Author: Amritha Jayasankar

At the City library where I work, there is more of “here are the requirements to the programs you should have” from our main branch while the County library (where I work as an intern) has “community libraries”. This way, programs can be more customized to what the community asks for/loves/needs. When I started my internship at my County library, I asked two supervisors how they figure out what the community needs. They both emphasized looking at what programs are already popular, getting a sense of resources and organizations nearby, and making note of regulars. That made sense, but now I’m also thinking about who isn’t coming. Now, my intention at my work is to be proactive in understanding my libraries’ relationship with its respective community. Specifically, I’ll be carrying the questions in “Reaching All Users” in The Heart of Librarianship:

“…whom do you reach well? Who uses your library passionately?…Who doesn’t use the library? Who in your community could benefit from access, services, assistance?” 

There is still a lot of frustration for using certain critical websites/digital platforms for healthcare, insurance, and government assistance. People have to navigate clunky, text heavy, difficult to use websites for forms, assistance, and have to wait for a long time to talk to a real person for help. Even though user experience and human-centered design are trending in the tech world, and I’ve seen great improvements on some services, I think they haven’t fully caught up where people are most vulnerable. 

Like Jessamyn West states: “…helping people get online, in whatever fashion that takes, is actually helping them to be citizens, to be interactive, to be part of the information economy, to participating in a democracy.”

When it comes to the balance between emerging technology in the library and meeting users where they are, supporting users for using the internet today with empowerment and confidence is very important, not just from a personal standpoint, but to society as a whole. It takes repetition, patience, and continuing support.

 Add AI to the mix, and now there is a layer of fear and resistance to engage with the tools and services available today. The library has to be a space where exploration and curiosity with AI tools is fostered, where people help each other understand, and end up benefiting from taking the step to learn something new. Even though the digital world is the present, not the future, I want to end with what my library had done the first few months this year: cute little paper hearts. 

 There is an empty wall next to the Information Desk at my library where we started utilizing community engagement. For Valentine’s Day, people coming in wrote “what they love about the library” on paper hearts which we posted on this wall. It has stayed up until now, as we’ll be celebrating the Tanabata festival. We now have a bamboo forest, where the community can hang “wishes” for themselves or for the library on slips of paper we provided next to the wall. It has been awesome to see people stop and admire the colorful wall. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Sources:

Stephens, M. (2016). “Reaching All Users” in The Heart of Librarianship, p. 41

https://www.librarian.net/talks/rlc14/

Blog

Where to start?

As I reflect on the kind of librarian I’m becoming, two concepts stand out: people-centered service and the idea of the library as a learning laboratory to create positive change. These concepts reinforce the idea of libraries and librarians as connectors. We, along with the space that we work in, serve to connect people to resources, services, ideas, and to each other. 

People (or user) centered thinking

When I first started working in libraries, I was interested in user-experience design but disliked the idea of working in tech. Instead, what drew me in was the chance to help people access resources that they really wanted, or didn’t know they needed, in order to enrich and uplift their life. When I thought about having empathy, I thought about affordability, access, community, and safe spaces. 

At work, I considered:

How do people navigate the building? Can they find what they’re looking for easily? Are they having a good experience discovering things or are they frustrated? How can I respond to a patron who’s overwhelmed, impatient, or uncertain?

My experience so far

Right now, I work for both the  San Jose Public Library and the Santa Clara County Library District.

This has been an eye-opening and interesting experience. Having experience in both systems has helped me better serve patrons, but there are differences between the two as well.  For example, the County’s libraries are more community-oriented and flexible,  and the librarians have more autonomy.  If a patron wants to suggest an item for purchase, they can do it on their Bibliocommons account and they are able to track it and see if it was approved or not approved for purchase. I think this adds to the diversity of the collection, and collection development becomes more of a participatory service this way. 

The City’s branches stem from a more centralized system, with a marketing team of staff who are not librarians and, programming comes from the main branch and the librarians have little room for creative, customized to the community kind of programs. 

Learning Laboratories

In the first chapter of The Heart of Librarianship, the idea of creating learning library laboratories (which also excited the scientist in me) caught my attention: 

“...  Professors, librarians, and students must work together to create new models of service and outreach. These models are evaluated and tweaked, and effective practice is reported to the greater community”

I can imagine a space where things are designed and tested with real people, feedback is welcomed and encouraged, and the library is community-centered and adaptive, and the best part is that library staff can take what is learned in such a lab and implement it in their libraries. The shift from rigid top-down flow of how things “should” work to a sort of iterative and people centered flexibility is very inspiring.  This reminded me of the “People and the UTS Library” article and their mention of design thinking and learning by doing, experimenting, and play (which is also emphasized at the County library where I work!). A culture of shared responsibility for change, testing ideas, learning opportunities, and staff empowered and trusted to contribute to shaping a new model of service can benefit not just the people that come, but serves as a model for positive change in other libraries as well. 

Questions, Reflections, and  Looking Ahead

I step into taking responsibility within my library community, and with each experience, I will be employing reflective practice. When people ask me what librarians do, I am going to create an elevator pitch not just for me, but for advocating for libraries and librarianship as a whole.

Starting in a new field and working in an already established system with coworkers that are 15, 20 years into their profession, I find where reality and idealized thinking clash, but because of the many examples of librarians and libraries leading change, I feel I have solid evidence that positive change is possible with as I take responsibility in my librarianship practice. 

With my new emphasis on reflective practice, with a focus on the people that I serve, and a bias to act on new ideas through small steps, I now have new questions for my practice:

How can we reach people that do not come into the library? Where and why do I seek permission? Where can I take small actions backed up by evidence, listen to staff and the community to implement positive change? How can I show up intentionally for my community today?

 

Sources: 

 Stephens, M. (2016). Chapter 1: “The Hyperlinked Librarian: Skills, Mind-Sets, and Ideas for Working in the Evolving Library” in  The Heart of Librarianship: Attentive, Positive, and Purposeful Change

http://287.hyperlib.sjsu.edu/wp-content/uploads/2014/06/Booth_PeopleUTSLibrary.pdf

Library as Infrastructure

 

Here is a mind map that I drew

Hello everyone!

My name is Amritha, and I’m about halfway through the MLIS program here at SJSU. I currently work at two public library systems in the Bay Area, and I’m loving it so far. In the public library space, I’ve enjoyed helping users discover new resources, explore outside their comfort zone, find a safe space to be, and make connections. Technology and spaces that people use are always changing and evolving, and I want to have a flexible and adaptable mindset as we navigate these changes. I think this course is a great way to understand how we are changing while still having a strong foundation in user-centered service.

So far my experience has been in public libraries, but I’m also curious about working in an academic setting such as a community college. The library and information science field is so huge, and it’s exciting and overwhelming at the same time, but learning more about information centers and how we can make a direct impact as information professionals is helping me narrow down where I want to be.

A Little About My Journey

I went to Oregon State University (a beautiful, beautiful place).  I could never pinpoint my interests in order to confidently pick a career path at the age of 17, so I decided I would listen to my parents and go the safe and practical route of science and engineering.

I really loved science, so I explored a few majors in the science and engineering departments. I jumped from Ecological Engineering, to Biochemistry and Biophysics, to finally settling on Microbiology.

After college, I moved back home to the Bay Area and started my first full time job in a quality assurance laboratory where I tested food products for pathogens like salmonella, e.coli, and other types of bacteria. Three years flew by, and all the while I was trying to figure out what to do next (I may have started talking to the bacteria, I spent so much time in that little lab). I felt restless because I realized that I didn’t want to continue down this path, but I also had no idea what else I could do, and I couldn’t admit that  the degree I worked hard and paid for was not actually what I wanted.

At the end of my third year in the lab, I realized I was not aligned with the work culture and changes that were happening. My awesome coworker and lab partner left, my boss (who was also amazing) was leaving, so I resigned. This was also when COVID pandemic happened. There was a lot of fear going around, a lot of time spent alone, and a lot of panic-job searching after thinking I had made a huge mistake quitting my other job.

After some time I interviewed and accepted a job as a food safety auditor for a third party company. It was a job that “sounded good” but I ended up working a lot of hours, driving all day, isolated. During this time, I was still trying to figure out what I really wanted to do. I thought about all the jobs I had done so far and how I wanted to spend my time. Continuing in this pathway gave me that familiar squeeze of dread of forcing myself to fit somewhere I didn’t want to be.

A Lot of Thinking

I knew  that it was important for me to be in a respectful workplace, with people who have similar visions and care about the same things that I do. It was also important to work for a company that cares about its employees and not just the profit. I wanted to have a job that paid me well and had flexibility so that I could work from home if needed to, and do my best work instead of being stuck in one place for nine to ten hours. I wanted to join amazing communities and work with them under a unified mission to improve my corner of the world.  I wanted to have enough energy to do stuff that was vital to me: read, practice creative writing, improve my art skills, learn how to box, because if I was just living to work and be tired all day, what was the point?

I thought about how I made decisions that ended in my current state. I realized that fear had influenced a lot of my actions (and lack of actions as well). I was afraid of disappointing those who loved me and expected things from me, I was afraid of not knowing what I wanted, I was afraid of having to work somewhere that filled me with dread, I was afraid of being seen as lost and confused. But I still had to take action.

I quit my auditing job, read books about career change, journaled about what I liked and disliked, and talked to people in careers that sounded interesting to me. I explored and took my time, despite the worried questions I got from my loved ones about what I was doing.

I found a career help service at my local public library, and talked to a career librarian (who knew they existed!), and ended up applying to and being selected for a part-time entry level job at the library. I loved working at the library, and the more time I spent and saw the library world behind the scenes, the more I felt like I belonged.  I applied to the MLIS program at SJSU, proud that I had made this decision for myself. I began to envision a lasting career where I could be part of finding solutions for the needs and problems my community faced, work in a space where anyone can explore the world, discover new ideas, and even learn about themselves. I’m inspired by the idea of being surrounded by thousands of voices, of authors, thinkers, storytellers. They each offer perspectives shaped by vastly different lives, yet each have something that we can all connect with.

I also started to go back to the boxing gym, made my health a high priority, and slowly started to be part of the amazing community there.

I don’t regret my Microbiology degree, because I have a deep respect for science and how it has allowed us to understand the basics of how we humans and the world work on a cellular level. I have deep respect and admiration for the individuals who devote their lives to the scientific process, research, and diving headfirst into uncertainty to make a difference. I learned how to assess and reassess where I’m going, how to adjust my course, how to be okay with giving up on a hypothesis that failed.  If anything, science has taught me what tools to take with me and how to navigate step-by-step when I walk into the unknown.

I want to end with a book recommendation: My Friend Fear by Meera Lee Patel.  In it, she shares wonderful advice on moving forward with fear:

“Being brave, being courageous is not living a life without great fear- it’s seeing fear clearly and living a greater life with it beside you. It’s breathing deeply and allowing your fear to breathe the same air. It’s knowing that you aren’t alone, even if no one is next to you. It’s realizing you have the power to choose which fears will guide you, and which are better left behind” (Patel, 2018, pg 78).