Educators That Rock: Lauren Pressley

Photo ©Wake Forest University by Ken Bennett.

Lauren Pressley is the instructional design librarian at the Z. Smith Reynolds Library at Wake Forest University in Winston-Salem, N.C. In addition to her role as a librarian, Pressley is an author, a blogger and a frequent presenter.

Pressley was named a Mover and Shaker by School Library Journal in 2009, and was sponsored by the Library and Information Technology Association (LITA) Board to participate in the American Library Association (ALA) Emerging Leaders Program in 2007. She also recently developed a very popular toolkit of short videos (two to three minutes long), which answer patrons’ frequent questions.

In a phone interview last week, Pressley told findingEducation about the impact online networks have had on her personally and professionally. “As a quiet person … I’ve been able to find my voice online,” she said. “It’s opened up a lot of doors that wouldn’t have been open to me otherwise.”

Learn more about Lauren Pressley at Lauren’s Library Blog.

fE: This past fall, Michael Porter and David Lee King published a collection of librarian essays for a project they called Library 101. In your essay, you describe the disappointment you felt after taking a personality test that listed librarian as one of the last possible careers for you to consider. What did it suggest you do instead?

LP: It actually said I should practice law or be a “professional philosopher.” I have no idea what that means. So the thing that is sort of interesting to me about that test is that all the qualities that it said that I had that would have made me a poor fit as a librarian were because they were assuming that the person needs to be really rigid and rule-following and not necessarily friendly. But the things that make me good at my job are actually the very things that that test thought would make me bad.

It’s indicative of how the field has changed, that people have such a clear idea of what librarians were and make assumptions based on that.

fE: Maybe it’s because I recently watched the movie “Julie & Julia” or maybe it’s because you look a little like Amy Adams, but…

LP: (She laughs.) I just read the book.

fE: You did? I haven’t read the book yet. Anyway, I’m picturing you in that movie role, and it seems like it’s a lot of work developing an online persona. Can you speak to that?

LP: I’m actually really, really shy, which is sort of a funny thing, considering how much I’ve put out online. I went to my first ALA [meeting] and didn’t know anybody, and that was a little stressful. Then I did a little blogging, and got a little more involved online, and when I went to the next conference, I already knew 10 people. I didn’t just know them, I knew things about their personal life, and what was going on in their work and they knew me, and they were looking to find me. I thought, “It’s not just about the job; it’s about really connecting to all these people who are out there and trying to do good things in their libraries.”

Deciding how much personal information to put out there is kind of difficult to figure out, because a lot of my personal friends are also professional. I actually on some level have to think, “Does this add to the relationships that I’m building or is this something that only a few people I know will really care about?” And I try to make the call that way.

fE: Tell me about your book, “So You Want To Be a Librarian.” What was its takeaway message?

LP: In addition to just giving an overview of the field, I try to make it clear that this is a field where if you want to make a change, there’s room for you to do that now. I try to advise people that having an online persona is really worth thinking about, because a lot of the stuff that I’ve been able to do happened because of what I’ve done online. As a quiet person who would never have gone up to someone and introduced myself at a conference and asked if I could get involved, I’ve been able to find my voice online. It’s opened up a lot of doors that wouldn’t have been opened to me otherwise.

fE: Tell me about your new book, “Wikis for Libraries.”

LP: It came in the mail yesterday. It’s very exciting! It’s part of a series that Elyssa Kroski put together for Neal-Schuman Publishers. I think of the series as sort of a one-stop shop for people thinking about certain technologies. In my case, librarians might have been thinking, “I’ll wait for the wikis to go away.” And then they realize the wikis are going to be around and its time to learn how to use them. The book is designed to be a quick read but straightforward, and very concrete.

fE: What makes wikis so important to libraries?

LP: In libraries that are really small and don’t have a Webmaster, it creates a way to have a Web site, where you don’t have to find an expert to make it. You set it up and then you go in and edit the content. In larger libraries like mine, where we do have a Webmaster, it’s useful because we can create a reference resource on the fly about how to do our jobs and we can share policy information that is immediately exchanged with the whole staff. It’s such a flexible way to share information, and I think that is what gives them they’re sticking power.

fE: Is it difficult to be both a “book librarian” and a “Web librarian”? Do people pigeonhole tech librarians as not interested in books, and people who are interested in books as not knowledgeable about the Web?

LP: There is a little bit of that, which is part of why I try to keep a hand in both sides of things. I love books; they are why I enjoyed being in libraries as a kid. But I also have this other side, because I see the information environment as being the space where we really have to innovate and think of new things to do. That’s the type of work that I really enjoy doing.

fE: What are you reading?

LP: Honestly, lately I’ve been reading a lot of books about babies. [Pressley is pregnant with her first child.] I’m always a fan of David Weinberger’s books: “Everything Is Miscellaneous” and “Small Pieces Loosely Joined.”

fE: Can you tell me about being a young leader in the field of libraries?

LP: What I found in terms of actually making changes within ALA is that I’ve had pretty good luck by picking a smaller group to focus on, and then really pushing on the issues that matter to me the most within that smaller group. I spend most of my time with LITA, which is the information technology group. Several of us will try out a small little pilot project and if it works well we see several votes that impact the larger ALA organization. This can be a pretty good way to make things happen, by seeing if these concepts really work, and then seeing them rolled out on a larger scale.

But I also realize that there’s a lot of policy issues that the larger ALA deals with, so I’m running right now for council, which is the body that does the legislation for ALA. That election is at the end of this month. I have no idea if I’ll actually get in or not but I’m hoping that at some point, I’ll be able to serve on council and make change happen that way as well.

fE: I thought your video was great. Good luck!

LP: Thank you.

Lauren Pressley’s Favorite Sites

Google Reader

Steepster.com

Twitter

Meebo

FriendFeed

Google Voice

Google Docs

Skype

Remember The Milk

Evernote

Dropbox

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Educators That Rock!: Sarah Houghton-Jan

Photo by Marc L. Gonzales, SFStation.

Last year, findingEducation spoke with Sarah Houghton-Jan, also known as the Librarian in Black, about her roles as a blogger, lecturer and the digital futures manager for the San José Public Library.

Houghton-Jan told findingEducation that when she’s teaching a customer or student something new, she tries to pretend she’s speaking to her mother because “the unknown is really creepy. And that causes me to show a certain level of respect and patience,” she said. “[M]aybe that will work for other people [but] only if you like your mother,” she added with a laugh.

Houghton-Jan was chosen as a Mover & Shaker by Library Journal in 2009. She is also a consultant for the Infopeople Project and a member of the Library & Information Technology Association’s Top Technology Trends Committee.

fE: Could you tell us how you became the digital futures manager for the San José Public Library?

SHJ: I started out not even wanting to be a librarian, and not being very techy. I was just handed our library’s Web site, at the university where I went to library school, and they said, “You’re responsible for maintaining this part of the Web site. Have fun!” I had no HTML training. So I did just a lot of self-training. And I took what few Web-based classes were available.

When I got out of library school, I was looking to relocate to the San Francisco area and one of the jobs that was available was for a combination Web site manager and technology trainer.

I’d been a teacher for a while, and I’d also now managed a Web site, so that was perfect.

fE: Library Journal named you one of 2009’s Movers & Shakers. In a profile from the Journal, a colleague described you as a person that helps customers feel both confident and competent. As a librarian, what tips do you have for interacting with customers?

SHJ: [Before working at the San José Community Library] I taught English Composition for two years at Washington State University, and was an English tutor for four years at both WSU & University of Illinois. When I first started teaching, I realized even though I was just a few years older than the kids in my college classes, they were terrified of me. And I think it’s the same in libraries. It’s so, so important to realize that that power dynamic has shifted automatically without you even doing anything or saying anything.

So you want to set yourself on the same level as your user, and make them aware that whatever it is they are trying to learn how to do is likely not as difficult as they’re worried it will be, and that they will walk out of there knowing how to do it. A lot of that is simply lack of exposure… And the unknown is really creepy.

When I’m teaching, I always try to do so as if I’m targeting my mother. And that causes me to show a certain level of respect and patience and really explain things at a lay level that might not otherwise be a natural impulse for me. Maybe that will work for other people [but] only if you like your mother. [She laughs.]

Also, it really upsets me when I hear librarians having a level of arrogance about whatever their area of specialty is. ‘I’m the techie and you’re not.’ Or even, ‘I have the Dewey Decimal system memorized and you don’t.’ Librarianship is about service. And I would really like us be mindful of that in everything that we do. The customers are who we’re here for.

fE: Speaking of mindfulness and acceptance, are people accepting of you as a Goth librarian?

SHJ: I’ve dressed in black for a long, long time. I’m kind of a neo-goth, the business professional kind of goth. A lot of people are accepting of it, but … some people think I’m scary, or mean or evil, or a Satan worshiper. And they definitely treat me differently. It’s interesting to me that they make that assumption. They put you in a box that they’re comfortable with and then that’s it. They’re done. [She laughs.] But I am still going to dress in black; that’s not going to stop.

fE: Do you have any specific tips for students doing research?

SHJ: There’s this big misconception with almost everyone, library people included, that search engines search everything that’s out there. I think the last estimate I heard was something like only one-and-a-half percent of the Web is being indexed by search engines. That’s all the search engines combined. So what I try to tell people to do is to think about using two or three different search engines, including maybe a meta search engine, or a lesser-known search engine. I still really like Ask.com and Dogpile.

Also, I think most people are just not aware of the site specific search functionality that Google has, where you can actually use Google to search a site that may not have a search engine or may have a really crappy one.

And if you can afford the time, a lot of sites have live chat help now, and if they don’t, they usually have some kind of e-mail form. Getting help directly from the source instead of wasting your own time clicking around is often a better approach.

Also, try to think about who would know the answer to a question, and look for that. The other day I was trying to figure out how to steam tamales… My husband, who’s also a librarian, just grabbed the laptop off of my lap and went straight to YouTube, typed in tamales and the first 10 results were videos of people showing you exactly how to do it, step-by-step. I didn’t think of that. Videos are exactly what we needed, not verbal step-by-step directions, but somebody showing me. If you stop and think about your search strategy before just diving in, that can really save you a lot of angst later.

fE: Some people say that kids today are digital natives. Others say they have no clue how to search and depend on Wikipedia for everything. What do you think are some of the biggest misconceptions about teenagers’ use of technology?

SHJ: In San José, we have a huge Spanish-speaking population, a huge Vietnamese population and a Chinese population. And there are definitely differences between our different neighborhoods in terms of whether the teens prefer FaceBook or MySpace, whether the teens actually own iPods or not … and whether they have Internet access at home or not.

I just wish people would stop painting this generation with such a wide brush and making these huge generalizations. Usually it is what you just said, ‘They’re born with it, they’re experts, [and] we don’t need to teach them anything.’ And that’s just not true. Even for the economically advantaged, a lot of those teens have no idea how to use a search engine well [and] have no idea what Wikipedia actually is.

fE: On your blog you’ve written a lot about libraries that are on a budget. What are the main things that librarians can do to keep going when they don’t have a lot of funds?

SHJ: One thing would be definitely looking at open source and otherwise free software; for example, using a free content management system with statistical software to run your Web site. It seems we have this snobbish attitude that free is somehow inferior and in a lot of cases that’s just not true anymore.

Libraries also need to be a lot more effective about how they’re spending their staff time. Use tools that update multiple networks at once, or that let you monitor multiple virtual reference options all at the same time, so you’re not staffing them all separately.

fE: One of the posts on your blog was related to a staffless library. What is your gut reaction when you hear the words “staffless library”?

SHJ: To me you have to have some level of human intervention to have something be a library. What has stimulated a number of responses on my blog is that people who work in libraries have the same reaction … It’s not a true library. It doesn’t have a place for me to sit and read. It doesn’t have Wi-Fi. I think there is something almost insulting to the libraries that are out there, saying this one-room, locked-down closet with some books on the shelf is a library.

Sarah Houghton-Jan’s Favorite Sites:

Boing Boing

Mashable

ReadWriteWeb

ResourceShelf

TeleRead

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