KNOW YOUR AUDIENCE
How Writing Helped Me Be a Better Librarian
Librarianship is a second career for many librarians—it was for me. Before attending library school, I was a price guide editor. I edited price guides that covered antiques, collectibles, and toys— toys were what I spent most of my time on and what I knew best. The organizational and project management skills I learned as an editor have been invaluable to me as a librarian, but the most helpful has been learning how to write for a specific audience. Writing and editing for a specific audience mean that you have to identify that audience and understand their needs. And identifying that audience and knowing what they want and need tie directly into librarianship. As outreach and marketing become more important to libraries, knowing who our users are and how they use the library is becoming core to our mission.
As an editor, I had to know who read our books. Our reading audience included two main groups: serious collectors and dealers as well as novice collectors. Serious collectors and dealers generally had large collections or had an interest in building large collections. Many of them made their living—or part of their living—by buying and selling toys. They bought multiple price guides to get a well-rounded picture of the market. They would acquire every book available just to have a comprehensive in-home library. Novice collectors were those with only a passing interest in toys. They were more likely to buy only one book for a specific purpose and not buy multiple books. They may not have been the core audience, but they were still readers and potential customers.
Working in publishing taught me how important it was to know my audience. This translated directly into librarianship—to be a better librarian I need to know who my user is. Just as with price guides, there is a primary audience for my library—university students. If I know who they are, what they need, and how they research, I can better serve them. Marketing the library and my services has been one of my goals as a librarian. I have surveyed students about our services. I listen to not only what students are asking at the reference desk but also what they aren’t asking. I reach out to faculty to find out what they need but also what they think their students need. One of the things I heard most often from faculty was that students weren’t using library sources.
In an effort to reach out to students, I took the library outside of the building. I offered a satellite reference service to the business school, my subject specialty. I wanted to make both students and faculty aware that I existed and that the library existed. At the end of every instruction session, I told students about how the library had the resources they needed to complete their assignments—and one of those resources was me and every other librarian on campus. Everything I did as a librarian represented the library and was a way to reach out to my core user.
Why did I put so much effort into marketing myself and the library? From getting to know my core audience through questions, observation, and research, I knew that I needed to market the library. I needed to reach out directly to my user—and that has helped me be a more effective librarian.
Writing stories can improve your effectiveness in many areas of library work, and you do not have to be Austen, Chabon, Shakespeare, or Woolf for this to happen. The process of writing, along with what the writer learns along the way, boosts skills ranging from instruction to presentation and interviewing. As someone who wrote long before ever thinking of library school, I use tricks and techniques learned from writing every day in my work as a humanities reference librarian. Although I write fiction, any kind of narrative stories, whether autobiographical anecdotes or narrative nonfiction of the kind written by Krakauer or Wolfe, should be effective for the purposes I describe here.
One of the best aids to the creation of good stories is writing regularly. Some authors write two pages per day and some write fifteen, but most have a daily goal. In addition, most authors develop certain habits to aid their productivity: writing at roughly the same time and in the same place, drinking the same beverage from the same mug, listening to the same music. All of these things combine to put the writer in the proper mental space to write.
If you write in your spare time, you will find that all writing becomes a little easier. Some librarians dislike writing for publication, but there are ways to conquer writing anxiety. When you write regularly in another setting, you will find that your “writing muscles” are warmed up more than they are if you go for long periods writing nothing other than e-mail. While library work often doesn’t allow for writing at the same time every day, or even necessarily a room of your own, every little bit that you can do to create a writing habit will be useful when it comes time for you to write on the job.
Different people take criticism in different ways, but learning how to listen to and profit from criticism is essential for anyone who wishes to work effectively. The process of writing stories typically involves revision to improve one’s writing. At some point in the revision process, one often asks for feedback from others, and this can come in a variety of formats.
Most writers develop some ability to take criticism impersonally, which can be very helpful when the time comes, for example, to propose a change in your library. Most such proposals do not pass management uncritiqued and require some measure of refinement. Coping with this can be difficult, especially if one takes criticism to heart. New librarians are often prone to take a lack of unbounded enthusiasm hard, but experience with criticism in one arena may translate well into another.
Daily journaling can be useful as a tool to help you with regular writing, but there are certain advantages to writing in the form of stories. Whether the stories are made up or based on events from your day-to-day life is not as relevant as setting them down on paper.
Reference transactions. When you are working with a patron, trying to explain how to use resources, or talking about the research process, it can be helpful to talk in terms of stories. People often ask for examples when they are trying to understand something, and even if they do not ask, an example might help the patron understand something in a nonabstract way and put him or her at ease. If you are accustomed to thinking in terms of stories, then good, well-rounded examples will come to you quickly when you are trying to describe aspects of the research process. For instance, an analogy about grocery shopping—finding the right aisle, reading labels, picking your type of shopping bag, not buying the first thing you find but rather carefully shopping—might help a patron trying to understand sorting citation database results.
Illustrations for instruction. Many techniques can enliven library instruction, but I have found stories to be particularly effective at catching patrons’ attention. This works for all the reasons mentioned for reference transactions, but there are a couple of things to keep in mind. First, because you prepare for instruction sessions in advance, it can be useful to test the story on colleagues first. This will give you the chance to ensure that the story is interesting and that it makes the point that it’s supposed to. Second, make sure that the story is broadly applicable. When working with a patron one-on-one, a story can be more specialized, but in a one-to-many situation, it behooves you to tell a story the whole class will be able to generalize from to research more effectively.
Learning how to tell stories can be an effective tool in helping you learn to interview more effectively, as I have discussed previously (Glover 2007). Framing your experiences as stories can help you to remember all the relevant parts more easily, give interviewers a convenient point of discussion during and after the interview, and provide you with a readily available story to use for behavioral questions. If this seems difficult to you, remember that you are the main character in the story that is your life, and an interview lets you tell that story.
Writing regularly will help your ability to encapsulate your experience in stories. While some people come by storytelling skills naturally, most of us have to practice.
We hear stories from our earliest childhood, and we are accustomed to consuming stories as part of communication, whether in the news, at the movie theater, or sitting around a table with friends. Because librarians are always striving to find a way to connect more effectively with patrons, it behooves us to explore all the methods available to us to meet that goal. Sometimes this involves the use of new technologies (e.g., short message service, instant messaging, virtual worlds), but it can also take the form of extended exposure to other methods of interaction.
Employees often attend workshops or retreats designed to improve their ability to collaborate. By the same token, a focused attempt to improve communication skills can lead to an improvement in our ability to work successfully. If librarians can take language courses to reach non-English-speaking populations or practice with new technology to ensure smooth operation in the classroom, it follows that practicing skills like telling stories is an appropriate, useful technique for improving effectiveness in the workplace.
Glover, John. 2007. “Telling Stories to Get the Job.” LIScareer.com, June 6. www.liscareer.com/glover_stories.htm.
Professional development can be expensive. It can take time away from your other work duties, but it is often required to some degree. Some ways to reduce this cost include watching webcasts as a group and keeping current on professional literature. Another inexpensive form of professional development is writing. Writing for professional development can mean a number of things, but it always means getting out of the day-to-day and exploring something new. Tips here range from where to get ideas to how to write about the unknown and where to take the material when it is time to publish.
Starting off into the unknown can be daunting. Not sure where to go? Think you should write only what you know? If you work only with what you know, or with what you see around you, you will not have the opportunity to grow. Plan the direction to the best of your ability, and be flexible enough to change when you find something that does not fit into your plan. Change and our dislike of it is the topic of another paper in another anthology. It is important, though, to remember that change can be scary and to combat that with an adaptable plan and an open mind. Try some of these tips for getting started into new areas:
Follow hot topics in the field. When something comes along that is inspiring, follow up. You not only will catch up on professional literature but also will have the opportunity to explore cutting-edge topics and develop new programs, projects, or techniques in your professional environment.
Partner with a colleague in a different field. Create a joint program or research project and see where it goes.
Make a list of the fields of your professional strengths and weaknesses. Pick a weakness and study it. Do some research in that area and get to know it better.
Partner with a colleague who is more experienced than you. Learn from what that colleague is doing, and create a joint project.
There are many ways to branch off from the usual paths. Start by working with a colleague. Once you are on a path to new knowledge, explore how that matches with what you already know. Making connections will help to reinforce your knowledge and make it more useful.
Becoming comfortable with a new material can take time. To use your new knowledge in writing, you will need to become familiar enough with the area to articulate your knowledge of it on a level that a newbie—such as you, before this project—could understand. When you are comfortable enough to articulate your new knowledge, write it out and have someone not related to the field read it to see whether he or she understands it. It is sometimes helpful to have more than one person read your work. Find people whom you trust, whom you know can give you constructive criticism when needed. Be open to making changes based on this new information, and remember how little you knew about the subject when you started. It is always important to get constructive criticism but even more so when you are working in a new area. If you have the opportunity to do so, find an expert to review your paper and someone who does not know the subject. This will help your article to be marketable to both levels of expertise.
After you make changes and have a final product that you are interested in publishing, start looking for places to publish. If you do a project or research with a partner who has more experience than you, either in a new field or in librarianship, look to your partner for ideas to publish. There is no need for you to reinvent the wheel when the person you are working with already has one. Build off his or her knowledge, and the two of you can grow together. If you are working alone, you have another opportunity to develop knowledge in a new area. Use resources such as Writer’s Market or Literary Market Place to find places to publish. If you are delving into a new academic field, look up some of the key publications in that discipline and check their submission guidelines. If you have done extensive literature searches, try instead citation searches for the articles you used. Check out the other people who have cited the articles you reviewed, and count those as other possible publishers to send your article to.
When you find a couple of places to submit your work, follow the submission guidelines carefully. Pay attention to the words used in the guidelines and in any calls for submissions. When appropriate, use those words and phrases in your proposals. If the call for submissions asks for articles on clockwork toys, don’t use the phrase “wind-up playthings” instead. If you are not successful getting new material published the first time, try again. Do not be afraid of failure, and be willing to adapt your subject if the publisher is looking for something different. Even if the article is not successful, you will have learned something new and can expand on that for further articles.
Writing for professional development does not stop with publication. Continue to research your new discipline or hot topic until you find a new path to go down. You will find that you continue in the front of the pack in terms of professional development, and you will have more opportunity to see your name in print while doing so.
All writing projects require commitment. Whether a book is based on personal interest or professional success, writing a book on any subject requires an enormous allocation of time for research, time for thinking, and time for writing. The thought of spending an immense amount of time on creative writing topics without professional merit might seem like time ill spent to career-driven librarians. While writing for the library profession is a means to increase your professional or academic credentials, writing a book on a nonprofessional topic can be an extremely rewarding commitment that may, in the end, have a significant impact on your library career.
As librarians, we know what questions people are asking, and as librarians, we are often the first people to notice when there is a lack of information in a subject area. With persistent questions (and creative inspiration), librarians have been known to write creatively on any number of subjects. Librarians have published romance novels, children’s books, cookbooks, restaurant guides, religious studies, and mysteries. Many of these books have enriched peoples’ lives and have granted librarian-writers the opportunity to reach out from behind the reference desk and into the lives and minds of readers around the world.
Your life will be enriched. Writing in an area outside of your professional comfort zone is a stimulating challenge and will give you the opportunity to enhance interests in your life that you may have yet to fully examine.
Your professional life will be enhanced. Many people spend a great deal of time consumed with work stress, employee conflict, and short deadlines. A new project outside of your daily work will enable you to focus on something new, and maybe avoid work-related burnout. The creative energy you develop on a project outside of your job description will eventually allow you to lend more creativity and energy to your job.
Your network with people who appreciate books will grow. Writing a creative work will open doors to new experiences and relationships. In short order, you may find yourself at an author association meeting talking with an award-winning author about the joyous day he saw his newly published first book on display at the library.
Your professional identity will change. You will become an expert on something new. Becoming an expert in a new field has the potential to bring you great satisfaction and personal accomplishment. Taking a step away from your job may give you the freedom to appreciate librarianship more or be the inspiration you need to try something new.
The connection between being a published author and working as a professional librarian does not begin and end with the quest to fulfill unanswered questions. As librarians, we are aware of the details that can make a book popular to a wide audience. For instance, librarians know that people do judge a book by its cover, we recognize the names of reliable publishers, and we know the companies and publishers that review books. In short, we know how to get books into readers’ hands.
In an effort to find readers for your newly published book, you may find your life as a writer boldly intersecting with your life as a librarian. As a guest speaker at bookstores and libraries, you might be surprised by the ways librarianship and your life as a writer connect.
You’ll meet future librarians. Touting yourself as a writer and a librarian will attract fellow librarians and people who have thought about attending library school to your book signings. This new platform as an author-librarian will give you the opportunity to share valuable information about the library profession with people who are interested in entering the profession. Be prepared to answer the questions “Where is the nearest library school?” and “Do you think earning a library degree online is a good idea?”
You’ll find new books. As a new author, you will inevitably join writers groups or have speaking engagements with other authors. The new writers you meet will give you insight into and information about the books they are writing, books that may be appropriate for your library’s collection and of great interest to library patrons.
You’ll reach nonlibrary users. As publicity about your writing is released, you may find yourself invited for interviews with newspaper reporters or talk-radio hosts. If the interviewer knows you are a librarian, he or she will certainly ask about reading, literacy, or librarianship. Interviews are a perfect opportunity to speak about the work of librarians.
You’ll have new professional writing opportunities. While you may write a work that is of personal interest, once you are a published author, new doors will open. Library publishing companies or library journals might approach you to write literature that will contribute to the profession.
Writing a book in a nonacademic subject area will allow you to explore interests that you may have submerged as you fashioned your library career. As a librarian and a writer, publishing any book will renew your professional energy by enriching yourself and by serving readers’ needs. The freedom to examine and rethink creative areas will help you recharge and bring you full circle—back through the doors of your local library.
Imagine that you have successfully completed an innovative project in your academic library that implements some key features of Web 2.0 and has received positive feedback from your user community. You wish to write a report on the project. Which of the following two strategies should you choose? The first option is to prepare an easy-to-read and relatively informal report for American Libraries or Library Journal. You can be sure that thousands of librarians will at least glance at your article. Some will borrow portions of your project to make changes in their own libraries. Your peers will learn who you are and respect your Web 2.0 skills. The second option is to write a scholarly article with all the formal conventions of the genre— literature review, endnotes, statistics, charts, tables, and formal prose with as little of your personality as possible. The journal will have some pretentious, scholarly name and about three hundred subscribers. You expect that the publication delay will be at least six months to a year as your article wends its way through the peer-review process. If accepted, your article will enter into the scholarly canon but is unlikely to have much practical effect before the findings become dated.
If you hope to meet the tenure requirements at many colleges and universities, you obviously choose the second option because nonrefereed publications, however widely read, do not count much, if at all, for tenure. I would hasten to add that your first step is to pay no attention to this article until you find out what the rules are at your institution. My advice is based on nearly thirty years of active publication, but publication requirements for academic librarians vary much more than they do for the teaching faculty. Double-check with your director, the academic administrator in charge of the review process, a current or former member of the review committee, or someone who has gone through tenure review to discover both the official and hidden rules of the local tenure process. I also advise you not to gamble on the future of your career by believing that, for some reason, you are special and thereby exempt from these rules.
The first author gets the most credit for any publication. Your tenure portfolio should include a majority of publications for which you are the sole author or the first author. Some review committees might like to see a mix of solo and joint articles to show that you have the ability to work with others, but librarianship is not a field like some of the sciences in which the publishing tradition includes research teams and dozens of authors even for short publications.
Editing a book or special issue of a journal is also probably not worth your effort for tenure. My institution considers such editorial activities more service than research. Editing the work of others is a specialized and needed skill, but few consider it scholarly research. You will also spend much time tracking down authors and encouraging them to meet deadlines.
I also caution against writing a book before you get tenure. In the same amount of time, you can write multiple articles so that you do not put all your eggs in one basket. Although some books are reviewed, many aren’t; and common wisdom states that books are less likely to be cited than articles.
Nonrefereed articles count somewhat, especially if an editor reviews them before publication; but internal documents, blogs, training materials, and textbooks normally have little worth for tenure.
The key decision in writing for tenure is thus to make sure that you choose a refereed journal. You can find such information easily in Ulrich’s Periodical Directory (available at www.ulrichsweb.com/UlrichsWeb/). Some journals have both a refereed and a nonrefereed section, so you must look carefully at any correspondence from the editor about the placement of your article. If the designation refereed is accurate, the editor will send your article out for review by one or more experts. The tenure review committee gives greater weight to such articles precisely because of this external review.
Other factors come into play but have less importance. A good tenure portfolio emphasizes the positive factors and minimizes the others. Journals, like universities, have more prestige if they reject a higher percentage of articles. If your article will date quickly and lose its potential for publication, consider sending it to a lower-prestige journal, because getting your article published is the most important consideration for tenure. Other quality factors include the reputation of the publisher and the journal’s impact factor as judged by experts in the field. The journal’s circulation and appearance in indexing and abstracting services are important because they are a factor in being cited, as I discuss a bit later.
Getting your article published is only the first step in improving your chances for tenure. Review committees will most likely judge your scholarly impact, so it is important for others to cite your work. Librarians who publish moderately good papers on hot topics are more likely to be cited than are those who publish excellent papers on cold topics. I doubt that the best paper in the world on the history of filing rules in the card catalog would be cited much. Once your article has been cited a few times, other authors will find those citations and confirm your scholarly reputation. You will then have an excellent citation record to include in your tenure dossier. In fact, I will contradict here what I said earlier because a paper in American Libraries may acquire an excellent citation record, and so have more value in the citation part of your dossier that it did as a publication. While citations in standard sources such as Web of Science count the most, most review committees will give some credit for citations in other publications, including in blogs and web documents.
I could write much more on this subject, but I’ll conclude by repeating that the most important point in writing for tenure is to know what counts and what doesn’t at your institution. Find out what the rules are and follow them. Most of all, don’t waste your time on publications that won’t help you reach your goal. You can write the great American library study after you get tenure.
Early in my professional career as a tenure-track librarian, I received sage advice: to consider coauthoring with another faculty member as a way to meet some of the tenure requirements. About a year into my tenure-track job, I found myself in a meeting with a colleague who wanted help with an appendix for a book he was on the verge of publishing. The details of writing the appendix grew into a full-length research project that we eventually coauthored and published together.
Working on a writing project early in my career allowed me to develop a friendship and a mentoring relationship with an experienced colleague. Coauthoring helped build my confidence as a researcher, writer, and professional librarian. Six years later, I found myself thinking about another collaborative writing project, and I have enjoyed the benefits for the second time of working with a fellow librarian to publish a book.
For most writers, writing with a partner offers some overwhelmingly positive benefits.
Continuous energy to keep the project moving forward. When one person hits a low moment in the writing, research, or publication process, there is another dedicated person to pick up the pieces and keep the project moving in the desired direction.
Developing a solid mentoring relationship. The relationship building and continual communication required to publish a book can form a long-lasting professional relationship.
Building on ideas. A colleague who is familiar with the depths of your research can be a welcome sounding board for inspiration.
Expanding your network. For new writers or people who are new to the library profession, writing a book with a more experienced professional may open the door to an array of professional experiences.
Strengthening your research. Talking about the numerous details involved in writing and research can help both authors focus unclear ideas. Coauthoring also opens up possibilities of working on an interdisciplinary project with an expert in a field outside of librarianship. A professor in psychology or in business may have significant expertise to add to your professional writing.
Creating new writing opportunities. Publishing book-length research has a way of opening doors to new writing projects or spin-off projects based on your original research.
Sharing the pain. When rejection comes, you have someone with whom you can empathize. No matter what kind of book you are writing, there will be times when you feel disappointed or rejected. When times are hard, it helps to share the disappointment with someone who really understands.
A good coauthoring relationship will reap all of the foregoing benefits and more. With those collaborative advantages firmly in mind, it is worthwhile to consider some of the potentially negative aspects of the coauthor relationship.
Sharing the author line. In some academic circles, coauthoring may not carry the same prestige as being the single author on a publication. In other academic situations, however, coauthoring is measured as a strength if you are working interdepartmentally or with students.
Breaking up. The coauthor relationship can fall apart in the midst of a project for any number of reasons. Publishing a book necessitates a relationship that lasts for years. If the relationship between the authors falls apart at any point before, during, or after the publication of a book, the project may suffer and end up much more complicated than a solo publication.
Downed communication lines. Communication is a key aspect of a good relationship, but it is also time consuming. If one or both authors are not willing to devote substantial time to communication, insurmountable problems may arise.
Coauthor relationships generally begin when two people have a shared interest or curiosity in the same subject matter. Once the idea for the writing project is forged, communication is critical throughout the planning, research, writing, and publishing process. Here are some things to consider before launching into a full-scale coauthored writing project.
Commit to the project. Both authors need to have a commitment to seeing the project through to the end. As events unfold during the production of a book, the commitment may fade and be revived again for both writers. However, an initial commitment to the final product is crucial.
Share information. As the research process progresses, both writers need to share all of their information. Providing each other access to all research materials allows both writers the freedom to think about things together and individually. Ultimately, sharing information will permit both authors to work together to create the best work possible.
Divide up the work. There should be an agreement about the division of labor. With both of my book projects, my coauthors and I agreed that our goal was to have fun. This goal helped ease the way through painful issues with publishers, contracts, and money.
Acknowledge strengths and weaknesses. As committed partners, it is essential to realize that you can balance each other along the journey. Every contribution should be acknowledged as having an equal part in the success of a book.
Identify goals. What do you and your coauthor each want individually from the project? While each author’s desired outcomes may be different, it is important to be aware of each one.
Discuss expenses. There are almost always monetary costs associated with the research, writing, and production of a book. A basic agreement about expenses will save hours of heartache.
Although all of these items are worth consideration and discussion, writing a book with a coauthor can be a very rewarding accomplishment. Dividing the labor of writing and research will lighten individual responsibility, and passionate conversations between coauthors will add to the depth and complexity of the final work. In a successful coauthoring relationship, both authors benefit by expanding their personal intellect, building new relationships, and successfully publishing a high-quality resource.
The twentieth century brought many changes for librarians, including the revolutionary advent of computers in the library, and the twenty-first promises everything from digital libraries to the gradual disappearance of printed books. Even as we strive to maintain the values of our profession, many librarians have job descriptions that are increasingly interchangeable with those of web developers, student services administrators, community liaisons, and intellectual property lawyers. In the face of this sea change, the ancient practice of writing poetry can help librarians work more effectively at the same time that they celebrate their humanity.
Writing personal poetry tends to connect you to the world. To write well, you must use effective, fresh detail that has not been used the same way in the past. You have to understand something about the human heart—its joys and its sufferings. At the risk of trafficking in stereotypes, it is important to be sensitive as a poet, and the writing of poetry itself often leads to sensitivity. This can be useful when working with patrons, especially after you have answered the same questions a thousand times.
From “Where’s the stapler?” to “When’s the next Stephen King coming out?” librarians get many repeat questions. We also get repeat problems, from children curious about and afraid of puberty to parents afraid of the effects of violent images on the community, to people suffering from incurable diseases who want current research. As in all helping professions, librarians sometimes become deadened to the concerns of the people they serve.
Reading and writing poetry exposes you to a kind of emotional experience that even the best of novels or movies do not provide, thereby renewing your capacity for sympathy to patrons. Reading poetry can attune you to the language patrons use and help alert you to those moments when they most need care. And while writing a poem about a Grecian urn or a road not taken might be helpful, more useful is writing the kind of personal poems in which you try to articulate the great joys and pains of your life.
Personal experiences often inspired confessional poets like Sylvia Plath or Robert Lowell, or more recent ones like Sharon Olds. By putting personal secrets on the page, and by trying to give them more structure than the raw form of a journal entry or blog post, you are forced to remove yourself somewhat from the experience. This ability to handle deep emotion can help you in working with those patrons who come to the library with concerns that are unique and serious for them but concerns that you may have seen a dozen times, or a hundred.
Information overload is a major problem in most professions today, and this is especially true in librarianship. A busy librarian may receive hundreds of e-mails in a day, sort through piles of catalogs and vendor offers, contact dozens of people about something or another, and manage patrons’ information needs. Clarity and conciseness are useful traits generally, but they are especially useful in written communication with colleagues.
Learning to write concisely can happen in many different ways. Some people learn by observation, reading countless e-mails or articles and learning what works best. Some people take courses on effective communication. But another way you can learn to write effectively is through the process of revising poetry. Revision is important for books, essays, articles, and short stories, but it is essential for poetry, where a poem’s success can rest on a single word.
Poets learning their craft can spend weeks, months, and sometimes years revising a single poem. They substitute words, exchange lines, and rewrite entire stanzas. Gradually, they learn not to overwrite, avoiding duplication and florid prose. For example:
Rays of sun flashed and flickered vividly,
flooding her dying husband’s sallow gray cheekbones.
Those sundrops rippled
across her husband’s ashen cheek.
Librarians do not need to be poets to communicate concisely and effectively, but the pains that you are forced to take when learning how to revise poetry can translate into other areas. When examining an e-mail before sending it, you will notice clusters of awkward words that you can profitably diminish— “the planned departmental reorganization that will be coming soon” becomes “cataloging’s impending reorganization.”
Anyone who has ever taken the time to read a number of mission or vision statements knows how badly many of them are written, often in language that seems only marginally literate. At some point, we all wind up involved in planning institutional missions and goals. While framing them in sonnet form is not necessarily more helpful than using business English, familiarity with poetry can be useful.
Individually we turn to poetry at times of change and crisis: births, deaths, commitments, and anniversaries. This is not because we think that wispy-haired aesthetes daydreaming on an idyllic plain are inherently transitional, but because poets observe life and recount the parts of it that matter using condensed, strong language. While knowledge of the principles of good writing is helpful when composing mission statements or other guiding language, an awareness of poetry may prove useful when trying to condense a large set of goals and values.
Vague or unclear language is inherently weak. The linguistic sensitivity that comes from writing poetry may help to combat the tendency to obfuscate or to use library jargon when it is of the utmost importance to be clear.
Finding time for poetry between all the tasks that face us every day can be difficult. While writing daily can make you a better poet, if your goal is simply to improve your skills as a librarian in the ways described here, you may only need a couple of hours every week or so. Over time, those hours will build up, increasing your verbal ability and keeping you attuned to the importance of language in our daily work.