Nearly 10,000 librarians, support staff, trustees, and others attended the 2008 Public Library Association National Conference in Minneapolis last week. Now, they have all gone home and must consider what they saw and heard.
As you might expect, there were some mixed messages. Some of my programs recommended new services and the tasks to accomplish their creation and maintenance. Others admonished us for trying to do too many things. The tough thing now is weighing what is worth doing.
I continued to report on PLABlog during the conference. Here are my final reports:
From Hype to Help: Making A Difference with New Technologies
Think Outside the Book: Online Service as Outreach - about teen services
When the Story is True: Practicing Nonfiction Readers Advisory
The next PLA National Conference is in 2010 in Portland, Oregon. I hope to go.
Showing posts with label pla2008. Show all posts
Showing posts with label pla2008. Show all posts
Monday, March 31, 2008
Sunday, March 30, 2008
The Memoir: The Readers' Advisor's Dream or Nightmare
With the controversy of totally fabricated memoirs in the news, The Memoir: The Readers' Advisor's Dream or Nightmare was a hot topic session at PLA A good-sized crowd congregated at 8:30 on the final morning to hear a panel discussion about the collecting and promoting of memoirs in libraries.
The program started with Donna Seaman of Booklist comparing the memoir to biography and autobiography, both of which are usually linear in arrangement and externally verifiable. The memoir is a slipperier item, more akin to poetry than history. Its purpose is to communicate the feel of a life, or, as Seaman says, "the texture of one's days and nights." There is more demand for an honesty of disclosure than for getting every fact straight. Because it is "a life remembered," there is bound to be mistakes. Unfortunately, some authors have violated the trust recently.
A good memoir is about more than the individual life. It usually includes ever widening circles of family, community, and universe. The memoirist seeks to describe experience in a effort to find meaning or identity and to communicate hard lessons learned. Like novels, they do this through the setting of scenes, describing of characters, and telling of stories.
Seaman had an interesting story of being a reviewer. After publishing reviews of memoirs, she sometimes gets calls from the author's family, complaining that what he/she wrote was not true. In response, all Seamon can do is refer them back to their son/daughter/cousin/ex-wife who wrote the book. She is just a reviewer with only the book to judge.
The speaker then reported on two subgenres of memoirs that are currently very popular. The first was the memoirs of people of mixed heritage. Among the books she recommended were:
Environmental memoirs are also popular, as new books are coming out to join Walden, Pilgrim at Tinker Creek, and Desert Solitaire. Among the many books Seaman suggested are the following titles:
Saricks added that she usually prefers audiobooks not read by the author. For memoirs, however, authors as readers is often a plus, as their personalities come through. She particularly recommends David Sedaris in audio.
Defining a memoir is not exactly easy, according to Saricks. Many narrative nonfiction books have memoir qualities even when there are third person author because these reporter (1) include so much of their subjects voices and (2) their quests to get the stories are memoirs. She recommended Shadow Divers by Robert Kuson.
Barry Trott of the Williamsburg Regional Library, Virginia, said that while character is the main appeal of a memoir, to choose one to suggest to a reader, you have to look at the other appeal factors such as setting, subject matter, story lines, etc.
Trott talked about the travel memoir, which has several common scenarios: including the hapless traveler (A Walk in the Woods by Bill Bryson), someone escaping their everyday life, or someone going to exotic places. These have the appeal of letting readers go interesting places without leaving home.
He also talked briefly about the recently hot food memoir. Chefs, waiters, and critics are among the people telling stories about their experiences. Calvin Trillin has been doing this for years, and even Euell Gibbons' Stalking the Wild Asparagus was a food memoir of sorts.
Many more titles were mentioned by all the speakers. Seaman said that she will put a list of them on the Booklist Online website.
When asked whether they would move the recently exposed memoirs to fiction, the speakers said no in most cases. Most of the exposures have been of fudging the truth. The totally fabricated memoirs may require some rethinking.
The program started with Donna Seaman of Booklist comparing the memoir to biography and autobiography, both of which are usually linear in arrangement and externally verifiable. The memoir is a slipperier item, more akin to poetry than history. Its purpose is to communicate the feel of a life, or, as Seaman says, "the texture of one's days and nights." There is more demand for an honesty of disclosure than for getting every fact straight. Because it is "a life remembered," there is bound to be mistakes. Unfortunately, some authors have violated the trust recently.
A good memoir is about more than the individual life. It usually includes ever widening circles of family, community, and universe. The memoirist seeks to describe experience in a effort to find meaning or identity and to communicate hard lessons learned. Like novels, they do this through the setting of scenes, describing of characters, and telling of stories.
Seaman had an interesting story of being a reviewer. After publishing reviews of memoirs, she sometimes gets calls from the author's family, complaining that what he/she wrote was not true. In response, all Seamon can do is refer them back to their son/daughter/cousin/ex-wife who wrote the book. She is just a reviewer with only the book to judge.
The speaker then reported on two subgenres of memoirs that are currently very popular. The first was the memoirs of people of mixed heritage. Among the books she recommended were:
- Dreams from My Father by Barack Obama
- One Drop: My Father's Hidden Life - A Story of Race and Family Secrets by Bliss Broyard
- Sweeter the Juice by Shirlee Taylor Haizlip
- Another Way Home: The Tangled Roots of Race in One Chicago Family by Ronee Hartfield
Environmental memoirs are also popular, as new books are coming out to join Walden, Pilgrim at Tinker Creek, and Desert Solitaire. Among the many books Seaman suggested are the following titles:
- Naturalist by Edward O. Wilson
- Unbowed by Wangari Maathai
- Refuge: An Unnatural History of Family and Place by Terry Tempest Williams
- Trespass: Living at the Edge of the Promised Land by Amy Irving
Saricks added that she usually prefers audiobooks not read by the author. For memoirs, however, authors as readers is often a plus, as their personalities come through. She particularly recommends David Sedaris in audio.
Defining a memoir is not exactly easy, according to Saricks. Many narrative nonfiction books have memoir qualities even when there are third person author because these reporter (1) include so much of their subjects voices and (2) their quests to get the stories are memoirs. She recommended Shadow Divers by Robert Kuson.
Barry Trott of the Williamsburg Regional Library, Virginia, said that while character is the main appeal of a memoir, to choose one to suggest to a reader, you have to look at the other appeal factors such as setting, subject matter, story lines, etc.
Trott talked about the travel memoir, which has several common scenarios: including the hapless traveler (A Walk in the Woods by Bill Bryson), someone escaping their everyday life, or someone going to exotic places. These have the appeal of letting readers go interesting places without leaving home.
He also talked briefly about the recently hot food memoir. Chefs, waiters, and critics are among the people telling stories about their experiences. Calvin Trillin has been doing this for years, and even Euell Gibbons' Stalking the Wild Asparagus was a food memoir of sorts.
Many more titles were mentioned by all the speakers. Seaman said that she will put a list of them on the Booklist Online website.
When asked whether they would move the recently exposed memoirs to fiction, the speakers said no in most cases. Most of the exposures have been of fudging the truth. The totally fabricated memoirs may require some rethinking.
Friday, March 28, 2008
Off Your Seat and On Your Feet! Proactive Reference Customer Service
Jodi Lee and Christopher Korenowsky of the Columbus Metropolitan Library, Ohio, confused an audience of librarians at the Public Library Association today. It was not that their proposal was misunderstood. It was very clear that they are eliminating their reference desks and having their librarians roam, float, wander, hover, whatever. What was confusing was their presentation. At moments they seemed to be saying that the action is a very radical idea, but at other moments they reassured the audience that they are not really changing that much.
Korenowsky also lost many of us with his "three-tiered research phase" portion of the talk. He did not tell us any of the research findings. What did "knowledge vs data" refer to? How are Starbucks, Blockbuster, and Nordstroms relevant? I know I've had lackluster service at each of these stores, and they still have big service desks.
I think the duo make a mistake in organizing their program around dispelling myths. We now know a lot about what they are not doing and not really that much about what they are.
I am sounding very cranky, but I am actually very sympathetic to the idea. Our library has a huge desk that separates the librarians from the clients. I want our reference librarians up and about helping people when there are people to help. I wish they would have given me more solid arguments for redesigning service areas and changing working procedures. They could have talked more about the smaller desk designs and the working of the headsets. I think they missed an opportunity to be really helpful.
Also, the mantra "stop doing things that don't need to be done" to address the work that librarians do at service desks when not assisting clients is not realistic in small libraries where there are not centralized services to do all the non-client assistance work. Lee and Korenowsky are limiting their ideas to larger libraries unnecessarily with this approach. I hope they revisit and revise what can be a liberating idea.
Korenowsky also lost many of us with his "three-tiered research phase" portion of the talk. He did not tell us any of the research findings. What did "knowledge vs data" refer to? How are Starbucks, Blockbuster, and Nordstroms relevant? I know I've had lackluster service at each of these stores, and they still have big service desks.
I think the duo make a mistake in organizing their program around dispelling myths. We now know a lot about what they are not doing and not really that much about what they are.
I am sounding very cranky, but I am actually very sympathetic to the idea. Our library has a huge desk that separates the librarians from the clients. I want our reference librarians up and about helping people when there are people to help. I wish they would have given me more solid arguments for redesigning service areas and changing working procedures. They could have talked more about the smaller desk designs and the working of the headsets. I think they missed an opportunity to be really helpful.
Also, the mantra "stop doing things that don't need to be done" to address the work that librarians do at service desks when not assisting clients is not realistic in small libraries where there are not centralized services to do all the non-client assistance work. Lee and Korenowsky are limiting their ideas to larger libraries unnecessarily with this approach. I hope they revisit and revise what can be a liberating idea.
Minneapolis Skyway Hike Slide Show
For those unable to visualize the PLA 2008 experience, here is a slide show of my walk from the Radisson Hotel to the Minneapolis Convention Center. There are a few tricky turns.
My best time was twelve minutes.
Down the escalator at the end of the Skywalk was a really nice convention center, where we had a really good conference.
My best time was twelve minutes.
Down the escalator at the end of the Skywalk was a really nice convention center, where we had a really good conference.
Wednesday, March 26, 2008
John Wood, Nancy Pearl, and a Day at PLA
The first day of programs at the Public Library Association National Conference in Minneapolis is over. I have written reports on Book Buzz with Nancy Pearl and the opening address by John Wood, author of Leaving Microsoft to Change the World. You may find these and other conference reports at PLABlog.
After today's session, I decided to see how John Wood's book about building schools and libraries in Asia and Africa is doing in the SWAN catalog of the Metropolitan Library System (outside Chicago). I see that readers are not checking out Wood's book the way they are Greg Mortenson's Three Cups of Tea. Both were tourists who made promises to help rural communities in the Himalayas, and in both cases, the one act led to many more. Wood's organization skills are much stronger than Mortenson's and his Room to Read organization appears to have actually accomplished more to date. Both men have been on Oprah. So, why is Mortenson's book more popular?
I believe the answer is Mortenson is more of a story teller. Rather, his coauthor David Oliver Relin is more of a story teller. Wood's book appears to have more in the way of statistics and rhetoric. Also, Mortenson started trying to help when he was an impoverished nurse and accident prone climber. Wood was already a wealthy man who risked less to quit his job to help the needy. Book groups have taken up Three Cups of Tea because they like stories.
Still, I think librarians as a profession should do all they can to help Wood by promoting his book. We should display, review it, and suggest it to book groups. His goal includes building 20,000 libraries and training 40,000 librarians in third world countries by 2020.
*****
I learned today that you really can get around downtown Minneapolis without ever going outside. I left my coat in the hotel and took the Skyway to the convention center. My best time so far is twelve minutes from room to center.
Nancy Pearl did not actually speak much at the Book Buzz program. She introduced the program and let the spokespeople from several publishers promote their forthcoming books. I was most interested in Milkweed, a small nonprofit press from Minnesota.
Tomorrow the regular presentations start. I have a very full schedule.
After today's session, I decided to see how John Wood's book about building schools and libraries in Asia and Africa is doing in the SWAN catalog of the Metropolitan Library System (outside Chicago). I see that readers are not checking out Wood's book the way they are Greg Mortenson's Three Cups of Tea. Both were tourists who made promises to help rural communities in the Himalayas, and in both cases, the one act led to many more. Wood's organization skills are much stronger than Mortenson's and his Room to Read organization appears to have actually accomplished more to date. Both men have been on Oprah. So, why is Mortenson's book more popular?
I believe the answer is Mortenson is more of a story teller. Rather, his coauthor David Oliver Relin is more of a story teller. Wood's book appears to have more in the way of statistics and rhetoric. Also, Mortenson started trying to help when he was an impoverished nurse and accident prone climber. Wood was already a wealthy man who risked less to quit his job to help the needy. Book groups have taken up Three Cups of Tea because they like stories.
Still, I think librarians as a profession should do all they can to help Wood by promoting his book. We should display, review it, and suggest it to book groups. His goal includes building 20,000 libraries and training 40,000 librarians in third world countries by 2020.
*****
I learned today that you really can get around downtown Minneapolis without ever going outside. I left my coat in the hotel and took the Skyway to the convention center. My best time so far is twelve minutes from room to center.
Nancy Pearl did not actually speak much at the Book Buzz program. She introduced the program and let the spokespeople from several publishers promote their forthcoming books. I was most interested in Milkweed, a small nonprofit press from Minnesota.
Tomorrow the regular presentations start. I have a very full schedule.
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