Tag: librarian

ER&L: Head First into the PDA Pool

Speakers: Lisa Shen, Glenda Griffin, Erin Cassidy, and Tyler Manolovitz

They did a 16 week pilot program, and in that time, users selected about 640 titles, selecting them steadily throughout the program. The most expensive titles tended to be reference works and STM titles. The least expensive were humanities driven or public domain. STM and social sciences took up almost half of the purchases. Surprisingly, more literature titles were purchased proportionate to the number available.

They used the YBP content level to compare the patron purchases with the librarian selections. The users were still selecting academic content at a high level, although the librarian selections contained fewer popular titles. They found an overlap between the two in general and advanced academic levels, and interestingly, users selected much more supplementary material than the librarians.

Shortcomings: not all librarians participated in selecting from the thousands of titles, the duplicates were not removed (33% of the titles were already owned in print or from another ebook vendor), and the default catalog display ordered items by publication date (puts the ebook first).

In summary, PDA is a good supplement to but not replacement for traditional methods, and may be an indication of emerging research needs.

Suggestions: Set a title price cap. Consider excluding older materials, journals, duplicates, and titles from publishers with better bundle deals. Use modified triggers like 10 pages viewed, 10min of usage, or anything copied or printed.

ER&L: Here Comes Everybody ( a fishbowl conversation)

Organizers: Robb Waltner, Teresa Abaid, Rita Cauce, & Alice Eng

Usability of ERMS
Is a unified product better than several that do aspects well? Maybe we are trying to do too much with our data? Theoretically the same vendor products should talk to each other, but they don’t.

Ex Libris is folding in the ERMS tools into their new ILS. Interesting.

ERM is an evolving thing. You’ll always wish that there was more to your system. (Too true.)

Usefulness of Web-Scale Discovery
Some of the discovery layers don’t talk to the underlying databases or ILS very well. In many cases, the instruction librarians refuse to show it to users. They forget that the whole point of having these tools is so we don’t have to teach the users how to use them.

One institution did a wholesale replacement of the OPAC with the discovery tool, and they are now being invited to more classes and have a great deal of excitement about it around the campus.

Reality of Open Access
Some OA publishers are seeing huge increases in submissions from authors. Not the story that has been told in the past, but good to hear.

Librarians should be advocating for faculty to retain their own copyright, which is a good argument for OA. We can also be a resource for faculty who are creating content that can’t be contained by traditional publishing.

Integrating SERU
One publisher was willing to use it in lieu of not having a license at all.

Librarians need to keep asking for it to keep it in the minds of publishers and vendors. Look for the vendors in the registry.

Lawyers want to protect the institution. It’s what they do. Educate them about the opportunities and the unnecessary expense wasted on license negotiations for low risk items.

One limitation of SERU is that it references US law and terms.

recommended reading: Tinfoil + Raccoon is back!

Rochelle Hartman, one of my favorite people in libraryland, has written a new blog post on Tinfoil + Raccoon, the blog she declared dead some time ago. If you’re thinking about buying an ereader and are drawn to the idea of being able to check out ebooks from your local public library, you should read this. If you’re a librarian who is getting lots of questions from patrons about checking out ebooks, you also should read this for some excellent tips and talking points.

Personally, although I have a Sony Reader and theoretically could be borrowing books from the library, the only library system in my area that has the appropriate Overdrive license is Chesterfield County, and I haven’t made it down there yet to get a library card. Having occasionally browsed their collection online, I’m not particularly motivated to do it anytime soon, either.

recommended reading: The Loris in the Library

No, it’s not a new children’s book. Rather, it’s a wonderful essay by Sarah Glassmeyer that was recently published in VoxPopuLII. Here are a few tasty quotes that I quite enjoyed:

…if an overly cautious, slow moving, non-evolving primate that responds to threats by a poison tongue or hiding and pretending the threat isn’t there didn’t remind you of anything, well then I guess you haven’t spent much time around librarians.

and

…librarians don’t cling to print materials out of some romantic notion of the superiority of books, nor do they make repeated demands for stable, authenticated archives of electronic materials just to make you crazy. When one is tasked with the preservation of information – on behalf not just of those looking for it ten years from now, but also of those looking hundreds if not thousands of years from now – and no one else is really in the information distribution or storage business, it pays to take one’s time and be cautious when determining what container to put that information in, especially when what you’ve been doing for the past 1,000 or so years has been working for you.

and

…with librarians this risk aversion has grown like a cancer and now manifests itself as a fear of failure. This fear has become so ingrained in the culture that innovation and progress are inhibited.

and

As it stands now, librarian participation in a multidisciplinary project is often regarded as more of a hindrance than a help. If librarians don’t change, they will eventually stop being invited to the conversation.

guest post on ACRLog

I see a strong need for the creation, support, and implementation of data standards and tools to provide libraries with the means to effectively evaluate their resources.

A few months ago, Maura Smale contacted me about writing a guest post for ACRLog. I happily obliged, and it has now been published.

When it came time to finally sit down and write about something (anything) that interested me in academic librarianship, I found myself at a loss for words. Last month, I spent some time visiting friends here and there on my way out to California for the Internet Librarian conference, and many of those friends also happened to be academic librarians. It was through those conversations that I found a common thread for the issues that are pushing some of my professional buttons.

Specifically, I see a strong need for the creation, support, and implementation of data standards and tools to provide libraries with the means to effectively evaluate their resources. If that interests you as well, please take a moment to go read the full essay, and leave a comment if you’d like.

IL 2010: Failcamp

speakers: Krista Godfrey, Char Booth, & Jan Dawson (moderated by Amy Buckland)

Buckland: Librarians seem to like reinventing the wheel. We only share our successes and not our failures (so that others may avoid them).

Dawson

AskON is an online chat reference service created by Knowledge Ontario. They wanted to integrate VOIP into their chat service so that they could add in vocal cues to clarify/focus the reference interview. They first used LivePerson, but the click-to-chat call button didn’t work, so they looked into Skype. When they were looking at feedback, they found that the data gathering portion was incomplete (forgotten or misused). However, they were able to follow-up on the feedback and found that staff preferred the workflow of text to vocal chat. Also, often both staff and users didn’t have proper equipment for vocal chat.

Godfrey

Fell into SecondLife and it snowballed from there. This snowballing is often the source of some fails. She was offered a chance to be on a panel talking about SL and then also some free space within it. So, her library began to explore how they could use the space in SL.

At one point they had six librarians covering shifts in SL, but after a while, participation dropped due to increases in traditional reference services and busy schedules. Fewer and fewer students were already active users, and they weren’t likely to start using it for reference services. They still have the island and hope to do something with it someday, but have stopped trying to do reference services there.

Booth

Don’t focus so much on the cause of failure. Figure out your contingency plan, then implement it if necessary.

Her library created a kiosk with a live image of a librarian’s face. The idea was to create a virtual reference space, but no one used it that way. In the end, they found it was more of a humorous PR tool.

Fake it like you’re making it. You can have self-doubt, but don’t show it. Your success will be more likely.

Audience

Are there any library initiatives to record and share failures? Not yet, but Kendra Levine offered to start one.

Library wanted to have a subject guide as a wiki, but it failed. How do you deal with a failure that you really wanted to work?

How do you process the failure as a group? If something does fail, assess it. It’s easier to walk away and ignore it, but you can’t learn from that.

Sometimes failures can turn out to be wild successes, but not in the way it had been originally designed. Tweak with purpose. And stop trying to control the user – learn what they need and how they want it, and you’ll have more success.

You need to know what resources you have from admin. You can’t go in to fix something if you don’t have the tools you need to fix any problems.

get off my lawn…er…library

Going back to some idealized vision of the way things were won’t solve the problem.

The librarian community (at least, those in higher education) is all abuzz over a recent article in The Chronicle by social science and humanities librarian Daniel Goldstein. He makes several damning statements about the trend in libraries towards access over ownership and “good enough” over perfect.

Before reading the byline at the end of the article, I had a sense that the author was a well-meaning if ill-informed professor, standing up for what he thinks is what libraries should be. Needless to say, I was surprised to learn that he’s a librarian who aught to know better.

Yes, librarians should be making careful decisions about collections that guide users to the best resources, but at the same time we are facing increasing demands for more and expensive content than what we already provide. And yes, we should be instructing users on how to carefully construct searches in specialized bibliographic databases, but we’re also facing increased class sizes with decreased staff.

There is no easy answer, and going back to some idealized vision of the way things were won’t solve the problem, either. If you do go read this article, I highly recommend reading the comments as well. At least the first few do an excellent job of pointing out the flaws in Goldstein’s either-or argument.

Internet Librarian 2010 is just around the corner

Monterey is awesome! #il2009
from Internet Librarian 2009

I’m heading off to Internet Librarian later this week, and let me tell you, I’m pretty excited about it! There will be lots of sharing of ideas, both in sessions and later over beers. I’ll also be giving a presentation on Wednesday morning on electronic resources workflow tips & tricks, along with my colleagues Emily McElroy and Bonnie Parks. I’m not sure if I want a large audience (yikes!) or a small audience (*sad panda*), as both come with their unique panic moments.

Here are the sessions I’m planning to attend, which will likely change while I’m there, and some are double-booked, so I’ll have to make an on-the-spot decision about which to attend:

Sunday

  • Gaming & Gadgets Petting Zoo

Monday

  • Adding Value to Your Community
  • Dashboards, Data, and Decisions
  • Managing Your Library’s Online Presence
  • Next Gen Discovery Systems OR Beyond 23 Things: For Staff & for Patrons

Tuesday

  • Adding Value: CIO Insights
  • Personal Content Management
  • Failcamp OR Applying User Experience (UX) Design
  • Augmented Reality & Libraries OR Patron-Driven Ebook Acquisition
  • Videocasting, Innovating, & Creating New Ideas
  • Rip Van Winkle’s Libraries in 2510

Wednesday

  • Planning & Designing for Attention
  • Tips, Tricks, & Workflows for Managing Digital Resources <– that’s mine
  • Best Free Web Stuff for Broke Libraries
  • Digital Librarianship: Open Access & Web 2.0
  • Adding Value Through Visualization

librarian day in the life #5

Electronic Resources Librarian, Academic Library

iced teaArrived, turned on my computer, and while it booted up, I went and got an iced tea from the café.

Processed new email and scanned a document that I don’t need to retain in paper.

Attended weekly department meeting. We were extra chatty today and went 15-20 min longer than normal.

Worked my way through the action item email messages due today, including updating a resource description on the website and responding to a few inquiries.

Discussed with a co-worker ways we could use GoodReads for the library staff book discussion.

Discussed QR codes and their usefulness/popularity with a co-worker. Used the opportunity to yet again show off how my Android phone is as spiffy (if not spiffier) than his iPhone. I reserve this for Apple fanboys only.

Remembered again that this is DILO librarian day and began this entry.

calendarCaught up on journaling accomplishments from the past three weeks. I’ll thank myself next year when I have to write my annual review. I normally try to do this at the end of each day (I use Memiary), but I’ve been lazy about it, and then overwhelmed by the backlog.

Continued working through today’s action items while chatting with a colleague via IM about the online resource renewal decision workflow/tool that I stole from her. Well, stole the concept, anyway. Learned about something else I can steal, too.

Planned out my project schedule for the week. Then left for lunch with a friend in the dining hall..

view from the deskBack from lunch and on the Main Service Desk for two hours. Tried to track down a phone number of someone in rural Virginia. Answered an IM question from a law student about borrowing a netbook. Notified building manager that a copier is out of paper. Directed a software question to the Help Desk. Directed a product trainer to the conference room. Directed users to the bound journals. Referred a business student to the business librarian. Checked out a netbook to a user. Looked up a book for an IM user. Read some RSS feeds. Smiled at people passing by the desk.

Back to my cube and sorting through the email that has come in since before lunch. Only one new action item out of the pile. Whee!

Played around with some wiki software options for a departmental intranet. Still haven’t found the right combination of features and function.

Was about to start in on a project when I noticed that there wasn’t a Technorati tag description for librarydayinthelife, so I pulled something together and submitted it. Rewarded myself with peanut butter crackers and a Coke Zero.

Finally got into my current project, which involves pulling together information about our database subscriptions so that we can easily review upcoming renewals well in advance of the deadlines. Tweaked the Access tables, queries, and reports, and then set to adding more data. Worked on this until it was time to go home.

RALC Lightening Round Micro-Conference: Afternoon Sessions

Laura Westmoreland and Donna Coghill: “Walk-In Research & Writing Clinics: A Progress Report”
More in-depth than the library service desk, but less than what they’d get at the writing center, with the option to work with a librarian or writing consultant. They do it in two hour shifts that are regularly irregular, and each shift includes one librarian and one writing consultant. Last fall, they saw over two users an hour, but they weren’t coordinating with the writing center. In the spring, they coordinated with the writing center and reduced hours, which resulted in a decrease to under two users an hour. It might be seasonal, or something else about the service that wasn’t clicking as well with the students.

Erin White: “Mobilizing your library website”
Used analytics to determine the popular pages hit by mobile users. They paid close attention to what other libraries were doing with their mobile sites to avoid reinventing the wheel (i.e. NCSU Libraries). They also included a mini feedback form at the bottom of every page of the mobile site, and the message sent includes details about the device used. The most popular pages tend to be information pages like hours, events, and computer availability.

Olivia Reinauer: “Creating SLACers: The Formation of a Student Library Advisory Committee”
In 2006, a think team put together a recommendation to create a standing library advisory committee populated by students in order to have a better idea of the needs of current students. They copied liberally from VCU’s student advisory committee to create the charge and structure. One thing that VCU that was different was actually paying the students an honorarium, so they did that, either as cash or in the form of a gift card. They meet once a month to discuss ideas gathered from colleague’s work and go through the suggestions from the suggestion box, using the students as a sounding board. They also have guest speakers come and talk about things happening in the library, which the students like because it makes them feel engaged. Some issues involve getting them to do things outside of the meetings and providing more enticing compensation.

Abiodun Solanke: “Did you find my…?: Lost and Found Issues at UR Library”
Students leave physical and electronic materials all over the library, from books and clothing to unsaved documents on public computers. When we find the items, they are happy, and of course disappointed if not found. The student activities also keep lost and found items. If the item is not financial or an ID, they take photos and display them on the lost and found cart, along with “safer” physical items like clothing and books. If the items are never claimed, we repurpose them for use locally or send them to other organizations. Before that happens, several attempts are made to locate the owners and contact them.

Carrie Ludovico: “LibGuides for Foodies”
Using LibGuides to engage with the community. The campus has a strong green emphasis, from bikes to hybrid parking to a community garden. The newest benefit is a CSA option for employees from June – September for full and half shares that are delivered on campus, and it has been more popular than the organizers expected. So, they created a LibGuide to highlight interesting and supportive resources. The most used tab is the scholarly and government resources, more than books, cookbooks, and recipes.

Betty Dickie: “Read This!”
Anything by Christopher Moore, for certain. David Maine tends to take Bible stories and rewrite them in interesting ways. A Canticle for Leibowitz – the library plays an important role. Alessandro Boffa’s You’re an Animal, Viskovitz! is small but mighty. Louise Penny has gotten good reviews for good reason – recommended for murder mystery fans who like good stories and character development.

Carol Wittig: “Boatwright Knitters”
They meet one day a week at lunch. It encourages home/work balance, improves morale, addresses the whole person beyond the job, increases cross-campus outreach, and builds bridges to reach diverse groups. You can involve the whole staff by “sponsoring a knitter” to pay for the yarn. They have a Ravelry group, a blog, and a set of Flickr photos of projects. Right now, they are a student organization, but don’t have enough student participation, so they’re working on outreach in that area. They’ve done charity projects like Knit One To Save One and caps for chemo.

Travis Smith: “The End”
There are many negative connotations about “the end,” so he wrote a poem. You’ll have to ask him for a copy.

css.php