The Business of Being a Librarian

Zehava Brickner | zbrickner@vera.org

As librarians, we’re not expected to know the answers, but we do know where and how to find the answers.

On Thursday, May 5, I attended an event at the Metropolitan New York Library Council (METRO) called “Suddenly Solo,” cosponsored by SLA-NY. The event was composed of a panel of solo librarians who spoke about their jobs as solos, the challenges that might arise and the pride they take in their work. As a solo librarian at the Vera Institute of Justice, I was particularly interested in hearing about the experiences of other solos and meeting other librarians in similar jobs. It’s sometimes difficult for us solo librarians to explain what we do because our jobs are without boundaries. Beyond performing all the tasks necessary to make our libraries function—which could normally take a staff of five or more to accomplish—staff often ask for our expertise on a variety of projects. And because we stand alone in our job title—and maybe even within our departments—we must establish a vision and set all the priorities for our libraries.

Given the near endless possibilities for our position, solo librarians are often natural born leaders and, in a sense, entrepreneurs. We must treat specific aspects of the day-to-day operations like a business. The following are strategies that I enforce daily to effectively run Vera’s Louis Schweitzer Library:

1. Communicate: As the only librarian or information management professional on staff, I am often inundated with requests from staff members. These requests are made in person and via e-mail and telephone. Sometimes they are quick reference style questions that can be answered on the spot and checked off my to-do list. Other times, they are more in-depth queries requiring some digging, searching, and research by me. I try to be open about my schedule. When I have a lot of requests (on top of the regular library work), I ask staff for a deadline or time to fulfill the request. Surprisingly often, the request is not an urgent matter and it can be done a few days after the request is made. Depending on the nature of your work, not everything needs an immediate turnaround. Instead, try to keep the lines of communication open so you can meet staff requests while balancing your regular workload.
2. Be honest: Sometimes staff members will request something that I have never handled or that I don’t know how to answer. Personally, I like the challenge and it makes me even more eager to help, but even librarians get stumped. If I don’t know the answer, I usually say, “I don’t know but I will find out for you.” As librarians, we’re not expected to know the answers, but we do know where and how to find the answers. Staff members appreciate the honesty and no doubt appreciate the dedication to helping them.
3. Take initiative: Librarians have specific job requirements, but the nature of the work is limitless. Encourage people to seek assistance from you, keep your door open, and promote your resources by reminding staff that you are available. I try to always make myself available to the entire staff of the Vera Institute, especially by orienting new staff members. I arrange a meeting with new staff members, which often happens after I meet them in the elevator or am introduced to them as they get a tour of the facility. If you are aware of a specific project, offer your expertise. Whether it’s suggesting a bibliographic training to staff working on literature reviews or directing staff to proper resources, the objective is the same: market yourself.
4. Make yourself invaluable: By taking initiative and marketing yourself, staff will view you as an essential staff member. By completing assignments on time and answering questions with relevant and useful results, you make your role significant and solidify your position. Not only will staff consult with you more often, but “returning customers” are a good way to gauge how vital you are within your organization or company. I take advantage of our Institute’s Intranet blog to remind staff of the library resources that are available and post links to webinars and free limited access sources.
5. Know your resources: Resources, of course, include useful databases and websites, but resources may also be people. Get to know everyone in your organization and the roles they play. Because our jobs are without boundaries, people often think that everything falls on the library! By staying in touch with everyone on staff, you’ll know when to tackle a request yourself and when to refer staff to others within your organization. A staff member might ask me something to which I respond, “Ask so-and-so in communications,” and I’m still directing staff to the appropriate resource.

If you are interested in becoming a member of a local interest group for solo librarians, please contact Tom Nielson (tnielson@metro.org).

Zehava Brickner is a solo librarian at the Vera Institute of Justice. She holds an MLS from the Graduate School for Library and Information Studies at Queens College and is interested in folksonomies and exploring issues of copyright, user rights, and access to information. She continues to be fascinated by bibliographic citation managers and enjoys teaching people how to use them.

Tracking Down the Contents of the Port Authority Library

Anthony W. Robins | http://www.linkedin.com/in/anthonyrobins

Anthony W. Robins, who spent 20 years on the staff of the New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission (Deputy Director of Research, then Director of Survey), is an historian specializing in New York City history and architecture. Today he writes, lectures, teaches (Columbia and NYU) and leads walking tours – always on the subject of the city’s buildings and neighborhoods. He is currently preparing a new edition of his 1987 book about the architecture and planning of the World Trade Center.

Back in the 1980s, I wrote a short book on the architecture and planning of the World Trade Center. Fortunately for me, the Port Authority of New York & New Jersey, the quasi-governmental agency that built and operated the Trade Center, had organized and catalogued an enormous amount of printed material about the Center’s construction. I spent many months in the Authority’s library, poring over documents.

The library occupied space on the 55th floor of Tower One, reached by the Trade Center’s extraordinary local and express elevator system. I can still remember what it felt like to zoom up in the express elevator – it could be an ear-popping experience. The library was a lovely space, well lit, comfortable, with spectacular views. Its only discomfiting aspect was the creaking of the walls, perhaps caused by the tower’s swaying slightly in the wind. The librarians – lovely and extremely helpful – made available all kinds of material, from promotional brochures to press releases to telegrams to internal discussion documents to endless newspaper and periodical clippings. They also permitted me (though I suspect this had to be cleared at higher levels) to make copies of much of the material. I couldn’t have written the book without their help.

In 1995, the Port Authority’s leadership changed, and the new executive director, in cost-cutting mode, closed the library. Not long afterward, I spoke with a couple of people at the Port Authority – all of them uniformly dismayed at the library’s closing – and they suggested that perhaps I now had the only set of copies of archival material regarding the Trade Center’s construction. That seemed unlikely – how could such an archive just be thrown out? If the library had been disbanded, perhaps it had been acquired by another library, or perhaps it was in deep storage somewhere. So when, earlier this year, I began planning a new edition of the book, I tried to learn the collection’s fate. It took some doing, but thanks to the members of the SLA I did eventually find the answer.

Turning first to the web, I came across an article by a library student at Kent State University, according to which nobody knew what happened to the Port Authority library. That sounded distinctly unlikely – given the thousands of people working at the Port Authority, somebody must have known. I’d heard that some of the papers of the World Trade Institute had been acquired from the Port Authority by Pace University. So I called the Pace library to inquire if by chance they had also acquired the Port Authority library. Unfortunately – as Michelle Fanelli, part-time reference librarian at Pace, explained – while the university had indeed acquired the Institute (which remained on-site at the Trade Center), it hadn’t also acquired the library. She then suggested that I try the discussion list of the New York Chapter of the Special Libraries Association. And that’s when I discovered the power of networking within the library community.

After joining the SLA discussion list and posting a question, I received close to two dozen responses. These included the names of former staff of the Port Authority library; accounts of people who'd tried to find the library and been unsuccessful; suggestions for other libraries that might have acquired the material; and even a request from an employee of a law firm involved in WTC-related litigation to pass on the information if I found it.

One SLA member passed on the request to an engineer who had worked at the Port Authority for 20 years. The engineer wrote:

I can ask around, but from what I recall all the material was basically up for grabs for whoever wanted it. I know in Engineering we grabbed some stuff. The Planning Department and some of the other Line Departments may also have some stuff. It was a sad day when they disbanded the library.

Melinda Gottlieb, Chief Librarian of the Staten Island Advance, sent the following:

According to a 2002 article from Archaeology, "Cultural Loss in Lower Manhattan" by Colleen P. Popson, the Port Authority archives were still housed at the World Trade Center and were lost in the 9/11 attacks. The good news: “Found beneath Tower One were portions of the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey's historical pictorial archive, which documents the last 80 years of the metropolitan transportation system."

Another member asked a friend, formerly an employee of the Port Authority library, who sent this response:

If memory serves, the Port Authority attempted to sell the collection to many places but was unsuccessful. The library was quite large, 75,000 volumes, with three full-time reference librarians. I believe we had a total staff of 10 or 12. Our transportation and world trade subject concentrations were impressive. We also held most of the original blueprints and other materials related to the building of the New York-New Jersey bridges and tunnels, and the Trade Center itself. In addition, we had the original Compact [creating the Port Authority] signed by New York and New Jersey in 1921.

Jane Minotti, librarian at the Research Library of the New York State Department of Transportation, passed on the request to Carol Paszamant, librarian at the Research Library of the New Jersey Department of Transportation (both are members of the SLA Transportation Division). Ms. Paszamant reported this remarkable story:

In 2001 the Port Authority invited a bunch of libraries, including Rutgers, the New Jersey Institute of Technology, SUNY-Maritime, and New Jersey DOT, to meet to discuss the splitting up and sharing of the Port Authority Library's collection [which] had previously been packed up and [stored] in the fourth sub-basement of the World Trade Center. Some of their most important documents had gone to an office in Queens instead of to the sub-basement. We had all met a couple of times at the Port Authority's offices in Newark, NJ to discuss how we would split up the collection, and at one point, they supplied each of us with a CD containing the metadata of the library's holdings. We had been scheduled to return on September 11th, but the meeting was postponed ahead of time. Needless to say, we all know what happened that day, and the collection was destroyed with the rest of the WTC.

Finally, a former librarian at the Port Authority passed on my request to the PR folks there, who sent the official response:

The Port Authority Library was closed in 1995 by Executive Director George Marlin as part of a broader focus on the agency's transportation mission that resulted in a downsizing of the agency. As to the collection, the short answer is much of the collection was a victim of September 11. Some items in the collection went to individual libraries -- but not in bulk -- and the balance was being stored in a cage on the B-4 subgrade.

In summary, the library once held some 75,000 volumes, tended by three full-time reference librarians, with extensive holdings on transportation and world trade, as well as original blueprints of bridges and tunnels and, of course, documents about the history of the Trade Center itself. In 1995, under a new administration, the Port Authority closed the library as a cost-saving measure. It was packed up and stored in a basement area at the site. Some parts of the collection were rescued by interested Port Authority employees, and if those documents were taken off-site, perhaps they still exist somewhere. An effort in 2001 to split up the collection among other libraries would have secured the rest of the collection, but that, unfortunately, hadn't yet happened by September 11 of that year. So the bulk of the collection, in the basement area, was destroyed during the disaster.

The account of the hunt, as it originally appeared on the SLA discussion list, has been picked up in several blogs, including an entry – posted by a student at Pratt Institute’s School of Information and Library Science – in a blog called “Free Government Information (FHI).” That blog entry has in turn been picked up by several other sites.

It appears that my file drawer full of copies of documents from the library may, after all, really be the only surviving set of World Trade Center documents from the Port Authority archives. I’m planning to scan and include as many of them as possible in an appendix in the new edition of the book. Because this is a self-publishing venture in the brave new world of POD and e-books, I have more latitude to include such things than might have been possible with a traditional publisher. With luck, the book will come out sometime in 2011.

Thanks, again, to all the members of the SLA who sent suggestions and information!

The New Orleans Public Library Five Years After Katrina: Progress and Perspective

Charles J. Lowry | clowry@fastcase.com

© New Orleans Public Library

Five years ago, when the winds of Hurricane Katrina sent the waters of Lake Pontchartrain and the Industrial Canal overtopping the levees, all areas and segments of New Orleans suffered. In a city where the educational and cultural milieu traditionally had several distinct layers, it is not surprising that the New Orleans Public Library suffered in various ways and in varying degrees. The immediate effect on the library was difficult enough. Of the thirteen branches, eight were rendered completely unusable and unable to reopen. Books were destroyed, facilities under water, surrounding communities scattered and devastated. More than 300,000 books, CDs and other items were destroyed, almost half of the total collection. In a city chronically short of money, the prospects were not good for the library. The tax base was so thoroughly undermined by the destruction that by the time the Loyola Avenue main library reopened, two months after Katrina, the city had already laid off 196 of the library’s 217 employees.

The news was not all terrible, by the way: the library’s archives and rare documents were held in below-ground storage, eighteen feet below the main library. Incredibly, the anti-flood works held, and the priceless collection was unharmed. These materials included slave ship manifests and logs, the official records of the City of New Orleans from 1769 onward and special music and Mardi Gras collections dealing with New Orleans history and culture.

It was a particularly joyless Halloween which saw the reopening of the library in 2005, just about two months after Katrina. Most of the population of New Orleans was still scattered. Nurses, firefighters and police officers were living in houseboats on the River. Restaurants, museums, movie theaters, hospitals, dental clinics, dry cleaners and retail outlets were closed. City services were spotty in some neighborhoods, non-existent in others, public utilities were being restored only block by block, and there was no local telephone service—not a big deal, you might say, until you stop to think of the impact on credit card acceptance. It was in such a city that the library reopened, with a small staff and a precious gift to New Orleans: wireless! Because of staffing, safety and logistical concerns, only the main library on Loyola Avenue was open, with very limited hours, 10 a.m.-3 p.m.

During that first week, there were very few traditional research and borrowing users for the library. A few books were returned from borrowers who had been able to get back to New Orleans after the storm. By far the greatest and most practical use of the library was computer-related. Lines formed before the library opened and continued all day for the terminals in the computer room, about twenty computers available for e-mail and web surfing. The much-reduced professional staff was engaged largely in damage assessment and strategic planning, very much impeded by financial uncertainty.

How much progress has been made in five years? Much is evident, and much remains to be done. Employee count in five years has crept up to approximately 170, about 20% less than pre-Katrina levels, though for a city with a population about 35% smaller than in 2005. The general recovery in New Orleans has continued, slowly but demonstrably. Population has inched back up over 350,000, from a total of just under 500,000 before the storm (see the excellent summary in the New Orleans Master Plan. Thirteen branches are open again and serving their communities. Five temporary facilities exist, generally in trailers, at various locations throughout city neighborhoods. These five temporary locations will soon be served by new facilities, underwritten by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and expedited under the Design-Build program, which shortens the time period for planning, review and construction in post-Katrina New Orleans. Parenthetically, a simply search of the Gates Foundation site will offer impressive and welcome testimony of what the Foundation has done for the Gulf Coast in general and New Orleans in particular after Katrina.

Library funding proved to be difficult during the post-Katrina years. The library operating budget was just over $7,500,000 in 2004, pre-Katrina. The city spent $6,000,000 on the library in 2005, the year in which Katrina could almost be said to have knocked a third of the city’s year away. The worst year was 2006, where the library operating budget fell to under $2,500,000. The budget has incrementally been restored to pre-Katrina levels in the subsequent years, equaling the 2004 budget in 2009 and actually slightly surpassing it in 2010.

The library, under the imaginative and dedicated lead of chairman—and well-known New Orleans musician—Irvin Mayfield, has a twenty-year master plan. By 2030, the library hopes to have upgraded or rebuilt all the branches damaged by Katrina, at a cost of $200,000,000. The library board imagines an operating budget of approximately $16,000,000 per year, about twice the current operating budget. To do that will require a combination of public and private resources that extends beyond what has up to now ever been available. Still, the library board is hopeful. The outpouring of support from both foundations and individuals—including thousands of librarians—has convinced the board that its goals are possible and has energized the board to pursue them. And all of us can help, in various ways. Here is the link to the donation site that can make us all part of one of the greatest recovery projects in library history: http://www.noplf.org/Donate.html

Let us close with two thoughts. One is from a Valerie Martin novel which well expresses the views of many who love New Orleans, especially poignant sentiments in the aftermath of Katrina. The other expresses the feelings at this time of year of all decent people:

* It is an odd sensation to recognize in oneself the need to be in a particular physical environment, when one longs for the home ground no matter how terrible the memories it holds, no matter how great the efforts to leave it behind. So I have left this city again and again and thought myself lucky to escape its allure… Where else could I find these hateful, humid, murderously hot afternoons when I know that the past was a series of great mistakes, the greatest being the inability to live anywhere besides this swamp?... I don't think I will leave the city again.

…[L]ife is not intolerable. Our city is an island, physically and psychologically; we are tied to the rest of the country only by our own endeavor. The river from which we drink drains a continent; it has to be purified for days before we can stomach it. We smile to ourselves when people from more fashionable centers find us provincial, for if we are free of one thing, it's fashion. The future holds a simple promise. We are well below sea level, and inundation is inevitable. We are content, now, to have our heads above water.

* Geaux Saints!

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Chuck Lowry is a sales representative for Fastcase and a long-time SLA member. Even when he is daydreaming in his beloved New Orleans, he can be reached at clowry@fastcase.com.

The American Numismatic Society Library

Elizabeth Hahn | hahn@numismatics.org | http://www.numismatics.org/Library

"How much is this coin I found worth?" "What is the oldest/most valuable coin in your collections?" "How can I find out more about ancient Greek coinage?" "Does your collection also have stamps?" "What exactly is 'numismatics'?"

These are some of the many reference questions that arrive daily in the inbox and voicemail of the American Numismatic Society Library. Located in a large building on the corner of Varick and Canal Streets, the American Numismatic Society (ANS) is home to a collection of some 800,000 coins and related objects and more than 100,000 library items. The word "numismatic" is best described in the Society's mission, which is to create and maintain "the preeminent national institution advancing the study and public appreciation of coins, currency, medals, orders and decorations, and related objects of all cultures as historical and artistic documents and artifacts; by maintaining the foremost numismatic collection, museum, and library…" (And as a result, this does not include stamps, which is left to the world of philately).