Dear Miss Manager:

I am too embarrassed almost to write this. I am a technical services librarian in an academic library, and I am deathly afraid of technology. I don’t mean the typical end-user version of technology – I can surf the Web well enough and send email and type up a document. But anything having to do with messing with machines or making sure a program is set up properly just puts me in a tizzy. What can I do?

Sincerely,

Technophobe

Dear Phobe:

Miss Manager is tempted to wag her finger at you and say, "Stop being so mousey." But she will resist. She understands that not everyone is constitutionally suited to be confident about overcoming difficulties. What you have is akin to the condition known well to many librarians with humanities backgrounds: math anxiety. Your interests are not particularly technical (in the computing/automation/engineering sense of that word, not to be confused with its cataloging/acquisitions/serials sense.) So you naturally found yourself wary about performing some technical function early in your career. Perhaps you were asked to coordinate the arrival of the new OCLC terminal, or to figure out uses for the departmental PC (back when there may have been only one) and you resisted or passed on the work to someone else. Since you did not handle that initial experience with much aplomb, you found succeeding chances to work with technical issues less appealing still; for, not only had you performed the original assignment with no distinction, you gave up the opportunity to train yourself to some extent in the technical area. With each new opportunity (and those opportunities have come fast and furious in the last 15 years) you fell farther behind, so that now your circa 1985 technical skills (typing at a keyboard, boolean searching, perhaps even loading paper into a dot matrix printer) are all you have when your director comes to you and says that you will be the person to coordinate the selection, evaluation, and initialization of a new integrated library system. By now you’ve never so much as adjusted a parameter. It was all you could do to learn how to italicize in your word processing program.

One advantage you have, one that has been building over the years, and has, in fact, allowed you to perform technical services functions without being overly technical yourself, is the staffing of separate computer services units within law libraries (or within those libraries’ parent institutions.) Some technical services librarians have not had to learn how to set up networks and deal with the installation of crash-prone operating systems. Other technical services librarians were the first ones in the building to learn computing skills and went off to become systems people. Every library with enough history has a different story to explain its technological development, and every technical services librarian has faced a set of circumstances which have required him or her to either hone technical skills or to pass technical work on to someone else. Most of us fall somewhere in between.

So, on the one hand, you can take comfort in the fact that you have operated for a long time without much technical ability (presumably you are doing well enough otherwise.) You are like the driver of a car in 2000 vs. the driver of 1920. In 1920 you not only needed to know how to drive, but also how to tinker with engines and patch tires. In 2000 you can just drive and let others worry about the details of automotive engineering. On the other hand, if you leave all technical work for others to do, you will have less understanding of the capabilities of the systems and machines available to you. You will be less capable of imaginative uses of your resources, less likely to respond to needs with a clear sense of possibilities. This is an issue that could lead to the separation of our profession along the library science / information science front, but that would not serve us well in the long run. Just as it is necessary for those who concentrate on the technical side of things to understand what is important about cataloging and acquisitions and serials practices, it is just as important for the well trained cataloger or acquisitions or serials librarian – or technical services manager – to understand technology issues. That doesn’t mean that every person who works in a law library technical services unit must be fully conversant with every detail of the computing universe. But it does mean that those librarians who do not work to understand their own systems as well as they can, who don’t know what sorts of programs are available to their patrons and how they might be using them, who don’t themselves learn to tinker with programs and settings and parameters will be less effective in the services they are providing.

But how do you go about repairing the neglect of your technological education? There is no easy road to this. There is no single book to be read or day-long workshop to attend that will give to you what it has taken others years to achieve. Don’t sell yourself short, though. You may have more on the ball than you realize. The "meager" skills you have acknowledged – surfing the Web and writing documents – could entail any level of ability. You will certainly be an amateur in some ways, but you should build on the things you can do. Take your word processing program for example. Explore it, go into the settings and experiment, write some macros, then edit them, then write more complicated macros. What does this have to do with anything, you might ask. It is helping you to develop technology habits. You should then go to other things more directly related to your work. Does your library have an online catalog? Does the ILS allow you to make many changes locally? Are you at all familiar with its inner workings? Are there manuals you can look through? Set yourself the task of making some improvement you have needed for a long time a reality. You will no doubt need to bring in systems experts at some point in a course of action like this, but just learning to explain your needs to them and finding out why something can or cannot be done, or why it must be done in a different way, will materially increase your computing intelligence. Sign up for classes, read books and articles with a more technical slant than you usually want, learn how to use a database program, write up a simple Web page – in short, practice. Practice being the kind of person who works with computers, and someday that’s just who you will be.

Dear Miss Manager:

I am a recent library school graduate who has just been hired by a large law firm as a technical services librarian. I am one of four librarians in the firm, and the other three have all been in the field quite a while. I particularly admire the head librarian, who not only seems to know everything there is to know about research, but also keeps up with technology, substantive law, and the concerns of my own area. My question is, how do I become like her? What is the appropriate route to managerial excellence?

Sincerely,

Wanna-be

Dear Wanna:

Miss Manager is so pleased to hear from you! The advice-giving world is very much like technical services work sometimes; i.e., we generally hear only the complaints. It is very encouraging to hear about your excellent situation and the great opportunity it is offering you. For that is my advice in a very small nutshell for a person in your position: don’t neglect this opportunity. And what is the opportunity you have? You have the chance to 1) observe the work, the daily habits, the style of an accomplished, professional manager over an extended period; 2) assess the way other experienced professionals interact with a superior manager and with each other; and 3) start thinking about management early in your career. Not everyone who becomes a technical services manager in a law library is necessarily happy about it or good at it. People get into positions in all callings by accident or unusual circumstances. It is much more preferable to pursue a goal because you are attracted to it. So, watch and learn, first of all. A good manager will teach you every day by helping you to do what you are supposed to do. Be observant. When she elicits good work from you, try to understand why it happens. Most of it will be because of your own good qualities as a worker, but some of it will have to do with the way she represented the work to you and guided your performance. Watch her public dealings with everyone in her department. How does she treat her colleagues? What things does she do to encourage, reprimand, praise in an appropriate way? Talk to her. If you demonstrate a real willingness to learn, she will be flattered and eager to discuss management issues with you.

Perhaps even more important than the good educational opportunities your current position affords are your own work habits and performance. If you show all the interest in the world in moving up to a managerial position but don’t work for it, you will either not get it or not be prepared for it when you do. A good manager like any good employee is the kind of person who shows up every day, who doesn’t have a string of excuses always at hand to explain away failures, who treats other workers fairly, and who puts in a good day’s work. In addition to these general qualities, a manager looks at the bigger picture, notices interconnections between workers and units, is ready to consider a better way of doing things, and is able to deal with a variety of personality types. Not all of these skills can be obtained easily. Some people come by them naturally, others force themselves to learn them. In your case, you should remember that you are early in your career and can’t learn everything at once. Your great fortune is to have a potential mentor at this early stage. But it is up to you to take proper advantage of this chance.

Dear Miss Manager:

I was recently accused of behaving in an "ungentlemanly" way. What can that mean in this day and age, and why should I give a rat’s patootie?

Sincerely,

Proud to be Crude

Dear Crude:

You are just trying to provoke Miss Manager, aren’t you? That in itself demonstrates your ungentlemanlike personality quite clearly enough. The technical meaning of "gentleman" long ago lost its exclusive connection with a particular kind of person from a particular class and came to refer to those qualities thought to be appropriate to such a person, namely politeness, integrity, and a tendency to behave well. You may find it more to your liking to behave impolitely, without integrity, and crudely. But in the workplace especially, where good manners serve the important function of maintaining a comfortable atmosphere surrounding people who might not otherwise choose each other’s company, crudeness and impolite behavior will make you hard to work with for at least some people. If you don’t care, then I hope for your sake that you don’t offend the wrong people. But it seems likely that you will sooner or later.