Mentored for the morning

Yesterday morning I attended a "flash mentoring" session at the office of my local library system. The event was billed as kind of a speed-dating approach to mentoring, in that we were matched up and spent a relatively short period of time together (2 hours) with no further commitment.

I was a little skeptical going in because I was matched with a corporate librarian working in an industrial setting, despite the fact that I loaded the questionnaire I filled out with references to teaching and academia. To be honest, though, I think she and I were the only non public librarians there, so I guess I was lucky there was anyone to match me with at all.

Regardless, she turned out to be a great "date"--very enthusiastic and with lots of great advice and some very relevant experience. She started her library from scratch and built it into a multi-campus department with a staff of 5 or 6 and some really innovative programs and services. She also does quite a bit of training that's really not all that different than what I do with the students and faculty.

She gave me some good suggestions about professional organizations to join and opportunities for writing and speaking. She said I seemed like a real "go getter" and that she could see a lot of areas where I could be innovative and make big changes where I'm at, rather than thinking of it as a bit of a dead-end job (since there really isn't any way for me to move "up" in the sense of promotions or that sort of thing).

I left feeling excited about my job again, which was nice, since I've been very discouraged lately. I was looking forward to the slow pace of summer, but in practice, it's not much fun. It's really hard to be motivated when there's no one around and no looming deadlines. I'm ready for things to be busy and hectic again, even if it means dealing with small-scale copier-induced mutinies.

My mentor-for-the-day also gave me a few pieces of advice of the cliched-but-true variety. One was to not be intimidated by my administration--that no one else there has my expertise. The other was that "it's easier to ask forgiveness than to ask permission." Both struck a chord with me because my institution is so micromanaged that I feel like I have to have my boss sign off on the smallest changes I make, despite the fact that anyone above me really pays that much attention to what I do.

Case in point: when I did a library satisfaction survey at the end of the spring semester, I was amazed at how many students requested more leisure reading materials (eg, fiction, graphic novels). One of the quirks of our collection is that we already have a disproportionate amount of that stuff because people have donated it (the accounting assistant brings me romance novels and mysteries when she's done with them so she doesn't have to lug them home on the train). But because of the way our collection is arranged, no one knows they're there. I proposed moving them to a separate section and creating a popular reading collection--and I'm still waiting for an OK. But do I really need one? Will my boss even notice? Since it won't cost the school a dime and won't affect the curriculum at all, I might as well find out.

I still haven't heard anything about whether I'll be allowed to teach a section of the freshman seminar, and some pretty dramatic changes in the course schedule for this fall are putting my book club and library skills workshop plans in doubt. I've got a month to kill before classes officially begin again, so I guess I might as well be a little subversive and see what happens. I doubt they'll fire me for rearranging some books.