Retrofit 5: The Competency Trap

This is my fifth “thinking out loud” installment in preparation for the RBMS seminar “Retrofitting Expectations or Redefining Reality: What Does the Future of the Special Collections Professional Look Like?”

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I need to reexamine an earlier piece to this mental puzzle, a piece picked up and pondered in my first installment: the issue of competencies. In that post I made the following statement:

…we should deal with the real [professional] image, or at least the one we talk about in terms of professional competencies. It is here that we need to begin, to take a long, hard look in the mirror, and see if we like the reflection. With any luck, and perhaps with a bit of skill and guidance from others wiser than ourselves, we’ll see (or are in the process of seeing) “a professional who gradually achieves such general proficiency over the course of his/her career” and “a sense of community and common identity among special collections professionals” that at the same time helps “others to understand our work.”

I referred to the RBMS “Guidelines: Competencies for Special Collections Professionals” as a proper starting point for an examination of our professional future, a mirror for self-examination and reflection.

In my second post I admitted to some difficulty with this approach. A look in the mirror tells us who we are, “the reality of the work we do.” Our reflection might spark memories of a professional vision—our dreams—when we entered the field. If we’re lucky, the looking glass might even offer hints to future directions, as we compare our present reality with what the Guidelines ask us to be, or to become. But it is not a magic mirror. It cannot tell us the future. It is not something we can step through, like Alice, into an alternative universe.

Or can we? Perhaps we need a different approach, or a different perspective. Looking in the mirror—reflecting on our present status—can bring other thoughts to mind or bend us to other realities. If it doesn’t take us into Looking-Glass Land, it does something else: it suggests another answer, or another piece to the puzzle. We might find that the answer—or an alternate solution—was staring us in the face all the time.

I’m not suggesting any solution to this seminar riddle, merely another piece to ponder. In my case, the piece surfaced on Twitter. (Which makes me wonder, if only for a moment, and with tongue in cheek: is Twitter—or any social media for that matter—a magic mirror?) What suddenly appeared before my eyes was a string of tweets from the 11th Columbia Library Symposium, specifically those related to a talk by Elliott Shore, Executive Director of the Association of Research Libraries. It was the title of his talk that caught my eye, especially the last four words: “Fostering Leadership Across the Academic Library Organization: Avoiding the Competency Trap.” (emphasis mine)

The symposium tweets tantalized me. Obviously, I was not present at Shore’s talk; I experienced it via the Twitterverse. But I felt led in or around the mirror: here was another perspective worth examining. With not too much digging, I found Shore’s presentation slides on the Columbia web site. While it was not the same as being there, hearing his comments in person, the slides still gave me a sense of what he said, of the argument he made. Let me try to encapsulate those thoughts. The program description of Shore’s talk is a helpful starting point.

There are all kinds of reasons for doing things in the future more or less as we have done them in the past, especially as one moves up in an organization — after all, one has succeeded so far, why change? The notion of the competency trap, applied to organizations since the 1980s, can be applied to us as individuals — and can blunt the possibilities for change. In this keynote, Elliott Shore…will recount what he has learned about suspending disbelief and share thoughts about building an environment that questions unexamined assumptions.

First, Shore provided a definition of the competency trap offered by Levitt and March in 1988, refined by Becker in 2004: “The position of an organization which uses a suboptimal procedure because it is good enough in the short run and so does not switch to a better one.” This raises a number of questions that I’ll ask here, but offer no answers—placeholders for further discussion: are the RBMS Competencies a trap? Are they suboptimal? If so, in what ways? In the same manner, are there flaws with institutional procedures, e.g. annual performance reviews, workflows, or supervision, that blunt possibilities for change?

Shore offered an example of a competency trap: the threat (economic and otherwise) felt by 19th century sailing vessels to the new technology of steam. Sail’s response was to add more masts, more sail, more waterline—all suboptimal procedures. Steam continued to threaten. Sail’s addition of more hull, masts, and canvas—what Levitt and March noted as a “favorable performance with an inferior procedure” led sail “to accumulate more experience with it, thus keeping experience with a superior procedure [i.e. steam] inadequate to make it rewarding to use.” By the early 20th century, sail had foundered; steam took over. Shore concluded that “incremental change lands you on the rocks” and that sail’s response to steam was an act of hubris.

Shore, as I interpret his slides, is looking for another path forward, something different than incremental movement. Borrowing from the work of John Seely Brown, Shore posits the belief that a) “the challenges we face are both fundamental and substantial,” b) our new normal is a state of “constant dis-equilibrium,” and c) “our ways of working, ways of creating value, and ways of innovating must be reframed.” Shore finds the path forward in the concepts of “disagreement deficit” and “being wrong” developed by Kathryn Schulz in her book Being Wrong: Adventures in the Margin of Error.

Disagreement deficit, as defined by Schulz and expounded by Shore, is a condition in which “people are naturally hesitant to disagree with those around them.” This condition goes further: “We not only believe what those around us believe, but we even see things as those around us see them.” In this deficit condition “our communities expose us to disproportionate support for our own ideas, shield us from the disagreement of outsiders, cause us to disregard whatever outside disagreement we do encounter, and quash the development of disagreement from within.” To be wrong is to wander. According to Schulz,

To err is to wander, and wandering is the way we discover the world; and, lost in thought, it is also the way we discover ourselves. Being right might be gratifying, but in the end it is static, a mere statement. Being wrong is hard and humbling, and sometimes even dangerous, but in the end it is a journey, and a story.

Shore, taking his cue from Schulz, is saying it is all right to disagree, to be wrong. It is an adventure. Part of the adventure, within an organization, is to protect those who disagree and to allow the uncomfortable questions to surface: “Why can’t we do it this way?” “What is the worst thing that could happen if we try this?” “Our scholars learn from experiments—often more from unsuccessful ones—can we experiment with this idea?”

My takeaway from this reexamination of competencies is this: As we look at retrofitting expectations or redefining the reality of special collections professionals, we need to look and listen to those who disagree with us, to ask uncomfortable questions, be comfortable in our wrongness, and not be afraid of the journey. Where do we disagree? What experiments have we cooked up or are in play? Have we really spent enough time examining and learning from our failures? These, and others, are difficult questions to ask, especially when other entities are asking—on any number of fronts—for accountability or efficiency. Have we got the guts to do the hard things, to take the risk, to wander, be disagreeable or wrong? Do we have eyes and ears attuned to what we might not want to see or hear?

Retrofit 2: Building on Competencies

This is the second installment in the development of my thinking on the RBMS seminar “Retrofitting Expectations or Redefining Reality: What Does the Future of the Special Collections Professional Look Like?”

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In the first installment I argued that the popular image of a special collections librarian was a red herring; that it should be discarded in favor of an examination of professional competencies; and that this was the proper base for comparing if “the reality of the work we do” resembles “our visions of the profession when we started.” However, even here I find myself crashing against the rocks. The comparison does not work, at least in my own mind, because I cannot remember what my vision was (or might have been) of the special collections profession before I started work in the field. I’m not sure I had a vision of the special collections profession twenty-eight years ago—when I stepped into my first archival job following a mixed six year career as an instructional services/reference librarian, library director, and medical librarian—except some ill-conceived and romantic notions, received in graduate school, that the reading rooms of special collections or rare books libraries were the closest I would ever come to a “holy of holies.”

What I do remember quite clearly was:
a) the institution that hired me wanted to step up their game; they previously employed retired faculty as archivists; they wanted a professional presence and I was their identified candidate;
b) the archivist from a local research university who served as a consultant to the search committee objected to my hiring because I came from the library world, with limited training or experience in archival practice;
c) my graduate training in archival management and practice came from two people: a former President/Fellow of the Society of American Archivists, and a long-time, active member of the SAA; and,
d) I spent the first year—of what ended up a twelve year stint—convincing the archivist/consultant that I was up to snuff for the position. This was my initial vision of the archival/special collections slice of the profession: proving my worth.

A professional environment laced with “proving one’s worth” is not a place I want to inhabit if we’re going to talk about redefining our reality. Neither is a romanticized impression of a rare book reading room as “sacred space” useful to me in examining the question of a future identity. I still believe that an examination of competencies is worthwhile; it helps inform both expectations and realities. But here, too, I’m feeling blocked. This sense of obstruction comes from the competencies themselves (approved by the ACRL Board in 2008). They are a set of guidelines developed by RBMS, i.e. they are in some ways “home-grown,” sprouting up from our own constructs and understandings of what it means to be a special collections professional.*

At the same time, the guidelines provide another clue, another approach for viewing expectations or realities: an examination of external motives or stimuli coming from beyond the institutional confines of special collections. Here is where the administrative voice sounds on stage, where administrators enter the conversation, and where questions are posed. My immediate concern is with the impetus for the guidelines on competencies, especially in the role played by the Association of Research Libraries (ARL), a body constituted almost entirely of administrators (although the Task Force on Special Collections included some practitioners).

ARL participation is unequivocal. The background section of the introduction on competencies notes:

Over the past decade, a number of factors have focused attention on special collections and the professional skills, academic credentials, and personal qualities needed for a successful career in special collections librarianship. In 2001 the Association of Research Libraries (ARL) established a Task Force on Special Collections to further an agenda to maximize the full potential of special collections. Its charge included, “Define core competencies among special collection librarians and create training opportunities.” In 2003 the ARL Board of Directors endorsed the statement “Research Libraries and the Commitment to Special Collections,” which described special collections as “one of the critical identifiers of a research library” and affirmed the “critical role” played by special collections in fulfilling the mission of research libraries.

At that time, ARL directors also perceived a significant shortage of candidates ready to take on the responsibilities of administrative positions to be filled in the coming decade. The ARL Task Force consequently identified recruitment, training, and continuing education as high priorities on its agenda. A white paper prepared by the Task Force, entitled “Education and Training for Careers in Special Collections,” surveyed recent changes in professional education for special collections professionals and identified a number of new programs and initiatives emerging to meet recruitment and training needs. The white paper reiterated the importance of articulating competencies required by special collections librarians and acknowledged that education and training opportunities are needed at all career levels.

This background narrative also provides broader observations relevant to our RBMS seminar.

These developments reflect profound changes in the roles, responsibilities, and expectations of special collections librarians. The changes parallel those in research librarianship generally and are chiefly the result of evolving information technologies. But they affect special collections most especially because special collections professionals work in increasingly diverse environments and carry an unusual variety of responsibilities. Individual career paths differ greatly. There is an expanding range of formats in collections, including three-dimensional artifacts and audio, visual, and digital materials. The audiences for our collections and services have grown to include students at all levels and members of the general public of all ages and backgrounds, both onsite and online. Although special collections have always encompassed both technical and public services work and professional assignments are often of broad scope, the digital environment integrates these areas more fully: instruction and outreach efforts require technical skills, and metadata librarians must have a keen understanding of users’ needs and preferences. Special collections librarians cannot succeed without effective collaboration with faculty and library colleagues. At the same time, expertise is now required in areas such as rights management and fundraising.

Beyond ARL’s role in stimulating creation of the RBMS guidelines, I’m interested in looking at other external forces, from organizations outside our individual libraries/institutions that mold or influence our expectations and realities. In my case, one organization I will attend to is the Committee on Institutional Cooperation (aka The Big Ten).

The basic point I am trying to make is this: our professional future (corporately and individually) is partially shaped by organizations external to our host institutions. Other forces or movements—societal, economic, political, technological, etc.—also shape our future. There is nothing new here. And this may not be a bad thing. What may be new, or at least provokes a question, is this: where is the balance? Who calls the shots? How many of our expectations and realities do we get to create (or at least have a say in their creation) and how many are imposed from above or beyond, wherever (and whatever) “above” or “beyond” might be? How often do our individual professional development goals come in conflict, competition or tension with institutional, consortial, or extra-academic goals? Are we able to perform the core functions of our position or is something administratively new and urgent continually crowding in, begging for attention (and completion)? Is the curator-scholar a creature of the past, left aside in favor of a rush to The Next Big Thing?

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I find myself reading old issues of RBML, looking and listening for a past voice—a usable past—that will inform our present and future discussions. Perhaps I’m also looking for an earlier vision of the profession, wondering if any part of that vision is still relevant. I live in hope.

*Members of the Task Force on Core Competencies for Special Collections Professionals included: Kathryn Beam, chair (University of Michigan), Mark Dimunation (Library of Congress), Jackie Dooley (UC Irvine), Hjordis Halvorson (Newberry Library), Kris Kiesling (University of Minnesota), Beverly Lynch (UCLA), Margaret Nichols (Cornell), Alice Schreyer (University of Chicago), and Dan Slive (William Reese Company).

Retrofit 1: Starting With Pieces

Like Sir Saul Enderby, chief of British intelligence MI6 in le Carré’s Smiley’s People, I can be “thick.” I sometimes need to plot things out, building a thought or idea step by step as if constructing a Euclidean geometric proof. Such is the case as I consider my contributions to a panel discussion/seminar slated for late June, part of the Rare Books and Manuscript Section (RBMS) preconference in Las Vegas. The preliminary description for the seminar — with the title “Retrofitting Expectations or Redefining Reality: What Does the Future of the Special Collections Professional Look Like?” — reads:

Does the popular image of the special collections librarian match what professionals now find in their jobs? Fundamental changes in librarianship and academia are impacting departments and their staffs. New economic and technological realities are reshaping the demands of the communities we serve – both patron and employer. The reality of the work we do may not resemble our visions of the profession when we started. Today’s professional needs a new understanding of expectations and opportunities in order to succeed. This moderated “fishbowl” discussion will put questions to two library administrators and two professionals in order to clarify their expectations and goals. The seminar will aim to provide strategies for building a successful career in a changing field.

Am I showing my RBMS hand by thinking out loud here, thus diminishing any impact I might have during the seminar itself? I don’t think so. There is a slight risk of showing my ignorance, thinking foolish thoughts, or getting sidetracked along the way. I’ll take the risk. I need to get my thoughts in order and out in the open (or at least partially in the open), in the hope that someone might offer an interesting or useful comment, link me to an article or blog, or correct me along the way. I don’t want to spoil our Las Vegas gathering by disclosing too much. On the other hand, this exercise might plant a few seeds and put colleagues in a prepared and productive mode (or mood) once we arrive in “Sin City.”

I’m not going to attempt to build my entire argument (or statement, or contribution) in a single post. And I might not post all the parts here, as I pick out the various pieces of this puzzle, play with them, and put them in place. I might, after all, need to maintain some sense of suspense or anticipation as to where I finally land and what the puzzle ultimately looks like.

For starters, perhaps in a pedantic or pedestrian fashion, let me grab the first thread from the seminar’s description: the popular image of the special collections librarian. Is there such a thing? Certainly there’s the stereotypical image of a librarian—a thing (and topic) I abhor and believe unrealistic. So, right at the start, let's abandon this train of thought and all images, words, etc. associated with the stereotype.

The impression of a special collections librarian is more problematic, so let me attempt to get at such an image through the back door, as it were, by looking at archivists. (I will have more to say about the archival profession as I move through the various steps of my proof. Let me at least put a placeholder here for a thought worth pursuing later, one I may or may not agree with (but have heard uttered by others more than once): archivists—at least in the North American context—engaged in a silent coup as they took over RBMS leadership during the last decade, wresting control from bibliophiles.)

Richard J. Cox, in a blog post from 2006 entitled “What Should the Fictional Archivist Look Like?,” asks:

If an archivist were going to write a novel or mystery portraying an archivist or the work of an archives, what would be the difference between what he or she would write and what a professional writer might compose? Mostly, I suppose, the archivist might work hard to avoid the stereotypical features most writers easily resort to in their portrayal. What are those characteristics? They seem to be absent-mindedness, other-worldliness, clumsiness, dustiness, musty odors, awkwardness, and other features suggesting one who is far more comfortable with dead, rather than living, people.

As to this stereotype, Cox observes: "Whatever the reasons, archivists are surrounded, buried in, layers of stereotypes, that they can hardly see their way through. But, still the question might be, what is the ideal way, if there is an ideal way that the archivist might be brought to life in a realistic fashion?"

Does Cox offer as a suitable image, something acceptable to the profession? Not really. Only hints, e.g. through the academic novels of David Lodge, but even here we have a problem as Cox adds another stereotypical image into the mix.

Everyone knows that the great university is still home to many who have no hope of making a living in any other part of the world, adding to the amusement evident in the most recent trend in university administrators’ thinking or rhetoric, to reform their institutions into the corporate model. Assuming that a business is intended to make some degree of financial profit, it is wonderful to envision our splendid group of professors contributing to the profit line. Most experienced academics know that to transform their departments into business would be a sure way of killing their programs in a relatively short time – but the rhetoric and posturing along the way would be fun....

Indeed, a thread to work with here is that so many academic archivists are frustrated academics, people who spend years preparing for a teaching career and life of quiet solitude only to discover there were no jobs or they were, despite opportunities, unemployable as academics for some reason.

If Cox leaves us with hints (skewering administrators along the way), Rachel Alexander provides more, at least in terms of stereotypes. In her “Literature review on the image archives and archivists project in popular culture,” Alexander provides another string of images, including: "middle-aged to elderly..., wearing glasses, and dressing sloppily or primly.... a 'fossilized anachronism who should have been put out to pasture long before....'" More images follow, none of them complimentary. I'll spare you the details. I’m sure readers can point to other articles, blogs, books, films, etc. with popular portrayals of archivists and librarians (who are often lumped together in those depictions). Unfortunately, I am still left with the original question in the seminar description: Does the popular image of the special collections librarian match what professionals now find in their jobs?

I think this is the wrong preliminary question to ask. We should scrap or ignore the popular image. We delude ourselves by thinking about or even briefly considering prevalent impressions. It is navel-gazing at its worst. If we got into this segment of the profession because of some quixotic idea of the scholar-bookman and no one in our graduate educational experience disabused us of our fanciful notions, then our professors are to blame for continuing the stereotype; we’re to blame for swallowing it hook, line, and sinker; and our administrators are to blame by leading us by the nose through poorly written or deceptive job postings (assuming such things exist).

Instead, we should deal with the real image, or at least the one we talk about in terms of professional competencies. It is here that we need to begin, to take a long, hard look in the mirror, and see if we like the reflection. With any luck, and perhaps with a bit of skill and guidance from others wiser than ourselves, we’ll see (or are in the process of seeing) “a professional who gradually achieves such general proficiency over the course of his/her career” and “a sense of community and common identity among special collections professionals” that at the same time helps “others to understand our work.”

30th Year Reflections/50: RBMS

“We must grasp fully who, or more correctly what, our performer is. We must eliminate from the word ‘performer’ any notion that he is one who merely reproduces what someone else or even he himself has composed…. Our singer of tales is a composer of tales. Singer, performer, composer, and poet are one under different aspects but at the same time. Singing, performing, composing are facets of the same act.” — Albert B. Lord, quoted by James P. Ascher in the vade mecum of the 54th Annual RBMS Preconference

Last week I soaked up one of my favorite annual events: the Rare Books and Manuscripts Section (RBMS) Preconference. RBMS, as the name implies, is a section of the Association of College and Research Libraries (ACRL), a division of the American Library Association (ALA). I was a member of the local arrangements committee and thoroughly enjoyed the experience (although it meant some early mornings and long days). If given the chance, I highly recommend participation in a local arrangements committee (or program committee) for a conference such as this. Our committee was led by two of my colleagues, Marguerite (Maggie) Ragnow and Arvid Nelsen. They did a splendid job; it was a joy to work with them and other members of the committee.

Perhaps the most backbreaking thing I did in conjunction with getting ready for the conference was stuffing the conference tote bags (and hauling the boxes out from the back room when more bags were needed at the registration desk). It took us about five hours to fill four hundred tote bags with all the information related to the conference, the book dealer’s catalogs, local information, etc. (Thanks to Rob Rulon-Miller for sponsoring this year’s bags and everything else he did for the conference.) Given my height, bending over the spread of tables to put each piece (or pile of pieces) into the bag took a small toll on my back, but such little pains come with the job. I’ve come to the conclusion that anyone working with archival materials will eventually come down with a bad back, unless they’re especially attentive to the proper way to lift.

But enough about boxes, bags, and backs. Naturally, I have a local bias, but I think we did the Twin Cities proud with this conference. Our welcoming reception at the Mill City Museum was spectacular, the final plenary at Pantages Theatre very fitting to the conference theme, our various tours to “bookish” places delightful and informative, and the concert by the Rose Ensemble memorable. In between all the receptions, tours, concert, and other pleasures was a full schedule of seminars, talks, and discussions. Because I was involved in local arrangements I did not get to sit in on all the programming, but what I did experience was insightful and inspiring. At a seminar on bibliography I experienced the bibliographic equivalent of a straight-line wind in the presentation by Stephen Tabor from the Huntington Library. His research over the past two decades blew me away. Likewise, I enjoyed a bit of heat and light in another seminar on curators and book dealers, as the discussion following presentations centered on the continued use and value of dealers’ printed catalogues. At an “unconference” with colleagues in Midwestern institutions we participated in a wide-ranging discussion on professional development, collaboration, internships, exhibits, and other topics. I think we may have stumbled upon a few ideas worth pursuing, e.g. developing information RBMS unconferences for those unable to attend the “main event” due to diminishing travel funds, or creating a regional discussion list for sharing questions and issues closer to home.

Conferences such as RBMS help us grow and develop professional awareness and skills. They help us network and make new connections. Hats off to James Ascher and other members of the RBMS program planning committee for a very thought-provoking and useful conference. I hope everyone who attended RBMS in Minneapolis enjoyed their stay and had a chance to experience a bit of what we get to enjoy every day.

RBMS: Remembering "AD"

All right. Way back when (a couple of weeks ago) I promised to post some reflections on the most recent RBMS pre-conference. But there was this strange block in the way that I couldn't quite figure out or get around. It took a couple of weeks, but I finally figured it out. It might sound a bit strange (and maybe I'm just engaged in a bit of self-analysis or reflection), but underneath all the really good times that I had at the conference (the Getty, the Huntington, my colleagues, etc.) it turned out that it was actually a bit hard to come back to LA and environs, especially the UCLA campus. I haven't actually been to LA a lot of times, but for me its more wrapped up in a person (who just so happened to be connected with the place). And it was all connected with my last visit to LA, nearly ten years ago. I'm still talking in riddles here, so let me get to the point.

The last time I traveled to LA was to visit my aunt. She, maybe more than anyone else in the world, had the greatest influence on what would be my chosen career as an academic librarian. She was not a librarian, although she was, in part, an academic. And she was much more. At the time of my visit she was in the last stages of suffering from Pick's disease. I wouldn't see her again. I knew this when I saw her, which made the visit that much more poignant, and difficult. After she died, on January 10, 2001, I wrote an obituary. It was never published in full and I'd like to share it here.

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NOTED PHYSICIAN LaVONNE B. BERGSTROM DIES AT AGE 72

LaVonne B. Bergstrom, professor emeritus of surgery at the UCLA School of Medicine and a 1957 graduate of the University of Minnesota Medical School, died January 10^th in Los Angeles following a lengthy illness. Dr. Bergstrom began her academic career at the University, completing an undergraduate degree cum laude from the School of Journalism in 1950 and a second undergraduate degree in Medicine in 1953. As an undergraduate, she worked for the Minnesota Daily as a reporter before her career interests turned away from the media and towards medicine.

While attending medical school, she decided to spend a summer as a lab technician at Embudo Presbyterian Hospital in New Mexico. What attracted her to New Mexico was the varied experience a mission hospital offered, plus the opportunity to see a different part of the country. While working at Embudo, she was impressed with the high caliber of medicine practiced by the staff and the atmosphere of dedicated service. Following medical school, she served as an intern at Minneapolis General Hospital for one year and then was commissioned in September 1958 by the Presbyterian Church USA for continued work at Embudo.

After a three years' stint as associate physician at Embudo, Dr. Bergstrom became the medical director of the Sangre de Cristo Medical Unit at San Luis, Colorado in 1961. The medical unit, operated by the Presbyterian Board of National Missions and the Synod of Colorado, was the only medical facility in a wide swath of south-central Colorado and northern New Mexico. General practitioner Bergstrom brought up-to-date medical care to an isolated, predominantly Spanish American community located eight thousand feet above sea level in the San Luis valley. Over one quarter of the population served by the clinic was over the age of sixty and the infant mortality rate was nearly double the national average. The nearest hospitals were forty-one miles to the north in Alamosa, Colorado, and sixty-five miles south in Taos, New Mexico.

Dr. Bergstrom was the only physician in the 1,215-square miles of Costilla County and the waiting room at the clinic was frequently standing-room-only. The county, with no industrial or agricultural base, was designated as a distressed area by the Federal government. More than half the residents were receiving some kind of welfare aid. Isolated, impoverished, and with little education, the inhabitants had no sustained medical care. In addition to the typical cases encountered by a general practitioner, Bergstrom found a higher-than-usual proportion of illnesses related to malnutrition, complications of pregnancy, and old age. In many of these cases she arranged for patients' care in distant city hospitals. While at San Luis, she commented that "sometimes it seems as if we're merely putting a Band-Aid on a large wound." But at the same time the staff was achieving a breakthrough with a wide-ranging program of preventive medicine, well-baby care, home nursing, prenatal care, and immunization clinics. In one day the staff inoculated 1,300 children. In 1962 the Medical Unit reported 7,338 patient visits for a county with a population of around 4,300.

Her schedule was grueling and frequently interrupted by emergency calls. In between office hours, she drove more than a hundred miles a day to make her hospital and house visits. She learned to dictate letters as she traveled. And, as the only doctor in the county, she had three unforeseen duties: draft board examiner, deputy coroner, and ringside physician at local prize fights. Because of these omnipresent responsibilities she was able to take only one day a month for relaxation. Volunteer doctors came from Denver to relieve her at those times.

In July 1965, Bergstrom left the clinic for a residency in otolaryngology at the University of Colorado Medical Center. Following her residency, in 1969, she joined the medical faculty at the University of Colorado and served in that capacity until 1975. Deborah Hayes, chair of the Audiology department of The Children's Hospital in Denver, observed that "I enjoyed working with LaVonne, and admired her pioneering work in otolaryngology, especially her work in [the] genetics of hearing loss."

In 1975, Bergstrom joined the faculty at the UCLA School of Medicine. Cydney Fox, director of audiology services at the Tracy Family Hearing Center in Los Angeles, reflected on her association with Dr. Bergstrom. "I first met her when I did my graduate work in Audiology at the University of Denver. She spoke to one of my classes and I was terribly impressed by her. Two years later, when I was hired at the UCLA Audiology Clinic, I could not believe that both she and Garth Hemenway, from the U. of Colorado School of Medicine, had been recruited. Dr. Ward, the chief of UCLA Head and Neck, kiddingly spoke often that there was now an embargo on Colorado faculty and staff because we were close to having a majority vote." Elliot Abemayor, current vice-chief of the department at UCLA, said that he "trained at UCLA under Dr. Paul Ward and worked with Dr. B. for four years as a resident, then as a young faculty member. I remember her animation, warmth, and love of patients." In June 1979, Bergstrom was appointed full professor, Department of Surgery, Head and Neck Division, at UCLA. In a profile by a local Los Angeles television station, the reporter observed that only 1% of the full professors of surgery at the nation's medical schools were women, making Dr. Bergstrom "a rare bird, indeed."

Over the course of her career, Bergstrom was active in a number of professional organizations. She was a member of the executive board of the American Auditory Society and served as its president in 1987. Ellen Friedman of the Texas Children's Hospital and current president of the American Broncho-Esophagological Association commented that she "was greatly influenced by Dr. Bergstrom. She was a remarkable woman who made significant contributions to otolaryngology in many, many ways." Rick Chole of the American Otological Society said that he "was a resident at the University of Minnesota when I first learned of her work in temporal bone histology. She was a role model for me as I completed my residency and graduate training and was one of my Board Examiners in 1977." Some of her other organizational affiliations included the American Academy of Otolaryngology—Head and Neck Surgery, the American Academy of Pediatrics (where she was a Otolaryngology Special Fellow), the American Academy of Ophthalmology and Otolaryngology (Fellow), the American Neurotology Society (Fellow), and the American Otological Society.

Beyond her work at UCLA, Dr. Bergstrom became involved with the Hope for Hearing Foundation in Los Angeles. Christine Coleman, executive director of the foundation noted that Dr. Bergstrom "was, indeed, very much associated with the foundation. She volunteered to take care of the ears of many of the children [who] were brought up here from Mexico for hearing aids. She was a wonderful woman. My office was next door to her's and I would talk to her every day. She had a great sense of humor, and common sense….She wrote a booklet for parents of hearing impaired children and had it translated into Spanish. We truly missed her when she became ill."

Children were her great love. Cydney Fox remembers that "LaVonne put tubes into my older son's ears twice. The second time, he took his Mickey Mouse doll into surgery with him and she put tubes into Mickey's ears via lots of tape. I thought it was creative and darling. My three-year-old did not agree and was incensed that Mickey had been degraded. Kids!!"

"I belong to the craniofacial team which evaluates children with multiple syndromes, the same type of specialization that LaVonne was so interested in. There isn't a Monday that goes by, when I go to the team meeting, that I don't think of her and how grateful I am that she shared so much of her love and knowledge in this complex area."

"I worked with her until her disease made her leave her position. I thought she was one of the most brilliant doctors and women that I had met. I still, to this day, believe that. I learned so much about children and otology and hearing function from her."

Bergstrom's nephew, Tim Johnson, special collections and rare books curator for the University of Minnesota Libraries, has memories of his aunt going back to early childhood, including numerous camping trips and hikes through the western mountains. But it is his recollections while an undergraduate that are perhaps the most profound. "We would get together when she came to Chicago for some medical convention or meeting. She had an excitement about research and higher education, a natural curiosity combined with a sense of playful adventure, that was contagious. Later on, I discovered the service and devoted side of her life and realized how much she cared for people, for her patients and their families. She, more than any other person, is why I pursued a career in higher education. She was a favorite."

In 1989 Bergstrom retired from the UCLA medical faculty with the title of professor emeritus. At about the same time, she was diagnosed with Pick's Disease, a disorder involving deterioration in mental function caused by disease-related changes in brain tissue, including shrinking of the tissues of the brain and the presence of abnormal bodies (Pick's bodies) in the nerve cells of the affected areas of the brain. Pick's disease is a rare disorder similar to senile dementia/Alzheimer's type and affects about 1 out of 100,000 people. It affects both sexes, but it is more common in women than men with the onset of the disease generally occurring between the ages of 40 and 60. The onset is usually slow and insidious. The exact cause of the disease is unknown. The symptoms are similar to senile dementia/Alzheimer's type, with aphasia (loss of language abilities), agnosia (loss of ability to recognize objects or people), and apraxia (loss of skilled movement abilities).

Marion Downs, wife of Dr. Hemenway (Bergstrom's colleague in Colorado and California, who is himself suffering from Alzheimer's disease), spoke on behalf of colleagues in Colorado. "We all knew Dene as one of the most brilliant physicians and surgeons in the field, as well as a loyal and congenial friend, and we have mourned losing her to that terrible disease for all these years. Now we will mourn her final leaving [of] us."

LaVonne Bernadene Bergstrom was born in Erskine, Minnesota, on October 17, 1928, the eldest child of Clara and Harry Bergstrom. Her father managed a store in Winger, Minnesota, owned by clothier and miscellaneous wholesaler Edward Baehr of Wadena. In the summer of 1930 the family moved to Wadena and it was from there, in 1946, that she graduated from high school as class valedictorian. In the fall of that year she matriculated at the University of Minnesota. Her parents preceded her in death. She is survived by two sisters, Leticia Johnson of South Haven, Minnesota, and Sharon Freude of Richmond, Virginia; one brother, Fred Bergstrom of Plymouth, Minnesota; and numerous other relations. Memorial services in California, Colorado, and Minnesota are pending.

Early in her career, while at the clinic at San Luis, Dr. Bergstrom made an early morning visit in sub-zero temperatures to a young boy, critically ill with pneumonia. Later, the boy's mother said that the doctor "looked like an angel when [she] came through the doorway." Bergstrom, who combined a bent for precise description with a whimsical sense of humor, would not have been one to claim wings and halo. "Slipshod medicine," she said, "would weaken our mission."

**********

That's my aunt. We called her "Auntie Dene" or "AD" for short. She lent me a lot of books, some of which I still have. I also have her bound volumes of favorite pieces from "The New Yorker." When she graduated from Minnesota with a degree in journalism, she was inducted into Kappa Tau Alpha, the national honor society in journalism and mass communication. Two months ago my second son graduated from the U of M with a degree in journalism and was also inducted into KTA. I guess some things are just in the blood.

A couple of days ago I left a comment on Lynne Thomas's blog about librarianship as a contemplative profession. I'll share some thoughts on RBMS in a next post or two, but for the moment I needed to contemplate and remember someone who brought me into the profession. Requiescat in pace AD, and thanks.

More Posts from RBMS

Here are some more posts from the RBMS pre-conference held in Los Angeles, June 24-28, 2008.

Historical Notes from the Oregon Health & Science University (OHSU) has an extensive report.
And from the Ephemeral Archives another post.
Karen Calhoun's presentation during one of the plenary sessions.

My own reflections to come soon. . .

Back from RBMS and the 4th of July

Its taken me a bit to get back in an office frame of mind after a great time at the RBMS conference in Los Angeles and a wonderful Independence Day at home with family. I want to share some thoughts I have from the RBMS conference, but it might take a day or two to work through my notes and get some coherent thoughts together. But, for the moment, let me point you to a few of my colleagues who've made observations about the conference. Merrilee Proffitt from RLG Programs posted some great material on hangingtogether. She's got stuff for Day One, Day Two, and Day Three of the conference. Likewise, Lynne Thomas at Northern Illinois has posted the reconstructions of her notes from RBMS. When I last checked she's got two very full posts and will probably have more.

One of the seminars I attended was on blogging. It was so popular that some folks couldn't get in. One of my colleagues was even blogging while she was attending. A blog was created for this seminar that I need to go back and visit, but wanted to at least get it mentioned here. Also, another colleague, Stephanie Horowitz from CBI, was one of the panelists for this seminar. She did a great job and posted some reflections on the CBI blog.

One of the things I picked up at the seminar was the importance of leaving comments. So I've left comments for Merrilee, Lynne, and Stephanie. As I continue to troll for more blogs on RBMS I'll leave comments there as well.