This past week, I went to a meeting at work. As a general rule, I think meetings are usually bad and about one in every ten is actually worth the time, but unfortunately this is not the prevailing view, and so a lot of information I need is passed on in these meetings. Exclusively on Teams, usually with many hundreds of colleagues (as you do in a large organization), and I will do all of the following at least once:
Mute anyone who has yet to learn how to mute themselves. If you breathe too loudly in a Teams meeting, I’m muting you. If you take a phone call and weren’t already muted because you’re a monster, muted. This is the single greatest function of Teams: the ability to mute other people. It also won’t tell you who muted you, but just so we’re clear: if you also work for the English-language health authority in New Brunswick, and have ever attended a large Teams meeting and got muted by another participant, it was me. I did it. And I’ll do it again.
Answer questions in the chat. I would never be foolish enough to host one of these godawful large meetings, nor will I ever be high enough in the corporate hierarchy to be tapped to do so, but I will throw you a bone and answer some of the questions which can be dealt with by sending a link or are fairly obvious. I answer questions for a living, as you know, and answering more of them is no sweat.
I will mutter something about how people need to learn how to make slide decks. How are we in the year of our lord 2023 and people are still doing criminal things with font and colour. Not only does it look bad!!!! but it’s inaccessible. I have railed about this for years. I have sent the Clear Print Accessibility Guidelines to everyone. I am visually impaired and you’re making this meeting even worse for me.
But despite having to do all of these things yet again, and my general distaste for meetings, it is true. As reported later in the week, the masking policy for staff has been ever so slightly loosened, allowing us to remove our masks in non-clinical areas where we can maintain physical distancing. What this actually means, in practical terms: I was previously allowed to remove my mask in my office, because I have one. The second I needed to step outside of it, or someone came in, I had to put my mask on. Now, I can go all the way into the library (if no one else is there/I don’t anticipate needing to go near anyone) maskless, but will need to put my mask on if I need to leave the library, or I’m helping someone.
I’m not going to change anything I do. This seems like a strong chance for confusion and more opportunities to forget my mask.
But something that this change has reinforced is the bird’s-eye-view I’ve been afforded of what’s going on, where people are headed, and the burden on us during the whole of the pandemic. I’m a hospital librarian, and that means I serve all departments and portfolios and people equally. Everyone is entitled to access the library and its staff for whatever assistance they need, whether it’s printing a paystub or needing a search for making a decision, whether you’re in housekeeping or the CEO. It doesn’t really matter to me. Your questions are important.
I also keep the statistics for my library, which means I have a more intimate knowledge of what resources and services are being used every month and by whom. In non-pandemic times, this has been helpful for deciding priorities, making budget decisions, and identifying gaps.
Since March of 2020, this has also been an accidental pandemic barometer. I could superimpose COVID waves over my library statistics and they would line up - and tell you some interesting stories.
For an incurably nosy person like me, being a librarian in an organization is the perfect kind of job. I like to know what’s going on, I like to know exactly what people are up to, and this role affords me that opportunity, even pre-pandemic. I’ve always been able to guess at projects or initiatives or trends, before they’re announced or enacted. I get a small giggle out of opening up the news in the morning and finding a story which sounds suspiciously like a search request I did recently. Generally, I cannot talk about specifics, so I usually just share a laugh with my coworkers and we continue on our merry ways, satisfied that something we did had an impact, somewhere. I like to read a memo and feel satisfied that there was a reason to a tricky search - generally, if I don’t need the specific context in order to find the information the requestor wants, I don’t. We operate on a need-to-know basis.
But this respect for confidentiality cannot stop us from observing patterns. We record all of our search requests in a spreadsheet located on our shared drive, so all library staff can check on the searches or answer questions from people who’ve lost our carefully selected results. It helps us balance the workload and assess any gaps or needs that might be emerging. And it reveals the inner workings of different parts of the organization, and the province as a whole. Is there a spike in a certain kind of question or topic? If a bunch of senior leaders are asking for best practices on a set of interrelated topics…well, where there’s smoke there’s usually fire.
People reveal themselves, consciously or not, in the questions they ask of the library. Their search requests, their questions, their requests for certain articles give us the big picture of what’s going on, more than many might expect. They reveal their agendas in how they ask questions, or how they try to hide their intent. They inadvertently give us a window into decision making on a higher level, and likely a more thorough one than many have access to, because we treat everyone’s requests equally. They give us warnings, but they also give us things to be excited about. And through COVID, it was a good measure of how we were doing. If questions dropped off a bit, or became very one-note, then we didn’t have to check the numbers because they were playing out in our records. When things eased up, there were more requests, and in a greater variety.
I have to admit I’ve been bored through much of the pandemic. Not because there wasn’t much work to do (hahahaha there’s so much), but because it was so similar. Searches and days blurred into one another. Requests have been diversifying for a while now, and I welcome the challenge. I need to sharpen my searching skills on different topics and different asks. I want to keep at the top of my game, and I want to learn more broadly from the work that I get to do. It may be my job to take all of the requests that come my way, but of course I have my preferences.
I’ll continue to watch, as time goes on. I’m interested in how things will move forward from here, and what will surface after such a prolonged period of the same. And I’ll continue to keep all of that information close to my chest, observing, waiting, and laughing a bit over the news.
“….it was me. I did it. And I’ll do it again.” THE BEST!! 🤣
You ended up somewhere in your post that I didn't anticipate, which is fun. I think that the questions that are asked can be tells in every environment but it's interesting to get an impression of what's visible through your librarian lens. Anyway, it's good that you have a more diverse set of horrible things to learn about!