I was having a think about del.icio.us last night, mostly because my bookmarks are in such bad shape, and sorely need maintaining. I was thinking about the different ways that people use it, and how it isn’t really actually working for me at the moment, and what I can do to change that.

My account is a terrible shambles. I’ve had it since Dec 2005, and I’ve now got something in excess of 600 items bookmarked, but I’m just not happy with the way I’m using it. I use it more as a surrogate for a traditional browser based bookmarking system (which it is obviously very useful for) and less for keeping track of articles and posts that I’d like to remember or read later (which I’d like to use it for). I’m finding it very hard to change my usage of it, mostly because my tagging is so awful. I have far too many tags, and in the system as it stands, it’s more or less impossible to edit them effectively.

I keep meaning open another account to keep track of all my bookmarks for work, but I keep hesitating, mostly because I know how easy it is to let it all spiral out of control. Do any of you use it for work/professional bookmarking? If so, do you have a better way of keeping it neat and tidy, or have you found that it tends to get messy fast?

I’m anxiously waiting for the beta to become public (there’s a preview of it on Techcrunch). Del.icio.us is such a good service, and very web 2.0 at heart, but it’s no way near as user friendly as it should be, which is a shame.

Only vaguely relatedly, but all the Facebooking law librarians out there should be part of Lo-Fi’s new group ‘UK Law Librarians for Publisher’s RSS Feeds’. We’re going to take on the man and hopefully try and convince the UK legal publishers that it’s in their and our best interests to start publishing this material as RSS. So much easier, so much more current and timely, and so much paper saved from the wastebasket. It’s win-win people. (Also, in the interim, do check out Nick Holmes homebrewed version. He’s a star for putting this together)

While I’m griping about web 2.0 products that are less than spectacular in some areas – why is the groups function in Facebook so poor? I tend to forget that groups exist because there isn’t (unless I’m not looking hard enough) a way of being notified when there are changes to a group. Which is a shame, because obviously social interaction is at the heart of Facebook, and not being able to interact effectively with the groups that you’re involved in is just disappointing.

Following on from my earlier post about image and perception, I’ve been thinking a lot about how we perceive ourselves in the profession, and how others perceive us from outside it.

But first, an anecdote. Last week I went to the dentist and it set me to thinking. I have a good dentist, professional and skilled, and snarky, in the way that the best dentists seemed to be. And he was oh so very cranky at me for not looking after my teeth as well as he thought I should – amazed and annoyed that I wouldn’t spend the time to floss three times a day. And it occurred to me that, being so embedded in his profession, so caught up in what he does everyday, that he had forgotten what it was like to be on the other side. It wouldn’t occur to him that his patients might value their time differently, and not want to dedicate a half hour a day to their teeth, or that they might not know the best and most effective ways of brushing and flossing. As a professional in his field, dealing with these issues every day, they are of the utmost importance to him, and he couldn’t imagine anyone else feeling otherwise.

I can’t help but think that in the library profession, particularly within law firms, that we tend to be blinkered in the same way. Dealing with our work everyday, we can’t help but value it very highly. And we should value it – we’re providing a professional service to the users in our firms. But I just don’t think our users value it as much as we do. And not just in the general, ‘oh those silly lawyers, they don’t know half the work we do for them’ kind of way, but in a more tangible way, I don’t think that our work is as immediately important as we would like to think it is. So much of what we provide, particularly in the way of raw data, needs to be filtered and refined in some way – usually by an overworked PSL or trainee – into something more relevant for the fee-earners. Whilst we have the skills to find the information, and provide somewhat of a refined product, we generally don’t have the skills to interpret it, nor the place within fee-earning departments to have the knowledge of exactly what is needed and when. What we provide is important, yes, but it’s often a raw product, and not the end in itself.

I think that much of our frustrations within firms stems from this – it’s not that the lawyers don’t value what we do for them, but that they often don’t know what we do for them. Our research and work feeds into many aspects of the firms information flows, but the source of this information is rarely acknowledged. Our information arrives in their inboxes or on their desks seamlessly or silently, and they, understandably, don’t really know the work that went into getting it there. And most lawyers, unless they have had a lot of experience with a good librarian, won’t know what we can offer and what skills we have. They will hold faint memories of librarians from their university days, or maybe from their days as a trainee, not knowing that we can give them much more. They don’t know, and they wouldn’t even think to ask – it’s just not within their sphere of interest. They feel that they need to know the details of what we do as much as they need to know exactly what their finance or IT or HR departments do.

Buried in our work, and knowing it’s value so completely ourselves, we complain that people don’t value us, but don’t spend a lot of time thinking about why that might be. We need to step into the minds of our users and think about how they gain their perception of the library. What do we do for them that they can see? That they can’t see? Where does the information that we provide flow throughout the organisation? What can we do to make our presence more visible and more valued? What can we do to educate people in the services that we provide? When do we need to step back and realise that what we’re providing isn’t as important or valued as we think? And what are we going to do about it?

How do you all feel about this? Do you think that we are placing an unrealistic expectation on our users to value us? Or do you think that your firm or organisation values your service as much as you would like?

I swear I’ll get around to writing a post about the BIALL conference (no, really, I promise!), but other things have cropped up, and have led me in other directions. And one of the issues that I’ve been thinking about a lot lately, particularly on the back of the conference, has been that of the public perception of librarians.

Now I know that everyone likes to talk about this a lot, with the ‘oh, but no one understands us and everyone thinks we’re just glasses-wearing, shushing, school-marms in tweed’. Which, arguably, is still the public perception to an extent. (Oh the joys of telling people that you’re enrolling to do your masters in librarianship! The rolled eyes! the confused glances! the requests for private shushing sessions in the stacks! Laugh a minute, I can tell you) But there’s another issue in this whole image malarky that really irks me. And that’s that only public librarians exist. In the public eye there is only one way to be a librarian, and that is in a public library. Well, maybe university librarians at a pinch, but only the one’s that sit on the reference desk, not any of the ones that work behind the scenes. And public librarians, well, I don’t think they represent the profession as a whole. They do a good and valuable and important job, and one that I wouldn’t do for love nor money, but they only represent one facet of a profession that has so many different aspects.

I’m curious to watch Hollywood Librarian when it gets a more general release, but I am kinda disappointed that (as far as I can tell) the only side of the industry that’s being represented are public librarians. Which is not to say that public librarians aren’t important, nor that it’s not a good place to start changing public perceptions (where better to start than with what people already know). But just that it’s a bit frustrating to realise that it’ll be a long time coming before there’s any sort of public recognition of the work that the many kinds of special librarians do. Corporate librarians and medical librarians and one person librarians and legal librarians and all of those myriad information professional jobs that don’t come with the word ‘librarian’ tacked onto the end. I can’t help but think that it’s terribly important to not just modernise our image, but to broaden it (I didn’t even know that special librarians of any kind existed until I started my masters). How are we meant to meet changing needs, and tackle emerging problems, in all disciplines and areas, when all people see us capable of is running an (admittedly very modern and progressive) public library service?

I think that changing the perception of librarians and information professionals in any way can only be a good thing (hey, it might even help get us higher wages one day!), but I think changing the perceptions of the whole of the profession can only be a good thing as well. And I think that it has to come from within. I hate that when we introduce ourselves to people (and I know we mostly do this – I frequently do, and then kick myself later) we sort of cringe and say, terribly apologetically, ‘Oh, i’m a law librarian’. You can almost hear the tacit ‘sorry’ tacked onto the end. As if that’s not a good enough response! (hey, we could be introducing ourselves as a lawyer! far more cringe-worthy I’m sure). We have all this rhetoric about being proud of what we do, and standing up for the profession, and we talk the talk amongst ourselves, but put us in front of an outsider and we apologise for ourselves every time we discuss it. And this has a knock-on effect in everything we do (you think a managing partner is going to pay attention to your department if you can’t even believe in yourself? I don’t think so). There is such a broad scope of information professional roles out there, and I’d like to see librarians (information professionals!) not just embracing them, but advertising them. Promoting ourselves and our skills. Letting people know that we exist, that we do a highly skilled and kick-arse job, and that they should know about us!

Now, I’m not proposing any answers here, as I don’t have any to give. I don’t know what to do about it. What do you all think? How do you represent the profession? Do you cringe and apologise? What do you think we should be doing to try and broaden the perceived definition of librarian?

I’d like to extend a very warm welcome to the UK legal library blogging scene (and gosh but isn’t that a mouthful) to Jennie Law, a law librarian from Scotland! It’s always wonderful to have some new faces in the community :)

We’ve got a whilst to go in matching the American contingent (so many blogging librarians over the water!), but give us time, we’ll catch them up yet!

I recently read a really interesting post from Michelle at A Wandering Eyre, discussing the generational shift in attitudes from people below a certain age, to those above it. It was good to hear someone else articulate it – how frustrating it is to be young and skilled and motivated and wanting to make a difference in your workplace, only to be told that you haven’t been there long enough, that you needed to ‘pay your dues’.

We no longer live in an environment where you work at the same job for most of your working life. I enjoy my current workplace, and I still can’t see myself staying here much beyond three years or so. I’ll want to move on, expand my skill set, meet new people, and continue to grow, both as a person and professionally. But I see it time and again, both in places I have worked, and those of my friends, that the new ideas they put forward (if they are even given the voice to do so) are not seen as valuable – they are discussed and sidelined, or simply ignored. I admit that I am spoiled where I work now – I’m given the freedom to find projects that are meaningful to me, and am given the scope to present ideas that I think will change my workplace for the better. But most people of my age group are not.

It was one of the things that frustrated me most whilst I was studying my MLS. I was being given these skills, and all these wonderful, challenging, exciting ideas were filling my head. And then I was told that I couldn’t use them. Maybe, maybe, in ten, fifteen, twenty years time, when I had the experience and was the manager of my own library, maybe then I could think about making changes. And one of the things I enjoy most about the biblioblogosphere (although I do hate that word!) is that it has given us a space to voice these changes we want to make, and see them happen. (The success of programs such as Five weeks to a social library is testament to that).

I think it’s different, as well, working within the legal environment. I think that the culture here (well, within the libraries anyway) is a lot more dynamic – there’s an awful lot of job churn as people move on to different firms with different interests or more pay or whatever. However, I also think that (comparatively to, say, an academic library) there is a lot less scope for creating large change within the legal library. Lawyers don’t want to change – and when you have to present your ideas to partners who scarcely even know what you do half the time, it can be hard to make interesting changes. The library just isn’t as well valued as we would like it to be. And I don’t think that’s necessarily a generational issue, just a cultural one.

But I do know that I won’t wait around the ten or fifteen years to make a change. I’ll be forging my own path, choosing where I want to go, taking the rope instead of waiting for the ladder.

What do you all think? Do you think there is still scope for a culture that asks us to ‘pay our dues’? Or is it time to move onto a new way of thinking about our career paths and where our jobs will take us?

ETA: Reading all the comments on Michelle’s original post, and some of the posts in response to it, I wanted to clarify that this certainly isn’t just a generational issue, but much more of attitude issue. I know that there are younger people who don’t want to make changes as much as there are older people who are just as progressive as we youths like to think we are. And I know this isn’t a simple issue – not all ideas for change are good or valuable or viable, and they should be considered thoughtfully within the context of your organisation. But it is about making sure that change does happen, whether that change comes from the bottom or the top.

Lore Librarian today posted to an interesting article on Law.com entitled Law Librarians Should Learn to Drive Their Stock Up.

Though it does indeed, as Lore Librarian points out, start a little tritely (I can’t say I’ve ever been known to shush, or be shushed in a law library, and it’s just that kind of image we’re trying to move away from), the article is actually quite interesting. Particularly as it isn’t written by a librarian.

Librarians wages are all over the place, there doesn’t seem to be any sort of consistent industry standard, and what’s more, compared with other professional industries, we are not paid a comparable wage.

The Institute of Museum and Library Services in the US, in a recent study on the future of library workers found that:

law firms are looking for librarians who not only have both a master’s in library science and a law degree but who alsohave expertise in law, business, finance, science and/or medicine. And an MBA, fluency in a foreign language and technological know-howwouldn’t hurt either, a panel on law libraries found. Many are expectedto manage resources and handle research requests across multiple offices.

And that there? That’s an awful lot of skills. Skills that should be recognised.

We provide an invaluable, but often undervalued service in our firms. We are increasingly on the cutting edge of new technology and information. We are expected to provide multiple services at once (researcher, knowledge manager, press searcher, marketer, IT consultant, cataloguer, administrator, general dogsbody and finder of things, to name a few). We are a professional industry, often with more qualifications than the lawyers we work for. But if we don’t stand up and make a case for ourselves, we are never going to be recognised for the service we provide, whether that recognition is fiscal or otherwise. (how many of you work for firms that don’t recognise what work you do, and don’t see the value in what the library does for the firm?)

But, as the article says, there are things we can do. Start charging back our time – we’re doing work for clients, there’s no reason it can’t be charged back. The libraries income isn’t likely to be comparable to that of a fee-earner, but it’s still going to be more than nothing, and that’s something. Prepare reports – tell management what you’re doing, why you’re doing it, how much time you’re saving for your fee-earners, how much money you’re making the firm. Raise your profile within the firm – don’t make people come to you. Be out there on the floors, asking people what they need, telling fee-earners what you can do for them – make yourself seen and people will start to realise how much you do for them.

And if all else fails, I say call a strike. You just see how quickly the firm realises how much they value your team when you all don’t do your jobs for a week :)

I’ve been thinking a lot this week about web 2.0 technologies, and how to go about implementing them in the library. Particularly, implementing them in the law library – traditionally one of the hardest places to get any sort of new idea off the ground. My immediate co-workers and I are all really quite keen about the idea, but there’s not much institutional support, and not likely to be any time in the forseeable future. But we want to get something started, and I think that starting from within the library is the best way to go.

We’re not going to beable to convince partners and lawyers to buy expensive enterprise level rss programs, we’re not going to be able to force our budgetaround expensive aggregated search tools that would let us create rss feeds of our current awareness. But we can start small and local.

We don’t need to have a staff training manual – we can have a team wiki instead, where we add information that we think is important, and we can all add and edit and play away with it to our hearts content. And it’s not tied to a file that might get lost or corrupted. It’s not all trapped in one of our heads. It’s online and searchable and there tomorrow should a colleague decide to move to Guatamala (or whatever) and take their harddrive with them, and we were to suddenly find ourselves with an information shortage that we have no way of fixing. (Peanut Butter Wiki and WikiSpaces are good examples of free web-based wikis that you can start as easily as a blogger account).

A shared del.icio.us account is a much easier way of sharing links and online resources and all those little important tidbits of information that any team is constantly emailing to one another. Why search back through outlook emails (and I don’t know about you, but my work gets kinda cranky when the inbox size starts creeping up and up and up) when you can post them all to del.icio.us and find them again much more easily. And, again, no information is trapped with any particular individual. That’s the joy of this sort of technology – shared information is the way of the future (I know I’m preaching to the converted here, but still).

These will both take time to set up, and will probably take up more time for us than the equivilant tasks currently, but once their in place, then they’re there, and the infrastructure is in place to continue sharing, learning and collaborating our knowledge.

Once we know how it works, and have been using it in our day to day jobs, getting stuff done with it, seeing how much better it makes our working life, and how much easier collaboration and sharing is this way, then, maybe, we can think about making a business case for it. It’s gonna be a while til the law community catches on (sadly, it’s just the nature of the industry). But that’s no reason not to start using it where we can.