Head Tale

Here's a sample overview of some highlights for a random week at FIMS…

Monday
I don't have class on Monday which means it's technically the day that I work on my independent Study project.  This week, I think I worked on sleeping, playing computer games, watching Oprah and eating Cheetos.

Tuesday
Tuesday is our management class.  Because it's a compressed course, it starts at 8:30am instead of 9am like most other morning classes.  And for some strange reason, lately, I'm usually one of the first people there.  This week I had the pleasure of being the absolute first and turning on the lights.  As for the class itself, I should maybe just say that not too many people I've talked to have ever enjoyed their management class at FIMS and leave it at that? 

Okay, I did learn one thing this week – the professor spent some time talking about one article he read as an undergrad which he called “the most influential article I've read in my life.”  It's called “The Science of Muddling Through” and was written in 1959 by a guy called Charles Lindbolm.  I haven't read it yet but the prof described it as the author basically poking holes in all management theory and saying that essentially, what happens is that managers are faced with constant decisions and they make the best decisiosn they can in the quickest manner possible given limited information and time to decide.  This resonated so much with me that I went up at break and got permission to respond to this article instead of one of our assigned weekly responses to the textbook which the class are increasingly disliking.  I know I was frustrated enough to use Dilbert as my required “source” a couple weeks ago.  Another classmate has used Monty Python sketches three weeks in a row.  And one classmate showed me her latest weekly response in which she used the methodology of the documentary, “The Corporation” to assess our textbook as if it was a manager then finding it unable to motivate, ineffective, disorganized, unreasonable and inflexible.  She concludes her paper by saying if our textbook were a manager, she would fire it. 

Wednesday
Wednesday is my Managing Internet Information class and even though I consider myself fairly technnology-savvy,  it's a great class where we're constantly learning about useful web sites, program and technology tricks.  This week, a bunch of my classmates were raving about www.protopage.com for instance.  The prof knows his stuff inside and out and is confident enough to teach the information he has each week and then let the class go even if we're being let out early, something other professors almost seem afraid to do. (Of course, the fact that class happened on the same afternoon as a World Cup semi-final and the prof is a huge soccer fan is probably also part of the reason we got out early!)  Went to the Grad Club to watch the game but it was packed so ended up sitting on the patio for a few hours with various people from upper cohorts and having a few laughs.  I heard from someone (Christina?) that FIMS has a new policy that we'll get a reading week each semester which is great news.  (I put that in bold so it'll stand out for anybody scanning this entry quickly and ignoring most of my babble.  I haven't heard it confirmed by any authority but the calendar on the FIMS intranet – http://intra.fims.uwo.ca/dates-grad.asp – shows Oct 30-Nov 3 as “Research Week” so that sounds promising.)  I missed having one this semester (although CLA was sort of the same thing – not a full-on break but definitely a break from school) and you can see people starting to crack up a bit by mid-semester so it's probably a wise decision.

Thursday
I have “Collections Development in Academic Libraries” as a night class and after thinking I'd drop the class after our first session, it's grown to be one of my favourites.  One of the things making the class so valuable is the professor brings in guest speakers on nearly a weekly basis and this week was no exception.  We had two women who work as collections developers in the nursing and health sciences areas at UWO.  They gave a great presentation then had us do the single best exercise I've done at FIMS.  For it, they handed out a sheet that listed the typical courses that would be offered to undergrad Occupational Therapy students, the research interests of the faculty and a list of 15 books in the area along with cover scans, prices, dates and short blurbs.  As small groups, we were given a budget of $300 and told to come up with a list of books we would buy and why.  This was interesting enough – talking with my groupmates and discussing the strategies we would use (we ended up going through the books one-by-one and ranking them on a scale of 1-5 based on things like cost, whether it was Canadian or not, relevance to courses or faculty, etc.)  Then all the groups wrote their lists on the board, it was revealing to see the similiarites and differences.  Although no one visiting a library sees which book you ranked first and which you ranked seventh (no matter their choices, all groups ended up buying 7 books which was also interesting), it was cool to see how the different groups ranked them and hear a bit about why.  Some (including us) put the one written by a faculty member first (obvious decision, I thought.)  Some put an introductory textbook first because of how much value it would have to many students (others thought that libraries didn't normally collect textbooks unless it was to be specially put on reserve so didn't choose it at all.)  Oh, and our group actually ended up being the only one to “buy” eight books because, thinking outside the box, we decided that our vendor always gave us a 20% discount on our purchases and this freed up an extra $60 to buy one last book.  Very fun, very enlightening, and very useful. 

Friday
Went to Children's Literature in the morning and people who aren't in the class probably find it hard to believe that this is the class where I'm doing the most work of any course I'm taking!  We have to read both professional articles/chapters from textbooks plus a novel or two from various genres of children's literature each week.  We have to e-mail the prof a brief response to these readings.  We have three major assignments.  Plus we have to do a fairly involved direct interview with a child about the books they own including preparing a transcript of the interview, a list of the books they own (my child had over 100) and a short essay about our experience.  Plus we have to do a “Book Talk”, a brief 3-5 minute presentation “selling” a book to our class as if we were presenting it to a group of young people.  Luckily, in addition to being my hardest class, it's also one of my favourites.  So that's all good! 

Classmate of the Day: Christina for having a very fun party last night (she lives just down the hall in our building which was extremely convenient)

A week ago I blogged about how, since I was half done my second semester of three, I was half-done the program. 

But in my head, I've always thought of June 30/July 1 (okay, July 2 as I'm getting to this post a day later than I meant to) as the “real” halfway point of my program since that's the actual mid-point of my year in London. 

I thought I'd do something special for this milestone and so have decided to post the “Statement of Intent” that I wrote as part of my application for library school.  As with my “hypothetical Spirit of Librarianship acceptance speech“, it's just a wee bit over the top in a few places. Let me explain why…

I was incredibly nervous applying to library school for a number of reasons:

– I'd made note of the application deadline a few months before deciding to apply but when I decided to finally go for it, I checked the MLIS web site, only to see that the deadline had been moved up by ten days which put me in a pretty heavy time crunch to pull together everything that was required for the application. 

– I'd been out of school for so long that the only University professors who could write me reference letters were people I knew because they were part of the writing community. (I still had to remind them what they taught me and what my marks were.)

– my undergrad marks weren't awful but they weren't great either.  (Luckily I was above average in the classes I took with the two profs who became my two academic references.)

– I'd only done a regular BA, not even an Honours one let alone a Masters degree.

– I didn't hedge my bets by applying to other schools because I knew that Western was the only one with an accelerated program and I also knew I could barely afford to be out of the workforce for one year, let alone two. 

– two of my professional reference letters came by fax and e-mail respectively so I wasn't able to include them in sealed envelopes as was specified.  (Having seen how publishers look for any excuse to prune the slush pile and knowing that “not following submission guidelines” is one of the easiest ways to do this, I honestly thought this might get my application into the recycling bin right there, before they even looked at it.)

So feeling that all of that was counting against me and even though I had no idea what a Statement of Intent was, I knew it was likely my best chance to convince the powers-that-be that I should be admitted to this program. 

All of my undergrad classes in expository writing and creative writing, all of that time working with writers and reading manuscripts and books on writing techniques and theory – it felt like it all came down to this one letter (or am I just being “over the top” again?)…

Statement of Intent – Jason Hammond
They say that everyone has that one special teacher who touches their lives.  For me, it’s not a teacher but a librarian who fills that role in my own life.  Mrs. Tuttle was a kindly old lady who worked at the Indian Head public library when I was a child. 

My first experience with her was when my parents would take me to the library to pick out books.  I can remember how, even at that age, I was amazed that I could choose any book off the shelf, take it to the desk and then take it home with no money changing hands like I saw in every other transaction that I witnessed in the adult world. 

Mrs. Tuttle helped influence my reading habits like no one else (my parents, my teachers, my friends) could.  I still remember the day I took yet another Hardy Boys adventure to her desk and she gently suggested, “Would you like to try something a bit more…advanced?” I nodded cautiously then she placed a copy of The Hound of Baskervilles in front of me. 

As the months went by, she would continually suggest other classics I could try.  I didn’t always listen and managed to read a fair amount of Stephen King and Tom Clancy during that time as well.  But my love of books (and libraries) grew out of those early experiences in that small, rural Saskatchewan library. 

I excelled at English in high school, edited our high school yearbook and after some initial debate between doing what I thought would guarantee a good job (Business Administration) and what I knew I loved (English), I chose the latter as my major in University. 

Upon convocation, I was fortunate to find work with the Saskatchewan Publishers Group (SPG), a literary non-profit umbrella organization for book publishers in my home province.  I worked with this organization from 1997 to 2001 when I moved to Calgary with my then-girlfriend, now wife.  Again, I was fortunate to find work with another literary non-profit organization, the Writers Guild of Alberta (WGA).  Essentially, this was the flip side of the coin to what I was doing with the SPG – instead of running programs for publishers, I was running programs to benefit writers.  Taken together, these two sides of the same coin have given me a great knowledge of the Canadian book industry and convinced me that no matter where life leads me, I will be working with books in some way.  

In October 2004, some difficulties at the SPG led to a staff vacancy and my wife and I jumped at the chance to return to our home province when this position was offered to me.  Unfortunately, those difficulties have continued throughout the year and so I made the extremely difficult decision to hand in my resignation in October 2005 and to pursue the career that I’ve had in the back of my mind as my “dream job” since my first meetings with Mrs. Tuttle twenty-plus years ago. 

In the course of my work with both the SPG and the WGA, I have worked with numerous librarians on a variety of projects and have continually been in awe of their intelligence, their sensibility and contrary to the “Shhh!” stereotypes, their passion.  

Allan Johnson who is the head of the Southeast Regional Library in Saskatchewan served on the board of the Saskatchewan Book Awards with me and had a skill I greatly admire but rarely see – the ability to cut through baggage surrounding any issue and get to the core point.  He was one of the few on the board with the necessary skills to help the Book Awards re-work its finances and improve its financial position at a critical time in the organization’s development. 

I have worked with Susan Anderson of the Calgary Public Library on that city’s Freedom to Read Week committee and was happy (but not surprised) when she told me of how it was members of the American Library Association who started the fight to keep Michael Moore’s Stupid White Men from being pulped.

I was honoured when Rosemary Griebel of the Calgary Public Library asked me to join her as a “community representative” at the grand opening of the new Crowfoot Crossing branch in Calgary.  (She maybe regretted the offer as I peppered her with questions about the behind-the-scenes workings of a library and her decision to become a librarian thoughout the day.)

In numerous readings I organized in various small towns around Alberta, it was always the local library that was the first place I would call for assistance.  Leslie Greentree at the Red Deer Public Library went so far as to allow me to crash on her couch the night before a conference we held at their facility. 

As an exhibitor at trade shows, I was often able to “sit-in” on sessions such as those at the recent International Indigenous Librarians’ Forum that was held here in Regina.  The issues that were being discussed were extremely interesting to me – protecting Aboriginal languages, serving remote communities, and the ongoing struggle for funding and recognition.   These are major issues that not only Aboriginal communities but small publishers and rural libraries are dealing with in Saskatchewan.  If I return to my home province upon completion of the program, I know these are issues that I will have to be prepared to deal with as well.  My main area of interest is the public library system and I look forward to a day when hopefully I can help contribute myself to what librarians offer – information, community involvement, and public service. 

This is why I am applying to the MLIS program at the University of Western Ontario.  Although I now know that Mrs. Tuttle wasn’t a professional librarian with a Master of Library Science degree, it’s because of her and indeed, all of the librarians and library clerks I’ve known over the years that I want to be a librarian myself.   

Thank-you for considering my application,

Jason Hammond

—

Oh, and one other detail I debated putting into the letter but decided (probably wisely) to leave out.  Mrs. Tuttle, that kindly old librarian, was the first woman I ever saw that had a mustache!

(Update: Links to Other MLIS “Statement of Intent” Letters…
Chris Graves
Quinn Dupont)