[MUSIC_]
Do you need to say anything to us before we go or--
No, I don't think I do.
--do you want us to just drop in?
No, you can drop in.
All right.
No, I was just going to confess, that I took a bunch of notes yesterday so I would know what I was talking about.
This-- is an unusual interview because--
Isn't it?
--you guys are co-hosts, and now you're the interviewee. CHARLIE BENNETT: This is good, though. Now, we've recorded the cold open and we've broken the ice. You are listening to WREK Atlanta, and this is Lost in the Stacks-- The Research Library Rock'n'Roll Radio Show. I'm Charlie Bennett in the Virtual Studio with the whole gang-- Marlee Givens, Fred Rascoe, and Wendy Hagenmaier. Each week on Lost in the Stacks, we pick a theme, and then use it to create a mix of music and library talk.
Whichever you are here for, we hope you dig it. This episode is called, "Out of the Basement."
That's a real Halloweeney title. This is kind of interesting that you would bring this out now, Fred.
Yeah, well, we'll find out more about that soon. And well, this is kind of-- I'm looking at the script here. It says that Marlee is one of the guests.
This episode keeps getting more interesting. MARLEE GIVENS: Yeah, that's right. I am wearing two hats today-- producer and guest. And our other guest will clarify, which basement we're talking about. CHARLIE BENNETT: What is happening?
That would be friend of the show, Sonya Slutskaya, who is Head of Resource Description at Emory University Libraries. Charlie and I interviewed Marlee and Sonya about a new book they edited for ALA Editions called, Transforming Technical Services Through Training and Development. CHARLIE BENNETT: Our songs today are about revealing new knowledge that was hidden, getting folks to understand complicated things, and working together collaboratively. Don't those all sound great?
All of these themes fall under the job description of book editor. So let's start the music off with "Editor" by evelyn.is, right here on Lost in the Stacks.
[MUSIC - EVELYN.IS, "EDITOR"]
That was "Editor" by evelyn.is. This is Lost in the Stacks, and our guests today include one of our co-hosts. Marlee Givens and Sonya Slutskaya were the editors of the recently published book Transforming Technical Services Through Training and Development. We started our discussion with the title, itself.
The book title is a mouthful--
It is.
Transforming Technical Services Through Training and Development. Oh, nice cover. And because of what I know about work you all have done in the past here and elsewhere, I feel, like, the actual title was a little bit longer. Maybe, it was originally, You Really Ought to be Transforming Technical Services Through Training and Development.
This is actually the short version. No, it's based on the title of our presentation at ALA 2020, which started the Technical Services Learning Organization-- subtitle-- Transforming Technical Services Through Training and Development.
She really wanted "learning organization" in the title. I think, Marlee was very disappointed that the ALA said no to the learning organization. So we'll just have to write another book that's called, Learning Organization-- something, something.
I mean, one good thing is, at least one person, one of our chapter authors, actually used that phrase, so it does come up. It comes up in our introduction, and it also comes up in another chapter.
Sonya, did you want that long title too, or were you kind of trying to shorten it, while Marlee was trying to elongate it?
I am indifferent to titles, so I always let other people decide on the title. So it depends on who I work with. Some people like funny, smart titles and then we have that, and some like long academic titles and then we have that, but I'm the long academic title kind of person. So mine would have had three colons and I don't know how many words.
It is actually nice that they let us keep "transforming." I feel like that's kind of a bold statement.
What was the significance of that original extra bit of the title?
I think, it makes it conceptual because--
Right.
--it's just, let's do some training and move on with life. It's let's transform our environment so it becomes focused on learning as the center of what we do, not the after thought-- oh, yeah, need to learn new things because we have to do new things. So I still think, it's very important that we are talking about the learning organization, not about just training or importance of training.
Right. And I think that, that comes across in several of the chapters, where training is just a part of work. It's just, it's an expected thing, everyone does it together, people are given opportunities to train themselves, and that seems to be part of the recipe for success, in keeping up with trends and meeting challenges. CHARLIE BENNETT: Some of our listeners who are not academic librarians may not know just how technical services get marginalized in a lot of organizations.
Can you, very quickly, bring some of our folks up to speed on that? I don't know if, Sonya, if you want to talk? That's where you've spent most of your career. I don't know if you want to talk about it from that perspective? SONYA SLUTSKAYA: About how I feel marginalized most of the time. [INAUDIBLE],, I spend 100% of my time in the basement, that they call Ground Floor.
So it's not as bad because it's not all the basement, but objectively, our work-- the technical services work is taken for granted. Most people don't think how the books make their way on the shelf, or how records appear in the library catalog, or how electronic resources become available. To them, it just happens in their mind, so they're never conscious of people who have to do all this work, only conscious of them when something breaks.
But the work, of course, is very complex and requires a lot of effort and time and infrastructure. And this infrastructure is the most forgotten one because it's not sexy or funny or you don't even need it to be visible. So the most organizations would prefer that the patrons just show up and everything is pretty, and it works perfectly, and the patrons are not necessarily aware of how it's done. I know, I'm making it close, sorry.
No, and I think it also-- it just, seems like something that's hard to understand because it can be complex. There's a lot of standards and best practices that are followed. Catalogers have all these books they have to consult with the rules in them, and I think, it just gives the impression that it's more complicated or difficult or specialized or obscure than it actually is.
We'll be back with more from Marlee Givens and Sonya Slutskaya about transforming technical services after a music set.
File this set under Z688.6.u6t735.
[MUSIC - LUNAR VACATION, "THE BASEMENT"]
You just heard "The Basement," by Lunar Vacation. And we started our set with "Written in a Book," by The New Faves, songs about things that are hidden away and revealing them in a book.
[MUSIC - LUNAR VACATION, "THE BASEMENT"]
This is Lost in the Stacks, and we're talking about the new book, Transforming Technical Services Through Training and Development, edited by our very own Marlee Givens, along with our former colleague and frequent guest, Sonya Slutskaya.
Some of the chapter titles almost imply that some of the transformation that you want to put the technical services departments through is to change the culture to be more participatory.
That's such a big theme. Even in the chapters that don't have the word "culture" in the title, the idea of the culture-- the learning culture, the participatory culture, the positive culture-- introducing more of a social learning culture in this area, that just comes up throughout the book. And, I think, it's because, in many cases, our newest library management systems are integrated library systems. They are-- I mean, I just said the word "integrated."
They are more integrated, and people are-- people have to work together a lot more, I think, across the technical services network. So just to give a little bit of, what my husband calls, inside baseball-- the old library systems were separate modules. And if you wanted to do acquisitions, you logged into Acquisitions, and if you wanted to do cataloging, you logged into Cataloging and so on.
And now, the systems are just you log in and depending on what your role is, you may have access to multiple modules within one integrated system. So I think that people who work in technical services are finding that they're having to work together more with people across other departments. And the other thing is, as library staffs have shrunk over time, people are having to come into technical services from other areas or to do multiple jobs within technical services.
So yeah, there has been a cultural shift, alongside a technological shift.
But there is also an idea, I think, that's in the book, that we can learn from so many other areas. We can use library instruction and information literacy and business methodologies to make training more meaningful and more fun and more participatory and more involved. And we shouldn't limit ourselves to just, what's available to us in technical services when we decide on training or professional development.
I want to ask about the topics that you included in the book. So for people that haven't seen it, librarians submitted chapters to you, and you decided, as editors, what topics to include under this topic of transforming technical services. So I want to ask about how you included topics, but through the lens of-- Marlee, I know you, have worked with you. I know that you train in technical service, but you train in lots of different areas in librarianship.
And Sonya, I know that you have worked in technical services a long time and have headed technical services departments. So one side, Sonya, you're the technical services expert, maybe Marlee, you're the training expert. How did you kind of do that negotiation or dance of selecting topics that came in?
That's so funny that you say that because yeah, it really was a little bit of a dance. I was looking for a variety of training methods, instructional design methods, different theories being put into practice, and I think Sonya was looking for a variety of technical services context and also the various functional areas within technical services. Would you say that's true, Sonya?
Yeah, I agree, but also, I think, the idea that we had originally had to change a little bit as we were looking at the material we were receiving. And I think, we hoped that the book would be slightly more theoretical, that we will get more chapters that talk about learning theories and instructional design, but when we were looking at what we received, it became clear that what people want is practical approaches, something that they can take and apply in the environment.
So I think our focus, at some point, shifted to making it as practical as we can, so people can actually use curriculum and exercises and whatnot in the practical training situations. CHARLIE BENNETT: Were there any things in the chapters that you received and used or received and didn't use that kind of changed your sense of technical services? Did you get-- you said, you hoped for sort of one area of thought.
Did you, also, get new ideas about technical services from what people wanted to write about? I'd say, to me, absolutely. My biggest reason to do it was to learn things about technical services that I can't learn because everybody's job is just limited. And I'm stealing ideas up to this day and not telling the office of the [INAUDIBLE]..
Yeah. And I think what I would add to that is, I think, it ended up being more expansive than we were expecting. We ended up, just to give this particular example, we ended up including a chapter that was coming from someone who's not technically in technical services, someone who's in circulation. And we looked at what they were proposing, and we said, oh, this would absolutely work in the technical services environment, too. So we included that.
CHARLIE BENNETT: There's a chapter that I'm really interested in. It's "Future-proofing Staff Through Skill Development." Actually, "Looking Back to Move Forward-- Future-proofing Staff Through Skill Development." What is future-proofing staff? All right. I'm going to-- I have to look at this one a little bit.
This is-- this is a little bit about-- to give the context, this was written by someone who was new to the institution, who came in to manage the department, and was having to kind of figure out-- learn the ropes herself, and then was also put in a position of having to train the staff who were there.
And I think, it's just another way of-- because there's another chapter that's about, like, reactive and proactive, and I think it's about setting up the technical services staff to be more forward-thinking, whether it's things, like, succession planning, or having more flexibility, or just sort of adopting more of that culture of wanting to learn, because someone came in who had to learn and was learning alongside all the staff that she was managing.
And, I think, one of the big ideas in the book and that future-proofing is-- one way to describe that idea is that the importance of learning culture is that if we are comfortable learning, it doesn't matter how the technology will change, or if we migrate to a different system, or if we are reallocated to a different department. If we know how to learn, we are going to be successful in the variety of environments.
And it's specifically important in technical services just because there are so many changes. There are new cataloging rules, there are new library management systems, there are new God knows what else, so you have to learn all the time.
You're listening to Lost in the Stacks, and we'll be back with more from, well, me, and my partner in editing, Sonya, on the left side of the hour.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
Hey, this is David Lowery from Cracker & Camper Van Beethoven, and you are listening to Lost in the Stacks on WREK Atlanta. Cool.
Today's show is called "Out of the Basement." When we were interviewing Marlee and Sonya, we tried to get them to talk about what was frustrating or stressful about writing a book, kind of a pessimistic thing. Maybe, we should have known better.
[MUSIC - AUTOPILOT, "LOVE IS A PROCESS"]
It's a signal of the kind of people that they are, that they would instead focus on the positive, like in this excerpt.
I don't think it was bad at all. I thought, it would be a lot more stressful and difficult and kind of nerve-wracking, when it wasn't. My credit goes to Marlee. She made it fun for me. I mean, she--
Oh.
--she kept things on track. We would have regular meetings. She comes prepared. And so--
No, and likewise. I think, Sonya, you are-- I think, you have much higher reading comprehension skills than I do. You're just able to really, not just read what was submitted, but really kind of hang on to the main topic of the content, and what we needed to talk about.
And that is the perfect editorial duo. And having worked with both of them, we know that they are like that with any person or project they work with. OK, basking in the warm glow of that, let's file this set under PN162.W465.
[MUSIC - ANTHONY ADVERSE, "NOW LISTEN"]
That was "Now Listen," by Anthony Adverse and before that, "Love is a Process," by Autopilot, and we started off with, "They Don't Know," by Tracey Ullman, songs about trying to get others to understand something complicated.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
Welcome back to Lost in the Stacks. Today's episode is called "Out of the Basement" because that's where we're bringing technical services-- out of the basement-- with our guests Sonya Slutskaya and Marlee Givens. In the previous segment, we were talking about how change happens in library technical services. In this segment, we pick up talking about why change in those technical services might be scary to some in the profession.
Yeah, I think about how, if I decide to start teaching in a different way or I want to change up my strategy for choosing books for the public policy collection, I don't break anything. There's no danger of me making everyone else's teaching or everyone else's book choosing go haywire, but in technical services, if you play under the hood, if you change some process that you're doing or you change the software you're using or the platform or whatever, it can make everything break.
And that seems, like, maybe that's part of the reason that people avoid pushing, sort of avoid diving into innovation because moving fast and breaking things in the technical services department is disastrous, not innovative.
Yeah. I hear where you're coming from. It seems that way, but I think anyone-- and Sonya, you can speak for yourself-- but I think that anyone who comes into any technical services department from any other library will recognize some of the same past experiments or errors or whatever. I mean, there's always going to be something to fix.
I don't think, whether it's coming in and there's just a huge backlog, or you can tell that there was a period of time where someone didn't know what they were doing, or really they were operating under a different set of rules, and that's really, especially in academic libraries, the materials have been there long enough.
Things that we still have in the library, that we've had for 50 or 100 years, they were brought in under a totally different sort of mindset and set of rules, and we still have them. So there's always going to be something to fix, but it is true that's fine within one library, I think, but catalogers share with each other between institutions. So in that way, it's actually kind of neat because if someone is messing up, someone else can fix it.
So there's a lot of-- I mean, that's why the rules are there, so that people can share, and you can go from one library to another and find things in the same way.
Not to get you to play favorites or anything with the authors of your chapters, but what are some of the most interesting things that you learned when you got a submission and you thought, oh, man, I got to try this, or this sounds great?
Oh, just ask them what their favorite was, Fred.
OK, what's your favorite?
I don't-- I can tell you that I have a favorite thing from each chapter. I don;t know that I have a favorite chapter. Some of them were giving us, like, an overview of lots of different approaches.
Those were-- those are just great to read, just to see there's a variety of ways of doing things, and I think those are going to be really useful, but then there's also some chapters that are, like, this was how we did something for this particular metadata project, or there's a bunch of chapters that deal with migrating from another library management system to Alma-Primo, which a lot of them are about. So yeah, I just-- I feel, like, there's-- there's' something.
I did actually write down what my favorite parts of each chapter were. I don't have a favorite chapter, though. Do you, Sonya?
I don't know. I have the ones that were more useful to me professionally, just because they were more related to cataloging, but what I really liked was that sense of community. When you read the same things happen over and over again, all over the country, and we have some chapters from Canada as well.
And you start thinking, oh, I'm not crazy, I'm not the only one who gets upset about this or that, I'm not the only one who struggles with training and retaining students, or I'm not the only one who wants a community of people who are excited about metadata, and that gives you a really pleasant feeling. You learn so much on one hand. On the other hand, you feel like you are part of something that happens all the way across the United States and Canada.
Marlee, do you have a moral of the story that you took from this whole process?
Yeah, I do. I mean, it's going to be long, so bear with me. But one thing is, I think, a big lesson that I saw as a lesson learned from a lot of these chapters was that training really does have to be incorporated in the regular work, and there's different ways to do that. So a lot of chapters lean very heavy on documentation, and that's a big part of it. So writing documentation so that you can, not just do the work, but show someone else how to do the work, that's an integral part of training.
A lot of the success stories that we read involve the supervisors and managers getting involved and participating in the training themselves. And all of them were about bringing the group together around the shared goal of, we're going to learned something new so that we can be better at our job. And it doesn't really matter what approach you ultimately take, but building that culture around learning new things, that was the big lesson learned, I think.
CHARLIE BENNETT: Sonya, you're currently head of a technical services team. Are you going to make this book required reading? SONYA SLUTSKAYA: Oh, I'm actually head of resource description, which is a part of technical services, and I will not make the book required reading, but I will encourage everybody to write the book because my lesson is, it's actually kind of fun to work on a book. So I think people should try to experience it.
So my goal is to make sure that people on my staff who want to have time for some writing research or creative projects actually have time to do it because I believe it's fun. And also, the best part-- and you didn't ask about it, but I'm answering in advance-- the best part is actually putting the book together. When you have this chapters and at first, you're, like, yeah, all these pieces, what we're going to do to make it a book?
And then, you start playing with the pieces, and eventually it becomes a book. It stops being just chapters on different topics from different people. It becomes one thing, and it kind of develops a voice and the style, and I think that was a really fascinating process for me and very, I don't know, rewarding.
Our guests today were also our co-hosts. Weird, right? Marlee Givens is the Library Learning Consultant for the Georgia Tech Library, and Sonya Slutskaya is Head of Resource Description for Emory Libraries. And they'll be back to produce another episode together, soon. Maybe, they'll have a different guest that time.
Yeah.
[MUSIC - THE MOTHERS OF INVENTION, "HAPPY TOGETHER"]
File this set under LB1025.3.K625.
[MUSIC - STEVIE WONDER, "WE CAN WORK IT OUT"]
You just heard, "We Can Work It Out," the version by Stevie Wonder. And before that, "Happy Together," a version by The Mothers of Invention. Those were songs about making things work through collaboration.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
Today's episode of Lost in the Stacks is called, "Out of the Basement." Sonya and I thoroughly enjoyed talking about the book that we edited, Transforming Technical Services Through Training and Development." And, to be honest, I feel a bit transformed myself. This was my first time being interviewed since becoming part of the show crew, and it felt really different being on that side of the microphone. What has been a transformational experience for all of you this year?
OK. Well, can jump in, and I have to confess, this is a ridiculous transformation, but profound in its own way. The first thing that came to mind when you asked this, Marlee, was the insight of adding heavy cream to the Thanksgiving mac and cheese recipe, and it created this creamy texture like nothing I had ever experienced in the homemade mac and cheese. And it's all about the heavy cream. So it was transformational.
I love it. How about you, Charlie? CHARLIE BENNETT: I'm so delighted. Next thing you know, you're going to put a 1/2 a cup of sour cream in with your scrambled eggs. OK. My transformational experience was I got totally beat up in classrooms this semester, metaphorically. Coming back from Zoom classes and trying to teach kids in person who had been kind of virtual for several years, it was very hard, and it made me feel, like, a terrible teacher. And then, there was this moment.
Like, the week before, I was teaching a bunch of oil paintings, and the week after people were talking and asking me questions. And then, the professors started to ask me to teach other things that I had not built, yet. So I had this transformational catastrophe of teaching, which was really nice. It's not over, yet. We'll see what happens next year.
I think, mine's a little bit COVID-related, too. So my oldest son is 18, but he only got his driver's license this year just because of all the COVID craziness happening. So him getting a driver's license was something, but then he also got a job bussing tables at a Mexican restaurant, so seeing my son drive away from my house in my car was a really interesting feeling. I'm glad for him, but I also kind of felt, like, oh, I've reached that stage in my life, now. I'm that old, now.
That was a very profound experience for me. MARLEE GIVENS: Oh, the baby bird.
Oh, wow. Well, Fred, you're editing this episode today--
[MUSIC PLAYING]
--so you can find the melancholy music that's appropriate when we roll the credits. WENDY HAGENMAIER: Lost in the Stacks is a collaboration between WREK Atlanta and the Georgia Tech Library, written and produced by Charlie Bennett, Fred Rascoe, Marlee Givens, and Wendy Hagenmaier.
Today's show was edited and assembled by Fred, not in the basement, but someplace much more cozy and comfortable.
Legal counsel and a new box of red pencils were provided by the Burrus Intellectual Property Law Group in Atlanta, Georgia.
Special thanks to Sonya and Marlee for joining us today, for producing the episode, too. I don't even really what to thank you for, but I do to thank all of you, each and every one of you, for listening.
Find us online at lostinthestacks.org, and you can subscribe to our podcast, pretty much, anywhere you get your audio fix.
Next week's show is a rerun because there was a fire, and we'll be back with Hawaiian "LITS-mas" the week after, Is it December already?
I think so. Time for our last song today. A lot of our music today was specially requested by Marlee, and Marlee, as executive producer and editor of this episode, do you want to make the final selection?
Yes, I will wield my power. And I've talked before on this show about how nostalgic I am for The Monkees and since tomorrow, December 10, will mark one year since their guitarist Mike Nesmith passed away, I would like to make a request for his composition from the Head soundtrack, "Circle Sky."
You got it. This is "Circle Sky" by The Monkees on Lost in the Stacks. Have a great weekend, everybody.
[MUSIC - THE MONKEES, "CIRCLE SKY"]