This just in from U.S. News & World Report...
Best Careers 2009: Librarian
By Marty Nemko
Posted December 11, 2008
Overview.Forget about that image of librarians as a mousy bookworms. More and more of today's librarians must be clever interrogators, helping the patron to reframe their question more usefully. Librarians then become high-tech information sleuths, helping patrons plumb the oceans of information available in books and digital records, often starting with a clever Google search but frequently going well beyond.
Librarianship is an underrated career. Most librarians love helping patrons solve their problems and, in the process, learning new things. Librarians may also go on shopping sprees, deciding which books and online resources to buy. They may even get to put on performances, like children's puppet shows, and run other programs, like book discussion groups for elders. On top of it all, librarians' work environment is usually pleasant and the work hours reasonable, although you may have to work nights and/or weekends
The job market for special librarians (see below) is good but is sluggish for public and school librarians. Nevertheless, persistent sleuthing—that key attribute of librarians—should enable good candidates to prevail.
That effort to land a job will be well worth it if you're well suited to the profession: love the idea of helping people dig up information, are committed to being objective—helping people gain multiple perspectives on issues—and will remain inspired by the awareness that librarians are among our society's most empowering people.
A Day in the Life. You work in a small municipal library, where you have to do a little of everything. You start your day by leafing through catalogs from online database publishers and book reviews in Library Journal to decide which titles to add to your collection. Next, it's out to the reference desk, where visitors regularly ask how to find something. Sometimes, it's esoteric; often, it's the bathroom. Later, you teach a class: an advanced lesson in Googling. Next, it's back to the reference desk, but you're soon interrupted by a group of boisterous kids, so you have to turn into schoolmarm: "You'll have to be quiet, or I'll have to ask you to leave." You end your day reading about "automated librarianship": data storage systems that let the public get needed resources without the help of a live librarian. Tomorrow, you decide, you'll start writing a grant proposal to develop a computer kiosk that will help patrons find health information.
Smart Specialty
Special librarian. All sorts of organizations need librarians, not just public libraries. They work for colleges, law firms, hospitals, prisons, corporations, legislatures, the military, and nonprofit agencies. In fact, special librarianship is the field's fastest-growing job market. Unlike public and university jobs, which require night and weekend hours, these jobs are mostly 9 to 5.
Salary DataMedian (with eight years in the field): $47,400
25th to 75th percentile (with eight or more years of experience): $42,800-$63,700
(Data provided by PayScale.com)
Training
The American Library Association offers information and links regarding training, including online options.
U.S. News rankings of library programs
Learn moreDepartment of Labor profile: Librarian
American Library Association
Special Libraries Association
Association of College and Research Librarians
Medical Library Association
American Association of Law Libraries
A Day in the Life: Career Options in Library and Information Science by Patricia Shontz and Richard Murray (editors)
Straight from the Stacks: A Firsthand Guide to Careers in Library and Information Science by Laura Townsend Kane
What's the Alternative: Career Options for Librarians and Info Pros by Rachel Gordon
Tuesday, December 16, 2008
Wednesday, December 3, 2008
Our Librarian Bodies, Our Librarian Selves
Thanks to Inju on Flickr for this image. (Exercising in National Library Singapore)Librarians are great at taking care of their patrons. We will conduct searches for our patrons and provide them with the resources they need, we contribute to the public good and offer ongoing educational opportunities, and we provide community space in the name of discourse and community building. We also testify in and lobby Congress in support of legislation that affects our work—all in the name of taking care of our patrons. But to what extent do we take care of ourselves?
I’m talking about workplace wellness. This is an issue that seems largely ignored in library land, an issue that may cause eye-rolling and cause some of our Lead Pipe readers to stop right here and move along to the next post in their feed reader. But workplace wellness is an issue that seems to be largely ignored by libraries, librarians, and library organizations. Literature searches in library and information science databases return very few relevant articles on the subject. Why?
Before I attempt to answer this question I’d like to propose a working definition of workplace wellness. Wellness in the workplace refers to an employee’s mental and physical health. Many businesses and organizations have implemented workplace wellness. Examples include the facilitation of lunchtime walking groups, providing on site massage appointments, and offering classes and lectures regarding wellness. Also included would be programs supporting employee health; providing free flu shots and health screenings, providing ergonomic work stations, having healthy snacks available, or even allowing workers flexible schedules to take care of their physical and emotional health as needed. According to this loose working definition it’s likely that every library has some sort of wellness program, but it seems to me individual and organizational buy-in aren’t that widespread in the library community.
I assume that the reason workplace wellness hasn’t caught on in libraries is a combination of the following reasons. First, wellness programs that do exist usually happen within a broader institutional context. Since most libraries are part of an academic institution, county or city government, or some other larger bureaucratic model, wellness initiatives seem to occur at a higher institutional level, and, as such they haven’t become top priorities for many libraries. Second, librarians are hard working dedicated people, who may not feel they have the time or even the desire to participate in a wellness initiative. Third, wellness programs haven’t been heavily marketed to libraries and librarians, either by their institutions or by profession-wide initiatives. Fourth, wellness programs cost, and most libraries are already run on tight budgets. Finally, wellness may not be part of a library’s organizational culture, or it might not even been an organizational value. It is this fifth factor that is perhaps the most prohibitive to the overall wellness of library employees.
A healthy and well library staff will provide better services to its patrons. Providing for and assisting employees in this regard will mean that they can work more efficiently and effectively. Of concern to many administrators should be the fact that wellness initiatives will save the institution money in health care costs when workers have fewer physical and mental health problems. One of the best examples that support this is ergonomics.
Wellness in the workplace constitutes a web of factors that can determine the status quo level of health and wellness experienced by employees at your library. Many of these factors may seem irrelevant when considered on their own; however, when placed in conjunction with others, they work collectively to either create or hinder employees’ well being.
The first two factors affecting workplace wellness are simple—your library’s physical space and physical location. How the inside of your workplace is designed affects how much you move at work. (E.g. is there an elevator, how far do you have to walk to place something in the recycling?) The library’s physical location can also affect workplace wellness. (Is there a tempting restaurant nearby or are you close to a park with walking trails?)
The third factor isn’t as cut and dry—organizational culture and values. These can greatly impact wellness at work. For example, many librarians work hard and long hours, which can lead to skipping breaks, even skipping lunch or eating at our desks in front of a project. These habits do not contribute to having a healthy workplace. For one, it reinforces the sedentary nature of library work, and second, it doesn’t allow an individual the mental break that one needs to best achieve work efficiently.
Food is also a large part of culture at many libraries. At one library where I used to work, there was a “chocolate drawer” behind the reference desk. Whenever we had a particularly trying interaction with a patron we would medicate ourselves with chocolate. Other libraries might have a tradition of pastries at department meetings, or social events, which usually include food.
However, changing an organization’s culture is not an easy thing. And if there’s anything that organizations are not quick to do, changing the culture and our values are it. So how are we to tackle this issue? How do we even frame an argument for starting wellness initiatives within our workplaces? First, we have to work to create wellness as a value within the workplace. At institutions where a wellness program already exists, but is not culturally adopted by the library, how do you get the library to do so?
I’d like to offer some suggestions as to how we can begin to tackle the organizational culture and values regarding wellness issue in the places of our employ.
Conduct an informal evaluation of your workplace to find supporting factors and hindrances to a healthy work place.
Ask for institutional support based upon your informal evaluation or observations. Paired with the Physical Activity Guidelines for Americans, this might be a convincing argument that your supervisor can send up the management chain.
Start a wellness committee and task yourself with developing a wellness plan for your library.
But what if your place of work/administration is not understanding of your plight?
Be aware of your habits at work. Wear a pedometer; take a walk during your lunch break (and invite your colleagues to join you), consider ergonomics, etc.
Investigate whether your larger organization (city, county, institution) has a wellness program and participate in that as an individual. Then try to market it to your fellow staff.
If you create community programs in your library or conduct outreach work, try to plan and implement programming about health and wellness.
There are some resources and initiatives that do exist regarding wellness in libraries. Most notably, ALA Past President Loriene Roy created the Circle of Wellness as one of her presidential initiatives. This web site offers resources for individuals to use to assess wellness attitudes in their library, as well as track their personal wellness goals. These resources offer a good starting place for you if you are interested in investigating wellness at your library.
The healthiest work places already have an organizational culture of wellness and value health as an institution. If this is not the case in your library, establishing a culture of wellness will happen very slowly. It takes quite a bit of energy and work to change and shape organizational values and change begins with the action of one or two motivated and dedicated individuals. It’s time we take care of ourselves and take the steps to create healthier work places. In the long run, our health and wellness serves our well-being and also our ability to provide the best services to our patrons.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
See the following articles on organizational culture:
Shepstone, C. & Currie, L. (2008). Transforming the academic library: Creating an organizational culture that fosters staff success. Journal of Academic Librarianship, 34(4), 358-368.
Sannwald, W. (2000). Understanding organizational culture. Library Administration & Management, 14(1), 8-14.
Many thanks to Phil Eskew (one of the best instructors I had in library school), and Miriam Rigby for offering feedback on this post. Thanks also go to fellow Lead Piper Derik for reading this prior to posting.
Tuesday, November 11, 2008
Obama on Libraries
We all know the hype that has been surrounding US president-elect Barack Obama for some time now. Here's some of what he has had to say about libraries (thanks to ilovelibraries.ala.org for the link).
Obama on Libraries
President-Elect Barack Obama keynoted the opening general session at the ALA Annual Conference in Chicago, June 23–29, 2005, while a U.S. senator from Illinois. This article, published in the August 2005 issue of American Libraries, is an adaptation of that speech, which drew record crowds and garnered a standing ovation.
Bound to the Word
Guardians of truth and knowledge, librarians must be thanked for their role as champions of privacy, literacy, independent thinking, and most of all reading.
by Barack Obama
If you open up Scripture, the Gospel according to John, it starts: “In the beginning was the Word.” Although this has a very particular meaning in Scripture, more broadly what it speaks to is the critical importance of language, of writing, of reading, of communication, of books as a means of transmitting culture and binding us together as a people.
More than a building that houses books and data, the library represents a window to a larger world, the place where we’ve always come to discover big ideas and profound concepts that help move the American story forward and the human story forward. That’s the reason why, since ancient antiquity, whenever those who seek power would want to control the human spirit, they have gone after libraries and books. Whether it’s the ransacking of the great library at Alexandria, controlling information during the Middle Ages, book burnings, or the imprisonment of writers in former communist block countries, the idea has been that if we can control the word, if we can control what people hear and what they read and what they comprehend, then we can control and imprison them, or at least imprison their minds.
That’s worth pondering at a time when truth and science are constantly being challenged by political agendas and ideologies, at a time when language is used not to illuminate but, rather, to obfuscate, at a time when there are those who would disallow the teaching of evolution in our schools, where fake science is used to beat back attempts to curb global warming or fund lifesaving research.
At a time when book banning is back in vogue, libraries remind us that truth isn’t about who yells the loudest, but who has the right information.
We are a religious people, Americans are, as am I. But one of the innovations, the genius of America, is recognizing that our faith is not in contradiction with fact and that our liberty depends upon our ability to access the truth.
That’s what libraries are about. At the moment that we persuade a child, any child, to cross that threshold, that magic threshold into a library, we change their lives forever, for the better. It’s an enormous force for good.
I remember at different junctures in my life feeling lost, feeling adrift, and feeling that somehow walking into a library and seeing those books, seeing human knowledge collected in that fashion, accessible, ready for me, would always lift my spirits. So I’m grateful to be able to acknowledge the importance of librarians and the work that you do. I want to work with you to ensure that libraries continue to be sanctuaries of learning, where we are free to read and consider what we please without the fear that Big Brother may be peering over our shoulders to find out what we’re up to.
Some of you may have heard that I gave a speech last summer at the Democratic convention. It made some news here and there. For some reason, one of the lines people seem to remember has to do with librarians, when I said, “We don’t like federal agents poking around our libraries in the red states, or the blue states for that matter.”
What some people may not remember is that for years, librarians have been on the frontlines of this fight for our privacy and our freedom. There have always been dark times in our history where America has strayed from our best ideas. The question has always been: Who will be there to stand up against those forces? One of the groups that has consistently stood up has been librarians. When political groups tried to censor great works of literature, you were the ones who put Huckleberry Finn and Catcher in the Rye back on the shelves, making sure that our access to free thought and free information was protected. Ever since we’ve had to worry about our own government looking over our shoulders in that library, you’ve been there to stand up and speak out on our privacy issues. You’re full-time defenders of the most fundamental liberty that we possess. For that, you deserve our gratitude.
But you also deserve our protection. That’s why I’ve been working with Republicans and Democrats to make sure that we have a Patriot Act that helps us track down terrorists without trampling on our civil liberties. This is an issue that Washington always tries to make into an either-or proposition. Either we protect our people from terror or we protect our most cherished principles. But I don’t believe in either-or. I believe in both ends. I think we can do both. I think when we pose the choice as either-or, it is asking too little of us and it assumes too little about America. I believe we can harness new technologies and a new toughness to find terrorists before they strike, while still protecting the very freedoms we’re fighting for in the first place.
I know that some librarians have been subject to FBI or other law enforcement orders, asking for reading records. I hope we can pass a provision just like the one that the House of Representatives passed overwhelmingly that would require federal agents to get these kinds of search warrants from a real judge in a real court just like everyone else does.
In the Senate, the bipartisan bill that we’re working on known as the Safe Act will prevent the federal government from freely rifling through emails and library records without obtaining such a warrant. Giving law enforcement the tools they need to investigate suspicious activity is one thing, but doing it without the approval of our judicial system seriously jeopardizes the rights of all Americans and the ideals Americans stand for. We’re not going to stand for it. We need to roll that provision back.
In addition to the line about federal agents poking around in our libraries, there was another line in my speech that got a lot of attention, and it’s a line that I’d like to amplify this afternoon. At one point in the speech, I mentioned that the people I’ve met all across Illinois know that government can’t solve all their problems. And I mentioned that if you go into the inner city of Chicago, parents will tell you that parents have to parent. Children can’t achieve unless they raise their expectations and turn off the television sets and eradicate the slander that says a black youth with a book is acting white.
To some, that was perceived as speaking solely to the black community. I’m here to suggest that I was speaking to a basic principle, a worry, a challenge, a concern that applies to all of America. Because I believe that if we want to give our children the best possible chance in life, if we want to open the doors of opportunity while they’re young and teach them the skills they’ll need to succeed later on, then one of our greater responsibilities as citizens, as educators and as parents is to insure that every American child can read and read well. That’s because literacy is the most basic currency of the knowledge economy that we’re living in today.
The need to read
Only a few generations ago it was possible to enter into the workforce with a positive attitude, a strong back, willing to work, and it didn’t matter if you were a high school dropout, you could go in to that factory or work on a farm and still hope to find a job that would allow you to pay the bills and raise a family.
That economy is long gone. And it’s not coming back. As revolutions in technology and communications began breaking down barriers between countries and connecting people all over the world, new jobs and industries that require more skill and knowledge have come to dominate the economy.
Whether it’s software design or computer engineering or financial analysis, corporations can locate these jobs anywhere in the world, anywhere that there’s an internet connection. As countries like China and India continue to modernize their economies and educate their children longer and better, the competition American workers face will grow more intense, the necessary skills more demanding. These new jobs are not simply about working hard, they’re about what you know and how fast you can learn what you don’t know. They require innovative thinking, detailed comprehension, and superior communication.
But before our children can even walk into an interview for one of these jobs, before they can even fill out an application or earn the required college degree, they have to be able to pick up a book and read it and understand it. Reading is the gateway skill that makes all other learning possible, from complex word problems and the meaning of our history to scientific discovery and technological proficiency. And by the way, it’s what’s required to make us true citizens.
In a knowledge economy where this kind of knowledge is necessary for survival, how can we send our children out into the world if they’re only reading at a 4th-grade level? How can we do it? I don’t know. But we do. Day after day, year after year. Right now, one out of every five adults in the United States cannot read a simple story to their child. During the last 20 years or so, over 10 million Americans reached the 12th grade without having learned to read at a basic level. These literacy problems start well before high school. In 2000, only 32% of all 4th graders tested as reading-proficient.
The story gets worse when you take race into consideration and income into consideration. Children from low-income families score 27 points below the average reading level while students from wealthy families score 15 points above the average. While only one in 12 white 17-year-olds has the ability to pick up the newspaper and understand the science section, for Hispanics, the number jumps to one in 50; for African-Americans, it’s one in 100.
In this new economy, teaching our kids just enough so that they can get through Dick and Jane is not going to cut it. Over the next 10 years, the average literacy required for all American occupations is projected to rise by 14%.
It’s not enough just to recognize the words on the page anymore. The kind of literacy necessary for the 21st century requires detailed understanding and complex comprehension. And, yet, every year we pass more children through schools or watch as more drop out. These are kids who will pore through the help-wanted section and cross off job after job that requires skills they don’t have. Others will have to take that help wanted section over to somebody sitting next to them and find the courage to ask, “Will you read this for me?”
We have to change our whole mindset as a nation. We’re living in the 21st-century knowledge economy; but our schools, our homes, and our culture are still based around 20th-century and in some cases 19th-century expectations.
The government has a critical role to play in this endeavor of upgrading our children’s skills. This is not the place for me to lay out a long education reform agenda, but I can say that it doesn’t make sense if we have a school system designed for agrarian America and its transition into the industrial age, where we have schools in Chicago that let high school students out at 1:30 because there’s not enough money to keep them there any longer, where teachers continue to be underpaid, where we are not restructuring these schools and financing them sufficiently to make sure that our children are going to be able to compete in this global economy.
There is a lot of work to do on the part of government to make sure that we have a first-class educational system, but government alone is not going to solve the problem. If we are going to start setting high standards and inspirational examples for our children to follow, then all of us have to be engaged.
There is plenty that needs to be done to improve our schools and reform education, but this is not an issue in which we can just look to some experts in Washington to solve the problem. We’re going to have to start at home. We’re going to have to start with parents. And we’re going to have to start in libraries. We know the children who start kindergarten with awareness of language and basic letter sounds become better readers and face fewer challenges in the years ahead. We know the more reading material kids are exposed to at home, the better they score with reading tests throughout their lives. So we have to make investments in family literacy programs and early childhood education so that kids aren’t left behind and are not already behind the day they arrive at school.
We have to get books into our children’s hands early and often. I know this is easier said than done, oftentimes. Parents today still have the toughest job in the world. And no one ever thanks parents for doing it. Not even your kids. Maybe especially your kids, as I’m learning.
Most of you are working longer and harder than ever, juggling job and family responsibilities, trying to be everywhere at once. When you’re at home, you might try to get your kids to read, but you’re competing with other by-products of the technology revolution, TVs and DVDs and video games, things they have to have in every room of the house. Children eight to 18 spend three hours a day watching television; they spend 43 minutes a day reading.
Our kids aren’t just seeing these temptations at home, they’re seeing them everywhere, whether it’s their friend’s house or the people they see on television or a general culture that glorifies anti-intellectualism so that we have a president who brags about getting C’s. That message trickles down to our kids. It’s too easy for children to put down a book and turn their attention elsewhere. And it’s too easy for the rest of us to make excuses for it. You know, pretending if we put a baby in front of a DVD that’s “educational,” then we’re doing our jobs. If we let a 12-year-old skip reading as long as he’s playing a “wholesome” video game, then we’re doing okay, that as long as he’s watching PBS at night instead of having a good conversation about a book with his parents, that somehow we’re doing our job.
We know that’s not what our children need. We know that’s not what’s best for them. And so as parents, we have to find the time and the energy to step in and help our children love reading. We can read to them, talk to them about what they’re reading, and make time for this by turning off the television set ourselves.
Libraries are a critical tool to help parents do this. Knowing the constraints that parents face from a busy schedule and TV culture, we have to think outside the box, to dream big, like we always have in America about how we’re going to get books into the hands of our children.
Right now, children come home from their first doctor’s appointment with an extra bottle of formula. They should come home with their first library card or their first copy of Good Night Moon.
I have memorized Good Night Moon, by the way: “In the great green room there was a telephone….” I love that book.
It sould be as easy to get a book as it is to rent a DVD or pick up McDonald’s. What if instead of a toy in every Happy Meal there was a book?
Libraries have a special role to play in our knowledge economy. Your institutions have been and should be a place where parents and children come to read together and learn together. We should take our kids there more.
We should make sure our politicians aren’t closing libraries down because they had to spend a few extra bucks on tax cuts for folks who don’t need them and weren’t even asking for them.
Opening doors
Each of you has a role to play. You can keep on getting more children to walk through your doors by building on the ideas that so many of you are already pursuing: book clubs and contests, homework help, and advertising your services throughout the community.
In the years ahead, this is our challenge, and this has to be our responsibility. As a librarian or a parent, every one of you can probably remember the look on a child’s face after finishing their first book.
During the campaign last year, I was asked by a reporter from the Chicago Sun-Times if she could interview me about the nature of my religious faith. It was an interesting proposition. I sat down with the reporter, who asked me some very pointed questions about the nature of my faith, how it had evolved. Then the reporter asked me a surprising question. She asked me, “Do you believe in heaven? And what’s your conception of it?”
I told her, you know, I don’t presume to know what lies beyond, but I do know that when I sit down with my six-year-old and my three-year-old at night and I’m reading a book to them and then I tuck them in to go to sleep, that’s a little piece of heaven that I hang onto.
That was about a year ago, and what’s interesting now is watching my six-soon-to-be-seven-year-old reading on her own now. My four-year old will still sit in my lap, but my seven year old, she lies on the table and on her own. She’s got the book in front of her. She’s kind of face down, propped up. And I say, “Do you want me to read to you?” “No, Daddy, I’m all right,” she says, and there’s a little heartbreak that takes place there.
Yet, when I watch her, I feel such joy because I know that in each of those books she’s picking up, her potential will be fulfilled. That’s not unique to me. It’s true of all of us who are parents. There’s nothing we want more than to nurture that sense of wonder in our children. To make all those possibilities and all those opportunities real for our children, to have the ability to answer the question: “What can I be when I grow up?” with the answer “Anything I want. Anything I can dream of.”
It’s a hope that’s old as the American story itself. From the moment the first immigrants arrived on these shores, generations of parents worked hard and sacrificed whatever was necessary so that their children could not just have the same chances they had, but could have the chances they never had. Because while we can never assure that our children will be rich or successful, while we can never be positive that they will do better than their parents, America is about making it possible to give them the chance, to give every child the ability to try. Education is the foundation of this opportunity.
The most basic building block that holds that foundation together is the Word. “In the beginning was the Word.”
At the dawn of the 21st century, where knowledge is literally power, where it unlocks the gates of opportunity and success, we all have responsibilities as parents, as librarians, as educators, as politicians, and as citizens to instill in our children a love of reading so that we can give them a chance to fulfill their dreams. That’s what all of you do each and every day, and for that, I am grateful.
Accessed from: http://www.ala.org/ala/alonline/resources/selectedarticles/obama05.cfm on November 11, 2008.
Obama on Libraries
President-Elect Barack Obama keynoted the opening general session at the ALA Annual Conference in Chicago, June 23–29, 2005, while a U.S. senator from Illinois. This article, published in the August 2005 issue of American Libraries, is an adaptation of that speech, which drew record crowds and garnered a standing ovation.
Bound to the Word
Guardians of truth and knowledge, librarians must be thanked for their role as champions of privacy, literacy, independent thinking, and most of all reading.
by Barack Obama
If you open up Scripture, the Gospel according to John, it starts: “In the beginning was the Word.” Although this has a very particular meaning in Scripture, more broadly what it speaks to is the critical importance of language, of writing, of reading, of communication, of books as a means of transmitting culture and binding us together as a people.
More than a building that houses books and data, the library represents a window to a larger world, the place where we’ve always come to discover big ideas and profound concepts that help move the American story forward and the human story forward. That’s the reason why, since ancient antiquity, whenever those who seek power would want to control the human spirit, they have gone after libraries and books. Whether it’s the ransacking of the great library at Alexandria, controlling information during the Middle Ages, book burnings, or the imprisonment of writers in former communist block countries, the idea has been that if we can control the word, if we can control what people hear and what they read and what they comprehend, then we can control and imprison them, or at least imprison their minds.
That’s worth pondering at a time when truth and science are constantly being challenged by political agendas and ideologies, at a time when language is used not to illuminate but, rather, to obfuscate, at a time when there are those who would disallow the teaching of evolution in our schools, where fake science is used to beat back attempts to curb global warming or fund lifesaving research.
At a time when book banning is back in vogue, libraries remind us that truth isn’t about who yells the loudest, but who has the right information.
We are a religious people, Americans are, as am I. But one of the innovations, the genius of America, is recognizing that our faith is not in contradiction with fact and that our liberty depends upon our ability to access the truth.
That’s what libraries are about. At the moment that we persuade a child, any child, to cross that threshold, that magic threshold into a library, we change their lives forever, for the better. It’s an enormous force for good.
I remember at different junctures in my life feeling lost, feeling adrift, and feeling that somehow walking into a library and seeing those books, seeing human knowledge collected in that fashion, accessible, ready for me, would always lift my spirits. So I’m grateful to be able to acknowledge the importance of librarians and the work that you do. I want to work with you to ensure that libraries continue to be sanctuaries of learning, where we are free to read and consider what we please without the fear that Big Brother may be peering over our shoulders to find out what we’re up to.
Some of you may have heard that I gave a speech last summer at the Democratic convention. It made some news here and there. For some reason, one of the lines people seem to remember has to do with librarians, when I said, “We don’t like federal agents poking around our libraries in the red states, or the blue states for that matter.”
What some people may not remember is that for years, librarians have been on the frontlines of this fight for our privacy and our freedom. There have always been dark times in our history where America has strayed from our best ideas. The question has always been: Who will be there to stand up against those forces? One of the groups that has consistently stood up has been librarians. When political groups tried to censor great works of literature, you were the ones who put Huckleberry Finn and Catcher in the Rye back on the shelves, making sure that our access to free thought and free information was protected. Ever since we’ve had to worry about our own government looking over our shoulders in that library, you’ve been there to stand up and speak out on our privacy issues. You’re full-time defenders of the most fundamental liberty that we possess. For that, you deserve our gratitude.
But you also deserve our protection. That’s why I’ve been working with Republicans and Democrats to make sure that we have a Patriot Act that helps us track down terrorists without trampling on our civil liberties. This is an issue that Washington always tries to make into an either-or proposition. Either we protect our people from terror or we protect our most cherished principles. But I don’t believe in either-or. I believe in both ends. I think we can do both. I think when we pose the choice as either-or, it is asking too little of us and it assumes too little about America. I believe we can harness new technologies and a new toughness to find terrorists before they strike, while still protecting the very freedoms we’re fighting for in the first place.
I know that some librarians have been subject to FBI or other law enforcement orders, asking for reading records. I hope we can pass a provision just like the one that the House of Representatives passed overwhelmingly that would require federal agents to get these kinds of search warrants from a real judge in a real court just like everyone else does.
In the Senate, the bipartisan bill that we’re working on known as the Safe Act will prevent the federal government from freely rifling through emails and library records without obtaining such a warrant. Giving law enforcement the tools they need to investigate suspicious activity is one thing, but doing it without the approval of our judicial system seriously jeopardizes the rights of all Americans and the ideals Americans stand for. We’re not going to stand for it. We need to roll that provision back.
In addition to the line about federal agents poking around in our libraries, there was another line in my speech that got a lot of attention, and it’s a line that I’d like to amplify this afternoon. At one point in the speech, I mentioned that the people I’ve met all across Illinois know that government can’t solve all their problems. And I mentioned that if you go into the inner city of Chicago, parents will tell you that parents have to parent. Children can’t achieve unless they raise their expectations and turn off the television sets and eradicate the slander that says a black youth with a book is acting white.
To some, that was perceived as speaking solely to the black community. I’m here to suggest that I was speaking to a basic principle, a worry, a challenge, a concern that applies to all of America. Because I believe that if we want to give our children the best possible chance in life, if we want to open the doors of opportunity while they’re young and teach them the skills they’ll need to succeed later on, then one of our greater responsibilities as citizens, as educators and as parents is to insure that every American child can read and read well. That’s because literacy is the most basic currency of the knowledge economy that we’re living in today.
The need to read
Only a few generations ago it was possible to enter into the workforce with a positive attitude, a strong back, willing to work, and it didn’t matter if you were a high school dropout, you could go in to that factory or work on a farm and still hope to find a job that would allow you to pay the bills and raise a family.
That economy is long gone. And it’s not coming back. As revolutions in technology and communications began breaking down barriers between countries and connecting people all over the world, new jobs and industries that require more skill and knowledge have come to dominate the economy.
Whether it’s software design or computer engineering or financial analysis, corporations can locate these jobs anywhere in the world, anywhere that there’s an internet connection. As countries like China and India continue to modernize their economies and educate their children longer and better, the competition American workers face will grow more intense, the necessary skills more demanding. These new jobs are not simply about working hard, they’re about what you know and how fast you can learn what you don’t know. They require innovative thinking, detailed comprehension, and superior communication.
But before our children can even walk into an interview for one of these jobs, before they can even fill out an application or earn the required college degree, they have to be able to pick up a book and read it and understand it. Reading is the gateway skill that makes all other learning possible, from complex word problems and the meaning of our history to scientific discovery and technological proficiency. And by the way, it’s what’s required to make us true citizens.
In a knowledge economy where this kind of knowledge is necessary for survival, how can we send our children out into the world if they’re only reading at a 4th-grade level? How can we do it? I don’t know. But we do. Day after day, year after year. Right now, one out of every five adults in the United States cannot read a simple story to their child. During the last 20 years or so, over 10 million Americans reached the 12th grade without having learned to read at a basic level. These literacy problems start well before high school. In 2000, only 32% of all 4th graders tested as reading-proficient.
The story gets worse when you take race into consideration and income into consideration. Children from low-income families score 27 points below the average reading level while students from wealthy families score 15 points above the average. While only one in 12 white 17-year-olds has the ability to pick up the newspaper and understand the science section, for Hispanics, the number jumps to one in 50; for African-Americans, it’s one in 100.
In this new economy, teaching our kids just enough so that they can get through Dick and Jane is not going to cut it. Over the next 10 years, the average literacy required for all American occupations is projected to rise by 14%.
It’s not enough just to recognize the words on the page anymore. The kind of literacy necessary for the 21st century requires detailed understanding and complex comprehension. And, yet, every year we pass more children through schools or watch as more drop out. These are kids who will pore through the help-wanted section and cross off job after job that requires skills they don’t have. Others will have to take that help wanted section over to somebody sitting next to them and find the courage to ask, “Will you read this for me?”
We have to change our whole mindset as a nation. We’re living in the 21st-century knowledge economy; but our schools, our homes, and our culture are still based around 20th-century and in some cases 19th-century expectations.
The government has a critical role to play in this endeavor of upgrading our children’s skills. This is not the place for me to lay out a long education reform agenda, but I can say that it doesn’t make sense if we have a school system designed for agrarian America and its transition into the industrial age, where we have schools in Chicago that let high school students out at 1:30 because there’s not enough money to keep them there any longer, where teachers continue to be underpaid, where we are not restructuring these schools and financing them sufficiently to make sure that our children are going to be able to compete in this global economy.
There is a lot of work to do on the part of government to make sure that we have a first-class educational system, but government alone is not going to solve the problem. If we are going to start setting high standards and inspirational examples for our children to follow, then all of us have to be engaged.
There is plenty that needs to be done to improve our schools and reform education, but this is not an issue in which we can just look to some experts in Washington to solve the problem. We’re going to have to start at home. We’re going to have to start with parents. And we’re going to have to start in libraries. We know the children who start kindergarten with awareness of language and basic letter sounds become better readers and face fewer challenges in the years ahead. We know the more reading material kids are exposed to at home, the better they score with reading tests throughout their lives. So we have to make investments in family literacy programs and early childhood education so that kids aren’t left behind and are not already behind the day they arrive at school.
We have to get books into our children’s hands early and often. I know this is easier said than done, oftentimes. Parents today still have the toughest job in the world. And no one ever thanks parents for doing it. Not even your kids. Maybe especially your kids, as I’m learning.
Most of you are working longer and harder than ever, juggling job and family responsibilities, trying to be everywhere at once. When you’re at home, you might try to get your kids to read, but you’re competing with other by-products of the technology revolution, TVs and DVDs and video games, things they have to have in every room of the house. Children eight to 18 spend three hours a day watching television; they spend 43 minutes a day reading.
Our kids aren’t just seeing these temptations at home, they’re seeing them everywhere, whether it’s their friend’s house or the people they see on television or a general culture that glorifies anti-intellectualism so that we have a president who brags about getting C’s. That message trickles down to our kids. It’s too easy for children to put down a book and turn their attention elsewhere. And it’s too easy for the rest of us to make excuses for it. You know, pretending if we put a baby in front of a DVD that’s “educational,” then we’re doing our jobs. If we let a 12-year-old skip reading as long as he’s playing a “wholesome” video game, then we’re doing okay, that as long as he’s watching PBS at night instead of having a good conversation about a book with his parents, that somehow we’re doing our job.
We know that’s not what our children need. We know that’s not what’s best for them. And so as parents, we have to find the time and the energy to step in and help our children love reading. We can read to them, talk to them about what they’re reading, and make time for this by turning off the television set ourselves.
Libraries are a critical tool to help parents do this. Knowing the constraints that parents face from a busy schedule and TV culture, we have to think outside the box, to dream big, like we always have in America about how we’re going to get books into the hands of our children.
Right now, children come home from their first doctor’s appointment with an extra bottle of formula. They should come home with their first library card or their first copy of Good Night Moon.
I have memorized Good Night Moon, by the way: “In the great green room there was a telephone….” I love that book.
It sould be as easy to get a book as it is to rent a DVD or pick up McDonald’s. What if instead of a toy in every Happy Meal there was a book?
Libraries have a special role to play in our knowledge economy. Your institutions have been and should be a place where parents and children come to read together and learn together. We should take our kids there more.
We should make sure our politicians aren’t closing libraries down because they had to spend a few extra bucks on tax cuts for folks who don’t need them and weren’t even asking for them.
Opening doors
Each of you has a role to play. You can keep on getting more children to walk through your doors by building on the ideas that so many of you are already pursuing: book clubs and contests, homework help, and advertising your services throughout the community.
In the years ahead, this is our challenge, and this has to be our responsibility. As a librarian or a parent, every one of you can probably remember the look on a child’s face after finishing their first book.
During the campaign last year, I was asked by a reporter from the Chicago Sun-Times if she could interview me about the nature of my religious faith. It was an interesting proposition. I sat down with the reporter, who asked me some very pointed questions about the nature of my faith, how it had evolved. Then the reporter asked me a surprising question. She asked me, “Do you believe in heaven? And what’s your conception of it?”
I told her, you know, I don’t presume to know what lies beyond, but I do know that when I sit down with my six-year-old and my three-year-old at night and I’m reading a book to them and then I tuck them in to go to sleep, that’s a little piece of heaven that I hang onto.
That was about a year ago, and what’s interesting now is watching my six-soon-to-be-seven-year-old reading on her own now. My four-year old will still sit in my lap, but my seven year old, she lies on the table and on her own. She’s got the book in front of her. She’s kind of face down, propped up. And I say, “Do you want me to read to you?” “No, Daddy, I’m all right,” she says, and there’s a little heartbreak that takes place there.
Yet, when I watch her, I feel such joy because I know that in each of those books she’s picking up, her potential will be fulfilled. That’s not unique to me. It’s true of all of us who are parents. There’s nothing we want more than to nurture that sense of wonder in our children. To make all those possibilities and all those opportunities real for our children, to have the ability to answer the question: “What can I be when I grow up?” with the answer “Anything I want. Anything I can dream of.”
It’s a hope that’s old as the American story itself. From the moment the first immigrants arrived on these shores, generations of parents worked hard and sacrificed whatever was necessary so that their children could not just have the same chances they had, but could have the chances they never had. Because while we can never assure that our children will be rich or successful, while we can never be positive that they will do better than their parents, America is about making it possible to give them the chance, to give every child the ability to try. Education is the foundation of this opportunity.
The most basic building block that holds that foundation together is the Word. “In the beginning was the Word.”
At the dawn of the 21st century, where knowledge is literally power, where it unlocks the gates of opportunity and success, we all have responsibilities as parents, as librarians, as educators, as politicians, and as citizens to instill in our children a love of reading so that we can give them a chance to fulfill their dreams. That’s what all of you do each and every day, and for that, I am grateful.
Accessed from: http://www.ala.org/ala/alonline/resources/selectedarticles/obama05.cfm on November 11, 2008.
Tuesday, October 28, 2008
More Tips for Coping with Email Overload
Five Methodologies to Deal with Email Overload
Written by Sarah Perez / March 20, 2008
These days, it seems everyone has an opinion about how to deal with information overload, especially when it comes to email management. There are numerous methodologies, best practices, tips, and tutorials available, but are any of them really effective? We'll explore that question as we delve into the top five email management methodologies.
The Methods
The GTD Method: GTD, or "Getting it Done," methodology arose from David Allen's popular and ground-breaking work-life management system. His techniques can be applied to nearly all aspects of work and life. Specifically, using the GTD method for processing email involves taking action on every piece of email that arrives in your inbox. As you review each item, you should should do one of these 3 items if the item requires action: 1) Do it (if it takes less than two minutes), 2) Delegate it, 3) Defer it. If the item does not require action, either 1) File it, 2) Delete it, or 3) Incubate it for possible action later. By processing mail this way, you'll always have an empty inbox.
Implement It:
Due to GTD's popularity, there are now several software tools to choose from. A list and comparison chart of many of these tools can be found here.
One of the more popular tools, boasting 80,000 users, is the GTDInbox Firefox extension for Gmail. This extension, which recently relaunched with a new version, GTDInbox 2.0, automatically sets up Gmail labels like "Next Action," "Waiting On," "Someday," and "Finished." The extension is smart - as you label items as "Finished," it will automatically remove the label "Next Action." The extension also structures Gmail as a personal database of projects, references, and people, clustering related items together so you can easily find everything related to a project, contact, or file. For example, you could click on a project and email all the associated contacts.
The 4-Hour Workweek Method: Timothy Ferriss also released a popular book which offered the blueprint to how you could eliminate most of your workload and outsource your life in order to regain more personal time ("mini-retirements," as he called it). He recommends managing email through more of an avoidance strategy, calling email "the greatest single interruption in the modern world." To counter the time-wasting aspect of email, Ferris recommends you begin by turning off the audible alert and/or visual notification. Then move to checking your email only twice per day: once at 12:00 noon (or just prior to lunch) and again at 4:00 pm. He advises you to never check email first thing in the morning.
Implement It:
To help implement this process, an auto-response email template can be used, which advises of your new process while also offering a way to reach you in the case of an actual emergency (like a cell #). If you become the master of this method, like Ferriss, you could even move to checking your email once per week. Of course there are other things that need to be adjusted in order for this to work, like removing yourself as an information bottleneck or empowering subordinates or employees to make decisions on their own, but ultimately the goal is to reduce your email inbox from being filled with urgent to-do items.
The "Treat Email As SMS" Policy: Another method to dealing with email involves treating all incoming email as if it were an SMS text message. Only use a set number of sentences to respond. How many sentences is up to you.
Implement It:
A web site called sentenc.es can help you implement this. Begin by updating your email with a signature similar to the following:
———————————————————————-
Q: Why is this email 5 sentences or less?
A: http://five.sentenc.es
The link takes you to the web site explaining what you're doing. There are also sites available for four, three, and two sentences, if you want to be even briefer.
The Folders & Rules Method: The classic old-school way of organizing your email into meaningful folders containing similar items. This method arose from a time when desktop email software was the norm and email search was either poorly executed or non-existent. Despite the fact that there are now clearly superior ways to organize mail, many people are still moving email into folders. This process can be automated in desktop software, like Outlook, or in web-software, like Gmail, by using "Rules" (aka "Filters" in Gmail). This process involves having incoming mail identified based on sender, keywords, subject, etc and then categorized and filing appropriately. Gmail also introduced Labels, which allows for mail to exist in multiple "folders," an option that is more like tagging your mail, but ultimately, it is just folders 2.0, leading Gmail users to having multiple labels for mail instead of single folders.
Implement It:
No don't! But if you must, at least make it easier on yourself. Read up on Outlook rules, Thunderbird filters, Gmail filters, or documentation for whatever your mail client of choice is. You can augment your software by using add-ons and extensions, too. For Outlook users, the Clear Context add-in will overhaul your email system and help you manage your inbox better. Apple mail users can use Mail Act-On.
The Email Bankruptcy Method: Surprisingly, some people are just giving up on email. The term's origin may have originated from MIT professor, Sherry Turkle's, concept after conducting research on people's relationship with technology. She discovered that some people had fantasies about escaping the burden of their email. However it was author, Lawrence Lessig, who popularized it.
Take this example from a Washington Post article:
Stanford computer science professor Donald E. Knuth started using e-mail in 1975 and stopped using it 15 years later. Knuth said he prefers to concentrate on writing books rather than be distracted by the steady stream of communication. "I'd get to work and start answering e-mail -- three hours later, I'd say, "Oh, what was I supposed to do today?" Knuth said that he has no regrets. "I have been a happy man since Jan. 1 , 1990."
But, according to the article, dropping out is copping out - "a reactionary and isolationist way of dealing with modern communications."
Implement It:
You shouldn't declare email bankruptcy unless you really have no other choice. If you are going this extreme route, the best way to do so would be to send out a mass email to all of your contacts with an explanation and an apology. Offer them other ways to reach you like phone numbers and snail mail addresses, unless you are committing to becoming a total hermit. Prepare to be ridiculed.
Conclusion
After reviewing the mailbox management methodologies, are there any that really stand out as the best way? The GTD method makes a lot of sense, but it takes time to retrain yourself to change years of behavior you've become accustomed to. Of course, time to train and change is something you often don't have due to the very same burden you're trying to overcome. Besides reading the success stories on the acclaimed authors web sites, how many people have implemented a GTD or alternative email methodology and stuck with it over time? Have you? Share your thoughts in the comments.
Written by Sarah Perez / March 20, 2008
These days, it seems everyone has an opinion about how to deal with information overload, especially when it comes to email management. There are numerous methodologies, best practices, tips, and tutorials available, but are any of them really effective? We'll explore that question as we delve into the top five email management methodologies.
The Methods
The GTD Method: GTD, or "Getting it Done," methodology arose from David Allen's popular and ground-breaking work-life management system. His techniques can be applied to nearly all aspects of work and life. Specifically, using the GTD method for processing email involves taking action on every piece of email that arrives in your inbox. As you review each item, you should should do one of these 3 items if the item requires action: 1) Do it (if it takes less than two minutes), 2) Delegate it, 3) Defer it. If the item does not require action, either 1) File it, 2) Delete it, or 3) Incubate it for possible action later. By processing mail this way, you'll always have an empty inbox.
Implement It:
Due to GTD's popularity, there are now several software tools to choose from. A list and comparison chart of many of these tools can be found here.
One of the more popular tools, boasting 80,000 users, is the GTDInbox Firefox extension for Gmail. This extension, which recently relaunched with a new version, GTDInbox 2.0, automatically sets up Gmail labels like "Next Action," "Waiting On," "Someday," and "Finished." The extension is smart - as you label items as "Finished," it will automatically remove the label "Next Action." The extension also structures Gmail as a personal database of projects, references, and people, clustering related items together so you can easily find everything related to a project, contact, or file. For example, you could click on a project and email all the associated contacts.
The 4-Hour Workweek Method: Timothy Ferriss also released a popular book which offered the blueprint to how you could eliminate most of your workload and outsource your life in order to regain more personal time ("mini-retirements," as he called it). He recommends managing email through more of an avoidance strategy, calling email "the greatest single interruption in the modern world." To counter the time-wasting aspect of email, Ferris recommends you begin by turning off the audible alert and/or visual notification. Then move to checking your email only twice per day: once at 12:00 noon (or just prior to lunch) and again at 4:00 pm. He advises you to never check email first thing in the morning.
Implement It:
To help implement this process, an auto-response email template can be used, which advises of your new process while also offering a way to reach you in the case of an actual emergency (like a cell #). If you become the master of this method, like Ferriss, you could even move to checking your email once per week. Of course there are other things that need to be adjusted in order for this to work, like removing yourself as an information bottleneck or empowering subordinates or employees to make decisions on their own, but ultimately the goal is to reduce your email inbox from being filled with urgent to-do items.
The "Treat Email As SMS" Policy: Another method to dealing with email involves treating all incoming email as if it were an SMS text message. Only use a set number of sentences to respond. How many sentences is up to you.
Implement It:
A web site called sentenc.es can help you implement this. Begin by updating your email with a signature similar to the following:
———————————————————————-
Q: Why is this email 5 sentences or less?
A: http://five.sentenc.es
The link takes you to the web site explaining what you're doing. There are also sites available for four, three, and two sentences, if you want to be even briefer.
The Folders & Rules Method: The classic old-school way of organizing your email into meaningful folders containing similar items. This method arose from a time when desktop email software was the norm and email search was either poorly executed or non-existent. Despite the fact that there are now clearly superior ways to organize mail, many people are still moving email into folders. This process can be automated in desktop software, like Outlook, or in web-software, like Gmail, by using "Rules" (aka "Filters" in Gmail). This process involves having incoming mail identified based on sender, keywords, subject, etc and then categorized and filing appropriately. Gmail also introduced Labels, which allows for mail to exist in multiple "folders," an option that is more like tagging your mail, but ultimately, it is just folders 2.0, leading Gmail users to having multiple labels for mail instead of single folders.
Implement It:
No don't! But if you must, at least make it easier on yourself. Read up on Outlook rules, Thunderbird filters, Gmail filters, or documentation for whatever your mail client of choice is. You can augment your software by using add-ons and extensions, too. For Outlook users, the Clear Context add-in will overhaul your email system and help you manage your inbox better. Apple mail users can use Mail Act-On.
The Email Bankruptcy Method: Surprisingly, some people are just giving up on email. The term's origin may have originated from MIT professor, Sherry Turkle's, concept after conducting research on people's relationship with technology. She discovered that some people had fantasies about escaping the burden of their email. However it was author, Lawrence Lessig, who popularized it.
Take this example from a Washington Post article:
Stanford computer science professor Donald E. Knuth started using e-mail in 1975 and stopped using it 15 years later. Knuth said he prefers to concentrate on writing books rather than be distracted by the steady stream of communication. "I'd get to work and start answering e-mail -- three hours later, I'd say, "Oh, what was I supposed to do today?" Knuth said that he has no regrets. "I have been a happy man since Jan. 1 , 1990."
But, according to the article, dropping out is copping out - "a reactionary and isolationist way of dealing with modern communications."
Implement It:
You shouldn't declare email bankruptcy unless you really have no other choice. If you are going this extreme route, the best way to do so would be to send out a mass email to all of your contacts with an explanation and an apology. Offer them other ways to reach you like phone numbers and snail mail addresses, unless you are committing to becoming a total hermit. Prepare to be ridiculed.
Conclusion
After reviewing the mailbox management methodologies, are there any that really stand out as the best way? The GTD method makes a lot of sense, but it takes time to retrain yourself to change years of behavior you've become accustomed to. Of course, time to train and change is something you often don't have due to the very same burden you're trying to overcome. Besides reading the success stories on the acclaimed authors web sites, how many people have implemented a GTD or alternative email methodology and stuck with it over time? Have you? Share your thoughts in the comments.
Wednesday, October 1, 2008
Email Yanks its Invisible Leash
Cut ties to your inbox by actually speaking with colleagues, experts say
Toronto Star, Monday, Sep 29, 2008, pg L2
Hillary Rhodes
The Associated Press
Remember when "You've got mail" alerts were thrilling?
The emails that now pour into queues and spill onto BlackBerry devices have left some workers feeling so bogged down they can find little time to do anything else.
"We're like frazzled lab rats, being poked and prodded and beeped and pinged," says Maggie Jackson, author of “Distracted: The Erosion of Attention and the Coming Dark Age.”
The average worker receives 200 emails a day, according to the business and technology research firm Basex.
It's an unfortunate irony that a system once lauded for its promises of efficiency has filled days at the office with wasted, fragmented time.
Constant access to information, communication and technology has becomes such a big issue, experts say, that its implications go beyond a lack of productivity and focus at work and into the quality of work relationships, as well as those at home. "Attention is the bedrock to learning, memory, social connection and happiness," Jackson says.
"When you're overusing it for the petty things – like the guy in the next cubicle – stand up and ask him the question," says Cherie Kerr, author of The Bliss or `Diss' Connection: E-mail Etiquette for the Business Professional.
Checking email can also be an all-too-tempting alternative to actual work.
And like any form of procrastination, sometimes taking care of email just feels so good.
"Email is being used like a drug to get a hit of accomplishment when one feels he is spinning his wheels," says technology analyst Craig Roth in his blog, KnowledgeForward.
In July, the Information Overload Research Group, a non-profit with members from technology companies and other industry experts, was launched with the mission to raise awareness of how current communication tools can impede productivity.
And the industry that created this problem is also trying to capitalize by helping people organize their inboxes. A program called C-MAIL promises to help prioritize email by learning through the user's clicks about what's more or less important.
The makers of Xobni, which is "inbox" spelled backwards, say their Microsoft Outlook plug-in speeds up the process by "threading" conversations (grouping responses together).
Toronto Star, Monday, Sep 29, 2008, pg L2
Hillary Rhodes
The Associated Press
Remember when "You've got mail" alerts were thrilling?
The emails that now pour into queues and spill onto BlackBerry devices have left some workers feeling so bogged down they can find little time to do anything else.
"We're like frazzled lab rats, being poked and prodded and beeped and pinged," says Maggie Jackson, author of “Distracted: The Erosion of Attention and the Coming Dark Age.”
The average worker receives 200 emails a day, according to the business and technology research firm Basex.
It's an unfortunate irony that a system once lauded for its promises of efficiency has filled days at the office with wasted, fragmented time.
Constant access to information, communication and technology has becomes such a big issue, experts say, that its implications go beyond a lack of productivity and focus at work and into the quality of work relationships, as well as those at home. "Attention is the bedrock to learning, memory, social connection and happiness," Jackson says.
"When you're overusing it for the petty things – like the guy in the next cubicle – stand up and ask him the question," says Cherie Kerr, author of The Bliss or `Diss' Connection: E-mail Etiquette for the Business Professional.
Checking email can also be an all-too-tempting alternative to actual work.
And like any form of procrastination, sometimes taking care of email just feels so good.
"Email is being used like a drug to get a hit of accomplishment when one feels he is spinning his wheels," says technology analyst Craig Roth in his blog, KnowledgeForward.
In July, the Information Overload Research Group, a non-profit with members from technology companies and other industry experts, was launched with the mission to raise awareness of how current communication tools can impede productivity.
And the industry that created this problem is also trying to capitalize by helping people organize their inboxes. A program called C-MAIL promises to help prioritize email by learning through the user's clicks about what's more or less important.
The makers of Xobni, which is "inbox" spelled backwards, say their Microsoft Outlook plug-in speeds up the process by "threading" conversations (grouping responses together).
Thursday, September 25, 2008
Tips for Coping with Email Overload
Tips for Overcoming Email Overload
by Kaitlin Duck Sherwood
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Here are my top tips:
Recognize that your inbox is your to-do list. Think of it as such and treat it as such.
Get spam out of your inbox. There are many good anti-spam software packages out there now. Your company should have one; if you don't have one at home, get one. Spam Bayes is a good one, and free.
If you are on an email list that is purely informational -- where messages never turn into "to-do" items -- use rules/filters to move the those messages to a subfolder. You can read them on some day when you don't have anything better to do.
Get off of as many email lists as you can. Will the day come when you don't have anything better to do than to read that mailing list? If not, get off the list. If you can't figure out how to get off the list, use filters/rules to send those messages to the trash.
Move messages out of your inbox when you no longer need to take read, respond to, or act upon a message. Don't beat yourself up about how you aren't filing your messages properly; just make a folder named "Done" and put all your "Done" messages there. (The Google Archive button does just this.)
If your email program allows it, put a button in the toolbar for moving the selected message(s) to a final resting place. Put or use a button in the toolbar for moving to the next message. If you are done with a message, press the first button. If you still need to do something with a message, press the second button.
Use rules/filters to prioritize your inbox. If possible, use rules to assign each message a category (or label) based on what group the sender belongs to. If you assign the categories so that they sort in the same order as their probable importance, then you can easily sort your inbox to list messages in roughly the order you want to deal with them.
Save and reuse responses to questions that you get frequently.
Write better messages:
Discuss only one issue per message. People frequently forget about all but the first or last question, and thus you have to send/receive more messages to deal with the missing answer.
Be sure to provide adequate context for your messages. Be particularly careful about pronouns in about the first three sentences: make sure it is absolutely clear what those pronouns are connected to.
Make your emotional tone as obvious and explicit as you can.
Use formal language and end messages with No Reply Needed to discourage responses.
As much as possible, reply to only the sender instead of to everybody and use BCC instead of CC. Your correspondents then won't get in side conversations with each other that they copy you on.
Don't forward any message that asks you to forward it to everyone you know. Those messages are almost always hoaxes or out of date. You might get lots of messages back telling you so.
If someone you know sends you messages you don't want (like hoaxes or jokes), ask them very politely to stop. Otherwise, they will send you more.
Read Overcome Email Overload with Microsoft Outlook 2000 and Outlook 2002 or Overcome Email Overload with Eudora 5 online If nothing else, read the first part of Chapter 2. Chapter 3 is slightly out of date, but will show you how to set up rules/filters. (If you are using a newer version of Outlook, the Outlook book will still be fine. If you are using something besides Outlook, you should probably look at the Eudora book.)
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by Kaitlin Duck Sherwood
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Here are my top tips:
Recognize that your inbox is your to-do list. Think of it as such and treat it as such.
Get spam out of your inbox. There are many good anti-spam software packages out there now. Your company should have one; if you don't have one at home, get one. Spam Bayes is a good one, and free.
If you are on an email list that is purely informational -- where messages never turn into "to-do" items -- use rules/filters to move the those messages to a subfolder. You can read them on some day when you don't have anything better to do.
Get off of as many email lists as you can. Will the day come when you don't have anything better to do than to read that mailing list? If not, get off the list. If you can't figure out how to get off the list, use filters/rules to send those messages to the trash.
Move messages out of your inbox when you no longer need to take read, respond to, or act upon a message. Don't beat yourself up about how you aren't filing your messages properly; just make a folder named "Done" and put all your "Done" messages there. (The Google Archive button does just this.)
If your email program allows it, put a button in the toolbar for moving the selected message(s) to a final resting place. Put or use a button in the toolbar for moving to the next message. If you are done with a message, press the first button. If you still need to do something with a message, press the second button.
Use rules/filters to prioritize your inbox. If possible, use rules to assign each message a category (or label) based on what group the sender belongs to. If you assign the categories so that they sort in the same order as their probable importance, then you can easily sort your inbox to list messages in roughly the order you want to deal with them.
Save and reuse responses to questions that you get frequently.
Write better messages:
Discuss only one issue per message. People frequently forget about all but the first or last question, and thus you have to send/receive more messages to deal with the missing answer.
Be sure to provide adequate context for your messages. Be particularly careful about pronouns in about the first three sentences: make sure it is absolutely clear what those pronouns are connected to.
Make your emotional tone as obvious and explicit as you can.
Use formal language and end messages with No Reply Needed to discourage responses.
As much as possible, reply to only the sender instead of to everybody and use BCC instead of CC. Your correspondents then won't get in side conversations with each other that they copy you on.
Don't forward any message that asks you to forward it to everyone you know. Those messages are almost always hoaxes or out of date. You might get lots of messages back telling you so.
If someone you know sends you messages you don't want (like hoaxes or jokes), ask them very politely to stop. Otherwise, they will send you more.
Read Overcome Email Overload with Microsoft Outlook 2000 and Outlook 2002 or Overcome Email Overload with Eudora 5 online If nothing else, read the first part of Chapter 2. Chapter 3 is slightly out of date, but will show you how to set up rules/filters. (If you are using a newer version of Outlook, the Outlook book will still be fine. If you are using something besides Outlook, you should probably look at the Eudora book.)
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Liked this article and want to see more? Go here for more books and websites on this topic.
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