotes and “pointless interludes to fill your mind with nonsense” (p. 4). This format is gimmicky and a waste of time. The writing is not at all challenging, and the author’s use of the gimmicky format adds to his condescending and pedantic tone of voice. Overall, I found this book infuriating. It gives a very bad representation of librarians in America. (.5/5)

Day three at ALA was my last day in California, after about four weeks of traveling throughout the state. By that point, I was very tired, and only managed to attend one program before heading home. The program I attended was called Hey! I Want to Do That Too! Gaming and the Elementary Age Child (1330-1500).

This program was presented by Dr. Warren Buckleitner, a former elementary school teacher, current New York Times contributor, current adjunct assistant professor at NYU, and current editor of Children’s Technology Review. His presentation was on creating a media center, or Mediatech (like biblioteca), for a public library. Dr. Buckleitner split his presentation up into two parts:

1. the history of Mediatech at his library, and
2. selecting the right materials to create a Mediatech of one’s own.

During the first part, Dr. Buckleitner explained how he developed a Mediatech at the library where he lives (and is a library trustee) in Flemington, New Jersey. Luckily for Dr. Buckleitner, when he pitched the idea to “VIPs in town” and the library board in 1998, he faced no opposition. In 2000, he already had the support of an attorney, schools, and library trustees to create a non-profit organization and begin fundraising. By 2001, they decided on the library as the location of Mediatech, and the library board contributed a $100,000 trust to renovate the space. Mediatech opened on May 23, 2003, marking the anniversary of Charles Lindbergh’s nonstop transatlantic flight from New York to Paris.

Dr. Buckleitner’s media center has about eight computers, all of which were donated. Most of the games available at Mediatech were donated by Dr. Buckleitner, himself, as he writes reviews for them.

Reflection on My Third Day at ALA Annual 2008

Dr. Buckleitner was a very good speaker. His presentation was engaging and informative. He definitely knows about children and what they want. However, I don’t know how useful this program would have been for someone who attempted to set up a media center, faced opposition, and was looking for advice. Dr. Buckleitner’s story almost sounded like a fairy tale; everything important went the way it should have. There wasn’t a struggle, which is a common thing in public libraries in America… what with the budget cuts and libraries closing everywhere.

I think this program could have been more useful if the speaker presented strategies for succeeding in cases where not everything goes the way it should.

My experience at last year’s ALA Annual Conference in Washington, DC, was guided by the 2 credit course I took with Scott Nicholson, IST 600: Leadership and Organizations. Scott gave us some tips and required us to meet with a leader in the field at the conference. I met with Sari Feldman, Executive Director of the Cuyahoga County (Ohio) Public Library, who has since been elected PLA vice-president.

Another perk of having taken that course in preparation for the ALA Annual Conference was that hotel accommodations were included with participation in the course.

Friday, June 22

I got to the hotel later than expected. There was a mix up from either the university or the hotel, but all was well 20 minutes later. One thing I didn’t do, as others suggest as well, is to check hotel reservations prior to arriving.

When I arrived, I met my roommate, Dawn Cadogan, shortly after making it to my room. We went to the Washington Convention Center via the metro to get our badge holders (and Dawn’s badge).

When we got there, we discovered that many, many, many people had the same idea. It was crowded, but the lines moved quickly. There must’ve been hundreds of people ahead of me, but it took less than 15 minutes to get to the head of the line. Once I got there, I was greeted warmly and taken care of quickly.

By that point, it was already late and we were hungry. We entertained the thought of going to the Film and Libraries program, but our hunger won out. Near the registration booths, Dawn, her coworker, and I found another booth we put to great use. ALA offered dining suggestions. We asked the lady behind the booth where we could find good food at decent prices, and we were directed towards Chinatown. (It was really helpful as none of us knew our way around DC.)

We went out to eat at Tony Cheng’s in Chinatown (right near the Convention Center), and by the time we were done, it was too late for the film program. We wandered around Chinatown for a while and then came back to our hotel. (more…)

The last week of this month is the ALA Annual Conference in Anaheim, California. Luckily, I’ll be in attendance for the first three of the five days the conference takes place (June 27-29).

In anticipation of the conference, I’ve compiled a list of programs that sound interesting to me. (more…)

According to the authors of Execution: The Discipline of Getting Things Done (2002), there are three building blocks to execution. The first is “the leader’s seven essential behaviors;” the second is “creating the framework for cultural change;” and the third is “having the right people in the right place.”

Of course, you can’t have the last one without the first two, but I think the last is the most important “building block” of execution.

The reason for this is that all these building blocks (would) exist between or within individuals. If the individuals are not open to these ideas or share a common energy, the aforementioned blocks are doomed to never be stacked. Bossidy and Charan (2002) explain, “over time, choosing the right people is what creates that elusive competitive advantage” (p. 110).

Part of the reason many public and academic libraries seem so behind on the user experience seems to be the fact that they do not have that competitive advantage of having the right people. Could this be because the leadership is not as passionate about the success of the library as, say, a businessman might be about a profit-yielding company? I think that might have something to do with it.

If libraries are to compete with for-profit companies like bookstores and search engines, how are they to have any hope of proving their relevance while they seem to keep having the wrong people in the wrong places (or the right people in undefined places)?

It’s hard to find the right people for the libraries that need to justify their value because those “right people” are more likely to work at for-profits than at unproven libraries. Perhaps the institution of the library needs to look into advertising (read glamorizing) for the right people (read competitive employees).