I’m no spring chicken. My white hair is certainly an indicator of that. But another is that I have probably forgotten more technologies than many of our young librarians have ever known. And they will know more than I have ever known in my lifetime. That is the impact of the increasing pace of change, and we must get used to it.
I went from working at a library that still had cards written in “library hand” to libraries on the very bleeding edge of change, and many places in between. Along the way I’ve learned and forgotten many things.
I have mimeographed cards for the card catalog. I have used manual typewriters. I have set up slide and film projectors. I have programmed in BASIC on a Commodore PET microcomputer, which stored the program on a cassette tape. I have used WordStar for word processing and Pagemaker for page layout. I have used Usenet news, Gopher, Veronica, Archie, WAIS, and all kinds of other Internet-based technologies that are no more. I have known all kinds of arcane LISTSERV commands, although at times those still come in handy. Not that I can remember them, or should.
We have all learned and forgotten many things, and we will learn and forget many more. So what are the skills we need to foster to do this well — both faster and better? I don’t claim to have the perfect formula, only a personal opinion. You will have to judge for yourself what speaks to you and your learning style and what doesn’t. All I know is that these strategies have done me well over the years, and they’re well worth considering.
- Learn as you breathe. You breathe all the time without even thinking about it. That is how you must learn — picking up bits of knowledge, new skills, and a fresh perspective every single day simply as a part of living. As human organisms, we already do it to some degree, but we all need to get really, really good at it.
- Learn only what is required to accomplish the task before you. Knowledge grows stale — fast. What you don’t use you tend to lose. If you need a particular skill, such as programming in a particular language, learn as you must to do particular tasks, but don’t seek to know it comprehensively. Just about the time that you do, you will be moving on to something else. Cultivate a “just in time” learning style.
- Don’t be afraid of forgetting. These days you don’t need to remember very much. You can look everything else up on the Internet. And in the age of the smartphone and tablet devices, you can often do this at times where you never could before.
- Don’t clutch old technologies when you should be tossing them aside. The natural human tendency is to cleave to what we know, and to view anything new with suspicion. There are good parts of this tendency, but so too there are some bad. Staying with outdated technologies too long because they are familiar and we feel comfortable in our mastery of them are reasons that are weak and unjustifiable.
- Don’t blindly embrace the new. Not every technology that comes down the pike is worth your time and attention. It may be worth enough time to assess it, but don’t think just because it is new and shiny that it should be immediately embraced. For my money, virtual worlds — at least at this point — are of this variety. There was a time when Second Life was the toast of the Internet. Is it central to what you do now? Likely not.
- Continually reassess your assessments. Just because Second Life — or some other technology — may not be important to you today, it doesn’t mean that it won’t become so at some point in the future. Knowing when that point arrives can be important — sometimes very important.
- Look back. We learn more from our mistakes than from our successes. I learned more from wrapping a whitewater raft on a rock in the Stanislaus River than all the other times I ran that rapid successfully. I learned more from nearly losing my life on a freeway than all the times I drove that highway safe and sound. And I learned more from choosing to implement Gopher at the UC Berkeley Library over the World Wide Web, and especially from all that followed in extracating ourselves from it. Learn from those experiences. Remember them, and take their lessons forward with you. It’s called “wisdom”.
- Look forward. Ever, ever, look forward. Because that is the present you will soon inhabit. Because that is the force that will shape your life — with or without your permission or acquiescence. Because that is what you hope to make better.
- Be grateful. You’re in a great profession, in a truly fantastic time, with an incredible cohort of colleagues, facing an amazing array of challenges. We can meet those challenges together, with insight, skill, and good humor. We always have.
I don’t claim to have cornered the market on how to manage personal change. This is my opinion, but an opinion based on 35 years working in libraries. I’ve seen many things come and go, and I will see more, life willing. So will you. We’d all better get really good at it, since managing personal change is required to do well at managing the organizational change that is increasingly necessary in today’s world.
About Roy Tennant
“Be grateful.”
The rest isn’t new for me (not that it doesn’t resonate) but I am often in a position of reminding myself and others that we have it good.
The only one I somewhat disagree with is: “Learn only what is required to accomplish the task before you.”
Yes, but… learning enough to actually understand what you’re doing is important for making sure what you’re doing actually makes sense and won’t cause headaches for the organization later. True, don’t learn technologies just for the sake of learning technologies, I agree it makes sense to spend time learning things that you have an immediate need for. But learning only barely enough to hack out something that seems like a solution without really understanding what you’re doing—often can result in a mess that someone else will have to clean up later.
As a corollary to your “just in time” education recommendation and “look back”, I would add to avoid seeking perfection. Often, I find that I avoid making decisions or trying something new because I feel the need to find the perfect, most elegant solution. This is a recipe for one thing – producing nothing. I try now to be open to the possibilites that any new endeavor will flop and that is okay.
Don’t blindly embrace the new.
Second Life is a valuable and innovative information ground that continues to evolve and remains a boon to librarians, libraries, educators and students. Virtual World education is burgeoning and SL supports those innovative educators and librarians. Librarians who embrace SL find its many uses for their constituencies. Academic librarians in particular need to pay attention to SL because of the exponential growth of VW education. Those who work and study in SL have an advantage, for a significant part of the future of information environments will be 3-D immersive information grounds. Librarians were not prepared for the growth and acceptance of the Web. Don’t let it happen again. If you have staff who enthusiastically embrace “the new” support them!
“•Don’t clutch old technologies when you should be tossing them aside.
•Don’t blindly embrace the new.”
My two biggest pet peeves: neophobia and neophilia.
I’ve been a librarian for 33 years. My career began in a rural library system serving southwestern Kansas. When I look back I’m awed by my journey and the changes I have experienced and implemented. I look forward thankfully with that same enthusiasm I had the first day an OCLC terminal showed up at the Dodge City Public Library and I sat down ready to expand access to our collection as well as my mind.
I would add to the above points:
–Take risks. Listen, read, learn, observe and then try out your own concepts. Don’t just follow the crowd. Stretch the rules, poke your head out of the box and see where it takes you. Take an idea and play it small at first. Then test it out and try to put it into practice. Ask questions. Share your ideas with others and learn from their comments/reactions. Don’t grab at every new idea or reject every old one. Hone in on what speaks to you and the needs of your community of service.
–Don’t be afraid to make mistakes. A teacher once told me, “You will make mistakes but make them with enthusiasm.” (She attributed the quote to Colet). It was good advice. Prune and graft different ideas knowing that some things will die on the vine. Rip them out, rethink and start again. In an age of constant change don’t stand still afraid of making mistakes. You will make them. Learn from them. Build on them, and move on.
—Loosen up. One of the biggest criticisms of virtual games such as Second Life is that they are just that… games. Wonderful! Roll up your sleeves, jump into the virtual sandbox and see what you can create by yourself or with others. Take on new technology as a means to an end and enjoy the ride. Poke, prod, blow whistles… see what makes things tick. At my own library we are encouraged to play with different tools (FaceBook, Twitter, Second Life, blogs, etc) and statewide we just finished up a very successful run of “23 Things.” Learn how to loosen up and play.
The problem with “Learn only what is required to accomplish the task before you” is that it’s often difficult to know whether or not you have learned enough to suitably accomplish the task before you. It can help to seek advise from someone else who can judge whether you have learned enough, but of course you still need to have learned enough to be able to judge whether that person knows enough to be able to judge whether you have learned enough to do the task before you. It may help to seek the advice of a third person….
Learn only what is required to accomplish the task before you: I find this an interesting comment. I feel that too many people only learn what they need to know, and when something goes wrong they don’t know how to fix it. I think it’s important that people look past the basics of “Press F1, type “go” and then click “ok”. If something goes wrong I want to know why I press F1 so I can fix it.
I think I need to defend “Learn only what is required to accomplish the task before you.” I often say this for a couple reasons. Many people think that in order to use a technology to do a specific thing you need to take a formal course, spend some number of weeks and $ and thoroughly learn that technology. In reality, much of what you learn in that process would not be usable to solve the problem in front of you, and therefore represents wasted time and money. Getting advice on whether you have learned enough to do the task in front of you, as Eric suggests, is a good idea.
And when another problem rolls around you will have forgotten what you had learned previously. At least that describes me, perhaps others retain what they learn much longer and better than I do.
Your article is timely for me. I have moved to New Zealand and begun working in a library that is being totally renovated – complete with technology updates and additions.
I would add that along with being grateful – it helps to be kind to oneself and others. It is never worth “beating oneself up” because one doesn’t catch on the first time. When up at bat keep swing at the ball.
“Keep going forward” is something I cling to — because change is the only constant.
Thanks Roy Tennant!
“Be Grateful”…thanks for that…both to Roy and KGS.
I’d add, Look sideways. Sometimes the best changes come from the sidelines and we learn the most from those we least expect to.
I think Bruce Lee could some up with a nice aphorism Roy:
“Empty your mind, be formless, shapeless – like water. Now you put water into a cup, it becomes the cup, you put water into a bottle, it becomes the bottle, you put it in a teapot, it becomes the teapot. Now water can flow or it can crash. Be water, my friend.”