Author: UC Berkeley Library

In the almost six months that we’ve been working at home we have tried to maintain a sense of community through meetings and retreats (via Zoom, of course), collaborative projects, and virtual coffee dates. However, beyond a few peeks on Zoom, we didn’t know what our colleagues’ work environments looked like, so we put out a call to our co-workers in the Social Sciences Division, asking them to share pictures of their home offices. We now present to you the range of ways we are continuing to stay connected to the Library and our work!

But first– a few words from colleague Natalia Estrada, who best sums up the challenge of working from home — even for those of us who were able to bring home our beloved dual monitors from our campus offices:

I live in a one bedroom apartment in a noisy part of town with a ton of construction. My spouse is also in academia, so we both are handling various Zoom meetings (sometimes at the same time!) and other large projects. You can imagine that working from home has been a challenge, bordering into impossible at times. The spouse and I have taken on many habits to try to make work-from-home in a small space work for us. We ended up rearranging our living room to create a better work station, using furniture we’ve acquired second hand (Urban Ore is a great place for this), plus taking certain needs into consideration. The work station, shared between the both of us, includes:

• a whiteboard used for teaching
• headphones, so I can block out distractions while I listen to a delightfully informative podcast (or the new Phoebe Bridgers album)
• two of our thickest cookbooks to use as laptop stands for presentations
• a desktop usually for processing large data sets, but also useful for touch ups before all those video meetings
• one of our many much needed mugs (this one comes from Valois in Chicago)
• a “work station” for our cat/office manager, so she can hang out while we work (she is a very good cat, but a bad office manager)
• artwork! Because artwork works great as a background (better than a laundry rack, at least for us). We like both the block print from Suzhou, China, and the concert poster from when Japanese metal band Boris played at Amoeba.

We’ve still faced various hurdles that make it hard for us to work at 100 percent, especially when one has the desk and the other has to Choose-Your-Own-Adventure a second work spot (the couch? the bed? the kitchen? the choice is yours!). But, hey, my cat digs all the attention she gets on Zoom!

We are pleased to welcome the newest librarian in the social sciences division, Natalia Estrada. She is the Political Science & Public Policy Librarian, and is responsible for reference, instruction and collection development for the department of political science, the Goldman School of Public Policy, and legal studies. She is also the specialist for California government documents.

In a vague mash-up of the Vanity Fair Proust Questionnaire, the New York Times Book Review’s By the Book column, and Us Weekly’s 25 Things You Don’t Know About Me feature, here are twelve things about Natalia:

1. I was born and raised in Downey, CA, spent a good number of years in Chicago, and have lived in the Bay Area since 2011.
2. Before UC Berkeley, my library and cultural center work experience has included UC Hastings, the Center for Research Libraries, and the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago.
3. I’m very much a puzzle solving/trivia answering sort of a person. I used to participate in the UChicago Scav Hunt during my undergrad years, I’m still searching for a good bar trivia spot, and I used to complete Sporcle quizzes for fun.
4. I actually don’t spend a lot of my free time reading, so I’m pretty selective about the books I’ll read. Usually I go with horror, maybe some sci-fi, and non-fiction.
5. Most of my reading gets done either during my lunch break, or when I’m on a flight. Nothing makes a better reading environment than being stuck on a plane.
6. The last book I finished was Severance by Ling Ma, I’m a quarter through House of Leaves by Mark Danielwski, and I’m hoping to read In the Dream House by Carmen Maria Machado.
7. My favorite book is We Have Always Lived in the Castle by Shirley Jackson. My older sister introduced me to Jackson via The Haunting of Hill House and “The Lottery” when I was in middle school, and I got hooked.
8. The last great trilogy that I read was the Remembrance of Earth trilogy (aka Three Body Problem) by Cixin Liu.
9. I have a small but mighty cookbook and food writing collection at home. It has your more popular cookbooks (Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat by Samin Nosrat, Bar Tartine by Nicolaus Balla and Courtney Burns), but it also has some special finds, like the 1964 edition of the Joy of Cooking.
10. I cringe whenever someone ties librarianship with a “love of books.” I’m focused on helping you find the right resources for your research. Books are just a part of that, not the whole thing!
11. I listen to a lot of podcasts, especially when I need to do large chunks of work, chores, or working out. Many are news based (Morning Edition, The Daily), subject deep dives (Throughline, Science Vs., The Dream), and yes, true crime (the second season of You Must Remember This, with its focus on the Manson Family Murders and Hollywood, is one of my favorites).
12. My favorite movie is Tampopo, but the movie I’ll always watch is Jurassic Park.

Answering reference questions is the bread and butter of what many of us do as librarians. But rarely do we in the Social Sciences Division get the kinds of questions that Emilio Estevez portrayed in his 2018 film The Public. *

In fact, we believe that there are no “dumb” questions and will gladly help our patrons with any of their information needs. More often than not, our patrons have deep and complex research needs that challenge our expertise (and make our jobs fun) and require the collective knowledge and experience of our colleagues.

Take, for example, this query that came in:

“What is the cost of the social safety net in the US?”

To effectively answer this query we engaged in a dialogue with the researcher (what’s known as the “reference interview” in library-speak). In a case like this we want to: determine what kind of data they are hoping to find; determine specific geographic and time constraints; and clarify what, exactly, they mean by social safety net. Are they talking about public/government spending? What about private and philanthropic spending on the social safety net? Do they mean support for low-income people specifically, or all of society?

Jim Church, Librarian for Economics, Political Economy, and International Government Information, suggested OECD Stats which contains statistics by country from the multinational Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development. OECD Stats has a section for Social Protection and Well Being including, among other things, pensions, sick leave, disability, unemployment, housing assistance, etc. Users can go to Social Expenditure – Detailed Data: United States.

Susan Edwards, Social Welfare Librarian and Head of the Social Sciences Division, suggested that for US data on the federal side, the Green Book provides statistical data of the major entitlement programs (Social Security, Medicare, Temporary Assistance for Needy Families, etc.) overseen by the Committee on Ways and Means. If, however, the researcher is looking into private and philanthropic spending on the social safety net, they can consult GuideStar and the Foundation Directory which provide information about the budgets of a wide range of nonprofit organizations and public charities.

Ann Glusker, Sociology, Demography, & Quantitative Research Librarian, suggested that the researcher remember to consider “grey literature”, which may not appear in peer-reviewed journals or formal publications, but which comes from reputable and reliable sources and which can add a lot to the published literature. In this case, the researcher may want to consult offerings and also staff in Berkeley’s Center for Comparative Family Welfare and Poverty Research, or Stanford’s Center on Poverty & Inequality, which has a page devoted to Safety Net Use.

Monica Singh, Business Librarian, suggested the researcher look at a couple of very helpful guides created by Jesse Silva, Scholarly Resources Strategy and Federal Government Information Librarian; Getting Started with the US Census has a tab on Social/Economic Census Sources.

A happy ending? We never saw the end result of the person’s research. We often send researchers on their way and don’t know how they use the information we’ve provided. But, considering we receive many return visits we must be doing something right.

* Note: members of the Social Sciences Division went on a field trip to see The Public when it was playing in the theaters. While we gave Emilio Estevez an “A” for good intentions, some of us wish we’d been able to make suggestions about the dialogue and plot!