joy at moll projects dot com
Jane, of A Wandering Eyre, wrote in A Story in Numbers about the wastefulness that results because her university library offers free printing. Our library is in the process of instituting printing charges. We put in place the logon procedures and the print release stations this summer that will be necessary to charge for printing. Charging will begin at Fall Break, October 20th.
This library noted a quadrupling of printing since four years ago, about the time ERes became available. Of course, four years is an entire generation of students, so our current students don't remember when you had to check out that journal article from 2-hour Reserve and photocopy it at a cost that is higher than we will be charging for printing.
Unlike the powers-that-be at Jane's institution, our administration at all levels wanted to get the printing under control because it was so expensive as well as wasteful. I think it would have been done before I got here, but the library recently underwent complete renovation, while staying open. The systems people were too busy running around moving computers to sites that were not being jack-hammered that day to implement the complex hardware and software solution that it has taken to charge for printing.
My small role began this summer when I was asked to code the website about printing and, therefore, be a member of the Printing Public Relations Task Force. We ended up calling the project Technology Changes Fall '06 and throwing in as many positive changes as we could, including the new IM reference (I'll write about that in another post). Along with all the members of the Task Force, I have been doing a lot of internal training and communication about the changes. And, along with the other reference librarian on the Task Force, I have been providing extra support to the front desk for problems with logging on or printing.
Today's issue of Student Life, the campus newspaper, had a front page story that got most things right. Payment for printing, for most people, won't happen via copycard as implied in the last paragraph--it will be charged to student IDs. It was obvious when I looked at the Printing FAQ page how that misunderstanding happened, so I changed the website today. The copycard was the first bullet point under "How do I pay for printing?" Tomorrow, when my correction goes live, the first bullet point will be the one that refers to the ID.
Fortunately, an editorial and a forum piece in the student newspaper were mostly positive. Angel's comment to Jane's post seems to be true on our campus: "Students do and will adapt to any measure that means less waste."
Of course, we have some students who are not happy at all--251 in a Facebook group called "I wish I could still print for free" and 21 in a group called "People Who Think It's Ridiculous to Pay for Printing on top of Tuition."
It has turned out to be a blessing, from a customer service aspect, that we were able to put off charging until October 20. Many students are happier that printing is free at this moment than they are concerned that we will be charging eventually. That gives them time to print their ERes and other needs early this semester and to begin to find other ways to cope with this change in their lives.
Labels: library insider, web development
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Keith Engwall posted a fun idea on the Web4Lib email list today--an opportunity for librarians to explore social software and lose weight at the same time. Nicole Engard posted the Librarian Fit Club proposal on her blog, What I Learned Today.
There's quite a bit of activity already on the Basecamp group. A couple of people have set up accounts at Traineo. I may do that in a day or two. Not much happening on the wiki yet.
My contribution was to add "be a more fit librarian" to 43 Things.
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Steven Cohen has a good point when he questions why librarians are fighting so hard against DOPA while the software companies that are being targeted don't seem to care. Still, I fear that it will be impossible for libraries to comply with DOPA while providing any internet access at all. I fear that the law will have a chilling effect on library innovations on the web (not much point in having an interactive catalog if you can't run it on the library's public computers). I fear that students will show up at college having developed their social software skills in the back alleys of the internet and it will be soley up to academic librarians and other university personnel to educate them on appropriate and safe behavior (we are not well-equipped for that role and college students are not the ideal age group to reach when you want to reduce risky behavior).
To tell the truth, though, I probably wouldn't have written to my senators if I hadn't come up with a metaphor that was too fun not to share. I'll put it at the bottom of this post.
Congress goes back in session on September 5. This is a good time to write to the senators at the home offices instead of the Washington office if you're inclined to use paper, an envelope, and a stamp. ALA has some good background information on DOPA.
Here's my letter:
The Deleting Online Predators Act (DOPA) has a great title, but it is a bad bill. Since many members of Congress apparently have little or no experience with social software, I have invented a metaphor that I think will be helpful.
Suppose that society decided that sports cars going too fast on the highways are big problems because their actions cause too many accidents. A member of Congress authors the Stopping Overly Fast Autos (SOFA) bill. That is a great title, one that will make Americans think that their Congress members are really addressing the problem. But what if it were a bad bill, like DOPA? Suppose SOFA did not really do anything to stop overly fast autos, but instead banned all vehicles carrying families from the highway system. That would arguably make families safer, but at a cost of prohibiting them from using a shared resource that is a great convenience.
The Stopping Overly Fast Autos bill would be a good bill if it actually did something to address the actions of the speeding drivers, instead of banning innocent people from using an important resource. It would be an even better bill if it provided for the education of moms driving minivans, helping them become more defensive drivers. That is what DOPA should be—a bill that goes after bad guys, while educating good citizens about how to use social software safely to develop themselves and their communities.
As the Web Services Librarian at Washington University, I have been giving presentations to a variety of libraries and librarians called “Reach Out! Social Software in Libraries,” demonstrating the many uses that libraries have made to reach patrons where they are, providing material that educates, informs, and builds communities. Under DOPA, these libraries will have to ban portions of their own sites from their computers. I would be happy to demonstrate libraries’ use of social software to your or your staff. Please contact me if that would be helpful.
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The Gallup Organization needs to catch a ride on a Cluetrain. They produced a book called Now, Discover Your Strengths by Marcus Buckingham & Donald O. Clifton. This is the kind of book that you would expect to have some kind of instrument to help one discover one's strengths. Turns out it's not in the book, it's on the web. Cool, thought I, until I realized that you had to register using the 14-digit number inside the book jacket which would only work once.
I, of course, got the book from the library. The library, of course, glued the book jacket on in such a way that the number was ruined before anyone got to read the book. And even if the number hadn't been glued into oblivion, only the first borrower would have been able to take advantage of it. Not a good book for a library to own, but the collection librarian would have to read half-way through the book before he or she would realize that.
Can you imagine how many more books they could sell if the instrument were freely available? We might all be blogging "go take this test--and read the book!"
Anyway. Being reasonably self-aware, I decided to determine my own strengths from the descriptions in the book.
As a Developer, I feel that if you write a self-help book, a primary motivator should be to help people grow and that means making your material fully available through libraries to people who can't or won't purchase the book.
My Connectedness strength leads me to believe that a secondary motivator for such a book should be to change the world. You don't do that by hiding your light under a bushel or behind a firewall. The message in this book really could change our organizations. It delivers a convincing argument that the path to excellence is in developing our strengths while the path to mediocrity lies in attempting to remediate our weaknesses. But I can't recommend it to my organization--we would have to buy 150 copies to get started.
Both of these concerns, helping people and changing the world, should at least appear to take precedence over milking every last dollar out of the consuming public. The appearance of greediness takes something away from the overall message of the book--it makes me doubt its sincerity.
As someone with a strength of Intellection, I think that an instrument requires testing and that biasing the results by only allowing those who are willing and able to pay for a book to take the test is unacceptable.
I just stretched their definition of Intellection to make my story better, using my strength for Communication.
Fortunately, I am a Learner so I can invent my own method for figuring out what I want to know.
So, there. Their test would have given me five strengths. I'm 80% sure they would have been these: Developer, Connectedness, Intellection, Communication, and Learner. I suspect I'll get my money's worth (heh) out of the rest of the book with that 80% certainty.
I probably wouldn't have responded so negatively had I not taken a wonderful and free profile just this week. It was recommended by our Instruction Coordinator as part of a late summer effort to improve our teaching librarian skills. If you teach, consider taking the Teaching Perspectives Inventory. It doesn't work perfectly well for those of us teaching one-shots, but it's still a useful tool from a group of people who are enjoying the scenery from their Cluetrain.
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Check out the Learning 2.0 self-taught discovery program at the Public Library of Charlotte and Mecklenberg County. I heard about it from Stephen's Lighthouse, Librarian in Black, and Tame the Web.
I liked the idea of Learning 2.0 / 23 Things so much, I showed it to a couple of other people at work and we're thinking about doing something similar here. It probably wouldn't happen until late next spring, giving us some time to plan and develop content and learn some skills.
So, I'm going to go through the 23 Things process myself and record it on this blog to get a feel for how it's working and what I want to think about if we try to implement it here.
Thing #1: Read this blog and find out about the program.
I subscribed to the feed of the Learning 2.0 blog so I would have a reminder to keep up. I also subscribed to some of the participants' blogs. And I added the first two Things on the 43 Things site to my 43 Things list.
I was a little confused by how 43 Things fit with the Learning 2.0 blog to make a program. I'm beginning to get that the 43 Things part is kind of a way for those of us who are not part of PLCMC to get to play along. Since I was confused and I'm familiar with both blogs and 43 Things, I'd probably change things around in any program we did. Either leave 43 Things out of the mix or have "explore 43 Things" as one of the steps. I like having 43 Things as a step but I might be prejudiced since it's one of my favorite Web 2.0 sites.
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Here we are in Edwardsville, blogging at SIUE.
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