Making and Catching Mistakes

Recently I was listening to The Best of Definitely Not the Opera's podcast on Makin' Mistakes. They had an interesting segment on how children are really good at noticing mistakes because they are unable to think metaphorically. Instead they think literally and as a result are more able to notice mistakes that most adults miss. This made me think about the role of new librarians in our profession. Often during our MLIS we are encouraged to observe and absorb before asking lots of questions when we start a new position. At its heart this is good and sound advice. We don't want to enter a new work place asking seemingly rude and unthoughtful questions (even when in our minds these questions were innocent). Plus, there are often very real reasons why certain things have "always been done that way."

But, in some ways our newness gives us an advantage. We can notice things that are out of place (literally and metaphorically). I worked with a librarian who, at her previous job, would give all new employees a camera and ask them to walk around and take pictures of things that seemed "wrong." She recognized that her familiarity with her library made it difficult to see things that might not have made sense to her users and her employees. This provided her with an opportunity to look at her library with "fresh eyes" and a clean slate. My colleague took advantage of her new "literal" thinking coworkers to expand her own "metaphorical" thinking. Yes, she knew the organizational reasons for why things were done a certain way, but she tried to not let that stop her from getting stuck in that mindset - something we're all in danger of doing!

I think this is especially important in light of a statistic I recently came across. According to the 8Rs 40% of new librarians want to stay employed by the same organization who gave them their current position. These librarians will soon move from being new "literal" thinkers to established "metaphorical" thinkers. Let's hope they remember what it was like to be new! For not only the benefit of the organizations they work for, but for themselves as well!