Grooming Squirrel

Have just been thinking that as a librarian with a techie sort of title (Virtual Reference Librarian), I am really swinging towards the non-techie/human relationships/touchy-feely side of librarianship.

Motherhood will do that for you. I recently read a great book called The Tending Instinct by Shelley Taylor. Taylor talks about nurturing as a powerful instinctual force, and backs up all her theories with biological studies, mostly ones done with animals - did you know that a rat with a genetic tendency toward having hypertension can overcome that tendency if its mother licks and grooms it a lot in the early developmental stages? Now that's powerful. Came away from reading this book with the determination to be a licking, grooming rat. Or squirrel, as the case may be.

I also recently went to a workshop on effective teams, where the facilitator recommended a book called Fierce Conversations. I haven't read it yet, but she said it posits that every relationship succeeds or fails one conversation at a time. This has a lot to say if you apply it to customer service in libraries. We win or lose our patrons one conversation at a time, whether it be an argument over fines, a discussion over computer bookings, or a chat about a great book.