Thursday 2 June 2011

Building a career on laziness

It worked for me - building a career on other people's laziness.

Most people don't want to spend time checking data, or working on data repairs - it's not exciting or glamorous, even if it teaches you an awful lot about the way the database works.

Most people don't want to go to boring routine meetings - but even the dullest meeting has other people at it who might turn out to be really interesting.

Most people don't want to engage with detail, with a mass of routine tasks, with the daily repetitious grind, and they'll be delighted if you offer to help them out with it. And cataloguers are naturally good at this sort of thing, after all - we've got the eye for detail, we can manage a whole heap of tasks, we can sort stuff out, we can spot patterns in things and fit things together - we've got that sort of mindset.

So it always surprises me that more people don't want to get involved in what seems to be the boring stuff, but is actually the stuff which teaches you an awful lot about the way your system, your organisation, fits together and works (or doesn't work). I've heard all sorts of excuses - I'm too busy, I haven't got time, I'm stressed enough already, why should I, it's not in my job description, why can't someone else do it. Some cataloguers even shun this sort of thing because they think that it feeds the stereotype and that cataloguers too should be dealing with ideas and strategies and policy.

Of course we should. Even if what I am advocating seems like the very opposite of high-visibility cataloguing, I don't want cataloguers to get stuck in the mud. But one of the ways to get influence and respect is to be able to sort out other people's problems, contribute ideas which help them achieve what they want to do, come up with ideas for developments which fit well with what's already being done and take it a bit further forward. These are the things which come out of knowing how things work and having a mastery of the detail, of the underside of stuff.

I think we should engage with our inner geek and take advantage of any opportunity to get involved with what's going on around us, even at the lowest level, and make that the first step on the ladder, because knowledge really does become power.

So, next time one of your colleagues is complaining about having to do something really really boring, offer to help out by doing it for him; he'll thank you for it, and you'll be doing yourself and your future a power of good.

1 comment:

  1. YES!!! I think that IS part of high visibility cataloging. Being part of the larger community - being involved in ALL aspects, that is what makes me a better librarian and, honestly, most of it is darned interesting to me. I love seeing how things go together, I like to contribute to the knowledge base, I like being in on the ground floor (or even jumping in on the 10th floor and going up with the rest). I like to get my hands dirty will all aspects - from inserting security strips to complex MARC to figuring out how to pull a report from the ILS to - well, everything. It helps me appreciate as well as be appreciated.

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