Jason W. Dean

One of the joys of our new home is reading. I’ve read two lengthy nonfiction books since we moved in – and that is with the work we have done to get everything in the house usable and accessible. Just about the time we were moving in, I heard a piece on Fresh Air on NPR about habits and how we form them. According to the author, the times when we can form new habits are times of major change – birth of a child, or moving. With this in mind, I have been making a special effort to create a reading habit in our new home.

My love of reading is no surprise to you I am sure, but these efforts come from my summer reading several years ago. My grandparents lived in a small town in southern Indiana with a population of 2,000 and I spent two summers there while I was finishing my undergraduate degree. One summer I read all three of Robert Caro’s books on Lyndon Johnson. It seems idyllic now – a comfortable chair and few distractions reading interesting and challenging material. Of course, in the interest of full disclosure, Fayetteville has many more entertainment options than Rockport with dial-up internet and tv selections made by my grandparents.

Jen has been doing a great deal of work on her two term papers for her classes this semester, and this has provided me with forced quiet time. There are so many distractions – phones, computers, iPads – that having a time when I need to be still and quiet to let Jen work has been a great boon to my reading habits. It’s usually during these two (or so) hours a night that I read.

An integral part of my reading is having a good chair to read in. The chair (above) that I usually sit in and read I bought before Jen and I got married for that express purpose – reading in – but it rarely got used. I usually read in bed, despite hearing that that is a bad habit to be in for good sleep patterns. However, the two levels in our home helped to solve that – I now read downstairs and sleep upstairs. The chair is facing our bookshelves, which provides a nice (but not distracting) background against which I can read. Jen can speak to my problems with attention and TVs at restaurants – but that could be another post.

Our home was built to be as energy efficient as possible, and so is well-insulated with six inch thick walls (normal walls are four inches thick). This added insulation helps to dampen sounds from outside when needed. We also have windows that we open in the evenings (especially with this lovely spring we have been enjoying) so we can hear the crickets and Cosby “talking” with the group of neighborhood cats we have.

When I take a break from reading, I look up at our books on their shelves and think about our moving, unpacking, and organizing our library. Our library is a reflection of Jen and me as individuals, and as a couple. I can connect certain memories and events to some of our books (like my Lincoln anthology with Maine, or the Caro books to Indiana) and how the books are arranged on our shelves to their significance and their context.

Our library is modest – about 300 titles, but very meaningful. I think our books are a reflection both of who we are, and who we want to be. As usual, Alberto Manguel says this better than I:

We can imagine the books we’d like to read, even if they have not yet been written, and we can imagine libraries full of books we would like to possess, even if they are well beyond our reach, because we enjoy dreaming up a library that reflects every one of our interests and every one of our foibles–a library that, in its variety and complexity, fully reflects the reader we are.

By my count, it has been a bit over a month since posting here at The Dean Files, and it’s nice to be back. My hiatus was prompted by Jen and I buying and moving into our first home in Fayetteville, Arkansas. I know Jen will want to tell you all about that, but here’s a photo from a couple of weeks ago of our new living room:

On my commute into work today, I was listening to a story about The New Republic on Morning Edition. Chris Hughes, one of the founders of Facebook purchased that nearly century-old magazine, and hopes to use it to re inspire reading long-form writing and journalism. A couple of things piqued my interest that he mentioned. Hughes seems to think that there is a real lack of that kind of reporting out there, and that The New Republic will be one of a few in a vastly under served market. Also, that tablet computers are the best new way to consume long-form writing.

His implication that his newly purchased magazine will fill a void of long-form, insightful writing and journalism just does not hold water. I subscribe to two paragons of this genre – The New Yorker, and The New York Review of Books. It’s all I can do to keep up with these two, but I am tempted by the wiles of Mother Jones, The Atlantic, and Harper’s about every three months. Those are five magazines that regularly publish long-form works that I can name off the top of my head, and I am sure there are many more out there. I am curious to see how TNR will establish itself in a niche that is already fairly full.

However, what bothered me more than Hughes’ assertion that TNR will be the only publication in this niche was his statement that the tablet is uniquely well-suited to reading long-form periodical writing. It makes little difference to me what people choose to read from – a book, a Nook, an iPad, or a Kindle, but making this statement with Hughes’ reasoning bothered me. This was his reasoning:

And he sees a growing ability to connect long-form journalism to digital users, thanks to tablets that allow users to “pause, linger, read and process very important ideas.”

As someone who has used a tablet to read long-form journalism, I take strong objection to this argument. Indeed, in an article published this week in The New York Times, some cogent and insightful thoughts were shared on just this very topic – reading on a tablet/ereader. To quote from that article:

Can you concentrate on Flaubert when Facebook is only a swipe away, or give your true devotion to Mr. Darcy while Twitter beckons?

People who read e-books on tablets like the iPad are realizing that while a book in print or on a black-and-white Kindle is straightforward and immersive, a tablet offers a menu of distractions that can fragment the reading experience, or stop it in its tracks.

As someone who has used both – I really still prefer the print version of a magazine for long-form journalism and writing. I read the Times on my iPhone in the mornings, but for anything longer than that, I think that the print version just cannot be beat. I think my coworkers ask for my read copies of The New Yorker and The New York Review of Books for that same reason – to read in print that which (for the most part) can be accessed online or in tablet format.

Readers, this is my final post for the Library Day in the Life, Round 8 project. As you can imagine, Friday was a day with all sorts of different tasks to accomplish, and I have even included some more photos as it’s Friday.

As usual, I turned on a few of the computers for the staff as I walked in and went and got settled in my office. The library director handed me a few new books I needed to invoice and mark as received in our ILS. I mentioned in the first couple of posts this week that I have been working with a new acquisitions workflow, and it seems to be going well, with a modicum of tweaking and adjustment. I also checked our funds in the ILS to make sure things were running there as they should, and indeed they were. Using this system gives us item by item tracking, which is really great. I also cataloged a couple of new acquisitions.

Some of our rare and framed items arrived at the museum today, and so I needed to move those items from the library into our secure collection storage area. I always love doing this, because I get to make sure all the items that are down there are where they are supposed to be, and doing well. Unfortunately, I cannot say much beyond that – but it’s certainly one of the perks of my job!

Friday is the day I deal with our “Needs Attention” shelf – the items that come back to me after a problem arises with the item and the catalog. Usually, it’s an issue of a record that just did not load properly, and sometimes the problem is a bit more complex. Today I had a multi-volume set that did not have barcodes and labels for each item in the set – just the first volume. So I took the time to barcode and label each volume, creating an item record for each volume. Here’s the result:

It takes a while to do these sets, and so I just correct them as they come across my desk. I also corrected any issues with the other “Needs Attention” books, so that’s clear again!

Our volunteers came in, and covered 19 hardcover books with mylar. They are extremely good at this, so I save all our dust jackets for them! I helped them get settled and checked in on them from time to time. Because they were both covering books, I sat at the reference desk for the quietest shift I have ever had here. I cataloged a book from our backlog that a curator requested and checked our funds again to make sure everything is posting as it should.

After our volunteers left, I moved the books they covered out and integrated them into our new books area I talked about earlier this week.

Friday is also the day that I check our reflection areas, which are seating areas with books and iPads. Here’s a photo of my favorite one:

Basically, I straighten the books and check the iPads. It’s also a great time to see the art in the building. For example, here is our recently installed Claes Oldenburg:

And, simply because it was raining outside, here’s a photo of the rain coming off the roof of the restaurant:

And that’s it folks. I hope you are having a great Friday!

I am a day late on this, the fourth installment of my Library Day in the Life project this week. It was a busy day yesterday, and I am excited to tell you about it. I am slightly altering my list format from last time, and I will try to include approximate times.

• 9:00-11:00 AM – As part of our consortial arrangement with the University of Arkansas, I serve on a few committees, one of which is the Innovative Review Committee. I really love being involved with the University and being able to gain knowledge of a large academic library by being integrally involved in their work. They are great people, and I always feel as though I learn so much from them.
• 11:00 AM-12:00 PM – Lunch with my wife! Yay!
• 12:00-12:30 PM – Return to the office.
• 12:30-1:00 PM – When I was at my meeting, a staff member sent me some questions about an item that was displaying some odd information in the catalog. I had to go into our ILS and look at the record to see what was going on with it. It was just on order – but remember that new acquisitions process? Yeah, that was the reason for the odd display. I talked to her, and set up a notify message for when it’s cataloged so she can be the first to check it out!
• 1:00-2:30 PM – Assist our library volunteers with shelving and other questions they have.
• 2:30-4:00 PM – A group of library managers from the Fayetteville Public Library came for a library tour. The library director and I showed them around. It was also a great opportunity to talk to some of my colleagues there about the presentation I am working on for them in March.
• 4:00-5:00 PM – Return emails and voicemails.

I felt as though I got a lot accomplished, and it’s Friday tomorrow!

Well, it’s my third post this week of Library Day in the Life and today has by far been the busiest for me. And, rather than some repetitive narrative for my day, how about a list to change things up.

• I had to call Syracuse to get copies of my transcript. More to follow on this later.
• Turned on the computers for employees to use (and a few did later on).
• Had a brief conversation about things ahead with the library director.
• We are trying our new acquisitions workflow, so I needed to test some things and do some research before I moved some new books through the system.
• I cataloged 2 gifts to the library, both of which were copy records.
• I then cataloged the new acquisitions and took notes about the workflow. Needs some tweaking, but the system is workable!
• Moved the new books (books I cataloged in the last month) out into the main stacks for browsing. Here’s a photo!

• Greeted our volunteer for the morning, answered her questions, and helped her check in many books.
• A colleague at the University alerted me to a problem we were having with circulation and our patrons, and I worked with him to get this solved.
• Had researchers ask for books on two specific female artists. Required some after the fact tweaking in the catalog, but the books were found and are now in the catalog.
• Another staff member asked us to generate a report on the value of items that met certain criteria in the library collection. This was really challenging, and required all of my searching tools to get the results back from the database. I also needed to send this information as an Excel spreadsheet – which was done after some research on the best way to get the data out of our ILS and into Excel.

Busy day, but I feel as though I was productive and wore lots of hats today – always fun! Check back tomorrow!

As I stated yesterday, I am participating in Library Day in the Life, Round 8. Today is much more quiet than yesterday, as Tuesday is our “dark day” at the museum. This provided me an opportunity to do something a bit different with my day today.

Just as I was walking in this morning, one of the folks from our cleaning crew asked what exactly I did, and why my office is card-access. I told her very briefly what I do as a cataloger, and what my other duties are. I also explained to her why my office is locked. After I told her, she said that I must have one of the coolest jobs in the museum, and I cannot really argue with that. Nice to hear it from someone else, though! Afterwards, I wrote my first letter for the Month of Letters challenge and began searching the catalog and compiling a list of books I might want to look at for my presentation.

I am giving a lecture/presentation on March 11th at the Fayetteville Public Library about the museum, the library, and our collection of color plate books, with special emphasis on books from that collection that pertain to the Civil War. It is slated to be between 30 and 45 minutes, with a question and answer time to follow. This is the longest formal talk I have given since I was in the classroom, and so I have some background and refresher reading and research to do.

While I was pulling books from the stacks, I ran into several books by a colleague of mine, who (it dawned on me) is an expert on topics that pertain directly to my presentation. I stopped, and wrote him a letter asking for some advice to help with the presentation. It was a nice opportunity to say hello as well.

Afterwards, I moved to the other part of my desk (without a computer on it) and started reading and taking notes for my lecture. As we are closed to the public today, this was really a great opportunity to research and refresh myself on what is one of my favorite topics. I took several pages of notes, and my reading helped me to begin forming an outline for my accompanying slideshow.

After lunch, I came back and started work on an accompanying bibliography for the presentation – mostly on books that cover color printing in the Americas, but also for references for example books I will use in my presentation from our collection. I also began my search for public-domain scans or digital reproductions of these works to use in the presentation, as we do not have facilities to digitize rare books on-site. I am beginning to be excited about the presentation, and so if you are in the area, feel free to come and check it out!

Well, readers, from now until the Friday, I am doing my best to participate in the Library Day in the Life, Round 8.

Here’s the brief about the project, taken from their website:

The Library Day in the Life Project is a semi-annual event coordinated by Bobbi Newman of Librarian by Day. Twice a year librarians, library staff and library students from all over the globe share a day (or week) in their life through blog posts, photos, video and Twitter updates.

I am sharing the work week with you, readers, so hold on and enjoy.

I arrived at work at 7:30 and turned on the computers in the library. Several staff members don’t have computer access at home, so we like to have the computers on and ready to go if they come into work early to use the computers. I checked my work email (something I rarely do on the weekends) and checked the general library email account to see if there was anything I needed to address in that account. I had one viewing request for one of our rare books to schedule for a weekend in April. Should be fun – I will pull some of our related Rockwell Kent items (and he’s one of my favorite American artists).

I went down to the all-staff meeting at about 8:15, and this lasted until 10:00. This is about my least favorite meeting here, but at least I get to see some new faces (mostly gallery attendants and folks working in the restaurant).

After the meeting, I returned to my office and met a new library volunteer. I gave her a brief orientation and welcome (she had already been trained). We have about 30 volunteers that help us staff the reference desk, shelve books, etc. I then cataloged 9 books – 8 copy-cataloged items, and two original records the first is here.

One of the artists I listed in the record was extremely difficult to track down to establish a heading for in our catalog, and I had no luck. Spent about 45 minutes doing this. Art catalogers can sympathize with me – artists so infrequently share information about themselves that would help us disambiguate their names (middle name, birth year, etc). And this information is not readily available online. This is part of the reason I am hoping to make the library where I work a NACO contributor in the near future – so that the work does not go to waste.

After this, I went to lunch and read two articles in the New York Review of Books. I try to keep up with events and books through that and The New Yorker, and they make for great lunchtime reading.

The second original record I created was much more fun, as it directly relates to an exhibition coming soon to the museum. Here’s a screenshot of what the record looked like in MARC:

(I hope these pass muster with you catalogers reading!) This record took the bulk of the afternoon, along with getting our afternoon volunteers settled in their tasks. One of them is placing new books tags in our books for the monthly display we will have for the books I cataloged in the previous month. As it stands now, I cataloged 122 books – 3 original records, 6 enhance records, and 113 copy records. If you are curious to know what I mean by those, let me know in the comments and I’ll be happy to share.

That is pretty much my day. I need to wrap up with some shelving and checking on our volunteers. I look forward to sharing my day with you again tomorrow!

Readers, you probably know all too well by now our penchant for letters at the Dean house – we try and write a couple each weekend. I have started replying to personal emails (if I have not replied during the week) with a letter so that I spend a bit less time in front of a screen. Jen and I usually write at least one postcard or letter to a friend or family member. However, I feel as though I might “step up my game” in the letter writing department and a challenge posted recently online prompted me to commit to writing 24 letters in the month of February. If you’d like to participate with me, send me your address (email, twitter, facebook, etc) and I’ll put you in line for a letter! It might be on fun paper, might be long or short, but either way I will hand-write a letter to you. Also, we have fun stamps to put on the envelopes as well!

2011 was a year in which I met and maintained professional relationships with many people I am proud to know. Writing about mail last week set me to thinking about what I have learned about making contacts (but more personal than that) with colleagues inside and outside your profession. I think this has become very important for both Jen and myself, and I feel as though we are much better at meeting people and initiating relationships than we once were. So, indulge me as I share five brief thoughts I have after meeting some great people and making new relationships within my profession.

First, be genuine. This is key. Don’t speak to someone just because they are famous, or cool. This ties in nicely with my third point, but if you hear someone speaking, etc. that is cool and you have a shared interest/something good to speak with them about, then go for it. People can read disingenuousness quickly, and might leave a bad taste in their mouth. Don’t force the conversation, either – let it bloom and take you somewhere. You might have a shared favorite band, or mutual friend. Yes, meeting the person as a professional contact is the reason you are speaking with them, but that only will not sustain a relationship. Be personal and genuine.

Second, if you see someone you want to meet, talk to them and find out their story. Why do you want to meet them? Keep this in mind, listen to their story, adapt it for yourself, and follow it. I am not saying just follow in their footsteps, but identify the things they did well that you should incorporate into your own career and growth.

Third, identifying a shared interest or specialization is important to have a worthwhile, long lasting relationship. You’ve got to have something to talk about other than work, right? Make mental notes of these, and write it down on their card. This will help in the future. Who did you meet them with, where, when, etc? These will all help in getting familiar with your new friend.

Fourth, Staying in touch is key. Follow up via an email or a handwritten note (much preferred) two to three says after meeting the person, or shortly after you get home if you are away. After the initial contact, keep up communication through email or other opportunities. A fun one which has been a recent opportunity for contact has been a library exchange program between my library and other libraries throughout the country. It’s fun to say hello to colleagues and extend them a nice professional courtesy as well.

Fifth, be real, caring, and interested. Just say hello from time to time, visit when you are in the same place as your colleague, and reciprocate gifts and contact whenever possible. Though you might not be best friends, it’s important to be a caring, connected colleague.

Finally, listen! Other people always have something good to say, so pay attention to it.

And in the spirit of the last point, I would love to hear what you have to say about networking! Any comments, tips, et cetera?

The holiday season (which is just about over as of this writing) is quite the time for mail. Holiday cards and letters, thank-you notes, and packages filled with presents. It’s amusing, then, that it appears that the postal service is ending next-day delivery and shuttering many of its locations across the US. Of course, as pointed out recently in The New Yorker, the rise of email and other forms of electronic communication are largely to blame.

Still, receiving a piece of mail is far more exciting than an email or an “@” mention in a tweet. Our many holiday cards on our mantle reminded me of this, and set me to thinking about why “analog” mail is such a joy to receive.

The handwritten, mailed note or letter (as I mentioned) really stands out amongst all of our other forms of personal communication. (For an amusing mash up of Twitter and mail, check this post out) Having something physical and permanent as opposed to something ephemeral lends weight to our words and the thoughts behind them. It also speaks to the care behind the item, as it requires us to do more than just push send. As Mr. Angell mentions, the connection that the physical communication brings can connect us with those we do not know, from a time before us.

For me, sending mail is almost as enjoyable as mail in our mailbox. Picking out cool stamps from the post office is really fun, and so long as you are not overseas or someone we are paying a bill to, you’ll get a cool stamp from us. We keep a variety of paper and notecards around, so picking the right one for the job is a heck of a lot of fun as well. There are, of course, some less serious ones (including postcards) and then more standard ones as well. And while the format is important, the content is paramount in a note.

Handwriting is far more personal than typing. Seeing a person’s handwriting gives us a more intimate connection with the writer, like our own, personal typeface. And, as much as I love type, nothing is more personal than a handwritten note. Our idiosyncrasies in handwriting, our mistakes as we write, and our more free-form thoughts come out onto the paper.

As a matter of fact, in this new year, I am planning on doing a great deal more of my personal communication via analog mail. If you’re interested, send me an email or a tweet, and we will exchange information!