1995 - NASA - Mary Walsh

Mary Walsh
Research Information Resources Branch Chief
AMES Reseach Center Library
National Aeronautics and Space Administration

Interviewed by Doreen Cohen, March 3, 1995

Mary Walsh, Research Information Resources Branch Chief, interviewed by Doreen Cohen, March 3, 1995, at NASA Ames Research Center Library, Moffett Field CA 94035-1000

What would you say to the person who is entering a program in library and information science today? What would you say to this year's graduates?

What I would say is you've got to be sure of your reasons for entering the program. You'll find out quickly if it interests you or not. But some of the classes you are going to be taking are not going to interest you at all, and you need to be sure of your motivation in getting into it. If you are getting into it simply as a stop-gap because the profession you were in has closed ranks, like teaching, I would say don't do it. If you're getting into it because you have an insatiable curiosity to find out why you don't want to specialize in any discipline, but you want to become a generalist, that's probably the best reason to get into it. I think you can look at your personality and if people are consistently asking you for help even if you don't know their language--if you're visiting over seas or something and you're still getting questions--you've probably got the right personality for it. If you're getting out, or even if you're getting into the program, I would say don't get into it with the thought that you're going to make money. You have to have a service attitude because the only benefits that you're going to receive from this are the intrinsic ones--doing something because you think it's important to you. You're not going to get monetary rewards. And for the most part you're not going to get recognition by people outside of your industry that what you're doing is of value. If you're getting out today, I would say look further afield than the traditional library settings for your jobs. You're really going to have to be a self-promoter and look for opportunities in the Internet area because that's where they really need our value these days and we're not getting there in the traditional sense. We have to go out and entrepreneur ourselves there. So if you're looking for a job, and the job market is so small, make yourself a job.

Any suggenstions on how to do that?

Network, network, network! Do research, but instead of doing it for somebody else, use your research skills to research companies that are start-ups on your own. And I don't know why I'm telling this to people because they'll be out there against you and me! Basically, do the research on the company and go in and show them what you can do. Volunteer for them. They'll take you on after they've seen you for awhile.

What is it that excites you about your work?

My current work--not a whole lot. The profession--the fact that we have the capability of organizing information and making it available for not just the people that are currently alive, but making an influence on the way the information is to be stored for future generations. That's the most exciting thing to me. The second is that we're in a transition right now on the formatting of information, and we are at the ground-rules level. And if we get our act together within five years, I think we have the opportunity to influence the way electronic information is stored. We've waited almost too long. But if we get in now, we can help build that industry. What I like about the reference side of the profession is the immediate feedback that you get as to whether or not you have gotten it or not. The immediate feedback is marvelous. In the administrative part of the profession, you don't get that immediate feedback. You have to wait. You have to be able to delay three years to see what the feedback is on any of your decisions, and that's something that I wasn't told before I got into the admin. side. And, I remember when I finally did find out something that I had done had made an influence, it was about three years from the time that I made the decision. That time lapse is very different.

Who has influenced you in your professional life and how?

This will probably have to be off the record! Mickey Cohen. She was actually my mentor at Mountain View Public. She was the best person I've ever worked for because she saw her role as a supervisor to open doors for us. And if we went through them and didn't like them, we could slam them, but she was just there to make sure that they were first opened for us. So she gave me the opportunity to fall flat on my face, which I did with great regularity. It was nice to have that opportunity--to be told to take the risk in preference to succeeding. Other people who have influenced me--I've had some very good people who were bad examples for me of what not to do. People who refused to delegate authority down to their staff, people who never thanked their staff for anything--that has also influenced me in trying not to follow their lead. People who've been an inspiration to me--what's his name, Ed [with the unpronounceable last name] down at Pasadena, who basically has taken the idea of "just do it" to the extreme. There wasn't a phone in front of the main public library in Pasadena. He's a public librarian, he obviously has no control over streets or utilities, and they would not put one in there. So when the guys were out across the street putting in a new phone booth, he went over, handed them money, and got them to put a phone booth in in front of the library, so that when kids come out at 9:00 pm they would have a phone there to call their folks. And he just got them to do it by basically just doing it. He probably broke every law in the book, but he got done what needed to be done. And I really admire librarians like him and Herb White, both of whom are always saying "why, why?" and questioning the traditional thinking, and taking a lot of risks with not a clue what the outcome would be--but doing it because it may not be politically correct, and it may not be something that will save jobs, but it is the right thing to do. [anyone who influenced you to go into the profession?] This little old lady librarian at my high school, Sister Anita, who must have been four foot five, big as a minute, and she took me aside one day when I was a junior. I'd asked her some questions about some kind of reference book, at the time I didn't even know what a reference book was, and she said she thought I would like this profession and I ought to consider it when I got to college. And of course I looked at her in horror because a. it was a librarian and b. it was a nun and I wasn't sure which profession she was talking about. But somehow it must have had the right influence because it stuck in the back of my brain and when I got out with my BA in lit., which gets you nowhere, it was still in the back of my brain. And after working for a year in a go-nowhere job, I knew I wanted to go back to grad. school and it was still there. It wasn't like I pulled it out, it was like it had always been semi in the forefront, and since I decided not to go into theater, I decided to go into that.

What was the most rewarding experience in your professional career?

That's a tough one. That's a tough one--when you look back on all the years. I wish I could say it was something like saving somebody from poison leaves or something. I remember doing things like that at Santa Clara City. But that was commonplace, actually--they used to get a lot of life-and-death kind of stuff. I'm going to have to think about that one. Generally, the reference has just consistently been rewarding experience. The children's was rewarding because after giving speeches to three and four year olds nothing scares you, so that's personally rewarding because of the growth. But at the time I abhorred it. I was over there for eighteen months and I thought I was going for a three-month assignment. And I was ill the entire time because the kids cough in your face, so that was a learning experience which has held me in good stead. As has the R.E.A.D. program which I started up in Santa Clara and kept going. But, I think the most rewarding for me has always been the one-on-one with the patrons. The quick connectivity with them, and then their vanishing. I like the short intensity, not the long drawn-out relationship kind of thing, but kind of the fast-food mentality of watching their eyes and seeing when you hit it. You can see their face just light up and that is a reward. You know when you're doing bad and you know when you're doing good.

Could you discuss whether or not you see today's challenges as being any different from those of your graduating class?

Well, we had a lousy economy to graduate into as well. Only one person in my class got a job. The rest of us subsisted on very part time--I mean ten hour a week--jobs for about the first year. That is the same. We also had been hit with the new technology. Dialog and online systems were just starting up when we got out. The Internet's just starting up now. The only thing that I see different is that the structures which supported the library function, the traditional institutions were not breaking down as I see them breaking down now, and I honestly do not think that the ones breaking down now are going to be reconstructed. I think that the class coming out now is going to have to look to themselves individually, or they should consider the study groups that they had in school, as networks that could grow into companies or into consultants who will hire out to existing institutions. But I don't think they should see themselves as going to work for a group for a very long, long time. I don't think they have that luxury like we did. They're not going to get paid much! That never changes. That never changes. The intrinsic rewards I think are the same. The kind of personality mix is the same. They'll always have people falling in love with them in the stacks. That won't change. They're going to have to change their paradigm which they are comfortable with of being nice people and thinking that nice people get rewarded. I really do not think that this reaction is just to the short term things that are happening within our company or just within Silicon Valley. I've thought about this for a long period of time, and I've come to the conclusion that I think Herb White has a few years ago that librarians do not market themselves at all well. And unless they do, they ain't never gonna get no respect.

At the SLA dinner meeting Jane Dysart made the commend, "Forget collections. Think of the school children using the internet today and consider how you will meet their information needs tomorrow.&qout; I'd be interested in your comments.

I think her use of the term collections is a very narrow one. She's obviously not thinking of the Internet as a collection, which I do think of it as. It doesn't happen to be in this country probably, but it's still a collection. It still needs organization. It still needs some kind of authority work done on it. And it still needs indexing. And that's where I see our value added to be in the next few years. Our value added expertise is going to be organizing electronic data and I find that kind of a short-sighted thing unless she unless she's used to talking to people for whom collection means physical within a building.

If you were going to interview someone in Silicon Valley about our profession, who would you pick and what would be your reasons?

I think somebody who could give us money. I think somebody who talked a lot so that they would go out and talk about whoever they interviewed with. A person in Silicon Valley who has money--that's a tough one. I would probably try and talk to John Young because he is on the National Information Advisory Committee that's working on the NII, and he has a clue of what information is about. I see that he would have a modicum of understanding about copyright problems and some of the problems that are facing us and he has a very large buy in to the Internet. And I would be interested in finding out what he sees the future of our profession as and that he understands our current profession to be. He's the CEO of Hewlett-Packard. So he's got money and he's got really good connections. If it were somebody within the profession to interview--that's a tough one. Bill Fisher comes to my mind, but that's just because I like Bill and I'd like an interview with him and we like to joke around. In the Valley--probably whoever (and I don't know and I'm embarrassed) is the head of San Jose Public. I think that the battles a lot of us are fighting they have fought for many years. They've got a spectrum of audiences that I think put the rest of our spectrums to shame. And they've had political crunches and fiscal crunches that the rest of us can't even approximate. So, I think that that would be a person that would be very worthwhile interviewing.

If you were not in this profession, what would you be doing?

Well, there's of course a myriad of things. I would be either on stage or in the movies--I don't do stage--I would be in acting somehow. Or, I would be in marketing. Not sales, but doing marketing research probably. Had I started early enough I might have been in one of the hard sciences, but I never could decide which one. It's the generalist in me. So, probably one of those two things. Maybe something to do with fashion, but there's not much of an industry need out there. So, I probably would have stayed in LA and gone into "the business."

How do you personally go about changing with changing times?

If I hit it up front--sometimes I've reached the conclusion I'm off the time frame--but a lot of times I'll find that people are staying with the changing times things that I've already been-there-done-that, and I'm now surprised that other people haven't already been-there-done-that. But, for example, the most recent changes of the fiscal short-falls--that one did take me by surprise because of the speed with which decisions have to be made. And I think it feels wrong to me and I think the wrongness is because the time curve--it hasn't been internalized. And it's unusual for me because usually change is very acceptable to me, and I'm usually out there shivving away for it, pushing it. This one, it's striking me as if there's changes imposed from places that are not welling up from the grass roots and I see the grass roots being taken by surprise by it. Not like it's on the avant-guard start of a change, but as if it is being rushed through by people with a different time scale. So this one is very difficult for me. And it's also difficult because the majority of the people around me are moving at different time. They're moving on the same speeded up timeline, but they're either a wave ahead of me or a wave behind me. And there is a few of us--I think you and I are at the same wave point, but most of the staff here I think are a few months behind us, and most of our supervisors are three or four months ahead of us. So I see us all on this gigantic cyclic curve of the change but at different points, and it makes it difficult to talk to each other without sounding like we're being condescending or stupid. Because the people ahead of us are saying god I've been there and I don't want to talk about it any more, and the people behind us are hearing the words and are interpreting it as something else. And that change--this makes this one of the most drastic change things because it's not a small one that affects only this branch. It's one that affects not only the whole agency but the entire government. So, I see change as visually this very large seismic waves with a lot of small ripples falling out of it, and the ripples are coming in great enough speed and succession that while we're busy coping with that, we're being asked to cope with the very large changes as well. And I see psychological exhaustion going on a lot. That's something that I think will probably take about three years individually and organizationally to get over.

How do you personally cope?

I scream. I curse. I sleep. I hide. Talking with people doesn't usually work because they're on a different point on the bell curve. Getting away by myself and just sorting it out. Talking to people who are not in the change mode helps because then I have to put it into a rational enough form that I can tell somebody who's completely outside of it what's going on. So talking to people in other parts of my life about it always helps a lot, outside the particular working environment. Talking to people in the working environment seems to just be a maelstrom of conflicting points on it, but it doesn't help clarify anything.

What would be the most important elements of your epitaph?

Well, there's a phrase out of "Guys and Dolls," which I've always wanted on my tombstone. It's when the Salvation Army doll goes out after she has saved their hides by lying and saying she's never seen any of these men before and one of the gangsters from Chicago looks after her and says, "that's a right Broad!" And I've always thought that's so much better than being a lady, because you can always be a lady by just following the rules, but she broke all the rules but did the right thing, and she's just a right Broad. And I've always thought, boy, you can't really give anybody better praise than saying she was her own person and broke all the rules but did the right thing. And that's what I'd like to have.

Is there a question that I should have asked that I didn't ask?

What's this for? The FaultLine. The question probably would be what do you see the future of the Chapter being? And I see the Chapter has got to reinvent itself. We're having a meeting tonight and we're looking at the strategic vision of the chapter. It will be real interesting to look at the vision goals which we came up with two or three years ago--they've been updated a little, but not completely--to see if they are responding to the culture that currently exists in the Valley. My guess is we're going to need to do a lot of revision on it. At the time that we set those up, we were very concerned about the image of our profession and we still are. We were concerned with marketing and still are. But the thing that was not such immediate need was the speed with which we have to change our paradigm. And that, I think, is something that the Chapter needs to become unreactive and get really, really proactive and quit talking to the choir. Quit talking to ourselves. Get out there and start talking to the CEO's of the companies around, because we can't make the change, they can make the change. What we'll actually be doing is changing ourselves, but we won't know it because we'll be so busy proselytizing. But I see librarians spending a lot of time talking to librarians, and I don't see librarians putting a lot of time talking to their users except as assisters. I don't see them bragging. And librarians have to learn how to brag because everybody else does. And it's something that's very wrong with our paradigm. I used to think it's because we were nice people. I've decided that's wrong. It's because we are repressed. And we have to get out there and say we do this better than anybody else in the world and that's why you should hire us. And I can't imagine a librarian going into an interview and saying I'm the person you should hire because I do better reference interviews than anyone else. That would be considered conceited and it's not considered so in other industries and it's a true failing of our industry that we do not tell people how good we are.

Is that something library schools could address?

Yes, they need to address it, and I don't quite know how. Unless they have encounter groups where they get the students up in circles and all screaming, "I'm good!"--something to improve upon the self-confidence level. Even if people are self-confident, there's something in our makeup that keeps us pretty quiet, and I'm considered very noisy in this profession. In others, I'm considered you know, if anything, slightly timid. And that's scary. That's really scary that we're at such an end of the spectrum that somebody like me can be considered noisy in this profession. I've seen Herb White and I've seen Ed down in Pasadena interacting with people of other professions and they come across as scholarly and funny and a little bit restrained, but definitely somebody you take seriously. They do not come across as boisterous, or anything, yet you put them in a room full of librarians and they come across as heavily boisterous. We've really got to market not only ourselves but the profession--what we would consider aggressively, what the rest of the group would consider realistically.

Do you think that means recruiting different types of people?

No, because the basic requirements to do our job have stayed the same. You need somebody who does not need self-aggrandizement. You don't need somebody who has ambition in this profession because they will never satisfy themselves. You need somebody who will satisfy themselves and others, but you need somebody who realizes that their best way that they can help others is to exist, and the only way to exist is to make sure that the profession is valued.

Is there any other question that you wish that I had asked?

Ooh, let's see. Well, I was just looking at the questions that were in the Specialist yesterday. I was reading up on the people that are applying for office. One of them was what is the biggest change that you think is hitting, but I think you've covered that. And where do you see us in five years. I see the profession in five years hopefully where it should be as trainers, about 70% trainers and 30% doing the final product. But facilitators far more than we are now, we always say we are, but when you actually look at the amount of time spent on it, it's far less than we think. We're still handling those materials much more than we should be. We're not leaving the materials handling to people who handle stock for a profession. We should do only the things that we can add the value, which is in locating and getting information for people.