LibCampNYC’09

Yesterday I went to LibCampNYC, a library “un-conference” hosted by Brooklyn College Library and Metro. It was far and away the most useful and fun professional library event I’ve ever attended. I have information literacy exercises to create, a poster session to plan and an inventory project going on, so what I write here about LibCamp is only a tiny fraction of what I got out of it.

You can check out the link above to learn more about un-conferences, but the basic idea is to providing people a chance to get together and share experiences and ideas without using the traditional powerpoint conference format that already felt old ten years ago. The sessions were planned collectively in the opening gathering and each session was “facilitated,” not led, by a volunteer with a particular interest in the topic. The list of potential topics was generated by participants using a wiki in the weeks leading up to the event.

Six discussions were held in each of the four sessions during the day, resulting in an embarrassment of riches (anomalous in my experience of  library conferences…), in that there were so many really relevant interesting topics during each session, it was hard to pick which session to attend. This was addressed with the “Law of Two Feet” which basically stipulates that it is up to you to get the most out of the un-conference, so if a session is not meeting your needs, you should get up and find a different session that does. I ended up staying in all the sessions I attended, but I love that rule.

The first session I attended was called “How should we handle the dinosaur known as the reference desk?” It was facilitated by Bruce Slutsky from the New Jersey Institute of Technology. Participants included academic, special and public librarians, all of whom shared their experiences, frustrations and hopes with the changing face of reference. The discussion to alternatives to the traditional reference desk and the pros and cons of moving away from the model we’ve ”always” used.  Both electronic reference and roving reference cane up several times. One of the most interesting ideas came from Alexa Pearce from NYU, who suggested combining these two ways of reaching students by using chat, text message and/or sms reference software to let us know where and when we need to be ”roving”  in our libraries. NYU’s experience, echoed by that of many other libraries, is that email, chat and text reference are not used only by students who can’t make it to the physical campus library, but also by students who are sometimes in the library, just a few feet away from the reference desk! While it isn’t always possible to answer in depth questions using these electronic reference techniques, we can use them as “pagers” to let us know where in the building students need our help, truly providing service at “point of need.”

The second session I attended was called “Librarianship as an Intellectual Craft.” Jonathan Cope from the College of Staten Island. This was probably my favorite session. The discussion seemed to focus on the tension in librarianship between our tendency to focus on practical aspects of the profession and the need to ground these practical considerations in a theoretical framework. We discussed whether or not Library and Information Science is actually a “science,” and how the structure of LIS programs influences the profile of the profession. There was also talk about the “myth” of library neutrality and the need to critically question the libraries and librarianship and information issues in the same ways we question other constructions. Participants debated whether the direction of librarianship and the specifically ALA is too political and whether or not it is possible to engage professionally without engaging politically.

Then lunch, which was lovely because I got to chat with Carrie, who was a fellow camper, and some new and interesting librarians from other libraries as well.

The third session I attended was “The Future of Digital Reference” and it was facilitated by Stephen Francoeur from Baruch.  This session was PACKED and I think it turned out to be just too big of an issue to cover in an hour, but it was still really useful to hear about the experiences other libraries have had with digital reference products and services.

We talked about potential uses for the “traces” of digital reference, such as chat transcripts. Some libraries use them to create FAQs or knowledge bases, other libraries have been deleting identifying information and posting the questions and answers on a secure blog, so all librarians can read them and learn what kinds of questions students are asking. NYU (again) is also using transcripts in reference training to create “MadLibs” by deleting certain key words from the transcripts. Librarians and reference staff then try to fill in the correct word to see how close the librarians expectations are to the reality of actual reference transactions between librarians and students. I think that’s really cool, and not just because I’m fascinated with MadLibs.

The last session I attended was “Critical Pedagogy/Critical Information Literacy,” facilitated by Jonathan Cope. It was really interesting though I would’ve liked the discussion to focus a little more on the relevance of critical educational theory to the whole enterprise of “teaching” information literacy. The concept of critical pedagogy comes from the Brazilian educational theorist Paolo Freire. I don’t know a whole lot about it, but the focus is on shifting away from the “banking” model of classroom in instruction, in which a teacher “deposits” information into the students, and toward a collaborative model of education, in which the instrurctor serves as a facillitator for students, working to create active and engaged subjects invested in their own learning because they are invested in the social world around them. Part of this idea is that education never occurs in a vacuum and for teachers (or librarians) to attempt to maintain complete “neutrality” does a disservice to the students by failing to ask the very real questions about the world we all live in for fear of appearing partisan.

Baruch “Teaching and Technology” Conference

From ”guest blogger” Heather Saunders:

Sarah and I recently attended the ‘Teaching and Technology’ conference at Baruch (CUNY).

After participating in an arts management interview that conflicted with the first session of the day, I caught up with Sarah at Faculty Perspectives on Teaching with Blogs@Baruch. Even though I resisted contributing to course wikis and blogs in graduate school, I was nonetheless excited about this session because two of the presenters taught courses in or loosely related to the visual arts.

The first speaker, Zoe Sheehan Saldana, from the Fine and Performing Arts, introduced blogging to her students as an extra-credit option and was impressed by how quickly they taught themselves to use WordPress (the same program that is offered through Purchase at http://blogs.purchase.edu/).

The quality of students’ work flourished as a result of the blog. Because students shared a single blog—as opposed to having individual blogs under a parent blog they offered unsolicited, constructive criticism about each other’s art, as it represented their class collectively to the outside world. Consequently, students were eager to tweak their work and re-post it. Saldana called blogging a parallel process to traditional studio critiques, which are known for inducing anxiety.[i] Saldana also noticed that the class blog reduced anxiety for students who are challenged by verbal communication, whether because of shyness or because English is their second language. Both types of students embraced blogging and overall, the quality of students’ writing improved throughout the semester.

The next speaker in this session was Louise Geddes, who teaches English. Like Saldana, she also used blogs to offer extra-credit, which substantially reduced the number of complaints about course grades. She also took blogs a step beyond extra-credit by making them a venue to submit ‘low-stakes assignments’. Compared to Saldana’s class, there was also more controlled interaction between classmates: for example, each student was required to critique the thesis of an assigned classmate for an essay-in-progress. Students were then allowed to make revisions, as long as the older posts were left for their classmates to access. Geddes’ reasoning was that it’s very instructive to have a record of the creative process.

I was struck by Geddes’ viewpoint that blogs present an easier way for students to produce work than traditional means, since they already spend such a great amount of time online. Rather than trying to make students conform to an outdated educational model, we can adjust the model based on their media literacy. It reminded me of Saldana’s approach to blogs: without a specific plan for the blog, she allowed it to evolve according to the students’ needs and preferences, which resulted in forum that she described as democratic.

Of all three speakers, the final one, Roslyn Bernstein, from Journalism and the Writing Professions, embedded blogging into her course the most. Her interdisciplinary course, Capturing Communities in Words (http://blsciblogs.baruch.cuny.edu/capturingcommunities/syllabus-for-capturing-communities-in-words-and-images/) centered on researching a photographing a local community—whether it be a large ethnic community or a small subculture sharing common interests. The objective of the course was to explore the complementary relationship between image and text. Students were asked to blog about the process of gaining the trust of their community and to provide captions for every photograph they posted. Simple requirements like these ultimately made them stronger writers, preparing them to write an essay to accompany their photographic series. One student’s work was so successful that her acceptance letter for PhD studies singled out her project in Bernstein’s class.

I was blown away by this blog, and I admire Bernstein’s efforts to integrate blogging into a course in a substantial way instead of doing it as an act of tokenism to appeal to Generation Y. At the same time, I feel that outside of art classes, this model would be difficult to emulate. It would be great for my husband’s senior high school photography class, in which students create a thematically coherent photographic series but tend to submit written support material only as an afterthought. (Incidentally, I think I’ve sold him on the idea of adopting a Bernstein-like approach to blogging).

For my own purposes, I’ve definitely been inspired to consider introducing a collaborative blog when I co-teach a course next year at Purchase with Ryan Taylor called Art & the Environment: The history and science of a social movement.

 

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[i] From personal experience, I can attest to critiques being a surprisingly cool environment where students often leave feeling completely winded. For more on this topic, see chapter two, ‘The Crit’, in Sarah Thornton’s fabulous book, ‘Seven Days in the Art World’ (2008, W. W. Norton & Co. Inc.).

Ranganathan Has a Posse

I forgot this

Stuck on a lampost near the convention center in Seattle. Originally created, I belive by http://www.walkingpaper.org/130

ACRL National in Seattle: Friday Night and Saturday

After Sherman Alexie, Garth and I hit happy hour (there are TWO happy hours almost every night, almost every where in Seattle!) at the Tap House Grill http://www.taphousegrill.com/ which was right by the convention center. We had an angelically sweet wait person who printed out the “recipes” for unfamiliar beers we asked about so we would know what to expect. We were seated next to a huge table of drunken vendors, who were HILARIOUS, in that all of there stories started, “And then, this ONE librarian…” and ended with flatulence, bird catching or just general awkwardness. I made sure my badge was hidden.

(Oh! Aside: we were standing around at some point during the day and some one mentioned (in disgust) that they had heard there was an ALA “swingers” scene that met up at the annual conference every year. Someone else suggested that instead of drawing keys out of a basket in “Key Party”/ Ice Storm fashion, librarian swingers could pull conference badges out of a basket. A badge party. I thought this was almost unbearably funny, but maybe you had to be there. Of course, if you are reading this, you probably were.)

Afters we walked past Pioneer Square to Elysian Fields http://www.elysianbrewing.com/, which was recommended by Charlie and Justin, who used to live in Seattle. Miraculously, by the time we got there, it was happy hour AGAIN. Charlie and Justin met us there, and then Susanne, Leah, Carrie and three more librarians made the long walk (for which I still feel guilty) and we all milled around before pulling tables together. I got a chance to meet the other new librarians, all of whom were pretty fantastic, as could be expected since they came through a connection to Susanne. Then it was time to go. Walking back to the hotel took much less time than walking there, because that’s the way it always is, and also because of the drinks and the company.

Saturday.

I got up early and went for oatmeal and fruit salad and then walked up Pike St. in the rain until the poster sessions started at 9. The posters were good, particularly the one presented by my airplane mates, Selene Colburn and Daisy Benson, from the Univ. of Vermont on “Your Questions, Your Library: The Evolution of a Student-Centered Marketing Campaign.” Their poster was all about their slick outreach/marketing campaign that used social networking tools, collaborative design, & student models. Their stuff looked fantastic, and I think this would be a great idea to try at our library.

Other cool posters included “Information and Visual Literacy Through Artistic Discovery: Critically Thinking About Information, Knowledge, and Space Through a Collaborative Art Installation,” presented by Stacy Brinkman and Sara Young from Miami University (where my dad went to college!), “Are You Ready for the Future of English Composition? Information Literacy, Visual Literacy, and the Digital Video Research ‘Paper,’” presented by Jennifer Corbin from Tulane University, and “Learn. Create. Produce. Helping Undergraduate Students Meet their Multimedia Researched and Knowledge Production Needs,” presented by Melissa Gomis, Laurie Alexander, and Laurie Sutch from teh University of Michigan.

At 10:30, I went to one of the Contributed Paper “pairs.” The first one was Understanding the Integrative Role of an Academic Library for Undergraduate Library Student Workers: A Qualitative Study at San Diego State University,” presented by Wil Weston, from, you guessed it, San Diego State University. This was a study about the impact working in the library has student engagement, satisfaction overall experience of college. The results were kind of what you would expect, but it was nice that he went to all that trouble of doing the study and writing it down.

The second paper presentation was initially called “Where Have All the Librarians Gone? The Academic Library Workforce of Today and Tomorrow.” It was presented by Barbara Moran, Joanne Gard Marshall and Paul Solomon from the University of North Carolina School of Library and Information Studies. By the time of presentation, the title became “Recruiting and Retaining the Library Workforce of Tomorrow.” Whatever we call it, it was fascinating to me, because I don’t think I’ve ever seen a proper workforce study of academic librarianship before. They explained their methodology, etc, and while they studied the career paths all types of librarians, the presentation focused on academic librarians. The research attempted to answer questions about why people choose academic librarianship and why they leave or stay in the field. There was also discussion of trends in the field, including the predicted librarian shortage as baby boomers retire. (This has been predicted FOREVER. They aren’t retiring.) The researchers documented the career transitions of a number of academic librarians, some of whom stayed in the field, and others who moved to public or special libraries, PhD programs or law school, or, hilariously, became massage therapists. Reasons given for leaving the field and/or changing jobs within the field, included a lack of growth opportunities, bad working environments, more challenging/interesting opportunities elsewhere.

By then I was hungry and tired of humans, so I went to lunch by myself at a nearby Vietnamese place and had a bowl of pho and read The Stranger http://www.thestranger.com/seattle/Home. After which, I was sufficiently fortified to go back for the afternoon sessions.

I walked through another poster session and then went to another set of papers: the first one was “Academic Library Support Staff Competencies: What should support staff know and be able to do?” presented by Rachel Applegate, Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis SLIS. Having worked as library support staff, a library student worker, a library graduate student and now a librarian in academic libraries, Applegate’s study was interesting to me, particularly in terms of the disparities between the duties support staff though were most important in their jobs and those library administrators thought were most important for support staff.  This study was connected to the ALA Library Support Staff Certification Project, which is attempting to come up with a set of recommendations and best practices for support staff training.

The second paper was, and I am NOT KIDDING, “Improvisational Theater as a Tool for Enhancing Cooperation in Academic Libraries,” presented by Anthony Stamatoplos (also frmo IUPUI SLIS, those guys in Indianapolis sure are busy little squirrels…). Stamatoplos is a professional improv actor and his presentation was really good, but I am just not sure I am buying it about the improv. I see how the techniques and skills of improv troupes are applicable to library staff, BUT I literally can’t imagine these exercises working in any of the academic library environments I’ve ever encountered. Still, good show.

Then there was more vendor walking, more posters and more meeting of librarians, and some mocking of librarians too. Garth and I walked up to Capitol Hill and visited little shops and looked at things and people, which was very satisfying, even though it was cold and rainy. Then we got cookies and coffee and it was almost time for the fabulous ALL CONFERENCE RECEPTION. Which actually was really really cool, though not particularly because of the librarians (they danced! the horror!) or even the free drink coupon that came in our registration packet (!), though those things were nice too. The reception was held at the Seattle Experience Music Project/Science Fiction Museum http://www.empsfm.org/which is in a Frank Gehry designed building near the Space Needle. They shuttled us all over there in buses from the conference hotels. Many librarians had their “going out clothes” on. This was fun. There was a DJ who was really really good, and food and cash bars, but we also got free admission to both the EMP and SFM. You should’ve seen the looks of rapt awe on the librarians’ faces in the Science Fiction Museum. My favorite part was the Oral History Project http://www.empsfm.org/programs/index.asp?categoryID=60 in the EMP. There were recordings of all kind of musicians just telling stories. My favorite was Mike Watt http://www.hootpage.com/(from the Minutemen, and Firehose, and just himself) telling stories in his tour van about being on the road and the Minutemen’s first tour.

So we watched the librarians dance, and the single ones attempt to mate, and then we were tired, so I texted our goodbyes and we went back to the hotel to prepare for our bracingly early flight back to NY Sunday morning (on which I read one of the last paper copies of the Seattle Post-Intelligencer before it went online!)

ACRL National in Seattle: Thursday and most of Friday

Sooo…Garth came with me to the conference, and our trip started at about 2 in the morning on the Thursday of our departure, when my exhusband arrived at our doorstep from Oklahoma, and our elderly, but hospitable cat met him with a freshly caught mouse. She always does this when he visits. She sees him and thinks, “Oh! The guy who likes mice.” This is particularly hilarious because he is a vegetarian. Anyway, he came to NY to stay with Chloe while we were conferring in Seattle, and he saved the mouse, took it outside to release it, and then locked himself out of the house. So he called me from down stairs to let him in, which I did.

Then, without anymore rodents, but many many librarians, we flew to Seattle. There were two librarians from the University of Vermont across the aisle from us, one from Wesleyan sitting behind us, and various others all around, all of us with our hip but practical shoes and totebags, and many of us wearing funky glasses. Disembarking in Seattle, we were swimming in this demographic. We knew we’d found our people.

We stayed at the Red Lion Inn on 5th Street http://www.redlion5thavenue.com/, which was awesome, and very close to the Convention Center and the conference hotel. Our room was on the 15th floor and we had a view of Pike’s Market and the water from our window.

We were starving and bewildered by the time change, and I desperately wanted to see the alleged opening speaker, Naomi Klein, so we ate at the pub in the hotel http://www.elephantcastle.com/main.html, which was fine if you like “British Concept” chain restaurants. I don’t.  AND I ordered a beer that I didn’t like, but saved the moment by drinking part of Garth’s Guiness with my whatever I ate.

Then we RACED over to the Convention Center to see Naomi Klein. Wooo! Naomi Klein!!!!!! I was SOOOOOOO excited. The convention center in Seattle is BEAUTIFUL, like if you combined a really nice airport and a really nice mall, and removed the stress of travel and the pressure to consume. So, we registered and received our nice canvas ACRL totebags containing the program, the addenda, an ACRL travel mug “Made From 100% U.S. Corn Plastic,” our badges and a little 4 minutes hourglass timer attached to a suction cup. Really. This last was for timing showers, an environmental initiative akin to counting squares of toilet paper, but whatever. I gave mine to Chloe so she can berate me with all the self righteousness of a 10 year old about the length of my showers.

Once we were checked in, we were ready to go see Naomi Klein who was supposed to speak at 4:30 pm, only to find out, AT THE LAST MINUTE, that she had to cancel due to a temporary health concern and would be replaced by someone profoundly unmemorable (Garth called him Mr. Fluffernutter) from the Washington Speaker’s Bureau, who had no connection to libraries at all. Bitterly, we decided to skip the wise words of Mr. Fluffernutter, which turned out to be an excellent choice, because we were able to walk down to Pike Place Market http://www.pikeplacemarket.org/frameset.asp?flash=false, stopping in at the very cool, independently/cooperatively run Left Bank Books http://www.leftbankbooks.com/store/?&cookieSet=1, and then stopping in to eat at the Pike Pub and Brewery http://www.pikebrewing.com/, which serves excellent sandwiches and delicious homemade beer. While picking at Garth’s sandwich, I received a call from Susanne letting me know that she and Carrie were going to meet at the Library Bistro & Bookstore Bar http://www.alexishotel.com/alxdini/index.html. We had about an 1.5 hours before meeting them, so we walked around Pioneer Square, and found The Elliot Bay Book Co. http://www.elliottbaybook.com/, which is AMAZING and was predictably, chock full’o'librarians. We met Carrie and Susanne, and I had a fizzy drink with raspberry puree. All the books on the shelves are for sale and all of them cost $5. All of the staff had literary aspirations or book related other careers of one kind or another. Susanne and Carrie went on to dinner, but we were exhausted, and expecting an early morning, so we just went to sleep.

Susanne and Carrie

Friday morning, Garth slept in, but I got up and went over to the convention center, first serendipitously running in to Leah at the little breakfast place across from our hotel.  Leah, Susanne, and Carrie had their poster in the first

Leah at the poster session

poster session, which ran from 9-10 on Friday morning. The posters were at the very back of the exhibit hall, but once I navigated past the variously hungry and bored looking vendors, I found my esteemed colleagues and their fantastic looking poster (pictures soon) “Teaching the Faculty New Tricks: Collaborating Across Campus to Provide Professional Development Opportunities.” They were literally swamped with people asking them questions and wanting to chat. I took pictures of the commotion and then looked around at the rest of the posters on display. 

Our “Stacks Reference” pilot program caused me to pay special attention to the poster, “Reference Relocated,” presented by librarians from East Tennessee State University, who are experimenting with providing personal reference service to students in many non-library locations, including the dorms and the campus gym. I’m not sure either of these ideas are specifically applicable to Purchase, but I think expanding the definition of Reference is going to be increasingly important, and rethinking traditional reference gives us opportunities to critically consider how we are and are not meeting the needs of our users.

The next thing I wanted to see wasn’t until 10:30, so I had a chance to wander around the vendors a bit. I bought three books at the Continuum table and checked out a new journal from MIT press called IJLM: International Journal of Learning and Media http://ijlm.net/, which is pretty cool and free online for now, so you should check it our if you’re interested.

While I was paying for my books at Continuum, I ran into my friend from library school, Charlie Potter, who is now working at the libraries at Claremont College, where her husband is teaching, where MY husband is getting his phd. We blocked the aisle for awhile, catching up, and then Garth showed up and the three of us made our way to the inexplicably and embarrassingly named “Cyber Zed Shed,” for a presentation by Nedra Peterson, Director of the Woodbury University Library, titled “Popculture Multi-Media and Library Instruction.” In this presentation Peterson demonstrated how she uses clips from films (High Fidelity, The Ring, School of Rock), TV shows (Buffy!!!!!), and music videos (Green Day’s American Idiot) to teach concepts like classification, format, proprietary databases vs. the freeweb, bibliography, homage and appropriation vs. plagiarism, and critical media consumption. In her sessions she generally shows, a clip, asking students to make particular note of a certain element and then follows the clip by leading a class discussion on the topic. I am actually really excited about this idea, because it might allow library instruction to feel like a little less of an existential crisis, and a little more like a somewhat relevant discussion of ways to articulate and improve skills we are using every day in all of our “information” and media consumption.

Then we talked to Charlie for a long time about  our old shared library, our new libraries, our new jobs, ACRL, etc etc etc.

Next, Garth and I went to a Galesponsored luncheon, where the librarians got their buffet sandwiches and sat at tables to listen to the Gale guys talk about their new products, some of which are really cool, but probably not within our reach. At OU we used ECCO and EBO, and NOW they are cross searchable through a new interface, which is excellent, if you are into that kind of thing. Garth was excited(?) about the new State Papers Online. Also mentioned were the products: Literature Resource Center, Global Issues in Context, and a multimedia “Green” Database, about which the sales guy sounded somewhat defensive… Also there were little tiny cheesecakes with little tiny chocolates on top, but I dropped my chocolate on the carpet, so I didn’t get to eat it.

Whew.

At 1:00, I went to a panel discussion called “Reeling in the Faculty: Baiting the Information Literacy Hook,” presented by several librarians and a Sociology professor from IUPUI (Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis). The presentation was very relevant to our recent efforts and ongoing efforts here at Purchase to promote the integration of information literacy concepts into the core curriculum. At IUPUI, there has been a campus wide initiative, which started with and “IL Strategy Group” to create a formal program with a mission statement, goals, and connections to campus goals and gen ed curriculum. The librarians made an effort to “Learn to think about IL from a faculty perspective, and consider what faculty see as the most critical information literacy issues.” The group worked to identify barriers to faculty involvement, and eventually created a pilot “community of practice” that included three faculty members and five librarians. This group discovered the things faculty most appreciated from the library were ready-made IL exercises and assignment add ons that could enrich student learning without compromising course content time.  The “take away” suggestions from building a faculty/library Info Lit collaboration include

• find a faculty champion
• make info lit relevant and focused on faculty concerns
• make it easy
• combine efforts with teaching faculty and other departments
• present at campus conferences
• library liaisons can attend discipline specific conferences to find out the concerns of teaching faculty
• create a collaborative online space for documentation and sample assignments
• publicize documentation to let faculty and admin know what is available

I am wearing out. I can’t believe you’re still reading.

Next, there were more poster sessions. Maybe I’ll describe highlights later. Maybe I won’t.

NEXT was the highlight of the whole entire trip and maybe the whole year so far Sherman Alexie http://www.fallsapart.com/, Friday’s keynot speaker. I’m not going to write very much about it because I would ruin all of his stories by retelling them, but it was awesome. I tried to get a podcast or video, but there isn’t one online. There is no way to even come close to explaining the “point’ because there were layers and layers of points, and they were all made in the telling of the stories. The stories are it. The beginning and the end and everything in between.

If you want some forced reader’s advisory, my favorite Alexie book is The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven, upon which the movie Smoke Signals was loosely based. I read it in a couple of different lit classes as an undergrad. Before he was famous, Sherman Alexie even came and spoke to my freshman honors English class at Univ. of Oklahoma. He was friends with my teacher, Craig Womack…Alexie read a poem about waiting for his shitty alchoholic dad and I had that feeling in my stomach hearing him read, that feeling like I was suddenly and shockingly riveted to earth by the fact that anyone, a HUMAN, would be so fierce and honest and lovely and come stand in a stuffy room in Gittinger Hall, in OKLAHOMA of all places, and tell these things to ME and my classmates, who had done nothing to deserve such honesty and beauty.

Sherman Alexie as keynote speaker at ACRL completely and totally justified my MLIS. If you are thinking that there probably are less expensive and boring ways I could’ve seen him speak, please don’t mention this to me.

This isn’t about libraries, but I found it on a library blog…

… http://diylibrarian.org/, to be exact. I think it’s kind of a cool idea, though maybe it’s just self-indulgent, but it’s the holidays right?

THE 99 THINGS MEME

Things you’ve already done: bold
Things you want to do: italicize
Things you haven’t done and don’t want to – leave in plain font

1. Started your own blog.
Really hard to participate in this blogchain if you haven’t…

2. Slept under the stars.

3. Played in a band.

4. Visited Hawaii.
I’ve read Paul Theroux’s books about it, though…

5. Watched a meteor shower. In Port Aransas, TX and also in Norman, OK.

6. Given more than you can afford to charity.

7. Been to Disneyland/world.
When I was 8, in Florida with my parents, and NOT again at ALA in Anaheim last summer.

8. Climbed a mountain. I’ve climbed “mountains” in the Oklahoma Wichitas, and mountains in Colorado.

9. Held a praying mantis.

10. Sang a solo.
No one would win…

11. Bungee jumped.

12. Visited Paris
Two summers ago, with my dad. We apartment sat for one of his work associates. Chloe learned to love Orangina, and I learned I wanted to go back by myself.

13. Watched a lightning storm at sea.

14. Taught yourself an art from scratch.

15. Adopted a child.

16. Had food poisoning. In India, more than once.

17. Walked to the top of the Statue of Liberty.

18. Grown your own vegetables. Kind of. I helped my mom, does that count?

19. Seen the Mona Lisa in France. This is a very Paris-centric life list…
20. Slept on an overnight train.
When I was 19, I took the train from Dallas to LA to San Francisco and back. These were overnight trips, but without sleeper berths. In India, we slept on trains with open barred windows and blue vinyl berths.

21. Had a pillow fight.

22. Hitch hiked.

23. Taken a sick day when you’re not ill.

24. Built a snow fort.

25. Held a lamb. County fairs…I’ve also held baby pigs, which I prefer…

26. Gone skinny dipping.

27. Run a marathon.

28. Ridden a gondola in Venice.

29. Seen a total eclipse.

30. Watched a sunrise or sunset.

31. Hit a home run.

32. Been on a cruise.

33. Seen Niagara Falls in person.

34. Visited the birthplace of your ancestors. Ohio? Also, Germany.

35. Seen an Amish community.

36. Taught yourself a new language.

37. Had enough money to be truly satisfied. N/A

38. Seen the Leaning Tower of Pisa in person.

39. Gone rock climbing.

40. Seen Michelangelo’s David in person.

41. Sung Karaoke.

42. Seen Old Faithful geyser erupt.

43. Bought a stranger a meal in a restaurant.

44. Visited Africa.

45. Walked on a beach by moonlight.

46. Been transported in an ambulance.

47. Had your portrait painted.

48. Gone deep sea fishing. (I’ve gone shallow sea fishing in Florida. Does that count?)

49. Seen the Sistine chapel in person.

50. Been to the top of the Eiffel Tower in Paris. Again with the Paris!

51. Gone scuba diving or snorkeling. In the Carribbean of the coast of Colombia…

52. Kissed in the rain.

53. Played in the mud.

54. Gone to a drive-in theater.

55. Been in a movie.

56. Visited the Great Wall of China.

57. Started a business.

58. Taken a martial arts class

59. Visited Russia.

60. Served at a soup kitchen.

61. Sold Girl Scout cookies. a nightmare.

62. Gone whale watching. In Boston.

63. Gotten flowers for no reason.

64. Donated blood.

65. Gone sky diving.

66. Visited a Nazi Concentration Camp.

67. Bounced a check.

68. Flown in a helicopter.

69. Saved a favorite childhood toy.

70. Visited the Lincoln Memorial.

71. Eaten Caviar.

72. Pieced a quilt.

73. Stood in Times Square.

74. Toured the Everglades.

75. Been fired from a job.

76. Seen the Changing of the Guard in London.

77. Broken a bone. My pinky finger. I got it caught in the chain of a swing. I was in my 20s.

78. Been on a speeding motorcycle. Actually, I don’t know if it was speeding, but it felt really fast.

79. Seen the Grand Canyon in person.

80. Published a book.

81. Visited the Vatican.

82. Bought a brand new car.

83. Walked in Jerusalem.

84. Had your picture in the newspaper.

85. Read the entire Bible.

86. Visited the White House.

87. Killed and prepared an animal for eating.

88. Had chickenpox.

89. Saved someone’s life.

90. Sat on a jury.

91. Met someone famous.

92. Joined a book club.

93. Lost a loved one.

94. Had a baby.

95. Seen the Alamo in person.

96. Swum in the Great Salt Lake.

97. Been involved in a law suit.

98. Owned a cell phone.

99. Been stung by a bee.

ACRL/NY Symposium 2008

21st Century-Library: Targeting the Trends http://acrlnysymp2008.wordpress.com/

December 5, 2008

8:30 am-3:15 pm

Baruch College, 151 East 25th Street, New York

If you are still reading this, you are, no doubt, beyond finished with my transportation adventures, so I will spare you my trip to Baruch College in Manhattan, except to ask, mostly rhetorically, a question which always occurs to me when I go from Larchmont to the city: “Why do I live in Westchester?”  Everytime I go to the city I start mentally calculating how long it would take me to get to Purchase from each Metro-North stop closer to the city. “See,” I say to myself, “Harlem-125th is almost the SAME as living in Larchmont.”

Anyway, I missed the initial round of coffee and pastries, but there was plenty of food later. I got there just as the keynote speaker was starting, which was fortunate since I had agreed to “write up” this speaker for the ACRL/NY newsletter.

 

Dr. Julie Todaro

21st Century Libraries: Identifying, Assessing and Integrating Trends

(This is the text of my draft for said article…I will be adding useful links, etc)

 Dr. Julie Beth Todaro, the 2007-2008 ACRL President, and the Dean for Library Services at the award winning (2001 ACRL Excellence in Academic Libraries) Austin Community College, Austin, TX, brought her formidable presence, intelligence and enthusiasm to her keynote presentation.

 As soon as Dr. Todaro took the stage in her red-trimmed, Holstein-print cowboy boots and matching bag, attendees knew they were in for a treat. Citing the new book “Future Files” by Richard Watson (http://www.futuretrendsbook.com/), she began her informative presentation with a discussion of the importance of identifying “trends and trending” in library planning. She suggests that while trends themselves do not constitute a direction for a library’s future planning, they can be used “as supporting data for the plan, strategy or direction.”

 To discover trends relevant to our libraries, Dr. Todaro suggests we identify subject headings and keywords in areas of interest, review the latest issues of popular magazines and journals, document and repeat topical web searches, and scan professional literature. The hand-out she distributed  provides links to useful resources, many Internet-based, for identifying trends in several categories: Library Trends/In Libraries/In the Profession; Trends for Umbrella Entities; and General Societal Trends.

 Dr. Todaro’s trend analysis yields two tangible products. First, the trend list, which provides a way to collect relevant trends in the environment moving at a pace of what she refers to as “dog year change” (one year equals seven). The second product is the trend chart, which allows a glimpse of “trends a glance,” and documents the presence and frequency of trends and those who identify them. Once these documents are created, Todaro proposes a list of questions librarians can use to assess trends and decide if they are worth integrating into their libraries, and if so, how that integration can best be accomplished.

 Dr. Todaro mentioned keywords in “trends in trending” she has found through her own research, including the terms:  green, mobile broadband, conversation, convergence, content, zeitgeist, social systems, citizen journalism, best practices, 24/7 reference and adoption horizon. She closed her talk by suggesting we need to learn to “think about how we think.” According to this leader in the field of academic librarianship, we need to move the discussion of the library of the future away from technology and toward a focus on learning to learn, adapt to change and scan the horizon for new developments.

Poster Sessions

You can read about the poster sessions on the beautiful symposium blog Susanne created: http://acrlnysymp2008.wordpress.com/posters/

All of the posters were really good, but the ideas that particularly stood out for me as being potentially useful at Purchase were:

•  the library NetFlix account Dickinson College is using 
• adding Simple Faceted Classification to the library Delicious site at NYU’s Health Sciences Library.

 

Jennifer Bowen: Envisioning an “eXtensible” Future: Opportunities presented by the eXtensible Catalog (XC) Project

Jennifer Bowen of Rochester University is co-principle investigator on an Andrew W. Mellon Foundation funded prject to develop “open-source software to provide libraries with an alternative way to reveal their collections to users.” In her presentation, Jennifer described some of the limitations of current library metadata, and talked about ways this XC project could address these limitations. The XC catalog “will run alongside a library’s current Integrated Library System to privde more intuitive access to resources, a customizable interface to include Web 2.0 functionality, seamless connections to other web applications…and sophisticated metadata services capabilities.” (http://acrlnysymp2008.wordpress.com/about/)

This presentation was vaguely exciting to me, in the way things I don’t really understand often are. I remember reading about the semantic web while in library school, and I know that Google searches don’t routinely return library metadata from MARC records and the like, but other than that, I don’t really understand the nuance involved. I am glad, however, that Jennifer Bowen is working on this…I went home and tried to tell Garth about the project, of which, as a recovered cataloger, he is aware. I think I may have said something about Dublin Core and the limitation of the MARC record in a web environment. He leapt valiantly to the defense of the MARC record and said the problem lies not with the MARC record’s limitations, but rather in the limitiations of people who don’t know how to utilized all the fields. This argument is somewhat reminscent of that of the NRA’s famous bumper sticker… ”Guns don’t kill people, people kill people, and monkeys do too (if they have a gun)” Eddie Izzard.

 Monika Antonelli: The Greening of Libraries

Monika Antonelli is a Reference / Instruction Librarian at Minnesota State Mankato.  Her presentation focused on the various strategies libraries have adopted to become more environmentally friendly and sustainable. She talked about the history of environmental awareness in libraries from Earth Day to present. She also discussed LEED “green building” certification for libraries, old and new ecologically conscious library programming including garden tool check out, seed libraries, and tips for practical ways libraries can be kinder to the environment.

I would’ve liked to hear a bit more about specific examples of applications of these ideas, especially in academic libraries, but it was good to think about “information and resources” from a different angle–that of shovels. Actually, I vaguely remember my mom and her friends doing something gardening co-op-ish like this in the late 70’s, so maybe it’s time has come back around. Thankfully, I live in an apartment without a yard, so I am exempt from actually trying to grow things, as much as I admire the idea conceptually.

Lunch and Raffle

Since Susanne went to library school at UT Austin, Julie Todaro was one of her professors, and she got to sit with her at lunch. Since I work with Susanne and she is a nice person, I got to sit at this table as well. Julie Todaro is smart. She has about a million ideas a second and seems to know something about everything relating to libraries. She also talked about her (very visible) love of jewelry, her feelings about camping (these aren’t good feelings), and her insane travel schedule. Raffle tickets were sold to benefit the ACRLNY scholarship fund. A Google Kindle was beign raffled off, so the tickets were quite popular. No where, perhaps, as popular as they were at my table, where Carrie bought $40 worth of tickets, out of her deep concern for LIS scholarships, I am sure.

The drawing was held after lunch and the suspense was excruciating as the numbers were called out. I watched over Carrie’s shoulder to see if she held the winning number in her hand….and YES, sure enough. Carrie won the Kindle, and, for the record, though she was on the symposium committee, Carrie was a paid attendee and is now the legal and proud new owner of an electronic book reader.

 

Chad Boeninger: Have You Got a Gameplan?” Adapting our Libraries to the Needs of Gamers

This was a cool presentation because Chad, a gamer himself and Reference and Instruction Technology Coordinator at Ohio University in Athens, OH, didn’t present on the useof video games in academic libraries. Instead, he talked about “how video games attract players, retain their attention, and make them learn.” Chad discussed the overwhelming ubiquity of video games in the lives of undergraduates, demonstrated different kinds of games and the skills they use, and talked about some common misperceptions about games and games. He argues that we can take some of our instructional cues from the learning principles in video games, including providing our students with

1.  Consistent interfaces to facilitate exploration (feedback loops in the catalog?)
2. Immersive space (i.e. info commons, cafe, tech support, moveable technology and furniture)
3. Customizable interfaces (give students control of virtual library)
4. Facilitate “learning while doing” (encourage mastery through multiple difficulties
5. Incorporate hands-on experiences in our teaching, allow students to experiment and talk less & teach less

I like the ideas in this presentation because they seemed to me a way of taking that hand-wringing, didactic argument about “lazy information illiterate undergraduates,” and changing the narrative in such a way that we can begin to recognize how students actually ARE learning, rather than lamenting and documenting all the ways in which they are not…

Panel

Then there was a panel discussion with Dr. Todaro, Jennifer Bowen and Chad Boeninger. Then everybody took their free water bottles and tote bags and left.

Afters, I saw the Xmas tree at Rockefeller Center, witnessed a Fox News broadcast occurring in a hotel bar and saw some of the lovely ladies and gentlemen of NASCAR, in their finery, in NYC for some kind of NASCAR gala, which may have been at the Waldorf Astoria. Wait, I just looked it up. The NASCAR thing was their awards ceremony: http://www.nascar.com/2005/news/features/viewers_guide/12/01/new_york/index.html 

Then, I had Glogg and Gravlax with some librarians at a Swedish restaurant called Smorgas Chef http://www.smorgaschef.com/ in Manhattan and went home.

 

 

 

 

Metro Bibliographic Instruction SIG

On Tuesday, I attended at meeting of the Metro BI SIG

BI SIG stands for Bibliographic Instruction Special Interest Group. The session took place at the posh CUNY Graduate Center which is a not very far walk from Grand Central Station, if you choose to walk in the right direction, which I did not. Still, I made it, only 7 minutes late, while everyone was still getting coffee and cookies off a book cart at the front of the meeting room.

The meeting was hosted by Betsy Crewshaw from LIU, Brooklyn Campus adn Michael Adams from CUNY Graduate Center. There were maybe 30 librarians and students attending from all over the NYC/Westchester area.

The first presenter was Maura Smale from NYC College of Technology. She preseneted on the topic of “Active Learning in One-Shot Instruction Sessions.” I was really interested in her presentation, because here at Purchase, we are mostly only able to get students in for one shot BI sessions.

Maura contextualized her presentation by mentioning research that indicates that today’s students learn better through active participation than traditional lecture format. In her library, an active learning pilot program has been introduced, initially targeted at Developmental English (not quite ready for College English) students, in which students who will eventually receive the usual freshman English orientation come into the library during Developmental English for an active-learning group exercise that focuses on only one information literacy topic. In the example she presented, Maura divides the class into groups and gives each group the title of an information source on a single topic, in this case, she used the Human Genome Project.

The sources include wikipedia articles, traditional print encyclopedias, peer reviewed journal articles, a hoax website and a goverment sponsored website. Students are given 10 minutes to examine the source and then they are instructed to complete a worksheet “evaluating” the source, with questions on accuracy, authority, objectivity and currency.

Maura reports that the students seem very engaged in this activity, often entering into lively discussions, and she and her fellow librarians have received very positive feedback on these sessions from instructors, students and administrators.

 Application at Purchase: I think this might be a really cool technique to use in integrating Info Lit into the Freshman Experience, allowing Freshmen to to get some context for information evaluation before exposing them to the “nuts and bolts” of library research in the College Writing library sessions.

The second presentation came from Jenna Freedman from Barnard College. Her presentation was titled, “Hands-On Instruction in Advanced Search Techniques in Library Catalogs and Databases.” (Online at: http://jenna.openflows.com/talks/2008/metro). I have a little bit of a professional crush on Jenna, because she is one of the founders of Radical Reference, and created a truly beautiful zine collection in the Barnard Library, the discovery of which gave me the strength to soldier through the sometimes soul crushing experience of library school.

Anyway, all swooning aside, Jenna’s presentation of “hands-on” instruction was really interesting because, rather than trying to simplify library research for her students, she views instruction as a chance to “welcome students into the world of research and scholarship.” She uses all the library terminology, and seems to teach this to the students in a way that it seems to honor and complement what they already know. I’m not sure this would fly as well with Purchase students as it does at Barnard, but I was kind of inspired to try, especially with kids in junior and senior seminars.

The hands-on activity that Jenna demonstrated was one that she has used with students in senior thesis classes, and it involved some discussion and terminology and then turning students loose to investigate and compare databases. She asks students to choose Historical Abstracts, Google/Google/Scholar, JSTOR, or ProQuest direct. She then instructs them to perform sample searches in their database and check out the “help” function to get information about peculiarities of truncation, phrase searching, descriptors, limiters, etc. Students then report their findings back to the class as a whole.

Jenna reports very positive feed back from this exercise and says it seems to encourage enthusiasm, increased class participation, and better learning and interaction from the students.

As a drawback to this method, Jenna mentioned that the exercise and discussion takes up a lot of class time, but that she believes it is time well spent.

The final presentation was on “Advanced RefWorks Instruction,” by Kanu Nagra from the Borough of Manhattan Community College.This presentation was a demonstration of a variety of RefWorks features and capabilities. Kanu mentioned that she has taught this session to both faculty and students, though she found that faculty are the ones who have really used the software.

The remainder of the meeting involved generating potential topics for future meetings.

TwitterVoterReport

One of our faculty members just sent me this link:

http://blog.twittervotereport.com/

 

very cool.

SUNYLA LiSUG (Library Software Users Group) Annual Conference

SUNYIT, Utica New York

October 8, 2008:So I drove from Purchase to Utica on Wednesday afternoon. The drive took me through the electrically autumnal Catskills and past many deer, barns and the Beech Nut factory. The streets of Utica are carefully laid out according to what appear to be cowpaths or maybe the drawing of a pre-literate child. Eventually I found the Hotel Utica, which is a historic hotel, purchased by the Clarion Collection and updated with spotty wifi and a live parrot. The grandeur of half halted decay has been left intact. Through my amazing librarian powers, I also managed to find the Nail Creek Pub http://www.nailcreekpub.com/, which is housed in an old building in the Brewery district (down the street from Saranac). The building was slated for demolition when it was saved at the last minute by the friendly owner, who restored the interior and added a gorgeous bar and an amazing selection of fancy local and international beers. Everyone in the bar seemed to know each other, and the bartender happened to be planning to apply to Purchase. I had lovely conversations and met not only the pub owner, but also a local musician with the following tattooed on the fingers of his hands, so that when he made a fist, his fingers read: ISCA RIOT. As in Judas. Really. He told me that ISCA means “bait” in Portuguese, but he didn’t know that until after the tattoo was already in place.

October 9, 2008:Anyway, I spent Thursday at the SUNY Collaborative Collection Development meeting in the Cayan Library at SUNY Institute of Technology. The Cayan library features a Manga Collection and a grand piano. Topics discussed included: when ordered titles should be uploaded to OCLC, the Films for the Humanities video streaming product, EBL as an ebook vendor, weeding, gift policies and uses for the OCLC collection analysis tool. It was widely agreed that “Gift books are free like kittens.” If you have any questions about stuff that was discussed at the meeting, let me know!

October 10, 2008:The LiSUG conference officially began at 9 a.m. preceded by registration and “breakfast” from 8-9. I fortuitously ran into Susanne in the parking lot so we walked into the building together to register and receive our electric green tote bags and conference packets. The theme of the conference was “Brewing Up Solutions,” presumably because it was held in Utica, home of Saranac Brewery and other commercial brewing operations?

The general session/welcome was held in the Kunsela auditorium at 9 am. We were welcomed by a woman in a pirate t-shirt and the President of SUNYIT.

Session 1: For the first session, both Susanne and I signed up for a presentation called “Top-Shelf Service on a Utica Club Budget.” It was given by Matthew Smith from Sullivan County Community College. The presentation was preceded by several slides of Mr. Smith’s garden and home renovation projects. The title plays on the name “Utica Club,” which as you may know, but I did not, was a VERY cheap local beer in days gone-by. The session was about the ways Sullivan County Community College library had used free software and maximized services to which it already subscribed to enhance services to users. Specific resources covered included:

• Chat reference using Meebo http://www.meebo.com/
• using tumblr. http://www.tumblr.com/ to create a new book blog. (Susanne and I whisper-wondered if Purchase Library might want to start a new book blog to increase awareness of new titles?)
• using Google Custom Search http://www.google.com/coop/cse/ to create subject page enhancements. You can create a custom search engine that will limit searches to websites you select. This could be an enhancement for recommended websites on subject pages. Maybe an addition to our use of Delicious?
• The presentation also touched on using IDS for information on titles and taking advantage of the Library Managed Holdings features available through Serials Solutions
• Finally, the library at Sullivan had been successful developing a strong presence on the college’s Learning Management System. Sullivan uses Angel. I wonder if it would be possible to for us to add chat, or links to resources to Blackboard?

Session 2: The second session of the day, which both Susanne and I elected to attend, was titled: “A Witch’s Brew? Emerging Technologies for Enhancing the Potency of Library Instruction.” It was presented by Heather Whalen Smith from New Paltz, Mark McBride from Buffalo State, Dana Longley from Empire State College, Logan Rath from Brockport and Justina Elmore from Geneseo. The aformentioned librarians comprise a workgroup on library instruction and have recently created the following useful blog: http://wgiltech.wordpress.com/. It is a veritable cornucopia of free or inexpensive enhancements for library instruction. Services or products highlighted by the presenters included some familiar applications as well as some newer more esoteric ones. Presenters specifically discussed:

• Using GoogleDocs to create running bibliographies during instruction sessions
• LibGuides http://demo.libguides.com/ (this is not a free service)
• Firefox personalizations http://www.mozilla.com/en-US/firefox/
• Using Facebook http://www.facebook.com/ as a tool for class communication
• Gaming: specifically PMOG http://pmog.com/ (Passively Multiplayer Online Gaming)
• SecondLife http://secondlife.com/ audiochat applications
• Diigo http://www.diigo.com/ for information literacy evaluations

Lunch & Keynote address by Cyril Oberlander from SUNY Geneseo

This was an inspirational sort of visionary speech. Oberlander pointed out that when we seek to improve library services, we tend to focus more on discovery of material than delivery of material. He advocates a more user-centric focus for libraries in which we consider the experience of the patron in all services. He suggests that we carefully study changes in the market and evaluate all of our options, including assisting patrons in getting free online content. Oberlander mentioned the potential for libraries in such services as Netfilx, BookSwim and Peer2Peer sharing resources.

As I finished my cookie and listened to Oberlander’s remarks, it occurred to me that I am still struggling with the issue of “delivery” and how much of the footwork librarians should do FOR patrons in academic environments. My beliefs certainly put me on the more service oriented end of the spectrum. I will almost always go with a patron to the shelves or email articles found for patrons at the desk, but is there a risk in doing too much for students? Are we actually handicapping their research skills in our efforts to make things “easier”? Or is that old-thinking? Maybe the research paradigms are changing so quickly that we don’t need to worry about whether or not students can find articles from citations? I don’t know…

Session 3: After lunch, I walked across a bridge and looked at leaves until the 3rd session started. I went out on my own on this one and attended “Perspectives on E-Books After Spending the Summer with a Kindle” by Mark Ludwig from the University of Buffalo. In this presentation Ludwig, who had a terrible cold that day, discussed the pros and cons of Kindle ownership, as well as their potential uses in libraries. The following facts emerged in a bullet-point ready fashion:

• Kindles are available through Amazon.com for $359.00 http://www.amazon.com/dp/B000FI73MA/?tag=googhydr-20&hvadid=2192951021&ref=pd_sl_20wgx685w_e
• There are LOTS of titles availabe to download from Amazon to your Kindle. Most cost $9.99, though prices vary widely depending on content and publisher.
• Magazine subscriptions are available, but are generally not worth the price because of bad layouts and the fact that current popular magazine content is often available online
• Kindles come with free wifi all over the US
• simple web browsing is possible with a roller ball “mouse” and a tiny little keyboard
• You can store your own pdfs, etc on a Kindle
• built in Oxford American Dictionary
• you can highlight and take notes on the kindle and search content
• you can get extensive samples (often the first full chapter) of most books for free

Library Applications:

• Amazon setting currently prohibit multiple users on a single device, but can be de-registered for sharing
• Kindles offer a very fast way to buy books
• solve physical storage problems
• offer searchability

Mark passed his Kindle around and let us play with it. The screen offers a surprisingly readable, paper-like page and the little leatherish cover is quite cute. I would love to have one, especially for travel, but I really wouldn’t love to have one $359 worth, sooo…as soon as the price goes down to around $100, I definitely want one.

At this point, I was exhausted and LiSUG-ed up to my nose, so I skipped the last session in favor of getting an earlier start and potentially avoiding getting home at midnight. I got on the road by 3:00 and made fairly decent time for a vast portion of the journey, but around 6:00 I started to hit Traffic. I assume these cars were full of people fleeing their Northern homes for the holiday weekend? Whatever it was that brought them to the Tappan Zee bridge, we all sat there together for what could very well have been hours, during which time I discovered a radio station that played 80s hits. I heard, “One Night in Bangkok” for the first time since maybe preschool and spent the rest of the trip home reflecting on the aesthetic the song presents and how disturbing it really is from so many angles. In other disturbing news, I also heard, “Paradise City” and “Rock Me Amadeus.” I got home well before midnight, however, and Chloe was waiting for me on the porch, so all was well.

Video From Patrick on Fair Use

Those Darn Kids…questions about entitlement

After the LiSUG conference, there was some discussion about how much we do for our students in libraries. Would it be better to do document delivery service for all ILL requests for articles owned by the library? How much should we expect students to do themselves as far as finding information goes? Is the ability to find articles in print journals from citations even going to be relevant in 10 years? In 5 years? Then, at a Blackboard training session for faculty members, there was some discussion about how students abilities and expectations have changed and, “THINGS HAVE GOTTEN WORSE.”

There is, of course, all kinds of literature about the “millenials.” Anyone who has any current interaction with college students can see that “they” are different than “we” were in college some very clear ways, but I wonder if they are really any more different, than I was different from a generation 15 years before me?

As you must surely be aware, I am a such a tremendous geek of a librarian that I am even married to a librarian; we talk shop at the dinner table. Poor Chloe has had to listen to more debate about Google’s ubiquity than a decent mother would even allow in her home. Last night, over cheese, we were talking about the frequent observations and tongue clucking we hear about undergraduates’ sense of entitlement, their expectation that information and services be handed to them, and their unwillingness to work. Garth, who has had the benefit of a classical education, and knows things I don’t even pretend to care about, observed (in slight paraphrase), “One of the few benefits of a classical education is that you have to read people like [Garth? If you are reading, would you fill in the name in the comments? That is how much I don't pretend to care], who were writing in Latin about those lazy ungrateful kids that many years ago.”

Lamenting the state of today’s youth is clearly not a phenomenon born alongside MySpace. I think I was a member of the MTV generation. Hmm…

So…how can we make user-centric, service oriented libraries, without stunting the information literacy of students? Anyone?

The ACRL blog has this article on the topic: http://acrlog.org/2008/10/14/another-story-about-ignorant-students/

Metro Virtual Reference SIG: Oct 31 Mtg OR Halloween morning in NYC

Friday (Halloween) morning, after dropping ma petite witch off at school, I got on the train, which I hoped would take me into the city for the Metro Virtual Reference SIG meeting on Knowledge Bases in Reference service. This actually did pan out, in spite of my inexperience with public transit. Several people were in costume. I was not in costume, unless you count trying not to look so much like a librarian because you are going to New York City a costume. Unfortunately, I doubt I pulled this off, but there are worse things to look like…right? Right?

On the train I read one of the suggested readings for the meeting. It was about the Business FAQ at the Lippincott Library at the University of Pennsylvania http://faq.library.upenn.edu/recordList?library=lippincott. It’s a pretty interesting article about the process of setting up an in depth online Reference Knowledge Base in one area. If you are interested in the article, you can find it online here: http://www.rusq.org/2008/01/05/providing-reference-service-in-our-sleep-using-a-faq-database-to-guide-users-to-the-right-sources/

I thought the Knowledge Base concept described in the article was interesting, but it seemed to require a fair amount of technical and staff commitment to get set up, and didn’t seem like it would really pay off here at Purchase. So, I was less enthusiastic about the Knowledge Base after reading the article.

Still, I was already ON the train, so I went ahead and caught the subway to the Metro offices on East 11thStreet.  Coming out of the subway I walked right passed The Strand and about ten million other fascinating looking places in Union Square, and found METRO, which is such a librarian-centric organization that there are even little baskets on the back of the unisex toilets, filled with bandaids, tissues, and starlight mints! Then, in the meeting room, there was coffee and little chocolates in a basket! 

There were probably 12-15 people at the meeting, which was facilitated by Stephen Francouer from Baruch College, who is a co-convener of the Virtual Reference SIG. He was wearing really fascinating (in a good way) green metallic-ish ankle high boots with his otherwise traditional academic librarian ensemble. The gentleman sitting next to me was wearing a large-ish bowtie and taking notes on a BlackBerry for which he had brought a little keyboard. All of the attendees were from academic libraries in the Metro area, except for one librarian from the Music library at NYPL. I was the only SUNY librarian, but there were several CUNY librarians, as well as some representatives from NYU and other schools.

[Now I am going to take the advice of Leah, Carrie and Susanne who suggested creating several shorter blog posts instead of one really really really long post. This is supposed to create more interest in your blog, though I pretty sure said interest is at least partially predicated on the writer not employing such anti-narrative devices as this bracketed aside....]

Oct. 31st meeting, part 2: Margaret Smith’s “Knowledge-based Reference” presentation

Once we had our chocolate and introduced ourselves, we were ready for the first agenda item, which was a presentation by Margaret Smith, who is a Physical Sciences Librarian at Bobst Library at NYU. She prepared her presentation, called Knowledge-based Reference, in blog format, which worked really well for this topic. You can look at her presentation blog here: http://leggomypreso.wordpress.com/ 

It definitely inspired me to want to try a blog format for future presentations. Blogs seem so much less clunky and awkward than powerpoint…I wonder if they would be useful for library instruction? If, for example, we set up a simple blog for College Writing classes, we could use it for teaching and then send the URL to the instructor and students after the class session?

The presentation basically talked about different ways knowledge bases can be constructed and used in Reference. Both internal (like our staff Wiki!) and external reference knowledge bases were disussed.

Three basic formats were presented.

FAQs

First, Margaret talked about the basic FAQ format used by LIppincott. Other examples of this format include the OCLC QuestionPoint Database http://www.questionpoint.org/crs/servlet/org.oclc.home.BuildPage?show=searchkb&language=1, and the Internet Public Library FAQ http://www.ipl.org/div/farq/. This format seems best suited to external knowledge bases. The main strength of FAQs is way they are able to be highly controlled in terms of form, content and structure, potentially allowing for higher accuracy that other KB formats. Weaknesses of this format include its relatively inflexible, static, structure and the fact that it is basically a content management system, requiring administration by a webmaster, and making it more difficult for librarians to edit.

Blogs

The next KB format covered was the blog. Blogs can be used externally, as Knowledge Bases for patrons, or internally, to keep staff members updated on reference issues, etc. A really lovely internal blog from Barnard College can be examined here: http://barnardrefdesk.blogspot.com/.

My favorite blog (and my favorite example from the presentation) is the external “Ask A Librarian”  blog from the Cornell Library https://blogs.cit.cornell.edu/askalib. The blog is an adjunct to their email-a-librarian service. Patrons using the email service check a box granting (or denying) the library permission to anonymously post their question and the answer to the blog. Patrons receive an email reply either way, but if they give permission to post the question, then it is added to the blog, creating a browsable database of questions and answers for other patrons.

I think something similar to the Cornell blog might work really well here at Purchase as another access point? I was thinking we might be able to create a blog on which we would post answers to email a librarian questions, edited chat transcripts and answers to questions that are frequently asked at the reference desk. We could use the Purchase College WordPress software. One major advantage I can see to such a blog is that it would provide ready made “scripts” of carefully constructed responses that could be cut and pasted into virtual reference responses. What do other people think?

Margaret suggested that the strengths  of blogs a knowledge bases include that they are free, easy to update and maintain, require no specialized knowledge or administration, can be checked through RSS feeds and the allow for tagging and categorization of discrete info. Weaknesses of using the blog format for knowledge bases, include the sub-optimal searchability of blogs, the fact that users need an account to comment or contribute, and difficulties of determining an appropriate tone for an unknown audience.

Wikis

Wikis are also used by libraries (like Purchase!) for creating knowledge bases. Margaret presented an example from Butler http://www.seedwiki.com/wiki/butler_wikiref/, which provides a reference KB to patrons and librarians and library staff. This seems to work pretty well, but requires a great deal of maintenance. We also looked at the general professional development wik for librarians called Library Success http://www.libsuccess.org/index.php?title=Main_Page. One of the meeting attendees showed us the really cool, staff only blog used by the music division of NYPL. It uses the same software as wikipedia and looks quite slick. Strengths  of the wiki format include the fact that it is easy to use, wikis provide relatively good searchability, and all members of a group can contribute. Weaknesses include the ways in which wikis can easily become excessively large an unwieldly, chronology of information can become an issue, and with so many potential contributors, accuracy and consistently can suffer.

Problems/Questions

Finally, the presentation touched on questions pertaining to all of these formats. Libraries must determine:

1. Who is responsible for maintaining knowledge bases?
2. Who is the audience for a web-based knowledge base?
3. Who is the final “authority” determining issues of accuracy and responsibility?

Oct. 31st meeting, part 3: Scapes, etc.

Next we watched a video of  R. David Lankes giving a presentation called “Scapes”  at ALA Midwinter, 12 January 2008. It is a very visionary kind of thing about new ways to envision knowledge and library service. Apparently, Lankes is a big advocate of “participatory reference” and contends that knowledge is created through “conversations” or interactions between people or people and resources. He proposes a VERY user centered, semantic web kind of interface he calls a “scape,” which is still in the mock up stage, but is really interesting in terms of challenging the ways we think about providing library services…You can watch the video for yourself here:

Lankes, R. David. “Scapes.” Presentation at ALA Midwinter, 12 January 2008.

After the video, there was a discussion where we conceptualized our own ideal computer interface, if time, money and technology were no object. There were lots of great ideas, including, but not limited to: a customizable “iGoogle” style interface, guided search style capabilities, really truly effective federated searching, etc…

Then, it was time to go, so I walked from Metro to 36th, where I met Garth for lunch at the Gingerman, after passing at least a million places I wanted to visit.

Teaching My Dad About Blogging

This is a sample post I am making to show my dad how easy it is to make a blog.