Interview with James Teliha, Associate University Librarian for Public Services at ISU

by Regina Koury

 

 

I had a pleasure of interviewing James Teliha, an Associate University Librarian (AUL) for Public Services at the Idaho State University since June 2008 and a member of ALA Intellectual Freedom Committee. In the past Jim served as the Head of Access Services at University of Rhode Island and as Access Services Librarian at Oregon Institute of Technology in Klamath Falls. He holds an MA in History from University of Colorado at Denver and an MLIS from University of Oklahoma. Our interview follows.

 

Q: What made you choose library as a career?

 

A: I've always been in libraries: before I was working in libraries I was using them. I was the kid who was spending summer afternoons going to the library. I grew up in the west side of Denver and went to Jefferson County Public Library, a large suburban public library that had a number of branches throughout the county. One of the first things I was able to do is learn how to request books from other public library branches so I can read everything I wanted to. This came to the attention of the head of circ at the branch, who when she found out I was only about thirteen, said: "come back when you are sixteen and we'll give you a job." So I did. I started in the local library shelving books as a page and never left. I love libraries. I love all levels of libraries.

 

Q: What was your first professional job after library school and how did it unfold after that?

 

A: I went to library school at the University of Oklahoma and my first job was as Access Services Librarian at the Oregon Institute of Technology in Klamath Falls, Oregon; which is a small school of about 2500 FTE's. I thought it was a great experience. I recommend anybody who wants to have a broad range of experience should work for a small library coming out of library school, because you have a lot more opportunities to do a wider variety of things.

 

I was lucky that one of the reasons I got hired at Oregon Tech was that their library director was from University of Oklahoma and that he was familiar with me from library school. He knew me by name, he knew that I had a grad assistantship and I was working at circ. I had an extensive paraprofessional career before I went to library school: I put in about 15 years as a paraprofessional. My last job as a paraprofessional was a night circ supervisor, so going to library school and being able to work my grad assistantship in circulation was really great. I was hired basically because of my paraprofessional experience. The director knew that an Access Services librarian would have more credibility with the circulation staff, the paraprofessional staff as having been one and having done that. And that's something I've been able to do throughout my career work very well with the paraprofessionals because I had been one for so long. You know what's going on, you know not only the theoretical side of why you are doing things which is what you learn in library school, but the practicalities of how things actually have to happen to get done. Paraprofessional experience is invaluable. If you are unfortunate enough to go straight to library school right after your undergrad and don't have any experience working in the library, that's where you should really do some kind of practicum, when you spend some time in the library, seeing how things actually work.

 

From Oregon Tech I became the Head of Access Services at University of Rhode Island, which is a Doctoral/Research Extensive institution. And after that I came to Idaho State as their AUL for Public Services, which is pretty much a normal career progression: moving up. Working in access services gives you immediate supervisory experience, since you are running a circ desk, reserves, interlibrary loan and a few other things. Access services gives you experience running the building, because circ people are the ones who open and close it. It's really a great training ground to moving up in administration. Circ is the first place that people see when they walk in the door and the last place they see before they leave. It is really important to have good people who like working with people and want to help them as much as possible.

 

Q: You are a member of the ALA Intellectual Freedom Committee (IFC). Can you tell me more about it? How did you get appointed and why?

 

A: IFC works with the Office of Intellectual Freedom (OIF), those are ALA staffers, who keep track of things. I got appointed and reappointed, so I am on my fourth year. You are allowed to serve two consecutive two-year terms, so this is my last year. IFC monitors things that are going on in libraries. We write and go over interpretations to the Library Bill of Rights, trying to update them. This last midwinter conference, we were updating four.

 

The philosophy and the ethics remain the same. We just need to develop new interpretations to reflect the changes brought by new technologies. For example, some of the ones we were working on this time dealt with social networking software, social networking sites, such as Facebook. As academic librarians, we don't really have as great an issue in dealing with censorship or dealing with minors. Most of our customers walking in the door are not minors, therefore they are adults, and that mostly spares us from that level of complexity in dealing with minors. But if you are public library or a school library it's different. Minors do have first amendment rights, independent of their parents, and defending those and making sure that they are given what they need to succeed with the help of or sometimes in spite of their parents is a lot of what Intellectual Freedom Committee does.

 

A lot of schools have heavily filtered the internet and have blocked all access to social networking sites, even for school purposes. There is a court case in Washington State right now, where a library wouldn't turn the filter off for an adult to access constitutionally protected speech site and that is a challenge. They have to take it off, because if they don't take it off that would be the basis for an as-applied challenge, which is currently going on in District Court in Washington State, which would probably then be appealed to the Ninth Circuit.

 

IFC and OIF are the people who end up, through the Freedom to Read Foundation (FTRF), suing and representing ALA for things like COPA (Children's Online Protection Act), which was just overturned and which was not heard by Supreme Court, so the Third Circuit opinion stood, declaring it unconstitutional, and when ALA was fighting the first version of COPA and all the other internet decency acts FTRF is who filed the lawsuits and organized the expert testimony.

 

The Intellectual Freedom crew is really fun to hang out with because there are so many big names and everyone is so deeply involved. Now that I am on my fourth year, I am kind of sad: I had worked my whole career to get on this committee and it is one thing I really care about most in librarianship. It's been wonderful. I'll always work for it and support it. I tend to see intellectual freedom as the core value that all librarians share, that from all our other values and ethics come from, and without it we are nothing.

 

Q: You are working on your Ph.D., can you tell me about it?

 

A: I am looking at how intellectual freedom went from not even being mentioned in the 19^th century to becoming a core value in the 20^th century. When researching the origins of ALA, you get to see all those famous names, people like Dewey, like Cutter. These were real people, they were there for the founding of the ALA in 1876 but when they are talking about stuff, they are talking about standardizing library education, they are trying to define a profession. And when they are defining the profession, they talk about a lot of things: they talk about standardizing cataloging, they talk about organization systems. They were all running libraries, yet they all came to libraries from different places: some of them were historians, some were literature people, one of them was a mathematician, but although they come from different places, they wanted to try to come up with standardization and uniformity.

 

So when the new librarians come out they are educated to know how to run a library and be professionals. One thing they don't talk about or one thing I haven't found yet is that intellectual freedom never seems to come up. And I am not sure whether that is just assumed or actually, because it is during the progressive era--the era in which there was a sense of highbrow v. lowbrow culture--are libraries run by a group of intellectual elites, deciding what the masses should have access to. So one must be careful not to give the masses something that might excite them too much or not be "good" for them, which on one level sounds really paternalistic and today would sound completely against everything we stand for in intellectual freedom today. I think it will be interesting and I'm having a lot of fun.

 

Q: What do you think are the core issues facing academic librarians now? Are they any different than ten years ago?

 

A: I am not sure. I think the core issues facing academic librarians are more than educating the students that come through, and educating the administrators and faculty that we are dealing with. As faculty progress through their career they come up through the ranks as grad students, they only know the library as doing research, they do not think of us for teaching, they don't think of us for helping with the students, showing them how to do research. They just think of us for doing their own research. If they end up at school that is centered more on teaching than research, faculty tend to think of libraries even less.

 

What we were always trying to do, and we were doing ten years ago and still trying to do is demonstrate our relevance to the administration and our importance within the university. And it is really, really easy, it really is. It just takes contact and communication with the faculty and administration. This is what we do, this is how we are spending your money, and this is how the university benefits. I don't think the core issues are different, I think the technology is different: applying ethics to technology is the challenge.

 

Q: What do you think are the qualities of a good library administrator?

 

A: I don't like to think about myself as a library administrator, I am a librarian. I like being a librarian. I don't see anything wrong with the "librarian" word, the "L" word. I think schools that are dropping the "L" word from their names--just becoming Schools of Information--are losing part of their soul. I am a librarian who happens to be an AUL. Experience makes a perfect librarian, a sense of empathy; having been a paraprofessional, I know what the paraprofessional are going through or at least have experienced something similar to it. I know what the reference librarians are going through. I do instruction.

 

Keeping your hand in, in a day-to-day operational sense, I think, is the one of the most important things an administrator can do. The greatest thing about being a library administrator is still being a librarian: you know what you are dealing with, you are able to run the library well and know how things should be done and represent that to the outside world in order to get the resources that we need.

 

Q: You have seen pretty much everything in your library career. How did you avoid burnout and manage to be so energetic, enthusiastic and encouraging to people around you?

 

A: I learned to see the bigger picture. The easiest part of my job is the time in the morning around 8:30 a.m. when I go around and make sure to see if anything is going on that needs my attention. I think it was Woody Allen who said 80% of success is showing up. So the thing to do is show up. And it does two things, it (a) lets me know that everything is OK out there and I can see what's going on, (b) lets people know that I am interested. It's a job of a library administrator insuring success and happiness of your people and usually you have pretty good people and you want to help them succeed, you want to make sure that they have tools to succeed. And if they need your help they feel comfortable asking for your help and if they don't need your help you need to feel comfortable to walk away and let them sort things out between themselves.

 

One thing I try to remember at all times is that usually most people, when they are doing things, have the best of intentions. Then they make a total screw up of the situation, but decisions they made going in were not made going in with the intention of screwing up. Sometimes if you feel you need to step in, at least go over, talk to them and find out what's going on, what they were thinking and offer your advice and help. That's the way I administer my department, help them when they need it, let them learn, as long as the work is getting done.

 

Q: How do you unwind after work?

 

A: Well, we are working on our house. I am not sure that's unwinding, but since we bought a new house and we are getting it fixed up and about ready to move in, that's I guess is how I unwind: crawling around the attic rewiring things. That's OK; I know how to do wiring. And I always read, so reading is just as normal as breathing so that's kind of unwinding and I do it all the time anyway. And every so often my wife and I like to travel; we like to get out of the country, it's fun. We usually take a few weeks and go over Christmas and usually try to go someplace warm.

 

Q: What piece of advice would you give to a beginning librarian?

 

A: Be active, go to ALA, be involved. Do things outside your comfort zone. The best thing that happened to me was going to a small library right out of the library school. I ended up having to sit on the consortium committees, I ended up having to learn how to interact and work with other libraries, I ended up having to serve on faculty committees in the University. If you are in a larger school, sometimes you have to fight for those things. Figure out what you want to do and then set yourself up to do it.

 

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Regina Koury is an Electronic Resources/Reference Librarian at Idaho State University (ISU), a position she has held since September 2008. In her previous position she had worked as an Electronic Resources Assistant at the University of Southern California. At ISU Regina is a point person for e-resources troubleshooting and a member of Database Evaluation & Selection Committee. She received her MLIS from University of Pittsburgh.