Faculty, Addressing

Teaching faculty are very important people. Be sure to address a faculty member by his or her earned title, "Dr. Smith," rather than by the familiar name, "Sally." This shows the important teaching faculty that you respect them. They will no doubt reciprocate this respect by letting you pull their books from the stacks, forgive their overdue fines, and babysit their classes while they're away at conferences.

Territorial, Being

Librarians often find themselves in uncomfortable situations where there is not a clear consensus on who has jurisdiction over a certain library collection or service. Some examples:

• Who orders the DSM-IV for the reference collection -- the head of reference or the subject bibliographer?
• Should the music education collection be managed by the music librarian or the education librarian?
• Who controls the web page to which everyone contributes?
• Who has the final say on how the public catalog records display -- reference librarians or catalogers?
  

Confused as to how one stakes a claim on a given collection or service?

Pee on it.

Yep, like a dog. Pee on your call number range in the reference collection. Pee on the music education books. Pee on the web page. Pee on the catalog. While you're at it, pee in your office. Pee on your favorite chair in the director's conference room. Pee on the reference desk. Pee on your coffee cup.

Note: Do not pee on people, even if they do report to you.

Drink lots of fluids. It can take a lot out of you to have so much control.

Jobs, (Desperately) Looking for

There is nothing wrong with religiously checking for new library job ad listings a few times each workday. It does, however, border on tacky when you start cold-calling libraries that just sound like cool places to work to see if anyone there is expected to retire or die soon.

"Uh, hello? Vanderbilt University's reference desk? Are any of your reference librarians sickly?"

Email, Setting up

Apparently this whole electronic mail thing (a.k.a. "email" or "the email") is really catching on. To stay in the loop, you might want to set up an account and make yourself contactable. Don't know anyone who has email? Sign up for a listserv to make some new library friends.

Or send a message to your newly-emailable (yet ever anonymous) editors of A Librarian's Guide to Etiquette at polite.librarian@gmail.com. We look forward to hearing from you.

Panic, Inducing

When your next library committee meeting works its way down to Other Items on the agenda, ask the room, "What if we eliminated the use of costly LC Subject headings in favor of patron-initiated tagging and social bookmarking in our catalog?"

As mass hysteria ensues, quietly slip out and return to your office for a quiet cup of coffee and a few hours of Text Twist.

Lifetime appointment, Recieving a

Academic librarians retire, die, or take better paying jobs. They do not get fired. Unless you are prone to felony crimes, this glorious job is yours until you choose to leave it. Yes, you have a de facto lifetime appointment.

Take advantage of this fact by doing just enough to jump through the promotion/tenure hoops, then coast into retirement with as little work ethic as you care to muster.

Elephants (or whatever), Addressing

There are often unspoken issues in library meetings that everyone knows exist, but that no one wants to address. Instead, librarians tend to talk around the real problems without getting to the root of it all. Examples include our desperate grasping for relevancy, our reliance on pitiful software vendors, ineffective management, etc. Any such issue is often referred to as "the elephant in the room." Or "the elephant in the corner." And sometimes the elephant is pink. Or purple.

One good way to force everyone in the meeting to address the unspoken issue is to come up with creative things to call it. Put your heads together and brainstorm. Here are some ideas to get you started...

• the dead elephant on the table
• the pink moose in the corner
• the 300 lb. gorilla at the door
• the turd in the breadbox
  

Once you've reached consensus on a clever thing to call it, addressing the problem will be a piece of cake. Just don't feed the cake to the elephant.

Lanyards, Wearing

One way to judge the quality of a library conference or meeting is to check out the lanyards that are provided to registrants. Lanyards come in a variety of styles: the stretchy, the logo-emblazoned, the too-long, the too-short. The ones that dip your name badge into your soup. The two-ended shoestring style. The looped ones with clips. The ones that make people lean in uncomfortably close while trying to read your name. And the ones that always twist around backwards.

Defining what makes a quality lanyard is a matter of personal preference.

If you find one you like, hang on to it, and wear it at any subsequent conferences you attend. Traveling with your own favorite lanyard is one of the subtle, yet distinct, details that say to the world, "Yes, I'm a librarian."

If that's not enough, the world can just read your name badge.

Work, Doing

At some point in your professional library career, you may be faced with a task or project that just won't go away. You can't delegate it to your library's staff. There's no library committee with jurisdiction over it. And for whatever reason, you can't create one. There's not enough time to slough the thing off onto a fellow librarian. And ignoring it won't make it go away. You can't talk your way out of it. You'll find yourself painted into a corner and the only way out is to bite the bullet and...

(gulp)

... actually work.

Should one of these rare occasions present itself, purposely perform the assigned task as poorly as you can. And turn it in late. Hopefully your poor performance will keep anyone from ever asking you to "do work" again.

Remember: a reputation of incompetence can serve you well in the future.

Racist blogs, Authoring

Don’t author racist or otherwise intolerant blogs chronicling your hatred of Muslims, immigrants, amputees, women, etc. It really ruins the librarians as liberal defenders of civil liberties thing the rest of us are so proud of. Not only are such blogs mean, they’re also terribly tacky.

Custodians, Pissing off the

Don't piss off your custodians. They will stop emptying your trash and will start hiding hateful messages under your telephone.

Things to avoid:

• correcting them for emptying your recycling into the regular trash
  
• playing computer games while they empty your waste basket
• regularly dribbling coffee all the way from the coffee shop to your office
• refusing to participate in idle chit-chat about the weather
• leaving your pay-check stub face-up on top of the trash
  
• snorting like a pig when they crash the library potluck dinner (bearing no food)
• writing "custodians suck!" on the bathroom wall in your own feces

[My Job] Committee, Setting up a

Set up a committee of your peers to oversee your primary area of responsibility. Appoint yourself chair. This is a great way to ...

• give yourself some leadership experience
• practice delegating to your peers
• diffuse responsibility for tasks you don't want to do
  
• share blame for bad decisions
• pad your vita/resume

Do all of this in the name of democracy... because everyone should have a say in how they do your job.

Stat counters, Lessons learned from

Placing a hidden stat counter on a library web site or blog is a great way to see if visitor traffic justifies the time spent authoring the content. In addition to counting the number of new and returning visitors, these counters also give the author some insight into how people arrive at their page.

For example, a surprisingly large number of people reach A Librarian's Guide to Etiquette by doing one of the following Google searches: nude librarians, nude sexy librarians, and sexy librarians (presumably the latter still being clothed). The Guide's authors can only imagine that their accidental visitors are sorely disappointed to learn that librarians, by and large, are not the least bit sexy. And more often than not (thankfully), they do wear clothes.

Ideas of grandeur, Entertaining

Though business may be waning in your reference room with final exams wrapping up, don't let yourself be caught at the reference desk wistfully staring at your own blog, daydreaming of the day that someone will offer you a book deal for your concept. Even if you do entertain such ideas of grandeur, don't let others see you practicing your autograph for your imaginary promotional book tour of national and state library association meetings (where, of course, you'll be paid to speak about the silly self-importance of your profession and where each reading will end with everyone wanting to buy you a beer). Your patrons and colleagues just wouldn't understand.

Pet projects, Promoting your

As final exams loom, academic librarians should begin gearing up for the Who can be the most annoying about their summer pet project? contest.

The rules are simple:

1. Pick a project that no one else cares about.
2. Talk about your project all the time.
3. Assume that your project is everyone's highest priority.
4. Get defensive when no one will give you any feedback or comment on it.

Ready? Set? Go!

"So I'm going to be changing the screensavers on all the public workstations this summer, and I was wondering if we could all meet to go over the first draft of my proposal?"

Reference Interview, The

Part of being a good reference librarian is being able to understand what patrons mean when they ask their questions. Often, the patron doesn't express their information need in a clear and concise manner... thus the need for a reference interview.

For example: A patron may ask, "What languages did the Vikings speak?" In his mind, he has communicated what he thinks is a clear information need. The librarian, however, can interpret his real information need to be, "How can I tell if I'm wearing too much cologne?"

The librarian's mission is now two-fold: a) find languages spoken by Vikings and b) let this guy know he is burning the hairs out of your nose. The first part is easy. The second may require some finesse. Be a good librarian and cough, gag, put your hand over your nose, or ask him to wait outside while you search for his answer. If he doesn't get the hint, light a match and see if he bursts into flames.

Tissues at the reference desk, Supplying

Do not keep toilet paper at the reference desk. It's tacky. Toilet paper is for use at the toilet. The reference desk can be bad, but it's no toilet. Class things up a bit by buying a generic box of Kleenex. The ones in the floral box. If you really want to show the patrons that you care, splurge and get the ones with lotion.

Are you crafty? Crochet a Kleenex-cozy to keep those tissues warm and comfortable. Just be sure to color coordinate it with your library's decor. Nothing ruins a good nose-blow like a mismatched tissue-box cover.

Gloating, On

It is totally uncool to gloat to your coworkers after handing in your letter of resignation. Avoid...

• Proudly drinking from a coffee mug bearing your new school's logo
  
• Gleefully bidding an early formal farewell in various committee meetings
• Unabashedly not taking notes in meetings
• Audibly counting down your remaining days at your current job
  
• Being happy

Be considerate of your coworkers' feelings and at least pretend that you're headed to a place that's not all sunshine and daisies.

Blogger's ego, Feeding the

If you meet someone at a library conference and you identify them as an anonymous library blogger that you regularly read, never admit that you've heard of their blog and that you subscribe and post comments to it. It will only give them a (totally unwarranted) rock-star ego.

The 10 Hottest Occupations, On librarianship not being one of them anymore

Five to ten years ago, library schools were abuzz with projections about the importance of information professionals with MLS degrees and their roles in the New Economy. This line of thinking is as dated as the term 'information superhighway' and now you are faced with the startling realization that your skill sets aren't needed nearly as much as the dean of your grad school had promised. You read magazines that compile annual lists of the hottest job trends and you see that an MLS degree is sandwiched between 'Clerk at Doctor's Office' and 'Phone Sex Operator,' though either of those professions would probably pay better. And with every passing day, your technical skills become more outdated and less relevant to the work force at large.