joy at moll projects dot com
All I need to know about library customer service, I learned from breakfast waitresses:
Of course, the good breakfast waitress is most famous for constantly providing fresh, hot coffee.
But I'm having a hard time figuring out how I want to apply that metaphorically to the library. What is the "coffee" in a library? Since reading Wayne Wiegand's article on January 26, I'm hesitant to say "information." Many patrons may be looking for a good book and a comfy chair. Besides, "fresh, hot information" sounds more like a mission for CNN than the library.
Maybe the metaphor just doesn't work for the library, or maybe each librarian will have his or her own definition for the fresh, hot coffee to serve consistently to guests.
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Here's what I just posted for the Read 30 books in 2005 thing on 43 Things:
5 down, 25 to go — 2 minutes ago
Keeping Curent: Advanced Internet Strategies to Meet Librarian and Patron Needs by Steven M. Cohen.
Obvious from the subtitle, this book is professional reading, although many of the tools and nearly all of the strategies would be useful to anyone who needs to keep up with information in the Information Age. Published in 2003, it’s all ready a bit out of date. Fortunately, Cohen has an active blog at Library Stuff that continues the conversation.
Yes, this is the third blog post about a book I've written in three days. I was reading three thin volumes concurrently and finished them all about the same time. It won't happen again for awhile. One of my classes is averaging 25 posts a day on the discussion board--it may be a month before I finish another book!
And courtesy of the LibrarianInBlack, I got in touch with my inner 6 year old by making a doll at Candybar Doll Maker. It's like playing Barbies only with lots more clothes and no tiny shoes to lose. The doll looks just like me (according to my inner 6 year old):
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All I really need to know about library web site design I learned from John Hench, Disney Imagineer (All quotes from Designing Disney: Imagineering and the Art of the Show by John Hench with Peggy Van Pelt--the fourth book I've read in 2005):
Okay, that last one probably is too silly. But it might work on a college campus with a great mascot. Or maybe you could get Nettie Day.
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My entry from last night on 43 Things, for the "thing" Read 30 books in 2005:
3 down, 27 to go# (1) comments
Kissing Doorknobs by Terry Spencer Hesser is about a fifteen year old with Obsessive Compulsive Disorder looking back on her life before she was diagnosed and treated. Reading it so soon after The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time by Mark Haddon, I missed the immediacy since that book was experienced in real time, while this one was from hindsight. On the other hand, it might have been too devastating without the perspective—particularly since Kissing Doorknobs is aimed at the juvie market. Thanks to my niece for recommending this one!
Do college students read for fun? When I was an undergraduate, I didn't. I had been reading for pleasure all my life and was anxious for new and different experiences in college.
As a library school student, I've been reading a great deal. I am mostly drawn to novels that librarians and library students talk about--usually these are books about books like the Thursday Next series by Jasper Fforde or The Rule of Four by Ian Caldwell and Dustin Thomason.
I wonder if undergraduates would respond to lists of novels with themes related to their majors. The subject librarians could compile these with input from faculty. This idea has the added benefit of providing a connection between librarians and faculty members--a good excuse to ask "read any good books lately?"
A particularly effective time to promote pleasure reading on a college campus might be just before breaks: Check out a book for Spring Break @ your library.
These ideas were inspired by Wayne A. Wiegand's article, "Critiquing the Curriculum," in the January 2005 issue of American Libraries--although the article isn't about reading for pleasure on college campuses. Wiegand bemoans the fact that in rushing to make libraries part of information science, we're missing the fact that information science is only a part of libraries. Two beloved aspects of libraries have nothing to do with information science--the library as place and the library as a resource that supports reading for pleasure. He thinks these should be more highly emphasized in library research and more frequently taught in library school.
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Del.icio.us, the bookmarking website with tags that I discussed on January 6, seems like the perfect tool for creating course-specific subject guides. Just agree on a tag, like the course number, and the subject librarian, professor, and students can build a subject guide cooperatively, on the fly.
I just tagged the two resources I identified for my Digital Libraries class with the course number. So they are now easily found by myself, and anyone else in the class, at del.icio.us/tag/sislt9409.
I wrote my paper on subject guides in my first semester of library school, a month before an article was published that rendered nearly everything I wrote obsolete. "Students, Librarians, and Subject Guides: Improving a Poor Rate of Return" by Brenda Reeb and Susan Gibbons in the January 2004 issue of portal: Libraries and the Academy concluded that if subject guides were to really reach students, they should be written at the course level--not "History Subject Guide" but "Resources for History 414: The 19th Century Working Woman."
Of course, Reed and Gibbons pointed out that "for libraries supporting several thousand classes a semester, customizing research resources at a course level is simply not possible...." But maybe with a tool like del.icio.us, it is possible. With the added advantage of involving everyone in the process.
The system of user-created tags that makes the categories in del.icio.us and flickr has a name: folksonomy. A taxonomy created by folks.
I explored the blogosphere on the topic yesterday and discovered some debate (like the most recent posts on the multi-authored blog Many2Many) about controlled vocabularies versus folksonomies, which sounds like it pits librarians against everyone else. But that debate isn't happening among the librarians. David Bigwood of Catalogablog explains why it's not an either/or proposition for librarians.
Librarians are saying "cool, what can I do with this stuff?" Jenny Levine of The Shifted Librarian is hosting a workshop on the topic as a way to start a discussion and has created a mock-up of how the library catalog might look with a folksonomic twist.
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The Mad Librarian wrote a post last week about Sunshine Week, mentioning in the entry that this seems a natural for government information librarians. It does--although I haven't seen it mentioned on the list server GOVDOC-L yet. But it's still early and I wasn't on the list at this time last year.
A notice about the related Freedom of Information Act Day did show up on GOVDOC-L yesterday as a request for nominations for an award to honor those who champion access to government information. I learned from that message that FOIA Day is celebrated on or near March 16, James Madison's birthday, each year. I assume that is because of a Madison quote that is widely cited among government documents librarians:
A popular Government without popular information or the means of acquiring it, is but a Prologue to a Farce or a Tragedy or perhaps both. Knowledge will forever govern ignorance, and a people who mean to be their own governors, must arm themselves with the power knowledge gives.
Although my gov docs professor likes to point out that the quote was more in the context of public education than libraries--a point also made on this page (where I took the quote), a part of The Art of Information Access Project by Michael Powell, a Ph.D. candidate in anthropology at Rice University.
Imagining myself as a government documents librarian....here are ways I might observe Sunshine Week:
Steven M. Cohen of Library Stuff posted yesterday about student blogging. From his post:
I'd love to see library schools embrace blogs and ask for volunteers from their students to blog a semester (or even a full 2 year program). Reasons? 1) To show potential library school students what the programs are about. 2) To help recruit to the profession. 3) To get more librarians (and library schools) excited about blogging.
That all sounds good to me. From the student's perspective, I have found blogging very rewarding. Reasons?
Here's my post from yesterday on the Read 30 books in 2005 goal at 43 things.
2 down, 28 to go
Just finished Lost in a Good Book by Jasper Fforde, the second in the Thursday Next series (after The Eyre Affair). This is a fantasy science-fiction mysteries series with lots of literary allusions (what’s not to like?). The books are also clever and funny.
For me, Inauguration Day is a day to celebrate the peaceful transition of power. Of course, it's a more dramatic observance when there is a transition, when the control of the White House changes parties. I think it can be effectively celebrated even when there is no change. After all, we did have the opportunity to make a change but a majority chose not to at this time. The concept of peaceful transition of power deserves celebration at least once every four years, especially when you consider the many countries that rarely, if ever, get to experience a peaceful transition.
Celebrate, with me, by visiting the Library of Congress' Inaugural Exhibit that includes delightful stories and colorful digitized artifacts. Lincoln's words in his second inaugural speech always seem appropriate during contentious times:
With malice toward none; with charity for all; with firmness in the right, as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in; to bind up the nation's wounds; to care for him who shall have borne the battle, and for his widow, and his orphan--to do all which may achieve and cherish a just, and lasting peace, among ourselves, and with all nations.
I tried, rather unsuccessfully, a few months ago to explain to my niece and nephews why "flag-waving liberal" is not an oxymoron. I used to think it was and one or more of them think it now.
A part of the change in me came about when I realized that patriotism does not demand believing that the USA is the best or #1. We're not talking about a high school basketball team here, folks. (Go Bulldogs!) Patriotism is a more sophisticated and complex endeavor.
For me, patriotism grew naturally from
One of the things that I appreciate about the United States is that, with one notable exception, our democratic election process has led to peaceful transitions of power for over two centuries. The fact that the country was able to return to peaceful transitions of power after the Civil War says a lot about the systems, ideals, and citizens that worked together to re-form the Union.
I still have a long way to go before I fully engage in being a part of the "loyal opposition," but I'm making progress. For me, I suspect, it will have a lot to do with a vigorous defense of the Bill of Rights and, professionally, with a campaign for keeping the United States at the forefront of supplying government information to its citizens.
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The latest issue of the on-line magazine D-Lib is available. This should be a helpful resource for my Digital Libraries class.
This week, in Digital Libraries, we're introducing ourselves and signing up for our group projects. The groups will be improving i-DLR, Interactive Digital Library Resource Information System, which will also be a helpful resource.
A definition for Digital Library is a little more than half way down this page in i-DLR, with links to other definitions (note to Review and Revise project group: the Berkeley link is broken). Reading those links leads one to believe that there isn't a great deal of agreement on the definition.
My fourth grade teacher, Mrs. Bridges, would recommend that I put the definition in my own words. In its broadest sense, the Internet itself could be considered the ultimate digital library. But that makes the concept of Digital Library almost unusable, so I prefer a definition that includes a deliberate selection of resources. I will allow, in my definition, automated selection with carefully designed web crawlers, such as those used by INFOMINE.
So, for my initial definition (I'm sure it will change during this course), I'll go with: A digital library is a collection of selected information sources that are stored in computers and accessed electronically. Examples include:
That last example also has services like a traditional library. Perhaps one could define "virtual library" as a digital library with traditional library services.
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Firefox brings the fun back into web surfing--tabbed browsing is so cool. In one window I can work on a project involving several sites with each in its own tab. Then, in another window, I can be working on a different project with different tabs. Instead of ten windows open on two different projects, I have two windows with four to six related tabs each. Much more productive.
I just arranged my most visited sites in 4 tabs of one window and made that my default set up--so when I start Firefox, here they are. I'll probably leave a window with those four tabs in it open all day, then open another Firefox window for my other browsing (with tabs, of course).
Last semester, Blackboard, the course software we use at library school, had a number of problems. The word from the tech people was that Blackboard doesn't play nice with Internet Explorer, so it was gently suggested that we have an alternate browser available. I didn't have too many problems with IE and Blackboard at home using the cable modem, but at the cabin on dial-up, Blackboard was completely nonfunctional some weekends.
I chose Firefox as my new browser in part because it has been called the Searcher's Browser. Sounds appropriate for a librarian. The always-there search box is wonderful and the "find in this page" feature works more intuitively than the one in Internet Explorer.
I did run into a few problems. My Mizzou mail is in a web-based version of Microsoft Outlook and it looks quite different in Firefox than it does in Internet Explorer. I'm going to see if I can live with that. And I came across a few pages that displayed the raw html instead of the web page I expected to see--including the archives of my own blog. I'm not sure why that is....So, I'm not throwing away IE, but I'm going to use Firefox most of the time.
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Looks like the web site has survived the move with everything intact. I changed as little as possible. I did add an XML button on the left so that anyone who is reading my blog in a news aggregator can easily pick it up again.
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Today, Wanderings of a Student Librarian is wandering to a new domain:
joy.mollprojects.com
Wish me luck and check for a new entry over there later today or tomorrow.
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I don't remember seeing anything on the library blogs and list servers about Brewster Kahle's talk at the Libary of Congress on December 13th. Then again, I was writing final papers at that time, so I might have just missed it. Anyway, CSPAN has the video on their website and I watched it last night. He talked about universal access to knowledge--and he meant everything. Very inspiring.
Brewster Kahle is the imagination behind the Internet Archive, including the Wayback Machine. The Wayback Machine is mentioned now and then on the government documents list server because it's helpful to compare what the government has up on web sites now compared to before September 11 or compared to the Clinton administration.
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This week I've been implementing (again) the system from Getting Things Done by David Allen. I bought the book and used it when it first came out in 2001, but I guess I'm not a poster child for the program since I start from scratch with it every 4 to 12 months. On the other hand, I always have some aspect of the system working and I keep coming back to it--which is definitely a ringing endorsement.
The last time I checked the web for ideas and encouragement about GTD (as Getting Things Done is known among its friends), there was very little available except for David Allen's website and forums (which, at that time, could be read in an hour or two). Recently, however, GTD has swept the web, including the blogosphere:
My new implementation is a low-tech paper-based version in a three-ring binder. I want to incorporate hand-drawn mind maps into the system and this seemed the easiest way. I likely will opt for a PDA-based system when I'm working for a living again. But, as a student, almost everything I get done happens at my desk so it works for me to sacrifice portability for creativity.
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The government has put up a list of agencies that are assisting with disaster relief and could make use of contributions. I learned about this site from a public service announcement on the radio taped by our senator, Jim Talent. According to the top page of this site, freedomcorps.gov, former Presidents Bush and Clinton filmed a PSA for television. You can click through to see it. I liked the last line "No one can change what happened, but we can all change what happens next."
I checked out several sites from Librarians' Index to the Internet about rating charities based on things like how much money actually goes to victims as opposed to being churned back into fundraising.
The quickest and easiest to use was the American Institute of Philanthropy's charitywatch.org which gives letter grades to charities. Their emergency relief page lists agencies that are providing relief in Southeast Asia and have received A or B grades from AIP. There are other helpful hints on this page about how to avoid fraudelent websites.
Charity Navigator ranks charities on a variety of factors and gives them an overall ranking on a 70 point scale that is graphically represented as 0 to 4 stars. The report on each charity compares it to similar charities, lists the CEO's pay, and presents other information about revenue and expenses.
Of course, nothing is ever easy. The International Rescue Committee, for example, gets an A from AIP, but only 2 stars out of 4 from Charity Navigator.
For our donation this month, we will likely choose AmeriCares, which got an A from AIP and 4 stars from Charity Navigator.
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My first Instant Messaging conversation was yesterday with my nephew (thanks, Philip!). I see the appeal. We covered 5 or 6 topics in short order. He taught me how to change my name as it appears on the MSN Messenger screen. I gave him the URL of a site (CIA World Factbook) that he can consult for his geography class.
I was curious what netiquette governs IM and I found The Internet Messenger Handbook. It's a little hard to believe that I can learn etiquette from someone that I wouldn't want my mother or nephew reading, but it's otherwise well-written and thorough. And I learned the answer to the burning question I had. Should I be typing while my nephew is typing? No--it's the same as interrupting.
If anyone wants to help me practice my IM skills, I am "iama411expert" on AIM and "joy weese moll at yahoo dot com" (put together like a conventional email address) on MSN Messenger.
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I went to a Virtual Seminar today--very cool! We had the Power Point slides and the audio of a presentation given last May on Web Design and Usability. It was originally given as a web-based seminar for the Special Libraries Association. Our local chapter bought a rebroadcast.
One of the items discussed was to avoid jargon--and that it's not always easy for a team of librarians and web gurus to recognize jargon. You have to test it with the users.
While I was waiting for this evening's book club to start, I leafed through the July 2004 issue College and Research Libraries and discovered the article "Library Jargon: Student Recognition of Terms and Concepts Commonly Used by Librarians in the Classroom" by Norman B. Hutcherson. The results of his survey, using a multiple choice test of common library terms, were surprising to me. Only eight percent of college freshmen and sophomores understood the term "Boolean logic" and only fifteen percent understood "Bibliography." I might have been in college before I had a class that covered Boolean logic (or, at least, used that term), but I spent weeks writing a bibliography for my high school English teacher, so I definitely knew what that was!
Hutcherson focused on terms used during library instruction and advises that librarians define terms the first time they are used. The Web Usability seminar highlighted an important difference on the Web--you don't really get a chance to define your terms. Either the user understands or takes the wrong action (or quits and tries Google, instead).
All of this reminded me of a wonderful site that I found last week (I don't remember how I found it--fortunately, I put it up my del.icio.us page so I can find it again). Library Terms that Users Understand is a clearinghouse of terms that have been vetted through usability testing. This seems an excellent place to start when choosing words to use on a website--and probably in the classroom, as well.
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Today, I'm filing away notes, reshelving textbooks, and archiving computer files related to the coursework I did in the fall--all in preparation for beginning a new semester on January 18.
In the process, I put a couple of new things on my Projects page and updated my Itinerary page.
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So far, none of my goals on 43 Things seem to be generating any communities. However, it still looks like a fun way to keep track of one goal (and I got the idea for this goal from 43 Things): read 30 books in 2005.
Here's the 43 Things entry I just put up about that:
1 down, 29 to go
Just finished The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time by Mark Haddon. I found it hard to put down. The voice and world of the 15 year old autistic narrator is mesmerizing.
I was highly motivated to complete this book since I'm leading a book club discussion about it on Monday for my fellow library science students.
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I'm sold--del.icio.us is awesome! Not only is it an improvement on my browser's "Favorites" capability but it's an amazing tool for finding great web sites. In less than ten minutes, I found, evaluated, and made bookmarks of four sites that will help with my goal to master CSS.
My biggest problem with "Favorites" has always been that I can't annotate the bookmarks--del.icio.us automatically includes the description if the web site has one and allows me to add my own comments as well. There are no folders in del.icio.us, but the tags work about the same way. In fact, tags have an advantage in that a site can have more than one tag--like putting the same web site in two different folders in Favorites, which I could have done before, but didn't. With tags, I probably will do that sort of thing when I want the same site to come up if I'm playing with CSS or if I'm concentrating on good web design.
Yesterday was the first time I started making del.icio.us bookmarks, but I've spent a couple of days on and off exploring the links. Everything that appears in del.icio.us was considered worthy enough by someone to bookmark, so the search results are of higher quality than you get from search engine. And, since so many people are doing it, you get a lot more results than from a highly selective directory like Librarians' Index to the Internet. Not that I'm giving up either one of those useful tools, but del.icio.us is a great thing to add to my bag of tricks.
I had a few problems. I couldn't always get to a search page when I wanted--and late in the evening, that didn't matter much, because "search" didn't seem to work at all. Also, the most active tags are on the top page and the most popular tags are on the popular page--is there a way to get to all the tags? But even not yet fully functional, the potential power of this tool is evident.
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According to a Pew/Internet report, The state of blogging, 27% of internet users read blogs and 5% use news aggregators.
Perhaps the most important information tool we can teach college students right now is the news aggregator. I wonder if anyone is doing that. I'm guessing not, since I'm not learning about it in library school. Who, but librarians, are going to teach about that kind of tool?
One of the librarians at Wash U, Sylvia Toombs at the Social Work Library, offers fifteen-minute instruction sessions to students. She says busy people won't give you an hour, but they will give you fifteen minutes if they think they will learn something useful.
A fifteen-minute session about news aggregators ought to be an easy sell to a freshman who is reading ten new blogs that his friends put up when they went to college as well as blogs and 'zines he read in high school. He may also be taking an interest in a variety of news sources--his hometown newspaper, one or more international sources, and some flavor of alternative press.
Fifteen minutes would be plenty of time to show the students two or three aggregators already set up--I'd invent a persona of a college student and set it up for her. Give a handout with the names of the major news aggregators and some blogs of particular interest to college students (although, I'd have to do some research to figure out what those might be). I would print the handout from a web page that I set up just for this purpose--so that students could go to the web page and link to things directly rather than type them from a handout. But I think it is important that they walk away with something that will remind them later that they wanted to try this.
To really leverage the marketing opportunity this offers, the library would need to have one or more blogs of its own like Georgia State University. Then students could be encouraged to put the library blogs in their newly set up aggregators.
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Things I want to learn in 2005:
Yesterday, I put these and a few other goals on 43 Things (see the list for Librarian), which I learned about from an entry on Library Stuff. I'm not sure yet how well this will work for me.
What would really work, right now, would be a site called "43 Things for Librarians" where the community is already broadly defined. Then I could sign on to meaningful goals like:
Jessamyn West wrote in a New Year's Eve blog entry on librarian.net:
I think as librarians we all sort of assume that people read the news someplace other than the library home page. What is our responsibility to be responsive to current events with our online presence as well as in person?
I have been wondering how I would handle national and international crisis situations in any future job I have in a library. I imagined myself in academic library at an institution with international students who might be directly connected to such a crisis and other students who have a great deal of energy to give in aid.
I think Jessamyn is right that students aren't necessarily going to turn to the library for news. Although, I also wondered if there might be a "build it and they will come" force involved here. If the library provided great tools and spaces (both on-line and off), perhaps it would become the place students go to for news. By selecting relevant and authoritative information sources, the library would be creating added value as well as convenience.
But maybe news isn't the best niche. Maybe the library's responsibility lies in two related areas: information and community.
Information. If students get their news in their habitual places, perhaps they will turn to the library when news isn't quite enough. The library can provide background information. The website might link to sources like the USGS Earthquake Hazards Program and the International Tsunami Information Center. A prominent section of the lobby can be devoted to a current events display with maps, reference books open to relevant pages, and handouts directing students to more information on the website and in the stacks. The library can compile a list of answers to the question "How can I help?" with opportunities for volunteer work and fundraising.
Community. The library could create a physical space and a virtual space devoted to the crisis, its affect on students and faculty, and the response by the community. These spaces could take several forms:
I suspect this would all be most effective if it is something librarians think about before any crisis occurs. It's something to consider when planning our physical and virtual spaces.
I have been reading Tom Peters' book, Re-imagine! One of his early bosses declared "We're the Movie Stars of the Business World!" When speaking to an organization of purchasing managers, Peters used this line: "When I look at you, I see the Rock Stars of the B2B Age!"
Here's a slogan I made up for my new profession:
Librarians are the Astronauts of the Information Age! We go farther and faster and we get there first.
I'm not the only one who thinks so. Edward L. Ayers, a dean at the University of Virginia, wrote "The Academic Culture and the IT Culture: Their Effect on Teaching and Scholarship" in the November/December 2004 issue of Educause Review, a magazine about information technology in education. This article has been widely appreciated on librarian email list servers because of this statement:
Librarians have been the real heroes of the digital revolution in higher education. They are the ones who have seen the farthest, done the most, accepted the hardest challenges, and demonstrated most clearly the benefits of digital information. In the process, they have turned their own field upside down and have revolutionized their professional training. It is testimony to their success that we take their achievement—and their information-management systems—for granted.# (0) comments
FirstGov.gov provides a list of Popular New Year's Resolutions with links to government publications that can help. Some of the links are better than others, but all of them lead to good starting points for exploration on the topic.
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