symphony of books

My name is Drew Durham, and I am enjoying my second term in the SJSU SLIS program.  I enjoyed Pink’s book, A Whole New Mind, for its honesty, its integrated comprehensive approach, and its ample evidence to support a great, potentially society-changing idea.  The search for meaning in my own life has led me to incorporate new skills and habits of thought, including some that Pink discusses, like “symphony” -- finding relations among things and integrating new items into related clusters with familiar items, using metaphors and mental links.

I work in a bookstore that specializes in personal attention and service.  To do my job well, and help people find the best books, I must build links and relations between an ever increasing number of the books in the bookstore.  It helps me to build in my mind ‘symphonic sets’ of things that different books share with each other in terms of subjects, themes, insights, plot, character types and settings. If I can’t understand and succinctly convey a set of choices to a customer – built on often complex relationships between different books in the store – then I lose credibility (which is our most prized attribute as a bookseller).  For example, if a customer comes in and asks me to suggest a book on a given topic, I use Pinks’s symphony to know which books fit that topic, where they are in the store, and how the first ones I think of connect to other books in the store.  The latter are a key part of symphony:  the related books much be similar enough to the topic to suggest in case my first suggestions don’t work for that book seeker. If I could not make those connections in my mind, then I would be of little use to potential customers.  They could just use Amazon and be done with it!  But as Pink writes, “certain kinds of software (or websites like Amazon) can sort these bits and offer glimpses into patterns. But only the human mind can think of metaphorically and see relationships that computers could never detect.” (p. 138) Happily, it is a clear need that our customers seek personal advice from people who can make the right brain symphony type connections to find the best book for each inquiry.

In short, I use right brain skill sets a lot in my work, especially “symphony.”  Without it, my clients would be uninterested in my suggestions, and the whole point of the store would be lost.  I also think these skills will help me later in life, regardless of where I end up. If I end up working with books, I will need to continue connecting them to each other in novel ways (!!!) and summarizing them in different ways.  I know I can, and I know I will. To create and maintain interest in books for 21^st century librarians and bookstore booksellers, requires right brain skills and especially “symphony” to relate the books together and find the best match for each user’s inquiry.  “Story,” of course, will help too, to compel and instill interest in a book, but “symphony” is the overall greatest help to me up to this point and right now.