One morning last week, as I poured the last bit of milk out of the carton and onto my raisin bran, I looked at the plastic spout poking out of the “roof” like a chimney and wondered to myself, “Who ever decided that this was an improvement on the original milk carton design?” I thought about how John R. Van Wormer’s ingenious idea to make a self-contained container – a single object that both held milk AND unfolded to give you a spout – somehow became “not good enough.” Why? Whoever thought that a carton needed a second spout, complete with three other small pieces of plastic that now, multiplied by a gazillion, take up space in landfills? What the heck was ever wrong with unfolding the spout?
I’ve thought about this for days. Literally. I’ve mentioned it to a couple of friends and/or colleagues. I’ve asked them if they know why this “improvement” came along? They don’t. And neither do I. But I’ve thought so much about what it represents that I’ve decided my new mantra is “Don’t reinvent the milk carton!” I even printed off a picture of the image shown here and gave it to my supervisor so that she could hang it on her office door. I’m bringing the message to the people.
But I bring this up on my “Library Hats” blog not so much because I feel like the research team that I’ve worked with the past year is engaging in such an act, but more because as my time as an informationist on the team winds down, I’ve begun to look back on the project and take note of some of the bigger (and maybe a few smaller) lessons that I’ve learned along the way. And one of these lessons does remind me of the milk carton mantra.
When we first approached the research team to discuss with them different ideas, options, projects, etc. that we thought an informationist could bring to their work, it initiated a terrific time of “big picture” thinking. Once we explained what an informationist is and what skills and/or services I could bring along with me to the team, we came up with all sorts of ideas for things to do. “It would be great if we could …” and “We’ve wanted to do …” were phrases that came up often. This was just what we wanted and we proceeded to write up several aims and a lengthy list of tasks and projects to undertake in order to accomplish them. These were all new things thought to improve the overall research project, not necessarily things to create extra work for the team. Work for the informationist, yes, but not more work for an overworked team.
That was our design, anyway.
As I prepared a report for tomorrow morning’s team meeting, updating everyone on the status of where I am related to the aims of the grant, I began to think about my milk carton metaphor and wondered if maybe we didn’t wreck a good design with the addition of me. Like the addition of that plastic spout to the perfectly perfect milk carton, throwing me on the top actually has created more work for everyone on the team. The projects that we thought about, particularly related to performing thorough reviews of the literature and examining information technology issues in research… these ideas were things that the team may well have wanted to work on, address, and delve into with an informationist on board, however I’m not sure we really considered how much of their time would be required to accomplish them. Like the milk carton, they were a single, self-contained unit that worked pretty well. Add me, the plastic spout, and now you’ve added the spout, the cap, and the little pull-tab plastic piece that you have to remove before you open the carton the first time. One thing becomes four. Better design? It’s debatable.
I do think that I’ve provided some valuable tools for the team (and future teams) to use, i.e. the data dictionary, data request forms, and a growing catalog of relevant articles for their field of work. But writing a review article is another project. Writing a systematic review is, in its purest form, an entire research project in and to itself. Similarly, planning a conference or investigating big-picture issues like how research happens in teams… maybe these are terrific aims, just not necessarily aims for supplemental work. I think that this is something we need to consider in the future when drafting our proposals for these type of services.
In a time when people, dollars, and all resources are stretched to the limit, we don’t need to be making extra work – or plastic waste – for ourselves.
What a few weeks it’s been! Regular readers of this blog know all about the changes in my library of late. Suffice it to say, the load of emotions and thoughts and tasks have kept the wheels spinning, both literally and figuratively. The result, in terms of this week’s blog post, is a bunch of bits and pieces – a collection of some of those thoughts and experiences that hopefully you find worthy of reading and/or commenting.
Missing the Forest for the Trees
First, let me give you an update on my informationist work with the mammography study. It seems like it’s been too long since I’ve done that. September marks a year that I’ve been embedded in the research team. I have about 5 months to go on the grant funding and a whole slew of deliverables to deliver between now and then. Thankfully, the project coordinator has taken it on as a priority to make sure that I get all of the things done that we said I’d get done, thus she is putting me on the agenda every week from here on out, encouraging me to keep everyone on task with the things that they need to do to insure my success. I realize that Mary Jo has to be the ideal project coordinator for any informationist and/or embedded librarian to come across when looking for success in this new role. All along, the team has been welcoming and encouraging of me, but a good coordinator keeps everyone accountable to everyone else, and thus to the overall goal of the research project. As I mentioned during last night’s weekly #medlibs tweetchat, it’s this level of accountability that distinguishes librarian support from librarian embeddedness.
Which brings me back to the one deliverable that has stumped me from early on, the data dictionary. As I’ve described in previous posts, the data for the mammography study comes from various sources. Helping team members to communicate more efficiently and effectively about the data was Aim 1 of my role. We envisioned that a comprehensive data dictionary would be the key to reaching this goal and so I set about collecting the different codebooks and related documentation, compiling them into a single file with the hope that I’d be able to easily see overlap in terms, discrepancies between definitions of the same terms, gaps in terminology, etc. It seemed simple enough.
What I found, however, was less than simple. I found a lot of tools that already existed, yet weren’t being used. As an example, the codebooks were there, yet weren’t always referenced during data requests between team members and the analyst. People continued to use their own chosen vocabulary, despite the ongoing confusion that it caused. More than once I’ve heard the phrase, “So and so uses ‘x’ to describe ‘y’, but we all know what s/he means.” If you think about it, we all operate like this to varying degrees. If/when you work or live with another person long enough, you figure out what s/he means regardless of what s/he is saying. Except when you can’t figure it out. And that’s when the communication breaks down. It’s why we have dictionaries and standards in the first place, particularly when it comes to technical research.
I literally went for months, scratching my head and being utterly confused (and often exasperated) over the amount of time spent talking about the algorithmic logic behind exclusion variables and which flags turned off or on in the system when. I couldn’t for the life of me figure out how the data dictionary that I was putting together was going to help make that hang-up in the study go any better.
Until this week.
Finally, during a conversation with Mary Jo about the dictionary that involved sharing the work with her and walking through my understanding of it, along with hers (something that I see now I should have done MONTHS ago), she mentioned that if I could add to the dictionary how each variable functions within the system, it would be a really helpful document. FUNCTION! It was like a light bulb went off. I’d been so stuck on names and definitions that I either never heard this word or I had completely missed the concept, all the previous months. For whatever reason, this dimension to the dictionary had escaped me. I went back to the spreadsheet, added the columns for the different functions that we identified, and began working through the different scripts, assigning each variable its proper function. Now the goal is to have it all together by next Tuesday so that I can present it to the group for feedback and evaluation.
Going Out on a Limb
“We all hear that it takes 20 years for something new to be implemented in medicine, but how long does it take us to de-implement something?” I’m paraphrasing a cardiologist who spoke something to this effect in a meeting that I attended this week. Basically he was asking, “How do you stop doing something once you know it no longer works?” It’s a great question and cuts at the heart of all of my personal curiosities and interests around human behavior and why we do (or don’t do) the things that we do. I wrote in my notebook, “The Challenge of De-Implementation” and tucked it aside as a possible question for thought – perhaps even some kind of research project – in the future. It’s certainly pertinent in my profession right now.
When do we take the chances that we need to take? What finally prompts us to stop doing what we know no longer works? What’s worth giving up and what is worth fighting for when it comes to health sciences libraries and librarianship as a profession?
Money Doesn’t Grow on Trees
In the mid-90s, at arguably the peak of their success as a band, REM released a less-successful, commercially speaking, CD entitled, “Monster.” It’s not my favorite, yet I did find myself pulling it off the shelf this morning to listen to one song in particular during my morning commute (I generally have about a 3-song commute). “King of Comedy” has a catchy little closing refrain,
I’m not king of comedy, I’m not your magazine, I’m not your television, I’m not your movie screen I’m not commodity
(King of Comedy, Berry/Buck/Mills/Stipe, 1994)
The irony is, of course, that the band was very much a commodity by that point. Like it or not, their huge success made them no longer individuals, per se, but an entity that could be bought and sold. What happened to REM is pretty much what has happened to information over the past couple of decades. With the rise of the Internet and the ease with which we can/could find and share and access information, its power and profitability has grown in ways likely no one ever imagined. Once something freely shared by say, your local library, is now out there generating a bunch of money for Google. “But Google is free!” you cry. Really? We gave up a lot to be bombarded with advertising, with product, with noise; to have personal information about ourselves be retrieved and resold to others for a profit. We are commodity.
What does this have to do with libraries? Oh, I’ve just been thinking about the move towards entrepreneurship in our profession. I’ve been thinking about just what is it that I’m selling to patrons. What is the real value of me as an embedded librarian – is it me or is it my skill set? I know that it’s a combination, but is one piece worth more? I once heard the story of a law firm in Chicago that, upon acquiring Westlaw, decided that they no longer needed a law library and the librarian who worked there. She was, like many of our colleagues, let go. Within a few months, however, the firm came back to her, offering her the position she once held. They realized that her value was actually more than the resources she provided. She considered their offer and rejected it, opting instead to hire herself back to them as a consultant (with no library), charging them much more for the work that she had always done.
You might think this is a great lesson in entrepreneurship and I can’t argue that it’s not, at least not for this individual and her personal value (financial status), but what does it say about the direction that health sciences librarians could take? Is our allegiance to the library, to the research team, or to ourselves? Again, I know that there is no one answer and that we hold a certain amount of loyalty to each, but if we do move towards a more independent and consultant-type model as embedded librarians, what will be the ramifications on the library – and on our profession – as a whole? There are pros and cons for being a commodity.
The Power of Branching Out
I love social media. For those who have rejected the power of blogs, Twitter, Facebook, et al for both professional and personal gains, I give you another chapter in the story, “Sally Meets Fantastically Cool People Through Twitter.” If you missed the previous chapter on my Twitter friendship with Rosanne Cash, you can catch up here. This past week involved finally getting to meet the one and only Amy Dickinson; the voice behind the syndicated advice column, “Ask Amy,” the author of the NY Times bestseller, The Mighty Queens of Freeville, and a regular panelist on the always funny NPR news quiz show, Wait Wait Don’t Tell Me.
I started tweeting back and forth regularly with Amy Dickinson about a year or so ago. I liked her as a writer and humorist, and followed her on Twitter. She tweeted something funny one day, I tweeted back, she back to me, and so on. Eventually, she started to follow me on Twitter, too. I became a fan of hers on Facebook. I offer up comments to the letters that she posts online. We got to know each other about as much as a librarian from Worcester gets to know a somewhat famous personality via these outlets.
Last Friday night, after appearing on the panel of Wait Wait that taped at Tanglewood the night before, she gave a book talk at the Lenox (MA) Public Library. I had a gig scheduled with my band, but after a week (more like a month, but a really horrible week) of dental trauma, I was a scratch in the band lineup. Rather than sitting home yet one more evening, wallowing in my tooth pain, I decided that I’d drive out to Lenox, a nice, quiet 2-hour ride from Worcester, and take the opportunity to meet – and especially thank – Amy in person.
Like my desire to meet Rosanne, I think it’s really special if/when we ever get the chance to say “thank you” to those people who fill up a bunch of our hours, days, even years. For me, these special people are most often writers and musicians (or a combination of both). Think about it. When I read Amy Dickinson’s memoir, I spent hours with her. She took the time to write a story and share it. I took the time to read it. Like taking the time to listen to a song and learn the lyrics, you have to give up something of yourself (a lot of your time) to accept all that the artist has given. As the hours unfold and you read an author’s book, particularly a memoir, you come to know them. It may be a little one-sided, but you still know them.
I got to the talk and Amy saw me walk in. She recognized me from my pictures on Twitter and Facebook. I recognized her from the same, plus the fact that she was at the front of the room, next to the podium. We made eye contact and waved to each other. She gave a great talk, funny as expected, and answered a bunch of questions about her work as a columnist and a radio personality. I had my hand up to ask a question and finally, at the very end of the evening, she looked my way and wrapped up by saying, “I need to introduce Sally.” And then… Amy Dickinson introduced me! Really. Before I could ask my question, she told everyone all about how we met via Twitter, how I was a librarian with a wonderful blog (she said that), how I’d offered her some help in terms of pointing her towards reputable folks in health care for reference in her letters, and how I was the first friend that she’s made completely through social media. Amy Dickinson called me her friend.
Several years ago, before the age of social media, I gave a talk where I introduced the “top ten” people that I wanted to be a personal librarian for. I did actually have a radio personality on my list, though (sorry, Amy) it wasn’t Amy Dickinson. It was Terry Gross. I think even Amy would take that gig. Who wouldn’t want to look up all of the cool stuff about all of the fascinating people Terry Gross interviews on Fresh Air?! Still, never did I imagine at that time that a day would come when I actually would be a bit of a personal librarian to the stars. But there was Amy, last Friday night, telling the audience about how powerful social media is in its ability to connect us with people and resources and ideas like we never could before. She said that while she’d been a bit late coming to it, she now sees what a rich tool it can be to help you do your job – be your job writing advice, sharing good information with others, promoting yourself, or connecting with people.
This blog has helped me share a lot of ideas and experiences with an awful lot of people over the past year. It’s helped me to reach some folks that I never would have reached in traditional means like writing journal articles or even posting on listservs. My presence on Twitter has connected me with researchers, science writers, other librarians across many disciplines, and even a few musicians and writers that I admire immensely. It’s not the one tool that will make or break my success as an informationist, but it’s certainly proved more than worth its value to me. Amy Dickinson introduced me as her friend. I rest my case.
Sometime within the past couple of months, the National Institutes of Health decided to start enforcing the requirements of its public access mandate that went into effect in April of 2008. On the one hand, it was nice of NIH to give its funded researchers a year or two or five to come around to following the rules. Yet on the other, the recent applied pressure has sent a flurry of befuddled and irritated biomedical researchers, clinical researchers, research coordinators, administrative assistants, and any number of other folks my way, usually in a deadline-induced panic, trying to figure out what the heck they’re supposed to do to get in compliance with the law.
For awhile, I was slightly irritated myself – at the researchers, that is. When it comes to “the Mandate,” I’ve been announcing and instructing and updating and troubleshooting ad nauseum for these past years. I’ve sent out countless invitations to talk to departments, to labs, to admins, to the staff in research funding (and to their credit, many – though hardly a majority – took me up on it). I have made it my business to know every in and out and upside down aspect of this Policy since before it became law, lo those many years ago now. And so, over the past couple of months, I’ve stifled more than one, “What rock have you been living under?!” retort to more than one, “NIH has instituted another new thing!” whine landing in my email inbox or coming across my phone line.
All of this said, as I have worked to smooth and soothe and clean up messes these past weeks, I can’t help but come to the conclusion that NIH, and more, the National Library of Medicine, could have done us all a HUGEfavor if they had taken just a moment to think through the naming conventions that they chose for the various resources and tools associated with this Policy. Why, for the love of Pete, did you name PubMed Central, PubMed Central? Why is there something so crucial as “My Bibliography” buried within “My NCBI”? Why are there “journal publishers that submit articles on behalf of authors,” as well as “journal publishers that submit manuscripts on behalf of authors”?
If you think that I typed the same thing twice there, read again. Closely. Which is EXACTLY what you have to say to researchers over and over and over again.
And that’s kind of my point. In one of the most basic textbooks of library science, Richard Rubin’s, Foundations of Library and Information Science, every aspiring librarian learns a handful of principles related to information management and organization. As Rubin warns, “Unless there are ways to organize it,it (information) quickly becomes chaos.” (p. 171)
Perhaps one can make a strong argument that the conundrum that is the naming conventions of NIH/NLM resources and tools isn’t really a naming convention problem at all. There certainly are distinctions between them. “My Bibliography” is not the same as “My NCBI.” PubMed is a completely different database than PubMed Central. How hard is this to grasp?! I argue, harder than the average librarian and/or programmer and/or chief resource namer of highest level (aka CRNHL – pronounced “colonel” – on Twitter) ever realizes.
I bring this topic up on my informationist blog because I find it pretty funny (in a black humor, ironic sort of way) that one of the primary reasons I was placed on a research team was because of my expertise in information organization. Librarians are the experts in applying the standards, language, and processes that help people communicate, find, and access information more easily and efficiently. This being the case, I can’t help but wonder why we shot ourselves in the foot here, choosing labels that are so easily confused and swapped one for the other. Like homology, homography, or holograms and homograms… who can’t help but get these mixed up? And when there is a compliance officer, grant funding, and a deadline all in play, well, we in the information arena could do better to make things a little easier on everyone.
A Librarian by Any Other Name 