Pause and Reflect

25 Aug

I love Julie Foudy. The retired member/captain/co-captain of the Unites States Women’s National Soccer Team, former president of the Women’s Sports Foundation, member of the National Soccer Hall of Fame, founder of the Julie Foudy Sports Leadership Academy for girls and the Julie Foudy Leadership Foundation, and television analyst for ESPN and other media outlets is an accomplished leader and inspirational force for girls and women in sports, and beyond. To me, she is in the mold of Billie Jean King, my childhood hero*. She sees sports as an opening to make the world more fair and more just. She’s just someone to admire.

But that’s not why I love her. At least not in total. I love Julie Foudy because she is funny. She is fun. Her podcast, Laughter Permitted, that she co-hosts with Lynn Olszowy, is at times snort-laugh-worthy. And her guests are a list of interesting women leaders from the sports world and more. I first listened to the podcast a couple years back, but my overall podcast listening has fallen off of late and I’d forgotten about it. But with the recent Women’s World Cup airing on some channel (FOX) that she’s not affiliated with, I found myself feeling like something was missing. It just didn’t seem like soccer without Julie, to me. And that’s when I googled and was reminded of the podcast! It was a goldmine of fun, hearing Julie and Lynn talk with so many of the 99ers. Just a hoot. And the bands. The stress-busting strength bands – I have adopted these into my own stress-relief routine. Thanks for the tip, Jules.

One feature of the podcast is called, “High, Low, Cheer,” an activity Julie says she did with her kids around the supper table, asking them to share a high (good thing), a low (not so great thing), and a cheer (a thanks to someone who supported/helped them) during that day. On the show, guests are asked to share these as they relate to their respective careers. I was thinking it’s a nice activity to add to these Friday blog posts (or at least my own Friday afternoon reflections on the week). So here goes:

High

In December of 2019, I was asked to serve on the National Library of Medicine (NLM) Board of Regents Public Service Working Group on ClinicalTrials.gov Modernization. That’s a mouthful. It was a one-year appointment, with the possibility of a second year. In February 2020, I traveled to Bethesda where the group met in person for the first (and last – thanks COVID) time. Dr. Francis Collins, the Director of the National Institutes of Health at the time came and met us. So did Dr. Patty Brennan, the Director of NLM. We met the ClinicalTrials.gov team, got our charge, and began the process of dreaming about what the modernization of such an important – but dated – resource would mean. It was a real honor to be asked to take part, particularly as I realized I was there to represent the medical/health sciences library community, as well as the patrons we serve (clinicians, biomedical researchers, patients, and caregivers). Today, 3-1/2 years later, we held our final meeting. It proved to be a bit longer of a commitment than anticipated and I didn’t get to travel to Bethesda regularly as I’d hoped, but the work we did as an advisory group was so interesting and so rewarding. When the new site launched earlier this summer, I felt pride in knowing I had the tiniest fingerprint on it. It’s a good feeling.

Lawrence A. Tabak, D.D.S., Ph.D., Acting Director of the National Institutes of Health, thanks the working group for their service.

Low

While I fortunately do not have longterm COVID in the physical sense, I’m certainly feeling the longterm effects of how much it changed my world. We work so differently today, scattered to the four-corners of our private worlds. I don’t see my colleagues every day – some I don’t see at all. And there seems a sense of us being adrift as a staff – lacking vision, leadership, focus, something. And it isn’t just my work place, not even just the library here at the medical school where I work. People in other departments have shared the same at times. As do friends and folks I know outside of work. It’s just this weird feeling, like people have just checked out. The political and social climate sure doesn’t help, either. Unmoored. That’s what it feels like to me. We’re all unmoored, drifting about, not quite sure what’s coming next. It brings me down sometimes, this week particularly so.

Cheer

I got TWO invitations this week to speak to early career and/or library school students over the next few weeks. I was first invited to be a guest speaker for the first members of the North Atlantic Health Sciences Libraries, Inc. (NAHSL) Health Sciences Librarianship Apprenticeship Program. This is such an innovative program and I’m delighted to get the chance to talk to the two apprentices in September. Shout-out cheers to Rachel Lerner (Quinnipiac University), Rebecca Morin (Tufts University), and Eugenia Opuda (University of New Hampshire) for leading this effort and thinking of me as someone to share some wisdom (or at least a laugh or two). It’s appreciated!

I was also invited to be part of a Collaboration and Leadership panel that will speak to students in the Data Services Professional Education (DSCPE) program at Simmons University’s Graduate School of Library Sciences. Along with 3 other leaders in our field, I’ll get to share my journey to leadership, some of the services we’ve developed and implemented here at my library, and how we partner and collaborate with other groups at the institution. I was invited by my former library director and boss, Elaine Martin. Elaine is one of the professors and directors of the DSCPE. She’s also fairly instrumental in my being where I am today, in terms of a career in research support, scholarly communications, and data services librarianship, since these services all began under her watch here at LSL. It’s nice to give back. Thanks for the ask, Elaine.

So that’s my “High, Low, Cheer” for the week. I hope it prompts you to reflect on the same for your past week. And if you need a good chuckle, check out that podcast because laughter is permitted there. Happy Friday!

*Billie Jean King is STILL my hero. I once did a job interview where I presented a “Top 10” of individuals who I’d like to be a personal librarian for (because everyone needs a personal librarian). BJK was numero uno.

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Take a Chance

18 Aug
Greg Neault, CC BY-SA 3.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0, via Wikimedia Commons

When I was around the age of 10 or 11, my family went on a summer vacation camping trip to Maine. We were a camping family and ventured a number of summers to Maine and the Maritimes of Canada. On this particular trip, we were staying somewhere near Millinocket, outside of Baxter State Park. My dad wanted to hike to the top of Mt. Katahdin, the highest peak in Maine and the northern terminus of the Appalachian Trail. My mom was not a hiker and my brother wasn’t up for it, so the two of them stayed and explored the Park while my dad and I set off to conquer the peak – me in my blue suede Adidas tennis shoes, shorts, and a “hang ten” short-sleeved sweatshirt. (Funny the things you remember.)

My dad was an avid backpacker and I’d been on many hikes with him before, so this wasn’t an unusual outing. But Mt. Katahdin is not an easy climb. It’s steep and it’s rocky AND in order to reach the summit, you have to cross a passage known as “Knife Edge”. It’s less than a mile, but it’s completely exposed and very narrow, with some points where there’s more than a 2,000 foot drop on either side. In a word, it’s scary. But I don’t ever remember being scared that day. I remember being focused, being in awe, and being exhilarated when we reached the other side – and eventually the summit. (I also remember crying on the way down as we were inundated with black flies!)

I think about this adventure and how accomplished I felt at taking it on. And I also wonder if I’d ever have the nerve to do it again, today, as a much more seasoned human being. But I did it then and I’ll always have that.

I’ve been thinking about taking on challenges lately. More accurately, I’ve been thinking about how I seem to keep encountering situations and attitudes and societal trends that leave me believing we’re living more in a time when we seek comfort over everything else. We do not wish to feel uncomfortable – worse, to be made to feel uncomfortable, by any circumstances. It angers and frustrates me, too, when the push to comfort is couched in the ideas of protecting children or paying attention to mental health or ensuring inclusivity or promoting equity. It angers me because these are really important matters – equity, inclusivity, mental health, children – and to hijack them for the sake of simply making sure one doesn’t feel uncomfortable lessens their importance. I believe.

I put together course materials and am advised not to make anything too long – not videos, not readings, not assignments. I’m told that I can’t have any live components because it’s an online class and you can’t ask everyone to tune in at the same time because they may have other things to do. Teachers can’t require their students to read material that may force them to think about things they disagree with. Students can’t be made to give class presentations because they can cause anxiety. Librarians can’t make book displays that upset anyone. In the course of history, the pendulum always swings from one extreme to another and it sure seems we’ve swung way over to the “shelter me” side right now.

During my time at Harvard’s Leadership Institute for Academic Librarians a few weeks back, we did a number of exercises to practice dealing with difficult things – uncomfortable things. I learned about taking small steps, breaking things down, practicing scary things in safe spaces. For instance, if I need to have a difficult conversation with someone I can run my script by a trusted source first for feedback. If talking to strangers is hard, I can just begin by making eye contact and saying “hello” to people I pass in the hall. If I disagree with someone, I can work through the issue with them, listening and sharing thoughts and arguments instead of sniping and hunkering in among everyone who thinks like I think. People can actually disagree and it not be some terribly bad thing.

I had the pleasure of speaking to some early career librarians yesterday about professional networking and I shared some thoughts I have on our need to be uncomfortable, at times, in order to be effective in our work. It comes with the territory. I cannot do my job hidden in my office. There are surely LOTS of stereotypes for librarians – shy, introverted, always reading books (glasses, cardigans, knitting, too). But I’m here to say that my work, and the work of the overwhelming majority of academic and health sciences librarians that I know, involves building relationships, reaching out to strangers, speaking in front of people, being political, advocating for your place at the table. In other words, things that may or may not be comfortable. And personally, I think this describes most of life. At least life as I’ve known it.

One of my favorite books to pick up when I’m feeling a little hopeless and/or out of touch (or more and more these days, old – as in “back in the day…” old), is Eleanor Roosevelt’s collection of essays, You Learn by Living: Eleven Keys for a More Fulfilling Life. My copy is dog-eared and highlighted, with notes in the margins. You need to read it within the context of the time it was written and the world in which Mrs. Roosevelt lived, but that doesn’t take away from the deep wisdom she offers. I’ve written before about my admiration for this book and Mrs. Roosevelt’s call to never stop being curious about life, to never stop learning. But I also treasure her reminder to never let fear of something keep us from trying. “You must do the thing you cannot do,” she reminds us. I believe that you must at least try.

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Inclusion is a VERB

4 Aug

What a couple of weeks it’s been! The Leadership Institute for Academic Librarians (LIAL) at Harvard’s Graduate School of Education was a learning experience the likes of which I’ve not encountered in some time. Gallos & Bolman’s Four Frames of Leadership, Immunity Mapping, Stakeholder Mapping, case studies galore, deep discussions on authentic leadership, organizational cultures that foster inclusion and engagement, culturally responsive leadership, decoding bias… and so much more. I had an amazing discussion group throughout the week that helped me work through my case study that I brought with me. I met colleagues from all over the world. I had instructors with such passion for teaching. It was such an amazing time. I left feeling more energized and enthusiastic for my work than I can remember.

THEN I had three fantastic days this week attending a workshop at FSCI 2023 on logic models. I came away from this experience with the beginnings of a plan for my department to help the university be prepared for the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy 2022 memorandum “Ensuring Free, Immediate, and Equitable Access to Federally Funded Research”, aka The Nelson Memo. And I learned about the cool tool Easy Retro. I think my team is going to love using it in our department planning!

And today I returned to my normal programming and spent a good part of the day engaged in a very interesting request from our Vice Provost for Research. I was stumped on part of it, but thanks to the community brain trust that is the Medical Library Association Scholarly Communications Caucus, I got a few great tips – one in particular that proved very helpful. So I learned something new today even without taking a class. Hah!

As I mentioned in the first paragraph, inclusion was a big theme at LIAL. It’s a big theme in libraries, in academia, in society right now, as it should be. We are very much focused on purposefully creating places and organizations where everyone feels a part, where everyone feels valued. I like to think I operate in this manner most of the time, but I learned tools and tricks to help me continue the work to be better here, because we all can always be better.

But here is where I’m frustrated. In a couple of my work roles (meaning my job roles and professional organization roles), I continue to hear the call for inclusion. People are still feeling left out. And so changes are made in how we do things and how we engage others. We reduce the barriers to make it easier for voices to be heard. We communicate in lots of different ways so that people won’t miss out. We say, “Please be a part of ___.” And crickets. Crickets, I tell you. I’m frustrated when we work so hard to be inclusive and yet no one seems to want to participate. Not even those who have been (again, rightly) calling for us to be inclusive. I am stumped by this.

And so I’ve come to believe that inclusion is a verb. It requires action by everyone. It requires accountability by all. If you want a seat at the table, a voice in the conversation, recognition for your work, or acknowledgement of your history, you need to take ownership of it and bring it on. When the welcoming table is set, it’s an invitation to join in. Please do.

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