Head Tale

Okay, the call for the Spirit of Librarianship Award for the summer semester has come out so I'll end my self-imposed ban on blogging about the award (I talked about it A LOT last semester.)  

First off, the notice:

The Spirit of Librarianship Award is presented to a
Master of Library and Information Science student to acknowledge and
celebrate the contributions that this student brings to the program. It
is to be awarded to the student who “exemplifies the spirit of
librarianship” in their daily life as a student. It is based on a
positive collegial attitude and contribution, a willingness to help
whenever a need arises, and an interest in fellow students.

All
nominations are due by Tuesday, July 17th at 1:00pm. Please send
nominations to lholdsw@uwo.ca with “Spirit of Librarianship Nomination”
in the subject line.

Now, the mea culpa…

The Student Council has a new web site which is very good and Colin put a huge amount of work into it – archiving materials, compiling links, just generally making order from chaos.  The only unfortunate thing is that it sits on the FIMS intranet which only makes it accessible to current students, not incoming ones or graduating ones when our passwords are turned off.  (Okay, there are two unfortunate things – it's also a Microsoft Sharepoint site which isn't the most user friendly way to present information although probably one of the easiest to set-up based on the department's infrastructure.) 

I was looking through the minutes from past Student Council meetings shortly after the site was launched and there was one reference to the vote totals for the Spirit of Librarianship Award being leaked last semester.  As I said, I wrote a lot about the Spirit nomination at that time so went back to look at my blog entries to see what I said. 

In one entry, I wrote “After an intense (?)
build-up, the Spirit of Librarianship Award goes to… (drum
roll)…me.  Without being too egotistical, I'm not too
surprised.  I heard I got more nominations than some people got
votes, I was the only one from first term nominated (and only the
second first-termer to win it) so I got lots of votes from classmates
while other nominees had to split votes between their cohorts. 
Plus a little bird told me the other day that I should definitely 
come to the “Destressor” so I had a pretty good idea how it might go
down.”

…which is retrospect, probably comes across as a lot more cocky than I intended it to. 

I wrote that I got more nominations than some people got votes, not because I'd had the info leaked to me by a student council member but because I knew that I'd been nominated by a few different people (they all told me this directly.)  I was talking to someone (who wasn't on council) and they said, “If you got multiple nominations, you probably got more votes already than some of the other nominees got.”  (I asked Lyndsey – nominating someone doesn't automatically count as a vote so that's not true either!) 

Anyhow, somehow
my brain translated this to “You did get more nominations than some people
got votes” and that's why I wrote what I did.  I should have qualified
this with “probably got more votes” and actually, I probably should not have written that at all.  Very un-librarian-like of me. 

As for the little bird that told me I had to come to the Destressor, I think this was possibly my overactive imagination mixed with beer mixed with with someone trying to get everyone they could (nominees and others) to come to the event.  In fact, I was told this at the Grad Club and I think people at my table were also told they had to come – and they hadn't even been nominated for anything!  So again, overactive imagination plus beer plus award nomination = foot in mouth disease. 

So I take full responsibility for what I said (and how I said it.)  I'm not even sure if my blog is why some people thought the vote totals had been leaked but if so, I apologise for any problems this caused for Student Council, other nominees or anyone else who was offended. 

On a slightly related topic, my biggest regret about the whole Spirit of Librarianship award is that I didn't push a bit harder for my win to be worded something like “Jason Hammond, on behalf of the Class of January 2006.”  I'm proud that I won it but I don't like how it sets me apart. 

I've had more than one person say “oh, you're the Spirit winner” or whatever and I know that instantly brings some preconceptions (and not necessarily good ones.)  One person described it as “oh, you're one of those involved people” except I don't think they necessarily meant “involved” as a good thing.  Another said “It's no big deal – it's not like you put it on your resume or anything” except, of course, that's the issue right there. 

The Award is very schizophrenic – it is (or should be) a pretty big honour as only one student out of what, 150 in the program, can win it each semester.  But it's also an award for the Spirit of Librarianship that ironically, works by doing things that are against what librarianship is about (equality, sharing, fairness.) 

In fact, if we're going to have awards, why not have a full-fledged awards program that will make the entire awards program into something special rather than just having one award that people may or may not care much about?  You could have one  for the “most promising librarian” which is aimed at someone who also has strong librarian qualities but maybe isn't as visible as the people who tend to win the Spirit award.  You could have an award just for first-termers – “Rookie of the Year?” or something?  Maybe have an award for a student who volunteers the most. 

Some of these could be voted on, some could be picked by student council as a committee.  I don't know – just an idea to sort of spread the wealth a bit and give other people something to put on their resume.  Because contrary to what that one person said to me (at the Destressor right after I won the Award no less!), I do intend to put my Spirit of Librarianship Award on my resume – proudly!

Classmate of the Day: Everyone involved in the great discussion today in 506 – Management.