Therapy

I learned tonight that some days, after some meetings, it takes 5 hours of knitting to make the world seem livable again.

Information Literacy 2.0

I've been reading an absolutely fantastic article (Elmborg's "Information Literacy and Writing Across the Curriculum") and a slightly less fantastic article (Shapiro's "Information Literacy as a Liberal Art"). And it's gotten me thinking back to my first months as a librarian here, when my supervisor brought James Elmborg here to talk to us for an afternoon about being new librarians. We were full of questions about how to talk to faculty when we couldn't be subject specialists in every subject we served, how we could advance the library's goal of integrating information literacy more fully into the curriculum, and how to talk to faculty about information literacy in a way that would communicate that we were talking about more than boolean operators and controlled vocabulary.

In the course of that afternoon, Elmborg gave us lots of tips and solid advice, but he also challenged us to think more broadly. I'll never forget when he urged us forward, saying, "You need to articulate your epistemology." As a group, he said, librarians have a hard time coming to grips with precisely how we fit into students' educational development. We have a hard time selling ourselves to faculty when we can't describe what it is that we do. And just two months out of library school, I was flabbergasted to learn that I didn't actually know what it was that I did or where I fit into students' development.

Just this last week week I revisited Elmborg's article in a new context. It was included in a packet of articles that served as the background for a meeting, and the Shapiro article was also in that packet. The contrast between the two was startling.

While the Shapiro article talks a lot about "information literacy," it foregrounds information technology in almost every example. It also says that the facet of the proposed information literacy curriculum termed "Resource Literacy" is "practically identical with librarians' conceptions of information literacy, and includes concepts of the classification and organization of such resources" (see the section entitled "An Information Literacy Curriculum"). This facet, by the way, falls second after "Tool Literacy" which is "the ability to understand and use the practical and conceptual tools of current information technology, including software, hardware and multimedia."

While these concepts are certainly not outside the realm of information literacy, I don't think that they are the primary goals, either. Instead, they are tools working in aid of true information literacy, just as punctuation and grammar are tools in aid of good writing. Nobody would argue that anyone with a perfect command of the grammatical rules of writing is automatically a good writer. Nor would they argue that the teachers of writing should hold grammatical rules as their primary instructional goals.

After reading the Shapiro article it was such a relief to read Elmborg saying exactly that. "There is a 'grammar' of information...." he says, "Like sentence-level grammar, these are isolated skills that separate research from the making of meaning" (72-73). And when skills are isolated from the process of making meaning it "breeds cynicism and a view of writing [and research] as busy-work" in students (Elmborg 72).

Making meaning, then, is a fundamental part of information literacy. Without this as the ultimate goal, information literacy becomes a task, a chore more akin to Hercules' Labors than to anything else. Helping students construct meaning should be our primary goal. Along the way we may have to help them develop specific skills, including the "grammar" of searching, recognizing what constitutes evidence in their disciplines, and evaluating the information they find against the measure of their information need.

With this as the primary goal, competency standards (such as those drafted by ACRL) and "resource literacy" are just the important intermediary steps on the path toward the ability to grapple with a subject, interrogate it, recognize the voices that contribute to its discussion, and contribute one's own voice to that discussion. Information Literacy is not a skill to be tacked on to a syllabus. It is one in a collage of abilities that enhance students' capacity to access course content and participate in the discourses of their chosen disciplines. This is my epistemology and the foundation of my theory of pedagogy.

References:

• ACRL "Information Literacy Competency Standards for Higher Education." 2000.
• Elmborg, James K. "Information Literacy and Writing Across the Curriculum: Sharing the Vision." Reference Services Review 31.1 (2003): 68-80
• Shapiro, Jeremy J. and Shelley K. Hughes. "Information Literacy [or Technology] as a Liberal Art." Educom Review 31.2 (1996): 31-34 -- I noted the possible change in title because I can't determine definitively which is correct. The "Literacy" version appears on the Educom web site, but the "Technology" version is indexed in Academic Search Premier, and is cited by other articles I've read.

tags: information_literacy, information_literacy2.0, learning2.0, library2.0

Thomson (of Thomson Gale) No Longer in the Education Business

Thomson Gale is probably one of the most recognized names in library and reference resources, but the day before yesterday Thomson Corporation announced that it would be selling off it's Thomson Learning business as of January 1st, 2007. Here's what they say:

The Thomson Corporation (NYSE: TOC; TSX: TOC) today announced a realignment of operations to sharpen its strategic focus on providing electronic workflow solutions to business and professional markets and better position the company for future growth. As part of the realignment, which becomes effective January 1, 2007, Thomson intends to sell its Thomson Learning businesses, including those serving the higher education, careers, library reference, corporate e-learning and e-testing markets. (From their Oct. 25th Press Release)

They're splitting Thomson Learning into three parts, and the bidding for the higher education part has not yet started.

tags: thomson_corporation, thomson_gale, reference

Free Beta Open-Source CMS

The Web Services Group at my college has developed a Content Management System that the whole college has been using for a couple of years. Last year the library migrated over to this system (and instantly became the "power users" on campus), and just the day before yesterday the current version was released as a beta open-source CMS called Reason.

Earlier this month there were a spate of messages on Web4Lib talking about the pros and cons of a CMS, and a few people wondering if there were any cheep ones out there. Well, this one's free, but it's beta. It's a very good beta, but still...

I'm no techie, but the guys that built this thing work within the library (they don't work for the library, but their offices are here), so I can hook you up if you have questions.

In other open-source news, Northeastern University has incluced our material type icons in their catalog. Cool!

tags: CMS, open_source

My First IM Reference Question!!!!!!

I just had my first IM reference question!!!! Yay!!!!! I told you I was optimistic.

Crazy Dream

I don't know if it's something I ate or what, but I've had the craziest dream. My Immersion 06 classmates and I were competing to create gourmet drinks (mine had something to do with cola and canned fruit with ice... but it was so much more complicated than that, and probably just as revolting as that sounds), and Tim Gunn from Project Runway was judging us.

I'd just been told to "make it work," when I discovered I had to blow my nose, so I used a tissue from a pile I found in one corner of the table. I had no idea that this was the center piece of a creation by Jason, and apparently he thought I'd deliberately sabotaged his project. He was so mad that he ground up a glass ball (like the ones you hang on Christmas trees) into my drink!

All I can say is that I would never knowingly sabotage your tissue-esque greatness, Jason. Please don't try to kill me with tiny shards of glass.

I think I'll try to get more sleep in the next few days, and maybe drink soothing tea before bed. Though there's no break in my schedule for a bit yet. Hmmmm.... Maybe I'll just have to put up with wacky dreams for a bit.

IM Reference at Carleton: A Low-Key Affair

Last year, sitting at our Research/IT desk, we started noticing that the SCIC workers sitting next to us were often engaged in lively conversation via IM. At about the same time, a few of us got started on Google Talk and it quickly spread through the rest of us as a way to ask quick questions of each other throughout the day without actually interrupting each other as completely as we had been by popping into each others' offices. (Personally, I think this was mostly a strategy to keep me in my office because I was new and doing a lot of popping in to ask questions... but nobody's admitting to that ulterior motive.)

We really took to this as a method of communication. We still do a lot of popping in, but now we have communication choices. Not only that, but every once in a while we'll be fielding a tough question during the night or weekend desk shift and end up IMing a co-worker for help. This isn't frequent, but I've benefited once and I've helped out once, and both times there's no way the reference interaction could have been successful otherwise. We're also keeping in social contact after work, which I really enjoy.

So after we'd played with this for one school year, we decided we wouldn't mind creating AIM accounts to give out to students. We each have our own account, and we can each be online when we're able to answer questions and offline or "Away" when we'd rather not answer questions, so we completely sidestepped all of the staffing and coverage issues that comes with "real" IM reference. On the other hand, this relies heavily on our liaison model, with students encouraged to meet with the librarian for their classes and major for anything more than general reference help. So in this sense, it's more an extension of our individual consultation service than of our reference service. But it provided a no-risk method of trying a new service this term, so we decided to go this route.

So far, the response has been mixed. One of my co-workers has answered a couple of IM questions (and we all rejoiced), but the rest of us haven't yet. [Update: It appears I'm wrong. One more of my co-workers has answered a couple of questions, and she is even one student's very first IM buddy!} We're also running up against a strong culture of face-to-face interaction here at Carleton, and some students have voiced the opinion that it's "sad" when people can't stand up, walk over, and ask us questions.

So I wouldn't call our experience a rousing success if you look at it as a stand-alone service. And yet, there are three reasons that I'm glad we're doing it and that we don't have any plans to discontinue it.

First, it gives us a chance to experiment with a new "toy." This is always valuable, especially when there's no cost associated with that experimentation.

Second, it contributes to our efforts to not only BE approachable and accessible to students, but also to APPEAR to be approachable and accessible. I've been thinking a lot lately (as I experiment with Ask.com vs. Google or worry that my laptop is dying and notice how that changes what I think about putting into it) about the appearance vs. the reality of usefulness and trustworthiness. And basically I've come to the conclusion that the appearance of trustworthiness is more important than the actuality. If I trust something, it takes a lot to get me to go back on that trust, and the converse is also true. In the same way, I think building the appearance of accessibility, expertise, and usefulness to our students is at least as important as actually providing accessible, expert, and useful assistance. And our new AIM handles are helping with this... I think.

Third, I don't care if I only receive one IM question. That's one question that may not have come to the desk. And it's not costing me anything in time or money to have AIM running in the background on my desktop. Even with a culture of face-to-face interaction on campus, there will always be someone who is shy about approaching the desk, or simply communicates better through the written word than the spoken word. There are lots of students that I only hear from via email, and I can foresee a time when these students will make me a buddy rather than putting me into their email address book.

Of course, I'm still waiting for that first IM question... but it'll come. I'm nothing if not optimistic.

tags: IM, libraries, services

Empty

I have so much to do... but I'm not doing any of it well. My house is too empty. My cat isn't in a mood to warm my lap. And work reading is a far cry from the "good book" that should be going with my cup of tea. If I lived in a city I might go to a coffee shop or something, but I don't. And besides, it's cold outside. And dark.

That Whole Tagging Thing

As I'm sure many of you have noticed, I haven't been tagging my posts at all. There's no good reason for this. Pure laziness (and forgetfulness) is all there is to it. There was no way I could see myself remembering to type in all the link code at the end of every post. But I just found a cool bookmarklet that will help me. You just copy the code found in this post into the "location" box of a new bookmark. Then every time you click the bookmarklet you get a little dialog box into which you can type your tags. Click "OK" and it spits out the HTML you can paste into your blog post.

Now, will I remember to tag stuff... We'll see. We'll also see if I can come up with any useful tags. How do you tag meandering posts about tagging, for example?

Oh, and on a completely unrelated note, I've added the options to save to del.icio.us and email posts that come over my feedburner feed. It's been a blogarific evening.

technorati tags: tagging

The Research/IT Desk

Sitting here at the reference desk for my Monday afternoon shift, I'm reminded of one reason that I no longer dread my desk shifts. Well, one obvious reason is that now I have a lot more reference experience, so I no longer tremble whenever a student asks, "Do you have a minute?" But experience aside, I prefer desk shifts here because I rarely have to answer any technical questions, un-jam copiers and printers, recover lost papers, teach graph making in Excel, or trouble-shoot any other computer problem. At my previous library, this is mostly what I did during desk shifts.

It's not that our students are more computer-savvy than the students at my previous library. If anything, there are more computer questions here because we have three computer labs here instead of one. No, this bliss is all because someone a couple of years ago (in September of 2004, to be precise) came up with the brilliant idea of providing a joint service point merging research help with technical help, transforming our reference desk into the Research/IT desk. So, to alleviate my sadness about not being at Internet Librarian, I thought I'd amuse myself by writing this all down before we forget what the first few years of this service were like.

The Progression

Before I begin, I should mention that I am NOT the authority on this subject. I just work here. My co-worker, Heather, is the point person for this and has presented on it several times and done a poster on it at ALA.

Anyway, For many years, now, Carleton has had IT support for students. They call this place the SCIC (pronounced "skick"), and it's a pretty full-service joint. A whole battalion of geekish students (affectionately called "SCICers"), headed up by two full-time staff ("the SCICitator" and another guy without a nickname... we'll have to work on that), troubleshoot software and even repair some hardware and clean up virus infestations.

Well, two years ago the decision was made that the SCIC would start sending some of the student workers over to the library to sit next to the librarian on duty at the reference desk. I wasn't working here then, so all I know about these early experiments is second hand. Basically, everyone could see that it was valuable... except the student workers. They didn't like being away from the SCIC because here they're on their own, their fellow student workers are a building away, they are more visible so they can't play games or wear headphones, and there's different technology to learn. The biggest thing that year, though, was communication. The librarians weren't these students' supervisors, and we didn't even really get to know them very well because there were 40 of them rotating through the library, and the librarians' desk shifts weren't consistent. So any SCICer could quite possibly work an entire term without working next to the same librarian more than once or twice.

Last year things got more formalized. SCICers staffed the desk for the entire time the library was open (even when there weren't librarians on duty), and the SCICitator worked with the librarians to provide formal training in the special types of service and support issues that come with working in the library (microfilm reader/scanner/printers, SMART board issues, referring research questions, etc.). What's more the SCICitator decided to schedule only second-year SCICers in the library, so they wouldn't be learning the basics while cut off from their fellow student workers and their supervisor/mentor. On the librarians' side, we regularized our reference desk shifts so that we would always be sitting next to the same students (except in the case of substitutions). Most importantly, though, we formalized the communication that happens between the librarians and the SCICitator. One of the librarians acts as the liaison to the SCIC and meets with the SCICitator briefly every week. She also coordinates training for the students. We've also worked on developing a habit of emailing the SCICitator if a student does really well or goes above and beyond, or if they miss shifts or in other ways slack off.

And slowly but surely, we're seeing an attitude shift among the SCICers. It's now a rare thing for them to show up with the attitude that this service point it "extra" or less cool. Some of them even try to shift their schedules so that they work only at the library.

The Benefits

Librarians immediately saw a significant drop in the number of "short" reference questions we answer. By itself, this is just interesting to us. But it become significant in terms of the service we provide when you pair this trend with the steady increase in the number of "long" reference transactions we have. Students are finding us available for in-depth research assistance now that we aren't running after paper and re-starting computers. Now only that, but students are starting to seek out the technical assistance at our desk that they would previously have taken to the main SCIC, so there has been a significant increase in the number of questions handled by the SCIC side of the Research/IT desk over the course of the past two years. (The library is the busiest building on campus, so it makes sense to have this service here rather than sending everyone to another building.)

The Challenges

There are two main challenges that we've faced: communication/reporting and statistics collection. Formalizing the communication channels has really helped, and now that at least half of the SCICers don't remember working when there wasn't a library service point, they don't balk at librarians stepping in to give them duties or brainstorm about solutions to problems. And this year we've gone to online statistics collection, which seems to feel more legitimate to these students. We know that they were under-reporting last year because many of them couldn't be bothered to fill in little hash marks on a piece of paper. This year they're still probably under-reporting, but making entries into an online database just FEELS more important, so they're making the effort.

So we haven't completely worked through all the ins and outs of this service point, but I've gotta say, I really like it. It frees us up significantly, and we get to develop relationships with a whole new set of students that we never really saw before.

technorati tags: libraries, services, Research/IT

This Year's Trading Card

At long last, we've had time to put images of our new trading cards up online. You can see all of them here.

Our Library's Watch List

I've heard from people who want to know what our library has on it's "Watch List," so I thought I'd post them here.

But first, a little bit of the back story. If you remember, at the end of last year we had a series of surprisingly interesting and stimulating meetings about out library's strategic plan (my posts about these meetings are here and here, and now a draft of the plan is available online as a pdf). Part of this plan involves watching trends and developments in the library world outside of our college. So each department made up a list of the things that they either are or would like to be watching, and then the full library staff met to pare the list down to those items that seemed interesting and important to the library as a whole and that meshed well with our strategic plan. Now we have a blog (visible only to library staff, and which I wrote about here) in which we track what we're seeing, and we use WordPress' category function to label each post according to the watch list item or items it covers. We can also use the blog space to suggest new items for the watch list, or to discuss taking items off the main list if those topics have stopped being of interest.

And here's what we're watching.

Collections:

• Collection development with interlibrary loan
• Storage/archival/retention issues: what to save, where to keep it
• Preservation (print and electronic)

Electronic, new and emerging formats:

• Licensing (Licensed streaming video as an alternative to videotape and DVD, and flexible copyright and licensing agreements
• Statistics
• Collection and management of websites
• Electronic Resource Management
• Digital Library: streaming videos, ebooks
• Open Access publications: cataloging and including in collection
• Image and multimedia management applications.

Access to our collections:

• Aggregator neutral records (MarcIt)
• Record enrichment (table of contents, dust jackets, reviews, comments, tagging)
• New search interfaces, non-text search (visual, audio), and displays of search results
• Metadata (Non-MARC, integrated from a variety of sources)
• RSS feedsfor new book info, e.g.
• Outsourcing cataloging and shelf-ready materials

Services:

• Interlibrary loan (international, unmediated, costs, ILLPOD, etc)
• Delivery systems (CC/StO) expansion
• Self-checkout
• Reference models at peer libraries, virtual reference and appointment models
• Data & GIS in a liberal arts library setting
• Students’ use of new web publishing models for research (wikipedia, mashups, web 2.0).
• Social Software and other applications that help users organize their research and information (personal information management, bibliographic management tools, etc).

Digitization:

• Who, what, how
• Scanning and OCR service points
• Institutional repositories

Equipment (hardware & software):

• Printing
• Touch screen computer monitors
• RFID
• Ares (Atlas course reserves product)
• “Print/bind on demand” in-house or from publisher (not warehousing titles)
• Open source software for libraries

Space:

• Cafes/Coffee Shops
• Space needs for Collection

Campus Initiatives:

• Copyright
• One card checkout technology

Other:

• Government Documents
• Workflow design
  

Calling All Podcasts

So... I'm thinking of listening to some podcasts. What good ones are out there? I've got the SirsiDynix Institute and Talking with Talis. What else should I be listening to? Or should I come to terms with the fact that I don't have time... No, that doesn't sound like fun. ;P

Making reference Desk Statistics Fun and Even More Useful

Up until this year, librarians have made little tick marks on a grid to indicate questions answered at the reference desk. We had a new grid every day, and we could tick off how many short questions and long questions we answered every hour, as well as how many questions we'd solved jointly with the IT help people, and how many questions we simply referred to the IT people (I'll write more about our IT help later, but for now suffice it to say that we have joint service point in the library). I hate to think how much time was put into compiling these paper tick marks each week.

But this year, we've beefed up our statistics. In fact, it's becoming much more than a statistics-collection project. We're building a knowledge base and learning from our co-workers' reference interactions.

How are we doing all this? We're using LibStats, a free, open-source, PHP/SQL database designed by library people at the University of Wisconsin, Madison. This term, we're using the default install which is perfect for reference interactions either at one location or multiple locations. We had grand plans of customizing the install to allow us to track our instruction and appointment statistics and notes, but we ended up simply taking the default settings so that we could get the system up and running in one day. (Seriously, it didn't take more than a few hours to set up and get the minor field customizations entered. We got our web team to install the database, and then told the system what values to include for things like "patron type" and "question type.")

Check out the demo, if you want to play around, but here's a little run-down of what it does and what I like. You can specify location, patron type, question type, time spent, and librarian VERY easily. Then you can either click "Save Question" or you can type in the question and the answer before saving. You can also go back and change saved questions, backdate them, or add comments. (We use this to help each other out with questions, build in more complete answers, and so on.) We also each initial our questions, which helps with follow up. (It also means that you can filter to see how many questions you have answered this week, which is fun.)

My favorite feature, other than how completely easy it is to use, is that the database remembers your settings so that, for example, when I'm in my office and want to enter an email question I got, I open the database and it remembers that last time I worked from this computer I was in my office, so that location code is already selected for me and my initials are already suggested for me. Or if I go out to the reference desk, I don't have to specify "Reference Desk" as a location because it remembers that from the last time that computer was used. It remembers all the values you specify, simply adding a date/time stamp to each entry whenever you click "save." This drastically reduces the necessary clicks.

You can also search questions by keyword, and this is where the knowledge-base comes into the picture. Our database is only 5 weeks old, but already I can search to find passwords to things or for answers to those questions where you know the answer is right under your nose but you can't think of it. We can also mark trends in questions, so it's easier for liaisons to get in contact with their professors and say, "hey, we're seeing a lot of questions about your numerical essay assignment."

I can't speak for my co-workers, but I know that this has helped me keep track of things like the questions I get at home or in my office via email. Now I can access the database from anywhere and just enter my question and answer. No more remembering to run out to the desk and make those little tick marks. And we're hoping to do some database customization over winter break that would allow us to check a box saying that the question still needs attention, which would allow us to flag questions needing follow up, or use the system more like a trouble/ticket system.

Oh, and you can do queries and reports (there are some default reports, but for everything else you'd need to know SQL), or you can do a data dump into Excel and play with data to your heart's content.

Impossible Working Conditions

Yesterday was impossible. The entire library came to a standstill (or at least a slow and distractable crawl) at the news that one of my co-workers was having a baby. But, after an entire work day of not getting any work done, the news came that mother and daughter were doing fine.

Then there was celebrating... and then students started shushing us... and we retorted that since we're on the fourth floor and since it was a special day, we could make a little noise.

Now we all wonder what we're going to do at the baby shower we'd planned for next week...

Congratulations Ann!

[Update: here are some pictures]

The Research/Writing Connection and Why There Shouldn't be Turf

Head on over to See Also, where Steve Lawson writes thoughtfully (as usual) about the connection between research and writing, information literacy, and the differences and similarities between librarians and disciplinary faculty.

To what extent should librarians help students see multiple sides of the scholarly conversation, develop their own arguments, or give other advice about constructing effective presentations? The only answer I have is "it depends." It depends on a lot of things, but one of the most important is the librarian's relationship with the professor. I know one professor, for example, who encourages her students to meet with me as they're deciding on a topic, as they're writing their papers, or at any other time in the iterative writing process. She and I in effect double team the students, pushing them to think not only about the answers to their research questions, but also about what makes a good research question in the first place. On the other hand, I know professors who bristle if I do anything more than teach the difference between keyword and subject searching. One professor would prefer me not to talk about evaluation of sources because that's something properly done during office hours and by "struggling through" drafts.

While I would never suggest that librarians should usurp the professor's role, I think that there are three specific ways in which we are uniquely placed to help students as they learn to engage with sources. First and most obviously, we are trained to think in terms of sources. We can make educated guesses about whether the information sought would be collected in a compilation, submitted to academic journals, explored in depth in a monograph, reported on in the news, or entered into an encyclopedia. We are adept at jumping straight to the questions "who would publish about this and where would they publish it?" Over the last few weeks, I've become acutely aware that most students cannot make educated guesses about these sorts of things. They just guess.

Second, we do not grade students. I've had students express confusion to me when they wouldn't have jeopardized their standing in class to ask a "stupid" question. And I've had a couple of good responses from professors who, when I alerted them to a pattern of confusion in their classes, took steps to alleviate that confusion.

Third and most important, librarians are not usually as deeply immersed in the particular subject matter at hand as are the faculty. This often seems like a liability since we can't simply pull related facts and theories out of our memories and construct searches from this base of knowledge. But far from being a liability, this is actually our greatest advantage. Because we don't simply "know" the topic at hand, we get to model learning about the topic with the student. The hardest part about this is remembering to narrate our thought processes to students as we work together. I was reminded of this earlier this week when a student asked me how I knew which record in a result list to open. I explained that I didn't and then consciously narrated through scanning the result list, picking up on clues from publication types and titles, looking at years of publication, and so on. Then I'd click on the record and narrate what I was seeing: title, author, publication name, subject headings, abstract. All this is new to students (especially first year students, though some seniors are almost here), but after a few minutes of this type of modeling most students will begin to take ownership of the search, suggesting new directions, pointing out records to open, and eventually running off to continue on their own. When we model learning, taking notes, going back and modifying old searches, picking up on clues, and getting excited when we find a juicy article, we're not only helping students locate the information they need, but we're also helping them learn the art of research.

On a related note, I would add that in addition to negotiating where librarians' skills overlap with and complement disciplinary faculty's skills, we should also consider how our skills overlap with those of the writing professionals on our campuses. Last spring I was invited to attend a meeting of writing professionals in our region, and it was eye-opening for all of us to realize that we both think about our jobs in similar ways, and that we both work with students on the same projects. And yet, students are trained not to expect too much help with mechanics and "proof reading" at the writing center. Writing professionals and faculty both expect students to learn about constructing effective arguments when they work with writing tutors. Why should it be so different for librarians? Just as writing tutors work with writers more than with papers, so also academic librarians are in the business of working with researchers, not simply of providing research.

A Wiki Library Web Site?

Jennifer over at Life as I Know It pointed me toward a new blog and a new idea, all in one post. The new blog is Library 2.0: An Academic's Perspective by Laura Cohen (into my aggregator she goes....), and the new idea is that of making library web pages in the form of a wiki.

Here's what Laura writes:

There are some people who rightly sing the praises of the Ann Arbor District Library because its site is blog-based. However, blogs are restrictive relative to wikis in that the typical user cannot create an entry but only comment on it. In the library context, librarians are in control of their Web site content and users can only respond. This is valuable, to be sure, but in terms of radical trust (a Library 2.0 buzzword), it falls short. [...] The technologies exist to make library sites a joint venture, in which librarians and their constituencies work together to create an online presence that hears voices from both sides of the fence. In a way, this type of site would remove most of the fence.

This is an idea I haven't heard before, and just based on that I'm inclined to say "Cool!" That's my default reaction to ideas that bring together fun and usefulness, interaction, learning, and (hopefully) improved service. And I think this idea has the potential to be meet all of those coolness criteria.

However, my personal experience causes me to pause, just a little. Would the presence of wiki functionality actually increase participation? I'm not sure. Laura is not advocating a wiki-only approach. She mentions combining wiki and blog bases to come up with a more interactive environment. But the suggestion that a wiki is more interactive than a blog got me thinking.

I know that when I view a wiki, I am hesitant to change the content unless I either own the wiki or I'm one of a small group of people working on a collaborative project. Each page in the wiki looks and feels to me like a draft of someone else's paper. I'm happy to comment on it and let the other person change the content, but I don't want to go changing another person's writing willy-nilly.

In fact, I'm even less likely to change a wiki than I am to post to a massive listserv, and for many of the same reasons. Call it shyness. Call it respect. Call it pathological inability to force myself on someone. Call it what you will, but the fact is that I've only written to a large listserv a few times in my life, and I've never changed any substantive content on "someone else's" wiki.

Blogs, on the other hand, present no barriers to me. I'm happy to comment because I'm not fundamentally changing someone else's work, but I can still add my two cents. And I create my own content secure in the knowledge that even if people disagree with me, all they can do is comment, so all the time I spend drafting will not be wasted. (Well, I guess wasted time could be argued... but we won't go there now.) Not only that, but my content isn't going directly to someone's inbox unless they specifically want ME in their inbox. They can visit me or subscribe to me at will, but I'm not forcing myself on them.

So where does this leave me? I think my answer is still "cool." I like the idea of including a collaborative and constructive research space where patrons can work with patrons, librarians with patrons, and librarians with librarians, and where everyone can contribute to the research experience. This collaborative space to include blog space for patrons who wanted to write and comment individually or in groups. Patrons should also have note-taking space via the library, citation managers, and the ability to tag and review resources that they find (see this earlier post for more on my wishes for a research portal). But as a library user, I'd also like the basic, predictable structure of an HTML page to organize my experience so that when I visit my library's web page tomorrow I'll still know where to find the catalog. What's more, my reservations are based only on my own interactions with collaborative platforms, so others may have an entirely different take on it.

Ultimately, I end up with a similar reaction to Jennifer's: I think the ideal research space would include a combination of a bunch of tools and formats which serve users and librarians and which, together, allow for constructive and healthy interaction.

p.s. What is the plural of "wiki"? I've seen "wikies" and "wikis" in use. Does it have an official plural? You'll notice I scrupulously avoided plurals in this post even though that made the language a little wonky.

The Best Antidote to a Snowy Morning: Getting Published!

It was a dark and dreary morning when I got to work today to find a large envelope waiting for me. "Another publisher's catalog," I thought, as I opened it.

But it wasn't a catalog. It was a stack of copies of an article I wrote with one of my library school professors and which has just been put out by Online Information Review. Suddenly the day doesn't seem quite so dark and dreary.

Zhang, Jin and Iris Jastram. "A Study of Metadata Element Co-Occurrence." Online Information Review. 30.4 (2006): 428-453.

p.s. This is also my 200th post!

Endeca Making More Inroads Into Libraries

Search and discovery is changing rapidly in libraries. Last January the North Carolina State University Libraries overlaid their ILS with an Endeca-powered search interface (here's their catalog, and here's their announcement from last January). This caused quite a bit of talk about dis-integrating out library systems and was a key feature in my research into the future of the catalog (see my list of related posts below).

Since then the NextGen Catalog listserv has undertaken to plan out the catalog of the future and WorldCat has gone open-access and web 2.0-ish.

And last night, ResourceShelf alerted me to the fact that McMaster has just overlaid their catalog with Endeca (Endeca press release here and McMaster's news item here). If this trend continues I see three possible futures for our catalogs: our ILS vendors will improve their search interfaces, third party search vendors will get better and better at working with MARC and library ILSs, or (best of all) both the previous two will happen and libraries will have a real choice in search and discovery systems and functionality for the first time.

Related posts:

• The Catalog, The User Experience, and Discovery
• More on the Future of the Catalog
• NextGen Catalog Listserv Debut
• Empathy But Not Sympathy for Innovative
• The Vendor/Catalog Debate Continues
• Wow, WorldCat Just Got Slick
• The First Internet Public Library (WorldCat)
  
• WorldCat Wikified?
  

"But Why Didn't They Archive Their pre-1990 Web Pages?"

Most of my co-workers spend most of their time working with juniors and seniors. They teach classes for these more advanced students, and their appointment slots fill up with students needing complex data, high-level scientific research, or rare primary sources.

I, on the other hand, have spent my time this fall almost exclusively with freshmen. In fact, so far this term I've only had two appointments with seniors. And because I'm the liaison to the English department, and because most freshmen take various incarnations of English 109, I end up teaching classes mostly for freshmen. Consequently, I find myself teaching an entirely different genre of class than my co-workers do.

In some ways, I have it easier. I don't have to worry about those left-field questions about SciFinder Scholar, and I don't have to worry about my status as a non-expert in whatever field the students are studying. Hey, they haven't even chosen majors yet!

On the other hand, though, these are hard classes to teach. The research topics range far and wide when the only requirement is to "write a research paper," so it's hard to choose a resource for them to learn that will benefit everyone in the class. The students are also inundated with introductory sessions for academic services, so they often come in prepared to be bored. And besides, what do you leave out when they need to learn about database searching and catalog searching and finding encyclopedia articles and evaluate web pages... All this and they don't know how to read a call number, let alone understand that you can't look up journal articles in the catalog. I also don't get to delve into the really fun stuff - the advanced searching techniques, the specialized bibliographies, the thrill of the hunt.

Not only that, but the "everything's on the web" attitude is now compounded with a new assumption: everything has always been on the web. Last week I had a student looking for government information from 1985-1990. The state government agency in question had digitized documents back to 1993, but not to 1990. "Why didn't they archive their older web pages?" the girl asked me, bewildered. It took me a minute to realize that she was asking why all the wonderful documents that they'd put up online prior to 1990 had been taken down! As I explained that Google has only been around since 1997, and that the web was pretty much unusable by the general public before 1995, this poor freshman's eyes got bigger and bigger.

In the face of such confusion, I've decided that I have a new mission at work. I've stopped being jealous that my co-workers get to prepare their students for complex research projects, and I've begun to realize that I have a special place in the library: not only am I perfectly positioned to reach more freshmen than my colleagues, but I actually enjoy the special challenge that these students present. So I will focus on reaching absolutely as many freshmen as I can. I will prepare them so that by the time my co-workers teach them in their advanced classes, these students will not only know the basics, but they will be empowered to experiment freely and ask for help unabashedly. These freshmen won't know what hit them.

Or maybe I just like to play god. Bwa-ha-ha-ha.

Baby Steps

Remember last school year I said I wanted to shift my teaching? Yeah, well that hasn't happened yet. Who knew it would be this hard?

And yet, things aren't quite what they used to be, either. Tonight, as I planned out the class I'll be teaching tomorrow, I realized that the way I think about and plan classes has changed. I'm not sure this has actually made any difference to the students I'm inflicting myself upon, but that's a topic for another day (or another year... or another lifetime).

Anyway, last year my teaching notes were arranged according to the order in which I was going to introduce tools and strategies. "Searching the catalog; searching one database; searching another database; practice searching." That's my typical outline from last year. This year the notes are arranged around tasks, which I somehow started calling "blocks," though I couldn't tell you why. "Block One: Use Britannica - after an introduction to the encyclopedia, use the index to find entries related to your topic and record good looking citations for later; Block Two: To The Computers! - after an introduction to searching for books and journals, find out if we have the items you found in Britannica, then find the best possible article on your topic." (I like having students justify the "best possible article" to each other. It opens the door to all sorts of wonderful evaluation topics.) I'm still introducing search tools and strategies, and they're still in roughly the same order, but my focus has changed. Just a little.

Like I said, I'm still not sure this has changed my actual teaching very much, but it's a baby step in the right direction, I think. Now, if I could just get my classes to mimic the messy non-order of actual research rather than this mythical progression from Reference Books to Books and Articles to Finished Research, Ta-Da!

Baby steps.

More Staff Means More Service

Our library's Annual Report was due yesterday afternoon, and I've gotta say, I'm very interested in one particular measure my supervisor included this year. She tracked the number of classes taught, students taught, and individual consultations held by each librarian for the last five years. Then she averaged the total by the number of librarians employed each year to show that adding staff directly impacted the services we provide.

For the first two years there were "only" five librarians and these librarians conducted quite a few individual consultations and classes per year, and they reached a lot of students. For the next two years there were six librarians, and each of these librarians conducted a few more consultations and classes per year, and they reached a few more students. Each librarian was, on average, more busy than the average librarian in the first two year. Last year, though, there were eight librarians, and each of us conducted LOTS of consultations that year and reached a LOT more students even though we taught only a few more classes than in previous years. Each "average" librarian was significantly more busy than the average librarian in any of the previous years. The graph doesn't just slant up, it curves up quite steeply.

I think a few things have contributed to this change. Not only has our emphasis on transforming from a "faceless" institution to a "faced" institution begun to pay dividends, but we've begun to be perceived as accessible by the students, and we've begun to develop more individualized relationships with our faculty (both in pedagogical contexts and in campus social contexts). Best of all, even though we're not faculty, we're no longer seen as outsiders in faculty reading groups or campus committees. (Of course, I keep saying "we" but since I only joined this staff last year I can really only claim credit for riding the tidal wave. My co-workers are AWESOME.)

Not that we're absolutely loved or completely trusted or anything. There's a long way yet to go. But we're beginning to see the fruits of our labors, and I am SO excited to be here to watch this tipping point in action.

And what's in store this year? Well, I can't speak for the rest of my co-workers (though I know they're all teaching classes and holding consultations at a breathtaking rate). But even though I teach fewer classes and provide fewer consultations than most of my co-workers, I've already had more consultations this October than I had last October (and I've only gotten through one week of this October). This year we're hearing a lot more students who say their professors recommended they come talk to us. And today I had my first instance of a student telling me, "I have a friend in a different major, and she keeps saying what a help her librarian is and asking me if I have a librarian. She keeps saying I should come see you." Cool! I think our service is really taking hold.

Google Slowing Down?

Search Engine Watch is reporting that the LA Times is reporting that Google is going to slow down its production/acquisition blitzkrieg and concentrate on improving the features of the products they already have.

To see more, read the LA Times article from Oct 6th entitled, "Google Puts Lid on New Products" by Chris Gaither.

Blogarific Developments

As part of the strategic plan development we went through at the end of last year, the library staff decided to go about watching trends and developments in library land more intentionally than we have been so far. Like most librarians, we do our best to keep up with developments, but we wanted a way to learn from each other and to make sure that we collectively watch topics that are of interest to the library as a whole. So each department came up with a list of potential "watch list" topics and then we narrowed it down to "only" 38 topics. Now all we needed was a place to gather all of our watching and learning in one place.

Enter the Library Watch List Blog. (I would link to it, but it's password protected, so there's no point.) We had an all-staff training session on basic WordPress blogging and then divvied up the topics so that even though we can each write about any topic, we also have someone responsible for each of the topics. And today, I posted to it for the first time (and I'm the 8th post).

I sure hope this blog takes off, not only because it'll be a fabulous resource but also because it'll give us a chance to learn collaboratively from each other while simultaneously practicing some social software use. It may be hard for some people, though. It takes a good bit of time, and blogging is completely foreign to some staff members (I know that I would have been pretty hesitant a year ago). Still, I think there's a good chance that some people will really take to it, and I look forward to learning from my co-workers.