LJ Series "New Roles": The Women Who Drive Library Technology

When Darci Hanning entered an electrical engineering program in the 1980s, her goal was to design computers. The man standing in front of her digital design class could give her that knowledge, and Hanning, whose mother led a chapter of the National Organization for Women, grew up feeling she could do anything.

So, she was stunned when the professor announced to the class, “I don’t think women should be engineers.”

Hanning, now at the Oregon State Library, wasn’t easily deterred. Her college experience made her miserable, but she persevered. “I try to succeed in spite of these things or go to a place that’s better for me,” Hanning explains. “I didn’t doubt myself or my ability.”

No matter their generation or library setting, the women who find technology and libraries a compelling combination share certain qualities. The women interviewed here are, like Hanning, confident. They are also skilled communicators and risk-takers, people who seek challenges and prefer working in teams. They revel in new gadgetry, but they never forget it’s all about a positive user experience. As a group, they represent a hybrid librarian—someone who is equally fascinated by emerging technologies and how to use them to improve library services.

For the hybrid librarian, keeping pace with change is integral to who they are. Hanning calls this “living the digital life”: seeking out and sampling new tools, troubleshooting your own technology, and making time to play. “Everyone can find their level of expertise. Everyone can learn one new thing a month,” she says.

Orange County Library System’s (OCLS) Wendi Bost is also naturally curious and explains, “I’m not a technogeek, but I love technology.” For example, she decided to run a presentation from a digital picture frame to avoid carrying a laptop and asked for help until she figured it out. “There’s a curious, pushy New Yorker inside me,” she says. “But I hate that image, so I ask a lot. If I can’t do it, I want to know why not.”

Curiosity often gets Bost into pioneering territory with her vendors. Asking why a damaged set of DVDs couldn’t be replaced led to a new streaming option for her customers. Asking why children’s circulation was flat led to using Nielsen ratings and watching children’s television to discover what might grab their attention. This brought gaming into the collection, even though she struggled with vendors who didn’t want to sell the games to her. “But games are about expanding your mind and figuring things out,” she laughs.

Bost advises libraries to embrace people who “understand how computers speak” and always wonders, “How can we be part of the here and now?” OCLS even has a trend-watching group.

Like Hanning and Bost, Indiana University’s Michelle Dalmau naturally blends work and life. She enjoys a flexible schedule and admits, “I’m a night owl. I sleep with my laptop. Work and life are blurred.”

The role of translator comes naturally to a hybrid librarian. Judy Russell can tell you about that. Effective May 1, she takes on a new role as dean of university libraries at the University of Florida, Gainesville. This follows time in another top spot, the 22nd Superintendent of Documents for the U.S. Government Printing Office (GPO). As the first woman to hold that post, she knew she had to prove herself to those who were “intrigued” about her abilities as a library technology leader. “But my communication skills rose above that,” she explains. “Users need to trust you, and tech folks need to trust that you know the limitations.”

Russell’s career extends back to the late 1960s, when she began gathering technical requirements for information systems and shepherding those plans into a product for people to use and enjoy. She describes herself as a “filter between these two worlds,” someone who can “marry the desires of users with the capabilities of technical people.”

Nettie Lagace, the SFX product manager at Ex Libris, traces her skill at bringing librarians and technologists together back to graduate school at the University of Michigan in the early 1990s. There were big questions to answer, and the open, experimental atmosphere often resulted in conflict between students with more traditional aims and those who wanted to focus on emerging technologies.

Lagace found herself drawn to the middle road, despite other plans. “I thought I’d be a reference librarian for the rest of my life,” she recalls. Instead, she participated in groundbreaking projects that grafted core library services into the digital world. Lagace helped build some of the first topical indexes to Internet resources. To launch the Internet Public Library, Lagace outlined the functions and features of an online reference system while immersing the project engineer in the library domain. Her role as a translator had begun, and she wasn’t even out of library school.

Lagace still plays this type of role at Ex Libris. As she looks back, she realizes, “I didn’t feel I wanted to do tech 100 percent of the time, but I liked bridging the gap.” Her secret to being an effective liaison? “I like to pal around with nerds,” she says with great affection. “You have to be able to prove yourself, recognize their language, and describe your needs in ways they understand. You have to be respectful, open, and curious to get tech people to play.”

Besides providing much-needed clarity, librarians who are adept at both services and systems like to try new things. Just ask Anita Cook, director of library systems for OhioLINK, a leading statewide consortium. In the early 1970s, her father’s veteran status entitled her to college aid but required her to take career tests first. Based on high math aptitude and some interest in libraries from a high school job, Cook was advised by a career counselor in eerily specific terms. “She told me, 'I think you should major in math and computer science. Then get a graduate degree in library science. Computers will be important in libraries,’” Cook recalls.

She delved into the new world of computer programming by punch card, often the only woman in her computer science and mathematics courses. Like Hanning, Cook had a professor who declared that “girls can’t do math.” Cook simply converted any resistance she met into fuel for her ambition. “It made me mad,” she remembers. “I wanted to prove them wrong.”

When she entered library school, though, Cook found few computing options. So, she staffed the university’s computer help desk—the only woman there. She also wrote a computer program to index newspapers, a product that earned her professor money. In library jobs, Cook recalls, “There were fewer men, but they were better paid. That used to tick me off, but it’s changed.”

Pay equity has improved over the years but still lags for women. LJ’s recent survey shows that men entering the profession receive higher pay than women, and the balance may even be slipping a little (“Starting Pay Breaks $40K” by Stephanie Maatta, LJ 10/15/06). Technology-intensive jobs offer some of the highest salaries, but a disproportionate number of men hold those jobs. In academic librarianship, for example, about 70 percent of all jobs are held by women, but about 66 percent of the computer systems leadership jobs are held by men, according to the latest figures from the Association of Research Libraries (see ARL Annual Salary Survey, 2006–07). Plus, men in these positions earn about $1000 more, on average, than their female counterparts. This is much the same situation reported in Lori Ricigliano and Renee Houston’s 2003 Association of College & Research Libraries presentation “Men’s Work, Women’s Work: The Social Shaping of Technology in Academic Libraries” (see an interview with Ricigliano in netConnect, LJ 4/15/03).

Unmoved by far worse equity imbalances in the mid-1970s, Cook jumped at a chance to develop circulation systems, first as head of circulation at the University of Denver, then, in 1981, for the University of Nebraska libraries. With remarkable boldness, she customized library systems, programming with long sets of switches and feeding 50-pound stacks of disks into drives as big as washing machines.

In 1992, Cook became the second dedicated staff person for OhioLINK, installing library systems throughout Ohio and defining the functionality to link a growing number of participating libraries together. Today, she leads a staff of 19, and OhioLINK provides nearly 90 member libraries with research databases, an electronic journal center, a digital media center, ebooks, and an electronic theses and dissertations center. Cook still looks ahead, wondering how cell phones or online environments like Second Life could extend OhioLINK’s reach. She believes that taking risks is not optional in the information business. “Things come up quickly,” she explains. “You have to keep checking the pulse.”

Hanning agrees, adding, “I have never been afraid to move on to the next thing.” In the mid-1980s, she landed her first real-world opportunity to design computers with Tektronix, writing controllers for machines that tested computer chips. She soon shifted her passion to software, a more forgiving activity that gives immediate feedback. When Sun released a graphical interface for its UNIX system, it captivated Hanning. “That’s when I found my niche,” Hanning says. “I started making testing interfaces, instead.”

When Mosaic and graphical browsing emerged in the early 1990s, she says, “I fell in love all over again.” She saw a chance to focus on interface development for web applications as many companies moved into the “make it useful” phase of the web. At companies like Hewlett-Packard, Intel, and Nike, she discovered her preference for consulting and a love of project management. But after five years, she felt burned out.

Hanning took stock. After soul-searching and career counseling, she decided she wanted to use her problem-solving approach and technology skills to help people and thought of libraries. She entered the University of Washington Information School distance program and volunteered for a wide variety of library projects in the Portland, OR, area. As she graduated in 2005, the technology consultant at the Oregon State Library retired. Delighted, Hanning jumped at the opening and landed her “dream job.” She calls it luck, but people like Cook and Hanning make opportunities for themselves through bold strokes and hard work.

The University of Florida’s Russell also believes in taking risks, and, like all of the women interviewed for this article, she enjoys change and loves a challenge. She credits an early experience at George Washington University’s Information Innovation Center for this attitude. Imagine participating in a National Science Foundation research project dedicated to the innovation life cycle—in the early 1970s. Russell explored “the whole effort. How does new technology get made, then diffused? What sparks innovation? What promotes acceptance?”

Russell’s career shows that she put this insight to good use and rode the crest of many disruptive technologies. She saw the beginning of Comsat Labs and early telecommunications satellites. She worked in the fledgling federal Office of Technology Assessment in the mid-1970s, then became the first librarian in product development for the private information vendor IHS. In the mid-1980s, Russell produced one of the first, commercial CD-ROM products for a company called Disclosure and soon found herself working at what was then known as LEXIS, convincing them to add materials of interest to government markets. Government information runs through Russell’s many job changes and eventually led her to the GPO and now Florida. “I like something that stimulates me intellectually,” she adds. “I changed jobs when something became routine or was mostly maintenance.”

Denise Davis couldn’t agree more. She shares Russell’s love of technology assessment, which she came to in 1995 with the SAILOR project, the first statewide shared network connecting libraries, and in working at the state library in Maryland. Today, she manages the American Library Association’s (ALA) Office for Research and Statistics. On a career path that led her from early OCLC cataloging utilities to building fledgling networks for statewide resource sharing and improving database products for commercial vendors, Davis has moved from coast to coast and back again, once changing her state of residence twice in the same year. Still, she has no regrets.

“I need to be challenged,” she explains. “I need to learn something. I can’t do the same thing every day. It’s not in my DNA. Why subject yourself to work you don’t like?”

To those who feel stuck in a job that doesn’t use or build upon their skills, Davis is blunt. “That’s a cop-out,” she says. “I’ve never felt stuck. People who are willing to try new things don’t get stuck. You have a professional responsibility to find a job where you can continue to learn.”

According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the number of American women working in IT is waning, from a high of 30 percent in 2000 to 27 percent in 2006. One of the reasons women give for leaving IT is a sense of isolation, because technical staff are often separate from the core activities of a business. But Carolyn Leighton, cofounder of the advocacy group Women in Technology International, thinks women have exactly what an enlightened organization needs. “Now IT goes across all departments globally,” she explains. “And women by nature are collaborative consensus builders.”

OCLS’s Bost can tell you about the power of teams. Bost was the acquisitions services manager for OCLS in Orlando, FL, until her recent move to a position as branch administrator. “I think it does 'take a village’ to do technology well,” she says. “I lead acquisitions, but I work with so many groups. I don’t operate in a vacuum.”

To illustrate, Bost described how she wanted to use the OCLS catalog to collect library events. The catalog could be a marketing tool, surfacing activities like author appearances alongside their works. Bost pitched the idea, but she couldn’t have actually done it without the cross-functional collaboration that exists at OCLS.

Bost gives enormous credit to the leadership at OCLS for establishing a shared vision that makes it easier to launch projects across departments. According to Bost, at OCLS, it’s everyone’s job to increase market share within the community. For example, at a national library leadership institute, she drew upon her economics background for her final project: libraries as an economic development partner in the community. This led to a successful OCLS team effort to secure a 2006 Institute of Museum and Library Services grant to deliver training and materials to support entrepreneurial needs, both online and on the road with a mobile lab. Boundaries are fluid, and Bost believes in synergy.

ALA’s Davis also prefers a team approach and has left positions where the synergy just wasn’t there. She recalls landing a management job that required her to wrestle control of various technology pieces away from a male staffer who had been cultivated as a likely successor by the previous manager. Davis worked to flatten the top-down nature of the group she inherited and bring front-line staff, who were mostly women, into processes and decisions.

In the early 1990s, Davis provided collaborative leadership in a big way on Maryland’s SAILOR project. Davis’s experience doing similar work with the University of Maryland libraries prompted her director to give her the freedom to participate in SAILOR. Davis marvels at this collegial spirit. “She came to me and said, 'I told them you’d be there,’” she recalls. “I was 'on loan’ to the SAILOR project for an entire year.”

These days, Davis leads a smaller team at ALA but still operates more as a producer than a director. She defines the data collection and analysis tools she needs and works iteratively with her developers to find solutions. On a larger scale, she is transforming the vision for her group. She wants to be more inclusive in order to have greater impact across the entire organization. She notes, “I’ve been able to bring ALA divisions into my work so they have a voice.”

Collaboration is easier when everyone remembers what it’s all about: the people you want to serve. Hybrid librarians always wave the flag of user needs high enough for everyone to rally around.

When OhioLINK’s Cook led a search for the University of Nebraska’s first integrated library system in the mid-1980s, she focused squarely on functionality and user needs. Cook’s team selected Innovative Interfaces. This separated Cook from her ARL colleagues, all of whom used the now-defunct NOTIS library system. “NOTIS called me,” Cook recalls. “They told me I made a mistake. But Innovative was willing to work with me to build what we wanted. Even talking to vendors in those early years was difficult. They downplayed women’s abilities.” So, Cook helped start user groups, like the Innovative User Group. “I wanted to be independent of the vendor,” she explains. “I wanted a sounding board.” Just as Cook wanted what was best for her users, she wanted vendors to take their own users more seriously.

Dalmau brings the same user-centered approach to her work as the digital projects and usability librarian for the Indiana University Digital Library Program (DLP). Though she came to libraries from a humanities background, she’s 32 years old and grew up digital. “Lots of humanities people are into computers,” she says.

Sometimes, necessity is the mother of careers. Dalmau followed her then partner to Indiana in the late 1990s, but job competition is stiff in a university town. Dalmau learned just enough to interview for a web development job and was amazed to be hired. “I didn’t know anything about it, but it interested me because of my art background.” Her interest led to a Master of Information Science (MIS) degree, where Dalmau found usability fascinating. While completing her MIS, she worked as an interface and usability specialist for the university’s digital library program and began to match her love for creating a compelling user experience with rich, meaningful materials. She adds, “I soon realized I was a closet librarian. I was as interested in representing and organizing collections online as I was in understanding the user experience.” A year into her MIS degree, Dalmau opted to get an MLS, too.

A 2007 LJ Mover & Shaker, Dalmau helped create her current position, insisting on retaining the focus on usability, and, like Hanning’s, it’s her dream job. She thinks we need more hybrid librarians and feels dual training in library science and computing is a wise combination, because, “technology will come and slap you in the face.”

Our best defense is to encourage more hybrid librarians like Dalmau to step into technology leadership roles in libraries. The private sector may fail to meet a woman’s need for life/work balance, a collaborative work environment, and the desire to have her skills recognized and well integrated into the rest of the organization, but that just means libraries have a great opportunity to support and attract women who speak the language of technology and love the mission of libraries.