The Green Kangaroo

One of my favorite parts of the AASL National Conference is taking a pre-conference school tour. This year I selected Tour 1: "An All-Day Tour Shows How Rural Elementary, Middle, and High School Librarians Bring Resources to Distant Desert Towns." There were eleven of us on the tour -- and those who weren't missed both an exceptional Nevada experience and some fascinating schools and school librarians.

Let's start with the librarians -- those visiting and those being visited. With eleven passengers in a small bus -- driven by a former gym teacher -- the two-hour plus drive quickly became a fluid discussion group involving everyone -- and the "everyone" was pretty diverse: a librarian from a DOD-dependents school in Germany, an energetic Spectrum Scholar from Brooklyn (studying at Simmons), librarians from Hawaii, from a Navajo school in New Mexico, from the state agency in Washington, from schools in Alabama, Vermont, north coast California, Massachusetts. Going and returning, the conversation was rich -- issues of funding, testing, weeding too-old collections, educating faculty and administrators in the values and resources of libraries. Everyone seemed to gain -- a new perspective here, an innovative strategy there. When I could, I contributed to the conversation. Mostly I listened. These conversations nourish me and help me find paths and connections through the Greenroo space.

What was perhaps most striking about the three school librarians who spent so much of their scarce time with us was their absolute commitment to their schools and students -- and the fact that they overwhelmingly chose to see the richness in their tight communities more than the challenges. Resources were not abundant. Chatting with a parent volunteer who worked with the librarian at the first school -- the Natchez Elementary School in Wadsworth (on the Pyramid Lake Paiute Reservation), I commented on the nice-looking, round mats piled up -- just the right size for a child to curl up with a book and read. She told me they bought dog beds -- available inexpensively at many big box stores -- rather than the more costly bean bags and that the wood chip smell faded quickly. I noted that several tour colleagues made notes for the future. In the Johnson Elementary School and Gerlach Middle/High School -- connected to each other -- the two librarians supplement their meager budgets "pushing pizzas." When asked about their challenges, though, they focused instead on the high level of support from their small community -- fewer than 100 students in K-12. The entire elementary school population -- 38 students (no one was absent yesterday)gathered to greet the visitors and sing. The high school library (40-some students) is also a branch of the Washoe County public library, open one night a week to serve adults unable to get to the library in daytime hours. It included an audiobook collection (used primarily by drivers of the large gypsum trucks that regularly passed us on the highway), a career center and a small childrens collection. The conversations in all three schools were expansive and valuable. So, Sherry, Katie and Debbie -- thank you.

Then were was the country itself. We had glimpses of Pyramid Lake -- a lake with no outlet, a residual body from a prehistoric lake, fed by the Truckee River -- inside the reservation boundary of the Northern Paiute. Roads often took us along the Truckee, with trees -- and autumn color -- marking the proximity of water in the desert. Salt flats were another frequent sight. Fedex and UPS trucks zipped past us -- testimony to people and businesses we couldn't always see. Cattle crossing signs -- a novelty to easterners -- seemed more common that stop signs.

Bruno's restaurant in Gerlach was our lunch stop. Arriving too early, we were advised to go another eight miles up the road to Planet X Pottery, "open most of the time." The galleries were, indeed, open and the pottery was well-worth the side trip. If you have no immediate plans to visit the Black Rock Desert, you can visit planetxpottery.com

Back at Bruno's for lunch, nothing on the outside prepared us for the meal inside. Bruno himself was cooking -- an Italian feast, from the array of antipasti to the hand-made ravioli (for which they are rightly famous) to the perfectly-marinated and cooked beef and chicken. Carafes of red wine were on the tables. Bruno came to Nevada as a young man -- who had apprenticed as a butcher -- in the years immediately following World War II. Once in Nevada, like many immigrants he did everything -- from working for U.S. Gypsum to racing bicycles. Eventually, he purchased a roadside restaurant -- in Gerlach -- and began to put his early training in butchering and cooking to use. The result is impressive. Inside and out, it looks simple. But the dining room is lined with pictures of family and friends and feels welcoming. Bruno's daughter and son-in-law were there -- and it's definitely a family business, with at least 3 generations working in the restaurant. Burning Man -- the art festival -- takes place each Labor Day weekend less than a mile from Gerlach -- and the professional crews that set up for Burning Man are a year-round presence. So -- if you're going to Reno or Tahoe or anywhere near -- do go out of your way. Go to the tiny town of Gerlach -- for great food, art, the old wooden water tower, and some very friendly people.

Over the months of inactivity – well, inactivity at The Green Kangaroo – I’ve accumulated a score of “things about which I should post” – interesting books, exploration of virtual worlds and gaming, things ALA. By inclination – and usually necessity – I keep moving forward, and there is always a new question, a new insight. Still, I have a compulsion to tie the pieces of my life together. All those paths that criss-cross through greenroo space have relationships and consequences.

A couple months ago, for a retreat on technology and libraries, I gave some thought to my twin passions: libraries and associations. Over a long career – really -- I have come to think about them and their importance is some very similar ways.

Optimisim. Both libraries and associations are inherently and unavoidably optimistic. The world can be made a better place. You can shape your life. We – individually and collectively -- have agency.

Persistence. Memory and mission. Identity. Focus. Purpose. Associations enable persistence of effort – across time, across individual participation. Amidst “radical decentralization” they provide persistent identity.

Discovery. In their different ways, libraries and associations aggregate and organize for discovery. Each contrives to take you outside your comfort zone, outside the familiar, outside of the “like me.” They bridge – geography, interests, backgrounds, time.

Context. The social construction of meaning, of knowledge is fundamental to and a consequence of libraries and associations. New information and creation have context. In perhaps different ways, both are containers for our responses to destabilization in our mental models, our social environments. Both libraries and associations are significantly about the individual – in the context of the collective.

Conversation. Discourse. Deliberation. Interaction with the artifacts of culture. Social construction of meaning also implies conversation -- interaction, the push and tug of differing conceptions, the struggle for agreement or common understanding. Conversation is vital for discovery in a multicultural world. Our stories live in libraries. They live in associations.

Both libraries and associations are institutions. They are complex systems. As they face ever-changing technology, social and economic structures, they must respond to fundamental questions. What do we adopt – and on what basis, with what consequences? What does “user-centered” design look like – for what users and how do we get there? Do we take an active or reactive policy stance – and how do we bring together competing interests and values? Above all, what is our narrative – and how do we build it collaboratively?

Over the past weeks, as I’ve followed the discussion – in blogs, at conferences and meetings – on “improving ALA,” it has become important to me to talk about why this association, which has been a thread connecting disparate parts of my life as both a librarian and an association executive, is important. These concepts – optimism, persistence, discovery, context and conversation – have shaped my views. They are my starting point – or perhaps my ending point, to which other experiences and conversations have led me.

The Green Kangaroo has been inactive since October – while I dealt with my own sense of overload, saw a son home from Iraq and a daughter defend a master’s thesis in geology, struggled to keep up with the 2.0 world – “friending” in Facebook, learning not to fall off buildings in Second Life and so on. But, the conversation among bloggers is too interesting to stay away – and so, I’m back. I’m back, observing and conversing from “the middle” – which is where I’ve mostly been.

This blog takes its name – and inspiration – from “The One in the Middle is a Green Kangaroo,” by Judy Blume, about the difficulties of being a middle child. I am not a middle child – but being “in the middle” has often described my adult life.

As Senior Associate Executive Director of The American Library Association, I am “in the middle” a lot – between the executive director of ALA and the executive directors of 11 ALA divisions, between the forces of change and continuity in key policy areas such as intellectual freedom and accreditation, trying to sort out the choices in areas as seemingly diverse as IT and Conferences Services. I’m in the middle of a wonderful conversational flow between staff, members, colleagues in many other associations – though the people in those conversations aren’t always connecting with each other.

An ALA staff member since 1995, I’m also a long-time member of the Association – 35 years and counting. I went to ALA because I was working with early library automation and desperately needed to connect with other people who could offer advice and understanding ears. So, LITA was my point of entry – though it was then known as ISAD, the Information Science and Automation Division of ALA. I’d finished my MLS at UCLA (1965), taking one of the very early courses in library systems analysis, and been supported (by the Los Angeles Public Library, which was then implementing a pre-MARC ILS) for a post-MLS term, focused on library automation, at USC. Right place at the right time.

A native southern Californian, I have lived outside of California since late 1977, when I was lured to Chicago as Head of Technical Service, and later Assistant Commissioner for Reference and Research Services, at The Chicago Public Library. Family and professional exploration took me to the DC area to direct USBE (The U.S. Book Exchange – a small, interesting nonprofit) and then to work for Gaylord in their information systems area, before heading off to Buffalo as executive director of the Western New York Library Resources Council, a consortium of public and school library systems, academic libraries and special libraries. In 1995, a call from a California colleague brought me to Chicago again – and to ALA staff.

My point of view “in the middle” has been shaped by a professional career built on variety and change. It has also been shaped by active participation as an ALA member -- on ALA division committees and boards, on Council, the ALA budget committee (then COPES, not BARC) and finally, struggling with organizational issues, on a self-study committee. Though I remain a member, “member” activity now is necessarily outside ALA – in the American Society of Association Executives and other organizations – but still informs that POV.

Like that middle child, I have found the middle – in libraries, in associations -- a good place to be. Now – back into the conversation….

In a session at the annual conference of the American Society of Association Executives (still working on a post about that), William Taylor (Mavericks at Work) advised advised us to focus on our "architecture of participation." A Google search takes me a Wikipedia article and from there to Tim O'Reilly's June 2004 "Open Source Paradigm Shift."

The "architecture of participation" has been one of the most persistent focal points in the greenroo space during the past months -- and will be for months to come.

I began thinking about this in association space -- trying to facilitate broader discussion on a 2005-2006 study from ASAE and the Center for Association Leadership on major trends affecting associations. Many association executives are serious readers -- probably not a surprise to those of you in the library world. So, we took the mechanism of a existing association executives book club -- a monthly teleconference on a specific book -- and tweaked it a bit. We shifted the discussion focus to a trend area -- but sent out an advance reading list for each session and asked the month's facilitator to use books, journal articles and web-based resources (including blog posts) as "springboards" for the discussion. That lead us into some interesting explorations.

At the same time, an association colleage -- Ben Martin at the Virginia Society of CPAs -- built a discussion group within an online community structure. That discussion, the exchange of stories in that community month by month, trend by trend, was very rich.

Then, Ben and I worked together to present a session at the ASAE conference in Boston this August. Well, we started down the path of doing a panel-style presentation -- then changed our architecture. We decided to facilitate a series of small group discussions. There were groups at tables, on the floor, clustered in the doorway -- a full house. People in each cluster took rough notes -- which we added to the website. Our change in approach came after the program deadline -- so people came expecting talking heads. Presented with an opportunity to sit or stand and share their worries and their success stories with colleagues -- people not only adjusted and stayed, the energy level zoomed upwards. Maybe we all need more opportunities to do that.

On the library side, the ALAL2 prototype was an intense six-weeks or so before the New Orleans conference -- and taught me, and others, a lot about what works, and what doesn't work, in architecting participation in the 2.0 environment. We've spent time thinking through feedback and have more thinking to do about next steps. I'm watching with considerable interest the "Five Weeks to A Social Library" (sociallibrary@gmail.com) educational opportunity being developed and managed by Meredith Farkas, Michelle Boule, Amanda Etches-Johnson, Karen Coombs, Ellyssa Kroski and Dorothea Salo.

ALA has had a small explosion of blogs and wikis in the past few months. This past Monday, Meredith Farkas -- who built and managed both the ALA2005 (Chicago) wiki and the ALA2006 (New Orleans) wiki -- spent a day here talking to ALA staff about wikis, sharing what she's learned, and providing us with some basic training. She created a lot of enthusiasm and energy around the concept of using wikis -- and we'll see where this path may take us. There is a wiki up and ready for your use for the 2007 ALA Midwinter in Seattle.

This, though, begins to bring us to place where we need to think together as we build an "architecture for participation" in the 21st century world. How do we effectively and respectfully blend different concepts of experience and participation? How do we facilitate without stiffling? How do we honor the needs for both experimentation and persistence? ALA President Leslie Burger has appointed a special task force to look at "member participation." The committee is chaired by Jim Rettig and includes some active bloggers, such as Michael Stephens and Karen Schneider. Jenny Levine is the staff liaison. This is a discussion of importance to all of us -- those who blog and those who don't, members and staff, regardless of generation.

This is a path -- architecting participation -- that will get wider and deeper with use over coming months. In the meantime, I keep exploring, reading and listening -- watching for the direction signs, the unexpected options.

On my reading stack now is Tom Kelley's The Ten Faces of Innovation, which has me thinking about the need for a serious talk with an organizational anthropologist. A couple of posts ago, I quoted from James Paul Gee's What Video Games Have to Teach Us About Learning and Literacy, which brought me a recommendation (from Jenny) to read Got Game: How the Gamer Generation is Reshaping Business Forever by John C. Beck & Mitchell Wade, which I've just finished and passed along to ALA colleague John Chrastka. I think the dynamics of the gaming environment have something to tell us about architecting participation -- but I have a lot of thinking and listening still to do. Finally, for late-day trains, I've picked up a book by an environmentalist who took a year to look -- seriously -- at her backyard: Suburban Safari: A Year on the Lawn, by Hannah Holmes. We won't talk about the growing stacks of unread...

Blogs continue to provide ideas, book citations and discussion threads -- which reminds me that I made a note to check out Edward Tufte's latest book (Beautiful Evidence) after I picked up the citation from Paul at Thinking About the Future, who picked it up on the O'Reilly Radar ... and so it goes.