explodedlibrary.info

rant: neurotic pedantic librarians

Earlier this week, I attended a presentation by a vendor which was held in a nearby academic library. It was about a product which is not used too much in our business school library, but still, it was good to learn about this in case I do need it. It was interesting to see how this particular product is developing.

That's not what I wanted to write about tonight. The real eye-opener for me was the behaviour of some of the librarians at this meeting. They interrupted with the most unreasonable pendantic questions, finding fault just for the sake of finding fault. At the time I remember thinking, "What a bunch of crotchety curmudgeons!" I asked myself, do libraries have more than their fair share of neurotic and pedantic people?

I chatted about this over lunch with a coworker and she had an interesting insight. A lot of the work that's done in a library is about being critical and accurate. These skills are often needed to do the work, but some librarians and library techs/assistants are unable to turn them off and they become nitpicky and pedantic as people.

Is the pedantic and neurotic librarian a similar species to the stereotypical brusque but brilliant surgeon? I'm doubting it. There seem to be two different skill-sets to library work - which aren't always complementary. One set is concerned with accuracy and technical competency. The other set are people skills, understanding what our users really want and need, building necessary relationships with vendors, IT, administration.

One other thing. Has anyone else ever noticed that some librarians feel entitled to treat vendors like crap? I've heard it justified by the fact that librarians who work for vendors are usually paid much more, so they should accept this treatment as the downside to their larger salaries. I'm not sure that this is true, or even if it were, that I would agree. It seems wrong to feel entitled to treat anybody badly because of their salary - whether it's  higher or lower. After all, I know that I would not want to be judged and evaluated according to what somebody else reckons to be my salary.

New Librarians' Symposium call for papers

Something I would definitely like to do in the next 12 months is submit, write and present a paper at a library conference. If I weren't involved in organizing it, I would definitely be interested in presenting a paper at the ALIA New Librarians' Symposium, being held in Sydney in December 2006.

Although I'm approaching the margins of what is a new librarian, I definitely feel that I am a new librarian in Australia. The new librarians/grads activities have been a great way to meet people who are in similar places in their career, with similar issues. It's quite possible that I'll be rubbing shoulders with many of these new librarian peers for the rest of my career, in some shape or form, so it's good to get know them in the more relaxed environment that is new librarian activities.

A similar thing applies with conferences and papers. Activities like the New Librarian's Symposium are an ideal way of testing the waters with presenting papers at conferences. It's a great opportunity to see if you have the skills  and interest to do this, in a friendlier and less intimidating environment than some of the major conferences.

On the other hand, this doesn't mean that the actual topics are going to be bland and unremarkable. Activities that are run by and for new librarians usually have a characteristic edge. We know that we have things to say about this career which we're contemplating investing the next 30 or so years of our working life, and we expect to be listened to.

Although blogging is one outlet which allows me to exercise my reading, writing and analytical skills, it is not the same and cannot replace that direct and immediate contact with one's peers in a real life audience. Sometimes it just doesn't seem possible to attend conferences - sadly this has often been my situation. But remember, unless you have an extremely stingy employer, you are more likely to get funding to attend these conferences if you are presenting a paper.

The call for papers for the ALIA New Librarians' Symposium closes on March 31.

customer service by chat

So I've just moved. Until I have broadband internet access set up at my new place, please excuse if I'm slow at replying to emails, moderating comments or indeed reading many blog posts. As well as all the unpacking and setting things up for a new household, I am also trying to get reconnected at home.

Seeing that I don't enjoy making (or receiving) phone calls to call centres, I thought that I'd try out the chat system offered by one of the bigger players in the Australian telco market. Big waste of time.

Things were going ok up until the point when I checked to see if they supported Macs - knowing before that they used to have issues with Macs. Just after telling me that Mac OS 10.4 should be ok, the customer service rep. asked me, "which version of windows does it have?" I explained, patiently and tactfully I hope, how that wasn't relevant.

There was a pause for several minutes - and then the chat session was abrubtly ended. I can only assume that he hung up on me. It's a bit of a worry.

I am asking myself - did I waste as much time this way as I would have if I'd phoned them, waited on hold for 5-10 minutes, and then spoken to the same clueless person over the phone? Maybe not, but I am guessing that it would have been easier for me to ask for this person's supervisor as soon as I started having doubts about his expertise. Also, if my experience at Vodafone is anything to go by, it's very rare for a call centre operator to be allowed to hang up on a customer. We were only allowed to do it when they started swearing at us and we had warned them that we would not put up with that sort of language. Released calls were monitored and counted, just like everything else, and always had to be justified. Maybe the online chatting is still so new that it's not monitored as vigourously.

Which is quite short-sighted - after all it would be very difficult for me to post an audio recording (or even transcript) of a call centre exchange on the web - but it was very easy to take a screen shot and post this on the web. It makes me think about virtual reference in libraries too - with a different medium comes different expectations and standards.

information about electricity and metrology for non-engineers

Generally I have been impressed by the information in South Australian government websites. In my previous job at NEMMCO, I would often refer people to ESCOSA's (Essential Services Commission of South Australia) information about electricity and full retail contestability (FRC). It seemed to be one of the few places to find less-technical information about electricity - stuff that is understandable to people without a degree in electrical engineering or years of experience in the subject. Another helpful publication is NEMMCO's An Introduction to Australia's National Electricity Market.

It's my opinion that within the broad electricity subject, metrology (about electricity metering) would have to be one of the most arcane sub-specialties. This was another place where I found ESCOSA's site to be helpful . The South Australian metrology procedure had a helpful cheatsheet (on page 30 of the pdf document) explaining the differences between the types of meters. It's a little dated now - with references to the now defunct National Electricity Code, and this document will probably disappear entirely within a couple of years when the state-based metrology procedures are replaced with national ones. Still, while it's around, the cheatsheet is helpful and isn't just relevant to South Australia.

sample lease and other tenancy documents

Something I've been looking for lately has been a sample Australian residential tenancy lease. Sadly not being in a law library with easy access to formbooks and form databases, this has been more of a challenge. Particularly because I have been looking for a sample lease that was free, authoritative and not obviously biased in favour of landlords or tenants. I did find something, and that's why I'm blogging about it - to make it easier for other people to find such documents.

This sample lease was created by the South Australian Office of Consumer and Business Affairs. There are only a few things which seem specific to that jurisdiction. Because I was able to convert the pdf to Word, it's easy enough to remove those.

There are other free tenancy documents on this page - such as an inspection sheet.