Guardienne of the Tomes

Library Day in the Life #libday8 Day 3

2012-02-01T21:33:00.000-05:00

6:10am - Ugh, too early. Dog steals the pillow as I roll out of bed. I brighten slightly knowing I have a breakfast meeting where the host usually feeds us. Ugh. Morning. Grunt. Hrmp. Mrf.

7:30 - walk into the library. Greeted by my day circ super who asks knowingly, "Early meeting?" I am not known to be a kind morning person, so he is not offended by my grunted response. This is about the time I wish I could stand the taste of coffee. I check the emails, grab my notebook and the list of items the Faculty Senate president noted that she wanted to bring up at the meeting. And an umbrella - it's misting, but with my luck by the end of the meeting it will be pouring.

8:10 - I'm in the Chancellor's conference room waiting on our 8:30 meeting; the faculty Senate Exec members usually arrive a little early, so I always feel like a latecomer if I get there at 8:30. I'm scanning through a case study on flu vaccinations that I'll need to write a paper on after work. The past president of Senate who serves as ex-officio comes in, so I move to the table with him and we chat over breakfast about his teaching award that was just announced.

8:30 - Senate Exec is present, but the Chancellor will be out (his assistant is on her way after a stop at HR), and the Provost is running late. We eat breakfast (thank you Aramark!) and go over the points we want to make sure get the Provost's attention.

8:45 - 10:15 - The meat of the meeting with the Provost is spent talking about initiatives for student success and retention, with some other current projects and issues thrown in the mix. And it is indeed raining on my walk back to the library, I'm grateful I remembered the umbrella.

10:55 - Circ super ducks in to see if I can cover some desk time due to someone being yanked from the desk for another assignment; no can do, off to a meeting. Laird makes it work, as he always does, because he is made of magic, Laird the Lord of Circulation.

11:00-12:00 - Meeting about ACRL statistics. Good discussion of whether previous assignments of who has the data for what question still hold. Really interesting discussion about what they count and what they don't. Why does ACRL not count hits to the library web page originating from inside the library? (It's not like we have any other good way for you to access the resources, including our catalog. No idea why in-library researchers don't count as users for this statistic.) What is a web site hit? Should we count hits at our LibGuides and Facebook and blog pages, especially if the user uses them as a point of origin as opposed to reaching them through our main web page? ACRL asks you to remove all reserves and any in-library circulating equipment, but those now make up the bulk of our circulation; the survey appears to be completely uninterested in those numbers, which is bizarre since I know other academic libraries see similar trends to ours. Brain asplode over thinking about how long it takes these library surveys to change to reflect what we actually do. (I'm sure if you suck out the reserves, study room, and laptop circs, you'd think that my circ staff had nothing to do all day. Gah. Happy we collect these for the in-library and campus annual report so we can show how important those services are.) The meeting also puts document delivery and some other ILL issues back on my radar, such as how we direct students to items we have access to that they've requested through ILL.

12:10-12:30 - Send off a bio and a headshot (which sounds professional, but it's really a taken-by-be-with-cameraphone-shot) to the editor of The Enchanting Verses Literary Review, who has asked me to be the guest poetry editor for issue XVI, which will come out in July. Wish there was a way to make my bio more interesting, with superpowers instead of publications. Quick chat with our Stacks maintenance guru, who is reporting that the students moving tables around so they can plug in laptops, and the dangling cords, are making things difficult for him and his students when they are working in the collection on the 3rd floor. I'm not sure how much we can influence the kids to not plug in, given the battery life of our circing laptops and the need for MOAR POWER given that we live in a gadgeted future, but I agree to see what I can do on the circ side during our evening rounds to encourage them to clear the aisles.

12:30-1:00 - Look at next week's calendar to see what I need to be prepared for, and to carve out some time for . Pop into some social networks and see what's flying about - one librarian discussion is on CVs, which reminds me that I need to update mine and standardize my darn citations. I'm out on Monday, but Senate exec is meeting with Graduate Council, there are interviews for the university's new distance learning position that I want to attend, there's a "Building Our House for Diversity" workshop I've been invited to by the Office few Equity and Diversity, and as a member of Senate exec I'm invited to lunch with the presenter. A rheum doc appointment - must remember to bring my notes and questions. My monthly meeting with my dean, and a meeting about supplemental pay (which we call MocsBucks) and what it can and can't be used for - an important topic, since quite a few of the librarians teach the freshman seminar courses where you can earn it. The usual circulation and reference desk blocks. Ooh, and Robert Pinsky, former Poet Laureate of the US is coming to UTC to speak on Tuesday night, must remember that.

1:00-1:25 - Remember I have to find two people to list as references for an artist's residency I want to apply for. Decide to back-burner since the application isn't due until March 1, and because I can't think of a single person to ask. I have lots of libraryland contacts, very few poet-y ones. Bah and humbug. Must try to hang out and connect with more arty folks. Also put the EdD study groups on Saturdays and Sundays into my calendar for spring.

1:30-2:00 - More email. (These posts are a crazy reminder of how much of my worklife is run through an electronic inbox.) Email the English department head back - nope, can't make Friday's faculty meeting since I'll be out of town, but I can be at the one on March 9th to peddle the library services and wares (or, as I put it in my initial email to him, to give "the 2-minute mini spiel on Why You Are Awesome, Why We Are Awesome, And How We Can Help You Be Even More Awesome"). Email came in asking that some curriculum proposals be put on the docket for tomorrow's Senate meeting; I email back that these were due last Friday to be on the agenda and members will likely vote to table them since they won't have had time to review them properly. President emails back that she agrees, they move to the meeting on the 16th, so I toss them on the agenda for that future meeting. Our Special Collections librarian reports back on his hunt for named professorships requested by the Senate exec team - that was fast. Steve is also made of magic. Grab my notebook for the next meeting. Remind self to waylay Griffey with sushi at some point to show me how to use the iPad for productivity instead of just doing jigsaw puzzles.

2:00-3:00 - Meeting with my dean, the Dean of Lifelong Learning, and the Head of Reference and Instruction about distance learning. Really interesting discussion about tuition and fee structures, about trying to identify students who are wholly-online versus those who take online courses with a mix of on campus courses, in-state and out-of-state, how to identify all these nuances, implications for library services (particularly interlibrary loan and document delivery but also instruction). Leave this meeting with head full. Also - ouch, my sinus. Damn rain.

3:00-3:05 - Opened mail, which included one of my student loan statements. HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA. Okay, back to work.

3:05-3:15 This is my last day in the office until next Tuesday, and because I prefer to read things in print so I can scribble on them (my staff jokingly refer to me as Treekiller Harris), now is the time where I make a list and PRINT ALL THE THINGS. Those things include: my flight information, a book manuscript I've been invited to edit on the relationship between poetry and medicine/health, an article I'm hammering at, the papers I need to revise for a conference in May, the book proposal for an edited collection...you know what? Who am I kidding? I'm not getting anything done on the plane ride to and from California but some trashy fiction reading and reading through that manuscript. Everything else will just have to wait, this isn't a working weekend.

3:15-3:55 - Receive email from the head of the Curriculum Committee asking for more proposals to be posted for Senate approval at the meeting tomorrow; president and I note that members will not have had time to review, which is why all materials were due the Friday before the meeting. Learn from Associate Provost that the approvals have to happen for the Fall catalog to be accurate. I post the materials to the site and send out an email via the Senate's Blackboard list notifying members of the late posting and that they should review them. Emergency averted, but selfishly happy that I won't be at tomorrow's meeting to hear the groaning about the last-minute posting. Registrar emails to say thanks for the fast work. That's right--my superpower is my superfast response time. Booyah.

4:00-4:53 - Email. Accepting new meetings for next week (darn, it had looked so easy just this morning!), things to add to Senate agenda for the meeting on the 16th, webinar invitations,

4:53pm - AUGH. The petitions for the Monday meeting of the petitions committee that I will miss just got posted. I can be a good person and come in tomorrow before the flight and get that done and my vote recorded by email, or not. Sigh. So much for running errands tomorrow morning before travel. *shakes fist at sky*

4:58 - start to pack up. lament that I did not get around to cleaning my omg-absolute-disaster of an office. Ugh. And next week's schedule says I can't tackle it until Wednesday. I do some defensive calendaring, block out some time on Wednesday morning to deal with this. Augh. Ooh, my cane. I'm going to need that for traveling. Yes, definitely clean office. You know what? The dean will grab me on her way out of the building, I can tidy a little bit now.

5:14- Here she is. Dinner at a this-looks-like-shady-business Mexican place that I haven't tried yet. The waitress is sweet but gets multiple things wrong with the order. But she checks on us regularly. There are only two or three other occupied tables in the restaurant. It's nice to be able to have a night out for dinner; this is the first week I've been healthy enough to go out after work in a long time. We have a grand old time. I feel like Old Me, the Before-I-Got-This-Stupid-Arthritis Me. This is awesome.

8:00pm - Oh, crap. I still have a paper to write, and I have to pack for California. Sigh.

Library Day in the Life #libday8 Day 2

2012-02-01T10:33:00.003-05:00

*writing this a day later - I have no idea what I did up through 10am yesterday morning - probably some combination of email, paperwork, checking in with staff, etc.*

10:00-12:00 - Working the circulation desk. I'm reading and sending emails when there's a lull, but it's pretty steady with slinging laptops, study room keys, and reserve textbooks. I take two fines, which keeps me from getting too rusty at using the cash register.

12:00 - 1:30 - Lunch with the Head of Reference and Instruction. Among other things we talk about her daughters (who are growing so fast - one is prepping for college already!), about work. I let her know that my EdD advisor has asked for me to design research instruction modules for the EdD students at two stages - one for incoming students, and one for students who make it to the pre-dissertation seminar. I okay it with her so that I'm not stepping on toes, and let her know I'll likely as to pick her brain; we discuss her work in a similar project with the Nursing PhD students, the surprising research habits of students who come in with a master's degree, other fun instruction and research and library stuff. We chow on cheeseburgers. Life is good.

1:30-1:45 - Taming the email beast again; make a note that I need to check my LibGuide links to make sure everything is working, some Faculty Senate items, an update on the job search my ILL unit has near-completed from the dean. An editor I know at a publishing house says she would be interested in seeing the proposal for my next edited collection once the table of contents is firmed up. I rejoice on my social networks on the interwebs. The world seems to be in order, for a change.

1:45-4:00 - Collection development. I have $4200 to spend on the Political Science collection, and not once have I ever been caught dead not being able to spend someone else's money. I concentrate on public administration and public policy; the collection review I just completed where I touched every book in PoliSci gave ample evidence that most of our collection is from the 70s and needs pretty serious updating. I toss a few emails to our Head of Materials processing and Lord of the Collection about items that are expensive ($350) but that I think we need. I'm going to leave those off my list and see if he has enough money when we're all done with our spending to pick those up. I compare my purchase list against both our catalog of current holdings and the approval plan purchase list, thinking that it would be great if all this data was in one damn place so I didn't have to search for each item in three different platforms. Grr.

4:00-4:20 - Stephen, our handy Knower-of-All-Things-IT stops by my office to let me know he's getting a scanner set up on the second floor service desk so that staff can process reserves while stationed there; he reminds me we agreed to use a web-based file sharing thingamajig, and that Melanie in ILL may already have documentation we can hand over to reserves processors on how to use it. He also asks where exactly I wanted ILLiad installed; I ask for it on one of the front circ desk machines so that we can get circ folks trained on checking items in and renewing, as well as on a staff machine since we're adding some part time help to ILL for the rest of the semester. That seems to cover things for now, all our other techstuff seems to be working okay *curses self for thinking that* *knocks on faux wood desk in the hopes it will ward off bad tech luck*

4:20-5:00 - More email triage, sending responses to things I had flagged earlier. Briefly meddle with the library's surveymonkey account.

5:00-5:40 - Hellish traffic on the way home. I should have probably just stayed at work until 6:00 so I could have a clear drive home. Instead of grumbling, I blast "Copperhead Road." Drivers around me frown and roll up their windows.

5:40-6:20 - Home! Walk the Ottodog, feed the Ottodog, change into gym clothes. Walk Ottodog again, quickly check my personal email before heading out to a place I really don't want to go. Blugh.

6:30-7:30 Tortured by personal trainer, who is actually a pretty nice guy. He reports he was held up in the gym parking lot last night by two men with guns; I think maybe I should be at the shooting range instead of trying to buff up my arms. Trainerman Alec and I disagree on my priorities, so he punishes my triceps.

8:00 - Home. Walk Otto again, watch him gad about with his bone, decide it is too late for dinner. Hit the discussion boards for my two grad classes. Catch the end of something that may or may not be Glee - there's a lot of singing, and Dance Moms, at which point I decide my brain must be rotting and I should just go to bed. I'll write my public admin paper tomorrow night, I swear.

Library Day in the Life #libday8 Day 1

2012-01-30T19:12:00.003-05:00

6:45 - Alarm goes off. Otto the basset slinks up from against my knees puts his warmback against my chest, and lays his heavy (very heavy) head on my arm at my elbow. I obey the dog. Hit snooze until

8:00am- Groan, knowing this means I will not get my desired early start on the day. Un-groan, as my joints seem willing to move today for the first time in awhile.

9:00-9:15 - Get into the office. Check in with my day circ manager to make sure everything is on the level, sign timesheets and drop them off in the Admin office. Talk shoes with Anna, laugh at the meanface my boss is giving her monitor when she thinks no one can see her, hit up the supply closet for tape.

9:15-10:00 - Email triage. Among the important ones is one from the faculty president; as secretary I need to get the discussion board up for the full faculty to do the second reading of the proposed Bachelor of Integrated Studies degree.

10:00-10:30 - After email, into Blackboard to post the degree proposal and executive summary, set up the discussion board, and set up the voting mechanism according to the timelines detailed in our Faculty Handbook. Another email comes in as I finish setting this up about the ODT degree that has, after much drama, passed Graduate Council and Senate Exec. That program will have to be similarly posted online eventually.

10:45-12:00 - Collection development work. As liaison to the Political Science department, I collect their purchase requests and also have responsibility to develop a purchase list to fill in gaps in our collection. Hooray for getting to go shopping with Library money! I make a mental note to add more colldev time to my calendar on Tuesday and Wednesday to make sure I get done by the deadline, which is Friday. (I'm out of town on Thursday and Friday, so the real deadline for me is Wednesday.)

12:00-1:00 - Realize I forgot to bring lunch to work. Check and organize email while feeling seven shades of grumpypants. Email Wilda at Library Journal back about book reviewing, email photographer/poet friend back about the shots he's taking for the cover of my newest book. Email my staff reminding them I'll be out later this week, giving them my contact information in case there's trouble.

1:00-2:00 - I have to transcribe the minutes from the last Faculty Senate meeting so members can approve them on Thursday. I should have had them up on Friday, but last week was hellishly busy. It was a long, contentious meeting - the minutes are seven pages, single-spaced. I also post the agenda for Thursday's meeting, curriculum proposals that the body has to approve, some other documents. Yay, webmastering.

2:00-4:00 - I'm on the circ desk so my day super can represent Access Services in the tech sub-group of our Internal Library Building Committee. Traffic is steady but not awful, and while I'm out there I celebrate two of my interlibrary loan requests coming in - especially since one s the first book of a series, and books 2 and 3 arrived last week. A few of the students from the freshman seminar

4:00 - 4:10 - Laird comes back from the committee meeting to let me know I need to attend the next one, since they'll be discussing the service models for our new building. I'll have to get folks together for a supers meeting so we can discuss it and brainstorm before that meeting. Things to think about include desk staffing, runners to the floors, tech help, more. It goes on my to-do list, but it's been percolating in all of our heads for awhile.

4:10-4:20 - A quick peek at the local paper websites show that the brouhaha over grading policy stemming from an article published on Saturday about UTC now requiring students to get a B to move onto higher accounting classes is raising the public's hackles; I pass it along to the Senate Executive team, this will probably be discussed at our meeting with the Provost and Chancellor on Wednesday morning. Here's to hoping the paper misunderstood the policy and that it isn't being applied retroactively instead of for new student catalog years. Sigh.

4:20-4:45 - Making the to-do list that I should have done this morning to get myself organized for the short week. List: talk to my ILL librarian about training and our new hire, send faculty President the attendance sheet for the Thursday meeting I will miss, make some notes of things I want to make sure I bring up during my lunch with the Head of Reference & Instruction tomorrow, clean up the list of items for discussion at the Senate Exec meeting with the Provost and Chancellor, find a time when all my supers are around for a meeting to discuss service models, get an invoice together for a faculty member who lost a very expensive set of DVDs, find a restaurant for dinner with my dean on Wednesday, review the ACRL stats before that meeting on Wednesday.

An easy day, in what looks like it might be an easy week for a change. I'll take it.

Now Available: Women on Poetry: Writing, Revising, Publishing and Teaching

2012-01-21T19:54:00.004-05:00

I am thrilled to announce that Women on Poetry: Writing, Revising, Publishing and Teaching, a collection of essays by talented women poets that I helped co-edit with Carol Smallwood and Cynthia Brackett-Vincent, is ready for ordering from McFarland! (Amazon currently reads as out of stock, we're working on fixing that.)

With a foreword by inimitable sonneteer and novelist Molly Peacock, and contributions from state poets laureate, Pushcart Prize nominees and winners, professors, workshop leaders, editors, and publishers, my hope is that this collection will have something for everyone. There are chapters for busy moms, chapters on using meter, chapters on publishing, blogging, promotion, journaling, contests, self-publishing, and more. You can see the entire table of contents here.

I learned an incredible amount while working with Carol and Cynthia on this collection. I learned about the difficulties of soliciting work by email only (and have slightly more sympathy for editors who only accept hard copy submissions). I learned more about soliciting permissions for lyrics and poetry from other publishers than I could have ever hoped to know-and what I did learn leads me to grave concerns about whether or not poets understand how hard it is for someone to quote and cite their work without prohibitive cost. I learned about copyediting, the ultimate pain in the ass that MS Word can be when you are pasting in multiple documents and need everything formatted just so, and that few people follow citation instructions *grin*

All in all, it was enlightening. And we have a fantastic book as a final product!

This experience has given me the courage to go ahead and take a stab at an edited collection I've been considering since I was working on my critical MFA thesis back in 2009. And so, I've written up a CFP for Mythology and Modern Women Poets: Analysis, Reflection and Teaching. Here's hoping there are others who share my obsession --ah, I mean research and teaching interests-- in the topic!

Harvard U. Libraries, Reorganization, and Transparency: A Note for Leadership

2012-01-20T12:36:00.008-05:00

The libraryverse is a-twitter with talk of the town hall meeting about Harvard University Library's massive re-org project. Chris Bourg collected all of the commentary, sifting fact from fiction from hyperbole when #hlth was fresh (a #hlth search in Twitter will garner you lots of commentary). Tom Bruno's blog post on the facts of the meeting he attended is another must-read. Go see them now before continuing with this. It's necessary background info. I'll wait.

Reorganizations can be a scary business. I was involved in a minor organization at an ARL, my last place of work. It was teeny compared to the scale of the project Harvard is taking on. But know this: the reactions, from librarians and staff, were eerily similar. Everyone wanted to know, at the very least:

(1) Exactly what positions were being eliminated
(2) What would happen to the folks in the eliminated position
(3) How the reorg would affect everyone else in terms of reporting/employment/etc
(4) When we would know all the details so we could prepare for the change

To be honest, "Don't worry about it", "We're working on it", "Soon", and "As soon as we have something concrete" are not satisfying answers. I can only imagine how much less satisfying yesterday when Harvard made it clear that there will be voluntary and involuntary staff reductions to go along with the reorg.

I am not here to rail against change. A library system Harvard's size was going to have to change its organizational structure at some point, whether to better centralize operations, consolidate responsibilities, or simply to handle budget cuts (or lack of significant budget growth in the amount they were used to). Change is necessary for organizations (and organisms) to thrive, particularly when situated within a changing environment. Change happens, change is scary, we have to do it anyway.

But let's not pretend there are no best practices with regard to organizational change. What of involving as many as possible from the ranks in the planning process? What about transparency through the whole process? You might not get the sort of buy-in you hope, since Change is Scary, and Job Loss is terrifying, but if HU librarians and staff were blindsided at this meeting with the amount of change and the speed at which it would happen, someone on the transition team or library leadership hasn't been doing their job. A reorganization of that scale is painful, but the old adage about "ripping a Bandaid off quickly" does not apply. People need time to plan, to digest, to get over being shocked so they can then listen and then understand. And if the consultants on the transition team don't know this, and did not make this very clear to administration before going ahead with yesterday's snafu, they're not worth their weight in salt, since it's the foundation of every single org theory and change class.

In terms of the town hall meetings, (as an outsider who was not in attendance) I wonder how admin thought these meetings would be useful if there were few/no answers to the very obvious questions that were posed by librarians and staff. Perhaps "town hall meeting" itself was a poor misnomer - perhaps they should have called it what it was - an update on the reorg. A town hall meeting implies a sort of give-and-take that appears to have been missing from the meetings. A note to library leaders, admin, managers: what you call things is important. It creates a set of expectations. When those expectations are not met, you leave people confused, and sometimes angry.

And while focus has been on laying off librarians, Tom points out in his post that he feels for his staff, already working understaffed and now faced with the specter of this reorg, after a meeting with lots of scary, vague announcements and few answers to any of their questions. It is one thing to be slightly anxious about the future, but it is a terrible thing to be scared of that future in your own workplace. Scared of being laid off. Scared of being one of the folks *not* laid off and faced with providing the same level and volume of service with fewer resources.

There's got to be a better way than blindsiding people. I still cannot decide what about transparency frustrates leaders so much that they will not engage in its practice.

Is it the fear that your people will see how messy a huge undertaking like a massive reorg is? Let them see that it is messy and difficult. Handing over a major overhaul as a fait accompli, making it look like decisions were easy, is insulting to those affected by those changes. Let people see how things were agonized over, revised, and changed along the way before the decisions were made. In a situation where any answer is going to make someone upset, let them know how and why you reached the decision you did. No, it won't make people happy - but nothing will. This will at least let them relate to the process and your humanity. You lose the power of the facade of Big Library Admin Boss Who Knows All And Shall Dictate, yes - but is that really who you want to be? More importantly, is that who your people need you to be?

Is it the fear that your people will disagree, and disagree loudly? Well, they're going to do that anyway. Better they do it with as much information as possible than in the dark. People are going to disagree, and disagree loudly, at the water cooler, in their cubicles and offices, on the phone, in their blog posts, at ALA MidWinter (nice timing, by the way), and on Twitter. How much of the black hole of information they have to create through gossip and speculation is completely up to leadership. I do not understand why you would not want them to have as much information as possible, both along the way, and once decisions were made. The facts of the matter are often far less terrifying than what we can make up on our own. And we *will* make things up to fill in the blanks - it's human nature. Better to just share the information than have people make up - and spread! - erroneous speculation.

I do understand the desire to break change to people in easily digestible chunks whenever possible, but (again, as an outsider) it does not sound like that is what the town hall meeting accomplished. I do wonder what the meeting was *supposed* to accomplish, given that the questions admin should have expected were not able to be answered.

In any case, I wish the librarians and staff at Harvard luck and strength to make it through what, in the best of times, is a painful and jarring process. These are not the best of times. I also hope that the transition team/admin/leadership will come forward with more information that will help their people, in a timely manner, and in such as way as to make the HU librarians and staff feel they are valued voices - or at least adult enough to be trusted with the information that impacts their livelihoods.

In the meantime, I'm going to add "hug my dean" to my to-do list for when she returns from MidWinter.

Reading in Review: 2011

2012-01-03T21:10:00.003-05:00

Of the 98 books I remembered to log as read in 2011, the breakdown is as follows:

5 horror

5 paranormal romance

11 nonfiction

5 short story

6 scifi

14 fantasy

1 memoir

3 mystery

21 paranormal/urban fantasy

6 thriller

5 YA fantasy

5 poetry

1 parody

Definitely heavy on the braincandy reading; most of the nonfiction were education and LIS books related to my coursework and research, with a few essay collections and books on writing thrown in. favorites included Kevin Wilson's short story collection Tunneling to the Center of the Earth, discovering Cathrynne M. Valente, Peter V. Brett and Scott Sigler as new-to-me fiction writers (fantasy, fantasy and sci-fi/thriller, respectively), and Karen Marie Moning's Fever series in the paranormal/urban fantasy genre. The lowest points were Meyer's Twilight series and Janine Cross's Dragon Temple Saga series, whcih I would heartily recommend steering clear of.

For 2012 I'd like to make sure I get a lot more poetry in (I have no excuse not to, given what's on my shelves waiting to be read). There are also a number of Kindle shorts and novels that didn't make it to this list, since I'm less good about tracking what I've read electronically. 2011 I kept on a Googledoc spreadsheet; for 2012 I'm trying to keep up with my Goodreads account.

Merry reading to everyone for 2012! Whatever your reading goal is - or even whether or not you have one, try to read at least one book this year. Interesting things live between book covers.

2011 Year In Review: Obligatory End of the Year Post

2011-12-21T13:17:00.003-05:00

When I tried to cast back on 2011, I found that it was a mighty blur. The primary things I remember:

Lots of planning. We have a new library building going up that is going to cause some major changes in how we run things. The UTC libraryfolk also spent much of the year batting OCLC's WMS about, testing it, developing it (well, our IT gurus), and discussing the product.

Lots of service work. I'm a Faculty Senate member as well as Senate Secretary. I'm on the Faculty Handbook Committee, which is engaging in a complete revision of our outdated handbook. I helped out with some of the SACS onsite accreditation visits. I'm on the Petitions Committee which handles students petitioning this, that and the other. I also served as a marshal at both graduations this year.

Lots of searches. I served on the spring search committee to hire a new faculty member into the University's EdD in Learning & Leadership program. I served as chair of the Library's two most recent librarian searches (for our E-resources & Serials and Digital Integration librarian positions). This fall I served as the instructional technologist voice on the University's search committee for our new CIO. I was on the evening/weekend circ staff search committee that netted our library a great new evening circ staff specialist, Heather. And due to the well-earned retirement of one of our ILL veterans, I'm currently chairing the ILL staff position search committee. Search committees make me both sad and happy - sad because it means we likely lost a friend and colleague, happy because showing off our excellent team here to prospective new coworkers is always fun and invigorating.

Trucking through the doctorate. In 2011, I completed 27 credit hours of coursework toward the EdD. More impressive (and useful) to me than completing the coursework well (though it has been a major challenge) is that I have been honing my dissertation topic, literature review, and the instrument I intend to dissertate with along the way. (I know that 'dissertate' is not really a verb. But it should be.)

A random milestone, but major for me: as of last week, I've been back here at UTC in my current position for 20 months. This is the first time in more than 7+ years I have not moved within eighteen months. My lease is good through summer 2012. I've had the good fortune to be renewed for the 2012-13 academic year, and then it's do-or-die tenure portfolio time. In any case, it's nice to feel like I might be able to put down some small roots by being in one place for a decent stretch. I can even almost get around the city without my Garmin. Almost.

Things I'm less happy about from 2011:

Getting sick, treading water, and dialing back. I've had some nagging sickness since last summer, and this year it got significantly worse (bad) but the doctors finally think they've figured out what it is (good). Spending more time in the hospital this year than in the past 4 years combined scared me silly. (I have a bit of a hospital-phobia.) The doctors' verdict of ankylosing spondylitis with a likely side of Crohns has forced me to re-prioritize, since my bones start screaming whenever it rains, my joints are trying to fuse on me, and stress makes my innards combust. I've had to rely heavily on my staff to keep things running smoothly, which they have done with incredible skill. My biggest disappointment is that a lot of things on the department's to-do list that I had hoped would move forward have been on pause, as I tried to just get done what needed getting done, and because I was sick and out of the office (or operating under-capacity). I've had to turn down some speaking engagements I was really hoping to make while I sorted my health out, and tried learn to work smarter (instead of harder and longer).

What does all of this mean for 2012? Three things.

First, I'm hoping to get a decent start out of the gate, and come back to my staff well-rested and ready to tackle the year ahead. I want to revamp our department's to-do lists, make sure everyone is equipped to do their jobs well, and make sure I'm on the ball. Spending the first week of the Fall semester in the hospital left me reeling, feeling woefully behind, frantic, and never quite caught-up. I want to avoid that in 2012.

Second, it means less professional travel. Travel tends to be hard on me in any case, but it is worse since being sick, and so I'm going to limit my time out of the office more than I have in the past, when I was thrilled to go wherever I was accepted to speak. I will be at Computers in Libraries in March 2012 to speak and to give a post-conference workshop. I'm going to give two papers at the Qualitative and Quantitative Methods in Libraries conference in Limerick, Ireland in May 2012. Depending on how I feel and the workload of the semester, I'm hoping to choose one fall conference to attend (instead of my usual three). At this point, deciding factors for conference attendance are:

(a) relevance of conference to my work and research interests. I want to: learn something that I can take back to my library and use to help us be more productive or provide better service, feel that I'm adding something new to the conversation, or use the platform to promote best library management and leadership practices and help create an environment that fosters those middle managers we need so badly.

(b) the opportunity to speak about important things with awesome speaking partners. For instance, doing this year's ALA pre-conference with Jenica Rogers and Mary Carmen Chimato (in absentia) is probably my career highlight to date. More gigs like that could make me a happy librarian for life. Giving a solo talk is heady. Working with people I really respect to hammer out a program that will give attendees useful takeaways, on the other hand, was much more rewarding.

(c) the chance to spend quality conversation time with people (librarians and non-) who are doing good work, who will engage with difficult conversations, who interest me as both professionals and people. Computers in Libraries is a fantastic conference for libtech folks. However, I attend as much for the firepit chats with fellow libraryfolk as the conference sessions, since the "post-party" is where we start gnawing at the gristle, worrying at the harder part of the problems, and sharing solutions and coping strategies.

Third, it means making time for me. Mostly, this takes three forms:

Making time to cook well and prepare for the week. With some new dietary restrictions, I'm not as easily able to depend on quick/lazy food, and preparing food for the week when I'm too tired to cook takes time and effort. Crockpotting on weekends helps with this, but I simply need to be more mindful. On the bright side, the more I learn about processed and synthetic/unnatural foods and how food is prepared makes me want to grow my own vegetables, raise my own sheep, and never venture near anything with an ingredients label on it ever again.

Making time for fitness. I find that my joints and muscles are less likely to lock up on me (and my stomach tends to stay more settled) when I participate in a consistent exercise regimen. I've graduated from the physical therapist to a personal trainer familiar with joint problems at my local gym. I see Trainerman Alec three times a week, and am also supposed to hit the pool for water aerobics or yoga on my off-days (per both Trainerman and the rheumatologist). My rheumdoc told me to treat these as his new physical therapy prescription, so I am going to treat these sessions as medical appointments. And you know, you never blow off a doctor's appointment as easily as you can blow off just 'going to the gym.' (At least, I don't.) If this is what I need to do to make sure I stay fit and able to be my best self at work and in my free time, so be it.

Making time for family and friends. I have a habit of putting off seeing, talking to, or writing people because (choose any of the following): I am busy, because I travel for work, because I don't like to be away from the office for long or often, because I am tired, because I want to burn brightly while on the tenure track and will get around to it once I have tenure, because I didn't budget for it, because they don't have air conditioning (no, seriously), because, because, because. Those are all lousy excuses. These are the people that hold me up to the light when I'm at my lowest, show me the best sides of myself, and make me laugh on a regular basis. After seeing so many friends lose loved ones throughout 2011, I am making a conscious commitment to do a better job of visiting or otherwise reaching out to my people.

That doesn't look like too much of an insurmountable resolution list. I'm already tracking a little bit on the cooking and fitness at a separate blog. Let's see what happens.

"Being" vs. "Serving As": My Job Is Not My Self

2011-12-15T15:47:00.000-05:00

In a discussion in one of my EdD classes (Organization Theory and Development, I think), the seminar got into a discussion about how passionate professionals sometimes over-identify with their profession to the exclusions of themselves as a whole person. Talking about this phenomenon in class brought up all the problems inherent with this - in particular, that there seems to be a high incidence of burnout in non-profit workers, public administrators, and human service personnel directly linked to this strong identification of what we do with who we are.

This hit pretty close to home; I identify strongly with being a librarian. (See the phrasing? "Being" a librarian. Puts me in mind of the difference in Spanish between the two "to be" verbs, estar and ser, where estoy usually refers to a temporary condition.) When someone asks me what I do, I do not say that I participate in the actions of librarianating (though when pressed for details I start talking about managing personnel, projects and services, serving on service desks, and planning). I just say "I am a librarian." I say it the same way I say "I am a woman," or how I might respond "I am white" or "I am 32" on a demographics survey, without thought and with as much certainty of the statement as fact. I've wrapped it up into my identity, and I've worn librarianship that way since I started library school back in '05. Because librarianship is not just what I do, it is what I love, I have adopted it wholesale into my persona.

But if I lost my job (gods forbid), I could just as easily "be" a creative writing professor, or a secretary, or any number of other things. Being a librarian should not feel as all-consuming as I've let it become. It's my own fault, I blame it largely on being a graduate student for so long, with the freedoms and easy selfishness that come to someone without a family to care for - my experience trained me to essentially submerge myself in whatever it was I was studying. (With few distractions, there was no reason not to Do The Thing All The Time, especially since Doing The Thing All The Time led, by and large, to greater success.) Only by making librarianship a profession, I never really came back up for air the way I do with an academic subject once the degree is done. If it's possible to train oneself into obsessive compulsion, I may have done it.

One wise woman in class noted that one of her mentors in a high university administration position always answers the question of "What do you do?" with "I serve as [Job Title]." She said he claimed it reminded him (1) that his job was not his entire identity, (2) that a job is temporary, not a permanent facet of his personhood. He said it helped him keep a healthy perspective on the fact that this may not be what he does forever, and that while he can love his work, it should not consume him to the point that he loses everything else about himself. And while most of you are likely nodding your heads at this, thinking How very commonsensical and unremarkable, I was really struck by it.

I've been mulling this over for a few weeks, in light of some medical issues that have me parsing my professional life from my personal life more carefully as I strive to strike a balance that works for me, but allows me to remain successful as a professional. Being a librarian for all my waking hours is no longer a model that works for me. I know this. My friends know this, and have been asking me to make these changes for a long time. My boss and colleagues know this, and have recommended making these changes for a long time. Being ill is just a precipitating event forcing me to actually make the change that has been needed all along.

So now I am working on a certain separation of powers, if you will. When I am librarianating, I focus entirely on that, to make sure I am being the best librarian I can be. But I am also now a woman who needs 8 hours of sleep, to make sure that I am also a Rested and Healthy Colleen. I am a student, and when I do that I am Studious Colleen. I'm working on improving my Downtime Colleen self by taking at least one day a week and dedicating it to anything not school- or work-related. (To date this has taken the form of cooking and football-viewing on Sundays; once football season ends, I am going to attempt to develop some hand-eye coordination via Skyrim and perhaps juggling, and pick up my creative writing habit again.)

I am more than my job, even if the skills that make me good at my job leak into other areas of my life. I've even changed the most recent bios I've submitted for publications, changing "Colleen is the Head of Access Services at UTC" to "Colleen serves as the Head of Access Services at UTC." It's a small change. Nobody but me (and perhaps you, now that you know about it) will notice the difference. But it is helping me remember that I am allowed to take off my librarian hat and nurture different sides of myself, rather than spilling all my energy into my work. I've habituated myself to revolve everything around work - my friends, my conversations, my thought patterns, my free time, so it's not an easy transition. But I'm working on it.

I would like to know: what does your non-work self (or selves) look like? What do you do to maintain a healthy balance of energy? How do you - or do you at all - draw a dividing line between your work and your self?

Bitchface and Customer Service

2011-10-07T11:44:00.000-04:00

Mom: "Stop making that face."
Me: "I'm not making a face!"
Mom: "You are making a face. Stop it."
Me: "Mom, I promise I am not making a face."
Mom: "You had better get that face off before I smack it off."
Me: "I AM NOT MAKING A FACE THIS IS JUST HOW MY FACE LOOKS."

And thus the conversation that occurred on a regular basis from age 8 through...well, I was going to say 18, but it occasionally pops back up, and I'm beyond 30.

I suffer from the worst non-health-threatening affliction a public service person can have. (It's not so peachy to deal with in my regular non-work life either, but it has more repercussions in worklife.)

My name is Colleen, and I suffer from bitchface.

My face, when I am concentrating on something other than how I look to other people (like reading, or spreadsheets, or complicated conversations) falls into an unfortunate cascade of down-turned mouth and frowny-forehead that I simply refer to as bitchface. The look can be interpreted as angry. Or that I am patently unimpressed. The truth? I didn't realize you were looking at me, and I forgot to put my "public face" on.

It sounds silly, but this is something that folks who work a public service desk have to be pretty conscientious about. My usual face would probably prevent a skittish freshman from asking me for help, and give someone a perception of library service that I certainly don't want to them to have. I try to be conscious of my face during meetings with colleagues so that my default thinking face doesn't make them think I am dismissing them out of hand.

So yes, when I work either of our service desks, I'm a little more "up" than usual; I try to be conscious of how I'm working my facial muscles. Long stints on the desk make my face hurt the way it did during sorority rush, or the way it hurts after I visit my best friend after a long absence.

This came up because my instructional design class was discussing performance measurement standards, and some classmates asked me how you develop such things for public service desks. Words like "alert," "engaged," and "friendly demeanor" are a little vague for the purposes of the assignment in class, which want specific measurements. Since (once upon a time, not too long ago, but sort of far away)I had to engage in discipline with a staff member who could not curb the sourpuss while on the service desk, it's interesting to think about - and it makes me wonder how other service providing companies define the physical aspect of customer service.

I won't dictate that staff have to smile (that makes my face hurt after awhile), but defining "approachable" and "alert and engaged" behaviors is not just an empty exercise to me with this class. It's a genuine exercise in figuring out how to generate a management tool with as much clarity as possible. Even if I can't use the word "bitchface" in actual HR paperwork.

And now, I'm off to work the desk with my SparkleSelf persona.

On Learning, Library Evolution, Organizational Change, and the (Occasionally Ugly) Responsibilities of Library Management

2011-09-30T15:11:00.000-04:00

Inside Higher Ed's "Library Limbo" story, noting the backlash against layoffs at the USD library, has sparked some great conversations about professional development and management in the past few days. Positions such as inventory control official and reserves supervisor, seen as non-essential to the USD Library moving forward, were apparently done away with in favor of positions with greater technology responsibilities. People were laid off close to retirement. People were offended that one could be let go after serving a university for more than 25 years.

Required background reading, if you haven't already read them:
Gavia Libraria (The Library Loon)'s "Libraries: The Last Humane Employers"

Barbara Fister's IHE column "You are not a tinker toy: Libraries and reorganization"

Wayne Bivens-Tatum's post "Responsibility and Professional Development"

Barbara Fister's Library Journal column "What do we want? Change! When do we want it? Yesterday!"

First, I would like to note that there is a great divide in terms of skills and competencies between a position such as evening supervisor staff member and, say, a digital integration librarian. The degree requirements are vastly different (a BA desired versus an MLS or MS required), customer service position versus coding and programming skills. These are not positions for which, even with generous learning opportunities, it would be likely that a person could be moved from one to the other. The sad fact of organizations is that some positions die out in terms of necessity. While some of those skills will be transferable to other areas, some will not. To be an agile organization means making difficult decisions that may seem inhumane to certain individuals.

That inhumanity of organizational growth and change, however, should not be due to a lack of communication or failure to inform the community that such organizational changes are being considered. Nor should it translate into poor treatment of staff at any level.

My concern - and it has been a concern since I began managing in libraries - is that much as these changes seem sudden, drastic, and unexpected, had best practices been followed, they would be none of these things. This sort of change should occur gradually over time, immersed in a culture of reviewing the staffing and service needs of the library versus the existing positions. When there is a mismatch, positions should be rewritten. Training and learning opportunities to keep staff up to date and useful in an agile organization should be part of the annual evaluation and goal setting process. Failure to meet learning standards should be met with the same processes used to handle any other failure to perform the job.

And this, ladies and gentlemen, is where it all comes to a head for me. No, I do not believe that all staff everywhere would be happy to continue learning given the chance, nor do I believe that all library staff actually have the capacity to learn and change as often as we need them to. I'm afraid I've spent too much time in the management and HR trenches and have met those few percentage points that would have me disagree with Barbara Fister's statement:

Of course if learning is a requirement of the job and an employee refuses to do it or does it only under such duress that it’s more work than it’s worth to coax them to learn something new, that's a significant problem. I can imagine a situation in which such a conflict becomes so intractable that the only solution is for the staff member to leave the organization. But frankly, it’s rare for things to be that bad.

I've worked at places where not only was that not rare, it was the norm.

BUT.

That staff have been allowed to become complacent about learning *and keep their jobs* is not their fault. It's not in their own best interest in terms of staying marketable in an unstable economy. It's certainly not nice to do to their colleagues. But that it happened; that it was allowed to happen over time to the point that it was only just realized that their positions were so out of date as to be completely unneeded by the organization; that it never became a factor in their annual performance evaluations; and that what I would call the re-districting of positions within the library came as a surprise strategy of organizational growth instead of being seen as a natural evolution of the organization - that, my friends, is the fault of management and administration.

I say that with sadness, as a library manager and occasional administrator-of-things myself. Sadness, because none of this should be new; none of it should be outside the scope of the sort of organizational self-review that should happen at least annually; none of it should have been unforseen by any of the involved parties. All of the hullabaloo could have been avoided had management pushed the sort of paperwork they get paid extra to push - evaluations, performance improvement plans, position reviews and evaluations, environmental scans, needs assessments. It's boring work. Lots of people don't want to deal with it due to the paper stacks and occasionally very difficult conversations those paper stacks force us to have. But it is an important job. And we see why when something like this happens. it goes from fuzzy organizational development theory and 'management best practices' to "Oh shit I just lost my job, whafuck happened?"

I am going to quote in its entirety the comment I left on the Loon's latest post, "In Which the Elephant is Measured" (and apologies, Loon, for the length of it!:

I would posit that while it is necessary for both individual librarians and staff to learn, that they do so should be made explicitly clear in their position descriptions and annual evaluations. It is then management/admin's job to *hold them to that standard* and provide appropriate opportunities. Not doing so depresses morale (for the reasons Val notes above), but it also creates the no-win situation for incoming managers that Barbara describes in her latest Library Journal article.

As a library manager I have walked into a new position tasked with quickly changing culture and conducting honest evaluations, only to find that (1) administration wanted it done quickly (2) administration wanted it done with no hurt feelings (2) administration would not actually support enforcing the consequences when evaluations were poor and required intervention, documentation, and occasionally disciplinary action. All of the open communication in the world (which is absolutely necessary so that folks know what is going on and why) does not help when you are given the mandate to make change happen, but without changing anything.

My own call is for management and administration to step up and take responsibility (which it sounds like may have happened at USD, and this was the fallout). What should have been incremental change was instead episodic and painful. At some point, if learning has been allowed to lapse, and the institution does not have the time to allow a slow gradual reintroduction, it is going to be uncomfortable.

But aside from the calls for leadership, I would posit that this is a strictly *management* best practices issue. (Management /= leadership, though the two are not mutually exclusive.) If learning is required for a position, it needs to be documented. If it is not getting done, then that - and management's attempts to provide additional opportunities - needs to be documented, too. And then if by some awful refusal to comply or simple inability (and yes, that inability does exist in some cases), the failure to learn is still there, you have enough to go about moving people out of their jobs *fairly*, by due process, using the disciplinary measures of your institutions resulting (gods forbid) in termination.

That the idea of "humane workplace" has grown to equal "somewhere that management has to let standards lapse to keep me in my job" is squarely on management's shoulders. If management is doing their job, then anyone who loses their job (for reasons other than budgetary cuts) bears the responsibility, since they were given clear direction and opportunity. This does not make letting people go easy; but it gives staff and librarians control. *This* is what evaluation systems and job descriptions were made for. To ensure that firing is not arbitrary, but the last resort after both parties have been required to do their part.

I say this with great sympathy, being a library manager and knowing how difficult this is to do, especially when you have to implement policy from scratch over existing practices.

Not-learning on the part of staff is a learned behavior perpetuated by weak management/administration not willing to do the work to keep positions updated, to make expectations clear, to ensure high quality work, and to follow disciplinary steps where required. If there are non-learning staff members still on board, the mechanisms that were intended to motivate or move those folks is, in the end, a management mechanism. (End of my comment on the Loon's post)

And so, this blog post is yet another place where I point to the Library Management Ether and tell you to Not Do This, to Not Accept This Behavior From Your Management/Admin. I was criticized in a previous post for telling people to leave management positions where they were discouraged from doing their jobs in terms of honest evaluations, performance improvement and disciplinary action by someone who said it's not that simple - and no, as I acknowledged, it's not. But if you stay and perpetuate a culture where these things are not addressed, you get the story of USD where trying to fix it results in even more backlash.

While I happen to agree, for a number of reasons, with Wayne Biven-Tatum's post about librarians being responsible for their own continuing education, it's management's job to hold everyone accountable.

End note:
That USD's library is being criticized for making the decision "with no regard to the livelihoods of those losing their jobs" (per the IHE "Library Limbo" story) strikes me as unnecessarily mean-spirited. Having been in on similar conversations at another institution, those discussions are always difficult and gut-wreching; people are well aware that this is going to hurt, and that it will probably hurt a friend and colleague. However, libraries are not in the business of keeping people in jobs.

I'm going to say this again, since this seems to be the perception of the management, administrators, and staff of libraries where honest evaluations are mere myth. Libraries are not in the business of keeping people in jobs. We are in the business of meeting our mission of providing information to our users. And while it may seem cruel that some jobs may have to go by the wayside, that is no judgment on an individual person or their worth as a human being. It is (or should be) a data-driven decision made with an eye to keeping the organization healthy.

Jobseeker Tip 1: CV/Resume Objectives, And A Contest!

2011-07-28T15:09:00.000-04:00

**This blog post is first in a series about job search advice as discussed by my happy band of fellow library hiring managers, and is not related to any particular individual applicant from actual past, current, or future searches. All objectives included below are largely fictional, and any resemblance they may bear to actual CV objectives is the fault of the CV writer**

Let's talk about the "Objective" section on your CV or resume. (Or, I'll write, you read.)

Delete it.

No, really. It's a waste of precious page real estate, and while it offers you the opportunity to shoot yourself in the foot, it doesn't offer a similar-sized boon if you get it right. If you make it library-department and library type specific:

"Objective: To obtain a technical services position in an academic library setting"

you'll look like a fool if you forget to then tailor that line when you start applying for reference jobs and public library positions. (Don't laugh; there are too many library hiring managers who have seen this for it not to have happened a billionty times.)

On the other, hand, if you get it right, what is your payoff? You stated your objective is to get the job they've opened. But that doesn't make much sense; they know that. Because you've applied.

Of COURSE you want to:

"Obtain a reference and instruction position in a thriving academic library where I can use my teamwork and communication skills to provide user-centric services."

Nobody ever says they want to work in a complete hellhole where people hate each other, in a department second only to Mordor for its sheer evil, or in a place where they will be disrespected, underutilized and demeaned. Nobody's objective mentions they'd love to come work in an antiquated icebox where they can be punching bags for budget cuts. Nobody mentions wanting to work with folks who are terrified of change, technology, and monkeys. Nobody's objective ever says that they hate working with people and would prefer plying their skills in a me-centric workplace.

Delete your objective. Library hiring managers already KNOW your objective. It is to be hired into the position for which you have applied. We're much more interested in what you've been up to that fills the listed qualifications of the position.

If you have a CV objective, it had better be something worth reading, like

"To work in an academic library where teamwork is achieved over mass agreement on the deliciousness of bacon and its primacy over all other foods."

Or perhaps,

"To work in a library where there is often free, delicious food served at meetings (preferably cupcakes) and extremely casual (read: pajama pants) Fridays."

Contest time. Write me the best job-seeking CV objective you can think of. Make me laugh (or cry). Make hiring managers wish they could meet you and shake your hand. (No idea what the prize will be yet, but I'll think of something. A review of your CV/resume by myself and some of my manager-buddies? Prize recommendations also accepted in comments.)

Real Talk on Library Management Difficulties

2011-06-29T11:44:00.000-04:00

At an ALA 2011 emerging trends discussion group on training and retaining middle managers, an HR official noted that if a manager is doing their job and properly training and documenting, then the HR office helps in the disciplinary process, and there is no reason a manager should have any trouble.

At an ALA 2011 pre-conference on the difficult parts of management, the refusal by some library administrations and HR offices to help managers properly handle disciplinary action with documented under-performing staff was a widely acknowledged reality among participants.

I will admit that I have worked in libraries with fantastic administrations and great HR offices, weak administrations and weak HR offices, and various other combinations. Given that experience, I have to say that the experience of poor management practices at the upper levels of an organization can make the life of a middle manager hell, and it does us as a profession no good to pretend otherwise.

The rest of this post is written under the assumption that with whatever performance problem a staff member has, it has been addressed verbally with a clear direction on how they can improve, with regular follow-up and documentation of any additional training and improvement, decline, or static-ness of performance. (Essentially, I'm assuming managerial due diligence on the part of the lower-echelon manager before they go to administration or HR to initiate any discipline.)

If your administration or your HR system will not mentor you and help you with your performance management responsibilities, and especially if, after all of your development attempts, they stonewall you on the written and established processes for disciplinary action, you have two choices.

(1) You can continue as you are. You can accept that some people will simply not perform their required job duties, and work around them. You can accept that as your lot in management life, and deal with it.

(2) You can job-hunt and leave, and work someplace where you can be an effective manager.

I cannot condone the first choice. If it has been established that your administration or HR system will not help (in the words of one pre-conference attendee, "My dean says that there is only so much you can expect out of some people, so you just take what you can get"), how can you stay? Your staff will see you as ineffectual. They will resent the fact that they work hard for the same salary as the undisciplined slacker. They see you accepting that differential treatment of them when you are supposed to be their advocate. And yes, while it may not be your fault you cannot address the problem,

you staying to work for that organization and perpetuate a system of unfair treatment is entirely under your control.

I'll say that again: you staying in that situation makes you a part of the broken system, and you have to accept responsibility for your part in perpetuating that broken system. It is no longer "they" but "we" when you talk about problematic practices. And you have to own that.

If you stay in a broken system, and practice bad management because of that broken system, that makes you a bad manager.

Full stop. Whatever your intentions or personal limitations on moving.

Even worse, if you stay, what you are doing is setting your successor up for failure. How many managers have walked into departments where under-performing staff have decades of excellent performance reviews behind them? Staff will be surprised when someone new points out deficiencies, HR's hands will be tied due to long histories of someone else saying everything was fine, and the quagmire starts all over again, placing a new manager in a difficult position.

I implore you: do not reward these places with your good work.

I've said this before, both in informal management conversations and at local and national presentations when someone brings the issue up. My very firm stance on this tends to either alienate people or help them feel empowered. Yes, I know it is easier for some of us than others to find another job and relocate. Some of us have spouses, or children, or ailing family members. But you need to weigh those responsibilities against your responsibilities as a professional, against your future marketability (since places with bad management aren't usually secrets once you start asking around), and against your mental and physical health. This creates difficult choices, but it is still a choice.

There is a lot of talk about library leadership and culture change. If there is a chance you may change the organizational culture to attach more accountability for responsibilities, you can work in that arena. I would caution, however, that one person (even two, three and four people) may not be enough to change an entrenched organizational culture. As a middle manager you can often make changes in your local (departmental or unit) culture; if you are dependent on upper administration changes, be both wary of and realistic about how much cultural change will happen under people who perpetuated the broken system in the first place.

If you have done everything within your power to carry out your responsibilities, and the roadblocks you face are your own administration and human resources, exhaust your options. Then look elsewhere. Otherwise you risk becoming the problem, and that helps no one.

Real talk.

Reflections on ALA 2011

2011-06-28T16:59:00.000-04:00

I miss New Orleans already, as I prepare myself for a lunch that doesn't involve oysters, alligator sausage, fried things of any kind, daquiris, or my far-flung library colleagues. I am trying to suppress my disappointment. Before everything gets lost in the haze of back-to-work, I wanted to get down some lasting impressions:

1. New Orleans, I Heart You

I don't know what I was expecting of New Orleans, but it is a wonderful, walkable, fantastic little city with great character and outstanding food. I could barely believe the tales of craziness (I never did make it over to Bourbon Street), until the evening I was walking back to my hotel and passed a number of folks in Santa hats. And they were immediately followed by a guy fully duded up as Santa - big hat, faux beard, heavy coat and gloves...and no pants, hollering "HO HO HO!" as he stumbled down the sidewalk. And apparently that's just an everyday occurrence, because no one else even raised an eyebrow. In any case, the alligator sausage po boys, raw oysters, delicately fried seafood, and daquiri stands made me a fan, and I'm already plotting a return. Thank you, New Orleans, for being a wonderful venue.

2. Pre-Conference Success

The preconference Jenica Rogers and I led on the tough parts of management went over very, very well. Not only did it sell out, but everyone came back from lunch for the second part. The participants seemed very engaged, asked some great and difficult questions, and it appeared to hearten everyone that they as managers are not alone as they navigate difficult situations. Many filled out our evaluation form, which will help us improve the preconference for the future. My dean noted that she heard some of our participants talking abotu the session the next day on a bus ride and they appeared to have been very happy with the session. (I will note that the preconferences ran into the opening session, which really should be avoided in future programming.)

3. Scalability/Generalizability of Presentations

I was struck by how much the sessions I attended focused on "how we done good" with very little emphasis on scalability or generalizing it to how other libraries may accomplish things with what the presenters learned. If "how you done good" is not something I can draw from and bring back to my own workplace, it's not terribly useful to me. I know my proposals through ACRL and LLAMA had to have a "three outcomes/takeaways for attendees" section on it; it would be nice if everyone had to do something similar to ensure that those takeaways are actually useful. (I'm talking to you, program planning committees!) I just spoke to my dean as she breezed past the circulation desk, and it turns out that many of us (a horde of us from UTC attended) had the same issue - not a whole lot we could actually bring back and implement. Whether that's because we're on the furthest edge of good already, instead of due to lackluster programming, I don't know.

4. Frankness and Honesty

Another thing I was struck by was the effect frankness and honesty has on the lifespan and usefulness of a discussion. A preconference on library management issues where we worked very hard to be frank and talk about such taboo things as how performance management systems are sometimes broken generated so much discussion that instead of the scheduled 9am to 4:30pm time frame, many attendees stayed until 5pm to talk informally about their own workplaces, issues, and solution - choosing to miss the 4:00pm opening session to do so. A two-hour interest group meeting on a similar management topic, however, ended nearly forty minutes early due to lack of discussion. I can't help but wonder if statements during the interest group meeting such as "these conflicts resolve themselves," and "if you follow HR procedures, that shouldn't be a problem" had a chilling effect on the conversation, since it was obvious that no one wanted to address the flip side of everything working well.

If we're not going to be very (perhaps brutally) honest in our discussions about issues in the profession, I don't see what the use of such discussion forums. Towing the party line and pretending problems don't exist we can do from home; no need to have people travel halfway across the country for that.

5. Can "Big Tent Librarianship" Philosophy Go Too Far?

Proposing a panel on library management for Annual 2012, I was encouraged to include public librarians as well as the academic librarians I had planned to have participate. I had initially restricted it because I know that as much as we are all librarians, we do operate under different strictures. I understand the desire to make such a panel as broadly popular as possible, so I agreed to alter it. but then someone noted that "Academic librarians already have ACRL, you know." Assuming all academic librarians who would be interested in a topic would have gotten it at ACRL is the same as assuming all public librarians hit their conference - give funding, it's probably an erroneous assumption, and I found it a very disturbing one. I do not want programs at ALA to be chosen or rejected with the attitude of "If you can get it somewhere else, get it there and not here." That's the case for nearly every topic, from IT to reference issues. Also, ignoring the fact that there are indeed differences between the types of librarianship - and not recognizing that a panel that can go in-depth into important issues in one type of library does not give it less value than a broader panel that can address many different topics shallowly - is not helpful.

6. Identity Crises

In LITA circles, there was discussion of the cancellation of BIGWIG, and much discussion of the Emerging Leaders' SWOT analysis of LITA which demonstrated a need for a clear mission statement. More than one person asked why ALA needs a division devoted to technology. I'll be interested to see how these discussions play out over the course of the next few months, particularly since I'm on the LITA program planning committee. I don't know that LITA is the only division with this issue, really; I attended some LLAMA meetings and felt distinctly out of place among the very-much-older crowd who didn't take well to any suggestions for changes, bringing in younger/newer managers, or generally making LLAMA much more useful in members' day to day lives. My dean also noted that what I will call LLAMA-lack was brought up in various different venues in New Orleans. A shame, because people are dying for good programming and guidance when it comes to management. Tons of stuff on the idea of leadership, and not a whole lot on management. Makes you wonder about who is going to actually get things done and how while everyone else is pie-in-the-sky-ing it.

7. Personality vs. Message

Interestingly, this is the first conference where I ran up against a situation where some folks took issue not with *what* was said, but *how* it was said, and said as much in their program evaluations. Later in the conference while pitching a program, those same folks happened to be in the room and asked that the *who* that had said it be stricken from future speaking proposals. Which was fascinating, since while three people took issue with the (occasionally informal) language used, 49 people reported that they found the conversation stimulating and useful. But the three unhappy ones are involved in program planning; everyone else was "just" an attendee. Guess whose opinion matters more? If shaking discussions up with blunt honesty is considered 'unprofessional,' I understand perhaps why that division's programming - and participation - is so lackluster.

8. On the "Doing Stuff" Style of Committee Work
I've been largely unhappy with my committee assignments in ALA to date, either because the committees were inactive, because the committees made random assignments without regard for skill requirements, or other mismatches. However, I'm now on the Program Planning Committee for LITA, and the idea that at the end of our work we'll have a finished product to point at and get feedback on is very satisfying to me. Plus, Abigail is our committee chair, so an awesome outcome is practically predetermined.

9. Meating Friends

Of course, one of the best things about large library conferences is that I get to see my many library folks who usually live in my computer. That we not only got to spend some great time together with much laughter, but do it with fantastic food, was a lovely way to spend my non-working parts of ALA!

Library Managers as Triathletes of the Mind? Meaghen's Wisdom for Librarians

2011-06-22T11:44:00.000-04:00

Meaghen Ann Harris, award-winning athlete

I'm putting the finishing touches on my slides for ALA, where I'll be presenting the LLAMA preconference "The Tough Stuff: Leadership, Change, & Performance Management for Library Managers" with the incredibly wise Jenica Rogers. This past weekend I was trying to find a theme to run through my portion of the talk on managing change. In a fit of pique and laziness, I polled Facebook, and my sister Meaghen noted that triathlons were a pretty good metaphor. She noted that triathletes have to swim to T1 (transition #1), tear off their wet suits, put on bike shoes and helmet, and cycle to T2 (transition #2), where they "drop off bike, tear off helmet, throw on some kicks and run...to the FINISH. Manage the change, Colleen. Manage the change."

My little sister is wise. (And a kickass athlete to boot, regularly taking 1st, 2nd and 3rd in her age group, while I cheer her on from under my covers and half a country away.) But Meaghen is right - triathletes manage not just their training, but issues of endurance and skill and training and awkward transitions. That sounds pretty much like library management to me. The next message she sent me via Facebook struck me right between the eyes:

“You always spend the most time on your bike. So it's a very important part of training. Swimming is the shortest part of the race (time and distance wise) but it takes skill and technique--- like- I can bust my ass to be a better runner/biker, but it doesnt work that way with swimming- if you try to swim faster by working harder you just end up thrashing through the water and looking stupid. It takes time to become a better swimmer (my current dilemma- because I want to be good NOW). Some people are JUST good swimmers- I like them- because I end up passing them on the bike and the run.”

Hmmm. Matching this up to library management issues, I see a lot of parallels. Where we spend the most of our time is an important part of our work (though perhaps we're not as well trained in it as we should be), managing the day to day aspects of our part of the library, the regular small changes that we absorb and move through with regularity. What is the shortest part of our management race/life? Maybe dealing with what I would call "catastrophic change" - things that happen rarely but are paradigm-changing. Like Meaghen mentions about swimming, I don't know that it is something we can do by working harder -- mostly, the folks I see who deal well with this are the library managers who work smarter, and who have gone through a few of these experiences and streamlined their responses. But if the only skill set a library manager has honed is the one necessary to deal with the huge, catastrophic changes, and they're not prepared to handle the more quotidian long-haul issues, they're not really prepared to hit any sort of finish line or goal with their organization.

Jenica notes in a recent blog post that the interest in learning how to manage - and how to manage better - is alive and well within librarians. My sister joined a team with a coach, and they support each other. I've found what Jenica might term my tribe of management peers largely through the luck of having great mentors, latching onto folks I want to talk to at conferences, and deciding to craft my speaking proposals around something I feel strongly about. I keep coming back to "[I]f you try to swim faster by working harder you just end up thrashing through the water and looking stupid."

Where are we working harder when we should be honing skill and technique instead? How (if at all) are MLS programs useful as a "training program" for library mangers? Should we instead be focusing on things like the TRLN Management Academy? I've asked before and I'll ask again, given the success of ACRL's Immersion for instruction librarians, why is there no Immersion for library managers until they get to the director level and can attend the ACRL/Harvard Leadership Institute? Why do we think we can develop library managers - mental athletes - by simply hoping they'll show up at the starting blocks, fully trained and ready to go?

These are the thoughts bouncing around in my head as I make my final preparations before heading to New Orleans tomorrow. Jenica and I will get to spend the day with forty-nine library managers on Friday who hail from academic, public, and special libraries, and I can't wait to hear what, how, and why they're doing at their own libraries in terms of management and leadership.

Disclaimer (for this blog post and for my slide deck):

I am not a triathlete. But my sister is. Take my advice about managing; take her advice about athleting.

The Dissertation Problem and ProQuest's "Legitimacy" Lie

2011-06-13T12:26:00.001-04:00

I located a great dissertation that I'll have to cite in my literature review for my own dissertation-in-the-making. While finding it thrilled me, it also completely crapped on my parade. The dissertation is not interlibrary-loanable, since the degree-granting institution has the only paper copy. And to get a pdf copy of the work from ProQuest? Will cost me $37.00.

I am now looking at this in light of comments my advisor, who is teaching one of my doctoral classes this summer, made. He said to a group of us who were talking about the dissertation in a discussion board that the dissertation is essentially a dead end research exercise - nobody reads them when you're through with writing the damned thing, it just provides a platform for your future research agenda.

Well, HARRUMPH, doc.

*I* read them. The useful-to-me ones, anyway. That is, if I can get access to them. The problem - as it always is - is access. How on earth is a dissertation supposed to be cited by others when access to it is so heavily restricted? It makes me wonder how much research is lacking because of the prohibitive cost of getting access to the research. It also makes me gnash my teeth that institutions awarding doctorates aren't fighting for the right to keep their students' work freely available in their own catalogs in digital format...even though digital format is how more and more graduate schools are accepting their theses and dissertations from students.

What really got me hot, though, was the phrasing on ProQuest's page for authors on why they should choose to publish their thesis or dissertation with ProQuest. (If it's even a choice - many graduate schools actually require this of their students.) On ProQuest's "Why Publish With Us" page for authors, they state:
"Publishing your dissertation or thesis with UMI provides you with a legitimate citation for your curriculum vitae and for other scholars who refer to your work. ProQuest's dissertation research tools have been the primary sources used to cite published dissertations and theses for decades."

Actually, having the school accept my dissertation as acceptable for the awarding of the degree provides me with a legitimate citation. Per Purdue Owl, in APA you would cite it as: Lastname, F. N. (Year). Title of dissertation. (Unpublished doctoral dissertation). Name of Institution, Location. ProQuest doesn't legitimize anything. If I find it in a database, I have to note the database and accession number, but there's no more - or less - legitimacy granted than if I had a paper copy in hand, or found it through the University's repository as a .pdf file.

I wonder how many students finishing their theses and dissertations are actually taken in by the legitimacy argument, and how many are just snowed under by the giant small-print forms they have to sign granting UMI? ProQuest the right to their hard work. Ah, well. I suppose that'll just be practice for when they sign away all of the rights to to their other research once they want it published in a journal, right?

/stabbity

Come Work at the Library We Love!

2011-06-06T18:03:00.001-04:00

Want to come work with a fantastic team of librarian that includes @griffey, @vacairns, @librarianwilk, @caitlinshanley? Well, you're in luck!

At our own University of Tennessee at Chattanooga Lupton Library, we're hiring in an Electronic Resources & Serials Librarian and a Digital Integration Librarian. We've got the postings and a comparison of the requirements and qualifications for each position available here. Have a talented buddy you want to work with? Apply as a team! We'll look forward to seeing you in the pool -- remember, we start reviewing applications July 5th!

"You Shouldn't Call Here", Or, How To Lose A Customer

2011-06-06T11:34:00.001-04:00

Just had another experience that reminded me of the importance of putting ourselves in our patron's shoes and making life as easy as possible, even if your university or library policies are a bit convoluted.

I called a medical specialist's office to see why I still did not have an appointment, five weeks after my doctor faxed my records and called to make the appointment. The conversation went something like this:

Me: "Hi! I'm just calling to follow up and see what I can do to expedite getting an appointment. I know you likely don't have anything open for months, I just want to get on your calendar. My doctor's office faxed my information and called five weeks ago, but I haven't heard anything back."
Receptionist: "Your doc office has to call and set it up."
Me: "They did. You said you were swamped and would get back to them. Your office hasn't."
Receptionist: "No, we always make the appointment when they call."
Me: "They've called your office weekly for 5 weeks to no avail. My nurse calls me to give me a report."
Receptionist: "That's not true, because it's not our policy."
Me: "Okay, I'm not sure where things went wrong. You have my file. My doc's office has called. Can you just give me a time slot?"
Receptionist: "No, your doc office has to call, and we give it to them, and they give it to you. You shouldn't call here; we can't help you."

She never even took my name.

I hung up frustrated and annoyed that my care has been delayed because of someone's failure to play ring-around-the-rosie phone tag. So, my doctor's office has to call you, and then they have to call me, even though you already have my file, know I'm a valid patient, and I'm already on the phone with you.

Frustration. Right now, I see this in academic library terms as "Well, you see, the copiers in the library aren't really the Library's; they belong to the Copy Office. And the Copy Office is actually located across campus. And you have to deliver them a paper form to get a $.10 refund for the copy that the machine mangled. And then you will be able to print the one page memo that is due in fifteen minutes. Here, let me get you a map so you know where to go, because we can't help you."

This is not good customer service. It is an explanation, and perhaps a helpful one in case this occurs again. But in the moment that the student needs one single copy/printout/whatever, does it really hurt us so much to make the damned copy ourselves? It costs us a piece of paper, a little ink, some extra flexing of decision-making muscle, and earns our user's gratitude and goodwill in return.

Telling me not to call the specialist's office, and that they can't help me...well, I'll tell you this: if you can't help me with what should be the easy part of just getting on the calendar, how the hell am I going to trust you with my medical care and records? Could you imagine if "You shouldn't call here; we can't help you" was standard customer service fare?

Had the receptionist sympathized with me, but noted the call-circle requirements were somehow medically necessary, I would have been *ecstatic* had she taken the initiative to call my doc's office, straighten whatever it is out and get me on the calendar. Instead, I was left with the feeling that the office was unhelpful at best, and rude at worst. Given that I run what is essentially a customer service department, I was affronted. I'll guiltily admit had a typical patron-who-had-a-bad-experience response: I wrote negative reviews of my experience and posted them wherever Google was collecting and publishing reviews of local doctor's offices. Turns out I'm not the only one who had this experience.

I called the only other specialist in the field in town, and had an extremely pleasant encounter with a receptionist that gave me a step-by-step explanation of how to get my doctor's office to get me in as quickly as possible. She took my name and said when the call came in, she would put me on the cancellation list immediately to get me in sooner. She invited me to call again if I had any other questions. I get the feeling this office will be a much better fit for me. I hope the doctor is as helpful as his office staff. I hope he appreciates the letter I've drafted commending him for hiring such warm, friendly, and helpful staff.

Anniversaries Galore: 10, 5, and 1 year

2011-06-05T12:07:00.000-04:00

In the past month, I’ve had a birthday, a ten-year anniversary of my college graduation, a one-year anniversary of being in my latest position, and next month will be the five-year anniversary of getting my MLS.

In the ten years since graduating college, I’ve held 10 jobs, which included:

Manager of Dunkin’ Donuts
Research Assistant at Emory University
Staff at Coldstone Creamery
Manager of a corporate technology sales team at CompUSA<
Overnight supervisor of the University of Kentucky’s Access Services
Second shift Reference and Instruction staff at the University of Kentucky
Graduate Admissions Officer at SUNY StonyBrook’s Graduate School
Reference & Instruction Librarian at UTC
Assistant Head of Access & Delivery Services at the NCSU Libraries
Head of Access Services at UTC

Those last five positions were post-MLS. In the five years since I earned my MLS, I’ve worked in Kentucky, New York, Tennessee, North Carolina, and am now back in Tennessee. I’ve been lucky enough to be able to travel and present on library issues across the country, including North Carolina, Washington D.C., Kentucky, Georgia, Missouri, California, and soon Louisiana – and the professional friendships I’ve made and the librarians I’ve met have influenced me greatly. I surprised myself by leaving a reference and instruction job I loved – LOVED – to try my hand at some of the efficiency, management, and process issues in access services. (That was a move I had sworn I would never make, but that’s a whole ‘nother post.) My shift in librarianship from reference to access hasn’t lowered my interest in reference and instruction so much as it has really increased my interest in library administration and management issues.

Looking back at all of this, I see strengths and weaknesses. I appreciate the skill development. I know the CV that shows that 18 months tends to be my make or break point for any position may make folks look twice, though I’ve been both (1) lucky enough and (2) able to explain it well enough that it has not held me back in my career. I’ve found management to be a hard row to hoe sometimes, trying to figure out motivation, performance management, communication, and other issues that are part and parcel of that side of the job. I’ve helped staff move on to bigger and better things; I’ve also been through the grievance process after terminations. I constantly rediscover how difficult it is to manage and coach people who all have their own motivations, quirks, foibles, personal lives, tragedies, skill sets, initiative levels, and ideas about what makes good customer service. Occasionally I dream about having a job where I am responsible for only my own work, and not that of a disparate group of individuals. Mostly, I enjoy the challenge of trying to move everybody’s energy in the same direction. It helps that I have a great staff who feel a real ownership of the library and connection to our users; without my staff, this job would be no fun at all and I would not last long.

This year in particular, I’ve been dealing with some health issues that have forced me to be better about prioritizing my time. I am working on making a shift to focus largely on my home library (we’re dynamic and flexible and undergoing a huge amount of change between our ILS migration, new building, and reiterative organizational changes) and on my doctoral studies (which are leading to more publications but require time for reading and research writing). I plan to throttle back on my usually-hectic travel and presentation schedule. The throttling is gradual (I’ll be at ALA, Brick & Click, and Access Services through the end of the year), and I hate the idea of seeing far-flung colleagues less. On the other hand, I’m realizing some more realistic limitations on my energies, and I want to make sure my library gets the best of me. I also want to make space for more teaching opportunities, and I can’t do that the way my professional life is currently structured. This fall I’ll be teaching my first undergraduate course: a freshman seminar titled “Poetry and Myth-making.” I have also been invited to teach upper-level undergraduate courses in both the Political Science, English, and Women’s Studies departments. Though I’m not in reference and instruction anymore, teaching is one of the core reasons I joined the library profession, and I have the good fortune of a Dean who supports my wanting to keep a toe in the classroom – as long as I can do it without impacting my library work and without overextending myself.

Not quite five years out of the MLS, I head my own department full of great people – not something I would have predicted when I got the MLS, figuring it would take me 10-15 years to get to this point. I work at a library where all of us largely agree on our mission and vision, at a University experiencing interesting growth in terms of both enrollment and philosophy. I have wonderful mentors from coming up through librarianship who are happy to offer advice or a cheeseburger (or sometimes both). I have a great extended network of librarians in all areas who don’t mind my picking their brains for ideas, solutions, and general feedback.

All in all, I can look back on the five years since my MLS and be satisfied – if exhausted – by what I have accomplished. Not all of it was fun, and the road has been peppered by personal triumphs and minor tragedies, but on balance, I’m proud of what I have made and the career I've built. I can also say that one of the best decisions since graduating college ten years ago was to change direction and make librarianship my career.

Valuing Librarian Work: McMaster is Not The Only Model

2011-04-10T01:58:00.000-04:00

By all accounts, Jeff Trzeciak at McMaster University appears to have jumped on the Taiga Train and is ringing in the end of the age of librarians in libraries. Jenica has a fantastic post detailing the myriad ways Trzeciak is undermining librarianship.

Mita goes even further on her New Jack Librarian Blog, discussing the implications of librarians being faculty-but-not-really, outsourcing information science work to vendors who now control and the library being a cost center maintained only by the good will of our communities. These are slightly longer term implications (though not, as Mita points out, for all three Mt. Hood full time faculty librarians, who were given pink slips).

A common thread here seems to be that administrators feel undergraduates will garner research skills on their own, somehow, without the benefit of librarians, despite the literature which demonstrates that such skills are not taught by the teaching faculty, who assume that librarians will take care of that, and despite the literature which demonstrates a strong correlation between library funding and number of full time librarians, and student achievement outcomes. Maybe McMaster's instruction numbers are declining because the Canadian students are just that awesome right out of the box. Or maybe it's because there are fewer librarians around to give instruction.

Regarding Trzeciak's "Likely to come out of IT, including audio/video production" piece of his slide - well, don't you just know, there are some dynamite librarians coming out with just those skills - and the ability to teach folks how to do advanced creation and editing in layman's terms. The librarians with these skills would probably also applaud Trzeciak for his ability to sit through an hour-long screencast (!) as opposed to a live-instructor session, where individual questions and confusions can be addressed.

This week we've been bombarded with tales of the librarianless library. Let me tell you about another kind of library. I won't call it the librarian-centered library, because the focus is actually on student needs, but perhaps the librarian-leveraged library.

Mine is a library where we are taking full advantage of new library technologies, as we:

-- implement OCLC's WMS system, which appears as though it will save us an incredible amount of time in materials processing

-- implement best practices and streamlined workflows for interlibrary loan

-- expand existing services and implement new services based on demand

In fact, with automated systems increasingly doing the rote work that library staff used to do, this has opened up new opportunities in our library for librarians. Automating routine processes frees human resources to do more of the work that requires creativity and critical thinking - two librarian strengths.

Unlike the McMaster model where librarians have been replaced at service desks, the more we advertise that our service desks are staffed by real, live research-expert librarians, the more excited our students and faculty become. The more our instruction librarians impress the faculty with their engagement, enthusiasm, and talent, the more sessions they are asked to teach, until our large R&I department is at capacity for the number of classes they teach each week of the semester, with increased interest from faculty teaching upper-level undergraduate and graduate courses a happy dilemma for us.

And we manage to balance this with our own activities and scholarship off-campus as well. Our Spring newsletter highlights that ten of our sixteen librarians - including our dean - are involved in presenting, publishing, contributing to research guides and instructional video databases, writing and earning grants, and keynoting library conferences. And those were just the folks who remembered to reply to the email solicitation for information!

So, Mr. Trzeciak, I want to add to the cacophony of voices reminding the world that your path is not the only path. That your vision for your library is not our vision for our libraries. That your disdain for the work, passion, and skill of librarians to be a part of the sea change of library engagement with the university is a mismatch for our own optimism and enthusiasm over the possibilities for how many ways we can contribute in this, and the future, information environment.

At my own library, the more quality service we provide our users with, the more they want us. Facing the happy-sad situation where one of my staff members left for a fantastic new job, and one of our awesome librarians is heading to an awesome new job, we're looking at how this could possibly change our current structure. And instead of banking the cash and leaving us short of needed expertise, or just going ahead and filling the slots as a staff position and a librarian position, the possibility of combining and breaking apart the lines and getting TWO librarians is a non-trivial option on the table.

That's right. Increasing the number of librarians. Because we are so damned good at our work, that our university administration, our library dean, our faculty, and our students challenge us to be more, and to be better. And if that means we need more librarians to make that happen, and we can creatively figure out how to make that happen within budget, well then, we will.

Because that's what we do. We make things happen. We come up with creative solutions. And we fill the gaps that PhDs can't - more administrators should read up on the literature about the research skills of PhDs. I've got a literature review article forthcoming that provides quite a bit of evidence that our faculty, much as I love them, don't know quite as much about research skills as we assume they do. At my library we knew that anecdotally, because so many of our faculty come to our nifty research workshops targeted at showing faculty how they can leverage things like auto-alerts and RSS feeds for their own research. We know it because our librarians talk about what's going on at the reference desk, including noting what our faculty are asking for help with, and noting when the wording of an assignment is leading students astray, and we help faculty redesign it so students are better directed to the proper resources. We know it because our faculty are begging us to become involved in populating their courseware with research aids.

All with our 16 librarians and 12 staff to serve our almost-11,000 FTE constituents. And we're hoping to eventually make the ratio even more librarian-heavy -- not because we want to make librarians look important/needed/sexy, but because we have that much work to do. Because we have not exhausted developing the services our community needs. Because our librarians demonstrate their value every day, and we have some great ideas we would love to implement, but our current librarians are already full-up on the awesome meter.

Meeting and exceeding needs and expectations. With librarians.

The mind boggles.

I'll admit, I give a healthy dose of side-eye to any library that feels it can do without the higher-level work and creative energy of librarians. Computers - incredible as they are - can only do so much. Non-librarians may be good at their part of the world, but developing a library staffed by people without a broad understanding of information organization and theory, without a sense of the bigger picture of how the myriad pieces of a library work together, without any focus on the needs of your undergraduates who will become your graduate students and eventual faculty, is terribly short-sighted.

I don't disagree with Mr. Trzeciak's call for systemic change - quite the contrary. But I suppose I see librarians as integral to creating and maintaining that change while increasing the quality of our contributions - not standing in the way of it.

I don't know whose vision will be more widespread over the long-term, but I'm happy to be on this side of my library's walls, beside my colleagues and our students, while we wait to find out.

Library Administration: Necessary Evil or Necessary Advocate?

2011-04-04T15:14:00.000-04:00

Poking my nosy nose into a mild kerfluffle between Jenica26 and @campbell_b, I landed smack in the middle of the greater debate on the evils of Administration. I jokingly (sort of) suggested that administration might be more appreciated if there were a wide walk-out, and library staff were left to live without the work administrators do.

Note: I don't take issue with folks who complain about bad administrators. I've known excellent ones, and I try to be a good mid-level manager myself, but I have been at the mercy of awful administrations, and there's little else that can make your professional life a living hell. I don't deny the existence of bad administrators.

What I do take issue with is the idea that library administration do nothing to add value to the library or to librarians' work-lives. Per Bryan's tweet to Jenica & me, "Walkout week? How about a few months? Staff will flail, adjust, move on. Try it. Maybe an innovation we need"

I don't doubt it will cause innovation - slack will be picked up, and people will try to figure out what needs doing and how. We're versatile creatures. What I do doubt is that the staff will be pleased about what gets added to their plates. In terms of academic libraries, the meetings and negotiations with university administrators-that-be to battle for funding dollars, providing oversight and leadership regarding the direction of the library - this is what a good library administrator does. A good administrator facilitates things so that the library staff can concentrate on their jobs.

How many reference and instruction librarians would be happy about leaving the desk and classroom to do more paperwork, have those negotiation meetings, pore over the budget, provide broader contexts for decision-making, and the various other non-patron-contact work that gets done in administrative chairs? Even Jenica notes that the more her plate gets filled with administrative work, the more she has to actively carve out space for librarian-like work. At a recent management council meeting, my own dean (who has developed an organizational culture I would be loathe to leave, and whcih I wish on everyone) celebrated that our University recognizes the good our library is doing - and lamented the necessary consequence that the impact of this is to increase her administrative responsibilities whcih pulls her further from the librarianship practice she loved.

At a certain point, and particularly as the library grows in size, services, and constituents, administrative duties begin to eclipse what we think of as traditional librarianship roles. And while some libraries have this to a lesser extent than others (based, I would posit, largely on size of institution, mission, and engagement level), I don't think it is a situation that can be entirely avoided. And so yes, library staff may adapt to having no administrators, and the pain wouldn't show in the short term - where the hurt comes in is over time with lack of leadership, lack of organizational clarity, lack of wider context for decision-making, and the like. Where the hurt comes in in the longer term is that all of the librarians who currently sing a song of never wanting to be management would be forced to take on those responsibilities, taking them away from the work they love and prefer.

Unhappy with management/administration? Become management and change it from the inside. Leave places with bad management, and make it clear why you are leaving - don't reward them with your hard work. (If enough people did this, such places would be forced to change. I believe this.) Talk to administrators and find out exactly what they do, how they spend their time, and how they facilitate the library's work.

Truly, do you know what your administrators do? Due to our transparent culture, I know that my dean's time is largely taken up by meetings with the Provost about budgetary and staffing issues; meeting with student development about some problem patrons and making policies more user-friendly; preparing materials to speak to the full faculty and the Faculty Senate about ongoing projects including the library's current collection review project; attending and leading library committee meetings such as IT Council, Management Council, and the electronic resources committee, among others; monthly meetings with department heads to ensure we are on track with our own projects and have the resources we need to accomplish them; chairing the campus-wide IT task force which is looking at revamping the current campus IT organization and infrastructure; attending state-wide (TennShare) and system-wide (UT/TBR) meetings around the state, where she provides input on our behalf on initiatives such as a possible courier service and more resource sharing and price-sharing agreements between UT-system libraries; being on the search committee for a new dean of the Graduate School; negotiating to keep a staff line or to convert it into graduate assistantships instead of losing it completely; meeting regularly with the architect and campus regulatory folks about our new building, in addition to the biweekly internal library building committee meetings; gathering and distributing data for the annual report, IPEDS, and for the accrediting reports for the individual department; attending after-hours university functions to represent the library to administrators, donors, students, and bigwigs; acting as our subject liaison and collection developer for Film Studies and for Library Science; going over budget figures regularly with our head of materials processing to see how money is spent, from whcih accounts, and by various university account breakdowns; working the circulation desk two weekends a semester; and much more.

That list only covers this semester, and I am certain I've left any number of time-consuming issues Theresa tackles regularly off the list. She is a more active dean than most in terms of also doing librarians-level duties such as liaison/collection development work and working the service desks. I will say that the reason I can concentrate on what needs doing in my own department in terms of staff development, training, re-imagining workflows and innovating in services is because she does all of that. Even spreading her to-do list around the fifteen librarians we have wouldn't be enough to cover it all, given that we are all active professionals both in terms of our librarianship at home and in the wider profession.

And so, I was thinking. If my dean walked out, would I be able to "flail, adjust, move on"? Flail, certainly. I work with fantastic people, so I have no doubt we would adjust to absorb those responsibilities. But it would have a devastating impact on our services, and I have no doubt that our staff would feel the pressure of that new time crunch. My colleagues and I pride ourselves on being advocates for resources and facilitators of improved workflows. And yep, I would indeed probably move on...in terms of leaving my position for one where I could actually do my job effectively.

Unless most library staff have significant problems with having too much time and not enough to do -- which I find unlikely in the current "we do less with more" environment -- I don't know that such a redistribution would be beneficial.

Perhaps there are some administrators folks might welcome doing an administrative walk-out. But I wouldn't assume that administrative duties at large are unnecessary to the running of a library. (I would also say that if your administrator could walk away for a few months and you wouldn't notice, think seriously about getting a new administrator.) A good administrator paves the way for librarians to do - and concentrate on - excellent work, as much as a bad one hinders it.

So tell me, how would you feel about, say, a four-month library administrator walk-out? Would it impact you much? Would you toss confetti, or go into panic mode? If you're feeling free enough to air it in public, say something in the comments.

Today's Nerd Moment Brought To You By: The Dual-Wielding Librarian

2011-02-24T11:47:00.000-05:00

My invisible internet buddy Derrick mentioned on Friendfeed today that he loves being able to log into a library's database from home and have all that information at his fingertips.

It's true - such power for those who know it's there!

And to me, the best thing, the most fabbalous, the High Mount Holy of Nerd-dom (which I have visited once or twice, and is beautiful) - is when you leave one library to work at a new one, and your old place hasnt turned off your database access permissions yet, and you have *two* sets of library databases your inquiring little fingers can flip through.

It's like dual-wielding. The Horde falls before my vastly superior information access! Bliss for the inquiring mind! ACCESS SUPERPOWERS!!

Ahem. *straightens hair* As you were.

Library Leadership: Trait Development, the Gender Continuum, and Our Responsibility to Grow Self-Aware Leaders

2011-02-14T16:49:00.000-05:00

I just completed a leadership analysis paper for one of the classes I am taking on Learning & Leadership for my EdD in same. The primary class text is Leaders and the Leadership Process: Readings, Self-assessments and Applications (Pierce & Newstrom, 2008), and it provides a great exploration of the different theories relating to, and dimensions of, leadership. the text combines syntheses of the literature with representative scholarly articles addressing various facets of leadership - I highly recommend it.

There are some interesting discussions going on over at the LSW Friendfeed thread about library leadership and over at Andy's blog post addressing library measures of competence.

I've got another post brewing about my own self-assessments and what I think they mean, and what I need to improve on my own tendencies, but for this post, I'm thinking about the feminine-masculine leadership trait continuum. Masculine traits include being aggressive, autocratic, task-oriented and goal-oriented, and a focus on "getting the job done," whereas more feminine leadership traits include advocating participative decision-making, relationship building, connectivity, yielding, and "affective expression for the welfare of others." [Gershenoff & Foti, "Leader Emergence and Gender Roles in All-Female Groups," Small Group Research 34.2, 2003].

I find it interesting to note largely that successful leaders in the business world tend to possess more masculine traits, or what is referred to as "androgynous" traits - the ability to adapt and blend feminine and masculine leadership traits according to the situation.

In my experience as a staff member, a librarian, and most recently a manager, I have found libraries to be largely characterized by feminine traits. I dont know if this represents our more interconnected units and tendency toward group work teams, or if it is largely a result of the profession being dominated by females for so long. What I have seen, though, is an extreme discomfort with task-oriented leadership, an inability of leaders possessing more masculine traits (and I'm one of these) to adapt and become more androgenous in their leadership traits, and a severe dependence on participative decision-making and concern for the welfare of others to the point that decisions are not made (or are so lagged as to become moot), and difficult decisions are postponed in favor of continuing affective connections to the detriment of the goals of the organization.

Certainly, goal-attainment, instrumentalism and task-orientation are not the only methods for a successful leader; and research demonstrates that reliance solely on such masculine traits leads to ego-tripping and autocracy (Pierce & Newstrom, 2008). We are all aware of this, and this seems to be one of the largest complaints about masculine-style leaders and managers - heavy handedness, inconsiderateness, callousness, and disregard for others' opinions or input all come up often in complaints about library management. On the other hand, a reliance on solely feminine leadership styles has its own downfalls, notably "subservience and neurotic complaining." (Pierce & Newstrom, 2008, p. 97) - both traits that *also* come up often in discussions about problems within the profession!

How, then, do we encourage the emergence of leaders who work on developing skills in blending the two styles? The masculine-feminine style continuum is not the only facet of leadership, but it is the one that strikes me as the duality that creates so much of the frustration with management, discussions of competency and accountability, and decision-making in librarianship. People naturally tend to a particular point on the spectrum. Unless a person scores as androgynous, which affords them the strengths of both the masculine and the feminine, and possesses the flexibility and sensitivity to determine their actions and reactions based on the situation, how do the rest of us train ourselves?

In my own particular situation, I know I have to engage in regular critical reflection and solicitation of feedback from my staff, colleagues and superiors to ensure I am maintaining a good balance. This is not easy. Being a manager is not a magical panacea. I don't have all the answers. And I need to keep an eye not only on my department, my library, my profession, and my colleagues, I need to learn to be in a constant state of self-assessment. It makes me wonder - does this critical reflection just come naturally to all the other managers and leaders I admire? Does having to work so hard to ensure balance mean that I am not intended to be a leader? It would be much easier to just "be myself," as we are so often told to be, but to be quite honest, I am pretty sure that my pantsless, comfortable beauty-base-zero manager-self is not the best thing for my organization or my people. But critical reflection is a lot of work. And sometimes it's damned uncomfortable when I see who (and how) I am, and it is so far from where I want to be.

How, though, do we engage in this sort of critical reflection and behavior monitoring profession-wide for our managers and leaders? I got lucky, and have had some wonderful managers and mentors who did more than slap me around when I got out of hand; they nurtured and mentored me. But not all of us have such self-aware and compassionate bosses. ACRL offers Immersion and its many tracks for instructors - what equivalents do managers have? Where is our LLAMA equivalent? (I don't know that the Harvard Institute or the TRLN version are a valid equivalent, with multiple specific tracks.) I have come to the conclusion that this sort of exercise is extremely valuable for me in my own development; could it be generalizable? Or am I the only dolt who doesn't engage in this subconsciously and without effort?

What are we doing not only to find our leaders, but to develop them? And not just in terms of get-them-into-ALA-committee-work development, but "help them determine their strengths and weaknesses, and address them" development? At the 2011 Emerging Leaders program at MidWinter, it was repeated ad nauseam that "this is not a leadership institute," and we should be aware of that so that we were not disappointed that the experience would be largely "active leadership experience" (read: group work on behalf of a division, round table or committee). That is fine, but where are our leadership institutes? Are we hoping people figure this out on their own, and develop the skills we need for effective leadership? Are we hoping they luck into excellent managers or leaders with the inclination and time to develop them for us? Are we hoping that tossing people we think have leadership qualities into group work will hurtle them ahead? This seems short-sighted and an abdication of our professional responsibility. Whose responsibility is this? How do we grow self-aware leaders to ensure our productive future in vibrant organizations?

And yes, I'm now seriously considering topics on leadership in academic libraries for my dissertation. I've become slightly obsessed with the idea of learning to be a leader, as opposed to the trait (or "Great Man") theory of leadership being only intrinsic. I wonder about the gendered trait divide in library leadership, and how that affects our organizations. I wonder...

Colleen's Library Day in the Life: January 21, 2011

2011-01-21T07:33:00.001-05:00

A librarian day in the life as Head of Access Services at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga's Lupton Library.

7:20am - 7:40am
Arrive at library in time to gather some materials and do some quick email checking before I open the library on the reference desk.

7:45am - 9:00am
Reference desk shift. It's the Friday of the first week of classes for the semester, so it's slow. Three hole punches, staples, "how do I format my Word doc" and some Excel formulas questions. I get some more time to reply to emails from faculty. I also find that though our textlinker will tell you certain journals live in open access databases, there's no way to get to those databases that I can find - not in our A-Z list, or subject guides. I send an email to see if the only way for our users to get to the Directory of Open Access Journals and others is to serendipitously search for an article or journal title, or if I am having an early morning brainfreeze. One of the interlibrary loan staff is out, so I cancel my 10am meeting with the ILL unit. I'll reschedule it for next week.

9:00am - 9:45am
Finish part of my collection development project. The past few weeks I ran through our PE section, and marked a spreadsheet abotu what I would recommend for discard, what needs updating, what's missing from the shelflist. I send it off to our data guru librarian, Andrea, who will make the list public and available for faculty review and comment.

9:45am - 10:00am
I made the final revisions to a tentatively accepted ALA LLAMA preconference proposal I pitched with Jenica Rogers and Mary Chimato, putting in Mary's revised description and adding that LLAMA SASS has agreed to be a cosponsor in-name-only (no funding). Scanned and emailed to the committee chair for final approval and submission to the official Annual program. Mental note to go beg for refreshments funding from a vendor. They should want to woo current & future library managers, right?

10:30 - 11:30
I meant to draft a library refund policy to pitch to the dean and send to administration for approval; instead, I took advantage of my dean's open door policy to plop down and chat. Hashed out some goings-on in the department, some personnel issues and plans to handle them, some staff development opportunities and funding sources, some schedule changes, some workflow discussions (regarding both now and imminent-new-building). Discussed ordering a new scanner for ILL, ILL policies for emeritus versus retired faculty, retrieved a book identified by a faculty member as incorrectly LC-ed. We talked about the LLAMA preconference I'm doing with Jenica and Mary, and had a good long discussion on library leadership and management, the lack of institutionalized training and development for it, the place a professional organization should have in that, and some ideas to fill that gap. I left feeling more energized than I have in awhile. (This is why I love talking to my boss.)

11:30am - 12:00pm
On the circulation desk. Lots of laptops in and out, the political science books on Montesquieu and Locke are popular, and a handful of returned books and DVDs.

12:00 - 1:00pm
Finish up preparing for a faculty research consult. The professor is interested in locating journal articles on leadership, strategic planning, board development, and conflict management in the context of nonprofit organizations. I happily nerd out, because I love this topic. I also check into Friendfeed to chat with some fellow LSW librarians about things like our current collection review, lurk on a discussion about involving other faculty with our relationship with library vendors, participate in some threads on library management and burnout, and some other interesting stuff. Forget to cook my lunch, it remains uneaten.

1:15 - 2:20pm
Faculty research consult. Demonstrated where to find the information needed, and offered to both design a quick research guide for the online course he professor is teaching so students have a research map and to send relevant articles on the class discussion topics to the professor by next Friday.

2:20pm
Swing by Head of Reference's office - empty. Mental note to let her know that I'll be building that study guide for that class, and to ask what delimitations of liaison responsibilities are and if she minds - I love this sort of work, but I don't want to stomp on toes by moving into reference & instruction's turf. We don't care much about turf here, I imagine it will be fine.

2:30 - 3:15pm
Scheduled a meeting for next week about ILL data issues and what we'll do to solve them. Checked ALA Connect to see if there's been any action from either the Emerging Leaders group I'm on, or the ULS ad hoc committee I volunteered for. Responded to emails, schedule time on the calendar for the research guide/article finding excursion I promised the faculty member earlier. Dashed off a paragraph as to why the scanner purchase request might be considered sole-source due to some unique properties of the scanner requested. Ordered a gift for a friend who is down. Made a list of 5 songs I plan to order from Amazon when I get home as a present-to-self splurge. Wished for an ipod shuffle.

3:15pm
Realize I forgot to eat lunch today, and the clock says I have no time to make and eat the oatmeal before my desk shift. Boo and hiss. *stomach growling* Emailed Head of Reference about that consult and study guide so that she knows what's going on. Find out that liaison work is collection-development only. Oops, okay. Now I know. Experience slight panic over emailed reminder of an article due February 1. Decide to ignore it until I have time to deal with the writing next week; tonight and my weekend are already packed. Hope for the tentative three-way call involving my philosophically-close and geographically-far girlfriends. Send staff member home who worked halfway through her lunch due to my long conversation with the dean when I was supposed to be on the desk.

3:30pm - 5:10pm
On the circ desk for the final hours. Printed out a number of articles on librarystuffs (leadership, management, and access-services related stuff) I want to read over the weekend once I finish my coursework reading. Email about new finals hours back and forth with the dean. Finish up the desk work, clear the floor and ask everyone to finish up, check everything in, herd them out, and lock up. And chase out a guy who scurried to use the bathroom after closing despite my disgruntled glaring. Finish locking up, grab reading material for tonight and over the weekend, drive home with a massive headache and a hunger worthy of Mordor.

Giving the Buzzer: Hoi Polloi Fact Checking Game Shows, Rabble-Rousing Due to Network Research Errors

2010-12-23T21:09:00.000-05:00

Fox network researchers came away with a black eye recently, when the wild west of invisible internet folks noted they made an error when they ganked a couple on the new show Million Dollar Money Drop. The show told the couple - who had bet $800,00 - that their answer of the Post-It note being in stores earliest was not true, and that it was the Sony Walkman that hit store shelves first. Amateur researchers across the internet shouted about the error until Fox caved and admitted the error. It does my librarian heart good to see people so interested in looking deeply for an answer instead of just taking a game show host's name for it.

I bet the Fox execs are missing the pre-internet days before the gainsayers could catch them out, or are hoping they were asking questions based on polls they had conducted (and could funge the data for). Back when folks just shut up and accepted what they were told by authorities.

I wish my students were as diligent about their fact-checking. This leaves me wondering - we at home watching the show have nothing invested in the contestants other than playing vicariously with them, furiously Googling to see if they (and we) are right. Student assignments should be at least as engaging as something students have no personal stake in - how do we get them as excited about research for their own ends?

For the Love of Librarians: On Book Reviewing

2010-12-21T11:24:00.000-05:00

An interesting topic came up recently, which comes up every so often when folks start discussing book reviews. I'm a regular fiction reviewer for Library Journal, largely in the fiction section (mystery, horror, thriller, paranormal, etc.). I also occasionally review for such journals as Journal of Access Services, Journal of Web Librarianship, Choice and a few others.

A Philosophy of Reviewing: A Pleasure & a Service

I very much think of reviewing as both a pleasure and a service to the profession. Like most of us, my free time is precious, and I have a long backlist of personal need-to-reads in addition to the books I review for various publications. For reviews, I am often asked to read authors I haven't come across before in the genres I'm most familiar with. This is an exciting opportunity for me to hear fresh voices.

In terms of service, I review in the hopes that folks making purchasing decisions (either for their personal libraries or for their place of work) find the review helpful as they weigh what to add to their collections...what to spend those precious few dollars on.

The Bad Review

I mentioned on a Library Society of the World thread in Friendfeed that I recently panned a book Library Journal sent me to review. It's not the first (nor even the first this year), but it always leaves me feeling a bit roughed-up.

The comments in the thread essentially affirmed the value of a bad review. It's a signal to both authors and publishing houses to stop putting out "schlock", and it serves as notice that a review in a professional or trade publication is not simply a rubber stamp congratulating you for having written a book. (Yes, it is hard work. That doesn't, however, mean it is good work.)

I always feel slightly guilty when penning/typing a bad review. As a writer (outside of library topics), I know how terrible you feel when someone dislikes your work. I can only imagine how much worse that is if someone publishes that dislike, and in a magazine many librarians use to select (or not) materials.

But I am not the author's PR director. I am a reviewer, and my responsibility is not to the author, but to the reader. I firmly believe that if you are going to review a book, either in a short blurb in LJ or in a much longer professional review, the reviewer has an obligation to be honest. You are telling people whether, in your opinion, given what you know of the field or genre, that item is worth a portion of a library's budget, or a person's paycheck, or a person's time. With the newer LJ reviewer guidelines, you can't avoid judgment at all, as they've added a "VERDICT" section to the end of the review, which helps weed out mere descriptions and lukewarm praise.

It's Not You, It's Your Book

I know of some folks who will refuse to write a poor review, and instead write a lukewarm or vague piece, write a good review no matter their opinion, or refuse to review the piece at all, sending it back to be redistributed to another. Some think reviewing is an obligation to approve of the work and help make it financially viable. (I would argue that this is exactly the sort of review/blurb model that now leads me to ignore all reviews-by-famous-authors on book jackets.) Others consider it a quid-pro-quo: I give a good review, later I get a good review. Others are just lazy, finding it much easier to write a good review than a bad one. And some people are just flat-out uncomfortable writing a less-than-stellar review - it's relatively rare, so there are few good examples of it. I find all but the last reason unacceptable, and for those who aren't sure how to approach writing a review of a not-great book, you can always ask.

Some equate bad reviews with rudeness (likely thinking of newspaper columnists or snarky critics). I've never found it necessary to be rude or spiteful. Is the writing good? Does the plot follow? Are the characters believable? Is landscape and geography authentic, or at least consistent? If the reader likes this author, who else are they likely to have on their reading list? For professional reviews, do conclusions follow from the examination, data and assumptions? Are the thoughts coherently organized? Do they build upon established literature or findings? Does the work do something new, or rehash something that was better written in an older resource? What books would be good supplements? These are the same criteria we apply to student papers and other writing with no qualms. Why shouldn't we address it in a review?

Earlier this year I reviewed a book by an author with an established reputation and fan base who put out a thin slip of a novel where the (already-established series) characters were pretty thin, the plot was completely implausible, and the dialogue was stilted, with a mystery solution that rested wholly on a deus-ex-machina technique. If I recognized this (and I had read the author's other works), there was no way established fans (or even fans of the genre) wouldn't notice that. Writing a good review would have pretty much outed me as a fraud. Not that patrons or genre readers are poring through LJ for reviews...but my colleagues do. And I'd know it was out there under my name.

Last Thoughts

I approach each new book I'm reviewing with enthusiasm, in the hope I'll be able to give it a rave review and umpteen stars. I'm rooting for the authors to succeed. I enjoy reviewing because it's like a Christmas grab-bag - I never know what will come of it, but I have high hopes. Sometimes I get the KitchenAid mixer, sometimes I get the stretchy gloves. I was thrilled that a good review I gave a book ended up on the jacket of that book's sequel. I groaned when I turned in the unimpressed review this morning.

Do you want your stellar review blurb emblazoned on a dud of a book? Do you want the publishing houses to throw more tripe your way? If you review, or are considering it, I implore you: be fair, but be honest. Many of us use these reviews to make selection decisions.

Takeaways from Yahoo's Delicious Debacle

2010-12-17T14:38:00.000-05:00

Folks can laugh about the "sky is falling" reaction to Yahoo's leaked information that the social bookmarking site Delicious was being sunsetted, but given how reliant those of us who are active on the social web are, and how much of our information is logged and stored by entities outside our control, it holds some lessons, both for users and service providers.

1. You as a provider are not unique, and your users will bail if you shaft them, are perceived to have shafted them, or if there is a rumor you may shaft them. I don't know if there's a report yet on what the number of signups over at Diigo, Pinboard, or even Google bookmarks

2. You as a company should not assume that any confidential meetings are confidential. Especially if those meetings entail laying off 10% of your workforce. Be PR-ready with such announcements. Come on, guys. If Apple can't hold out without a leak, doubtful that you can, particularly when you've just majorly pissed off the product developers. Transparency isn't just good corporate citizenship, it's also a great CYA strategy in the land of instant updating. To have been caught by surprise and say, "Speaking for our team, we were very disappointed by the way that this appeared in the press" is disingenuous. You should have had a press announcement ready as soon as you showed a slide sunsetting any of your products, but particularly one folks are actually interested in and using. Once your employees know something, it's a matter of time before it hits their airwaves. Once your disgruntled or former employees know something, expect to be asked about it as you walk out of that meeting on your way to the ladies' room.

3. Take note, Important Internet Companies: your audience is fickle. Unless you have tied your users to you with unadulterated loyalty (Apple) or enthusiasm (Google), you're not immune to people flat-leaving you at the drop of a hat, no matter how popular your product. How have you grown your users? How have you made them part of your brand's family? Yahoo could have had very good answers to these questions with delicious and Flickr, but seems to be faltering. Hell, some of us even PAID for a similar service. Why wasn't delicious monetized? Seems a shame, and a waste.

4. CEOs: When you lay folks off, people will want to know how you're raking in $47 million and not feeling badly about it. It may not be fair, but it's true. If you're going to lay folks off and not take a pay cut yourself, you'd better have some damned good decision-making backing you up along the way so that you look like you're worth it. Good decisionmaking like, say, actually having accounts on services your company provides.

5. You as a user should be more invested in backing up your data. This one is child's play to some folks and may be assumed by others, but many of us sign up for a service in the cloud and assume it will be there forever and ever, amen. Yes, that may be naive, but even savvy social networkers don't always back up all of their info. The delicious leak was a huge wakeup cal for even those of us who are casual users, and a reminder that unless *you've* got your data, you can't guarantee your favorite service will have it tomorrow for you.

I'll be very interested to see how this plays out in the long run, especially after Yahoo's non-response where they say nothing more about delicious than that they hope they find a home for it. Somewhere. Sometime. Maybe. Will folks stay with delicious, or will those already fooling around cut their ties and move along? As for myself, I have to admit that I've already exported all of my delicious bookmarks and am fooling around with Pinboard and Google bookmarks. Should Flickr meet some awful fate, I'd be Yahoo-free.

Sad List of 2010 Heroes

2010-12-15T10:14:00.000-05:00

Zuckerberg walked away with Times Person of the Year. Which I find baffling. Yes, Facebook as a product is incredible in terms of connecting people, even if it is used largely to poke people, announce breakups, and copy and paste meaningless messages. But given the outcries of privacy issues it creates - and Zuckerberg's remarkable reluctance to take those user concerns seriously - I'm rather surprised about the decision. I probably shouldn't be. He's a bazillionaire with his very own movie.

Many wanted Julian Assange (WikiLeaks founder) or Bradley Manning, the Army private who worked on classified networked and distributed any number of classified diplomatic cables and top secret government documents, to have been the choice, and here I leap into librarian heresy: I'm not going to call Assange or Manning heroes for wholesale datadump of classified material.

In any case, Zuckerberg, Assange & Manning. The Tea Party, which is not, in fact, a "person," but an entire group of persons who border on the irrational and would have us do away with separation of church & state. Hamid Karzai, a ballot-box stuffer). The Chilean miners who - while their story was touching - accomplished not much other than working in horrible conditions and being saved by others.

What a sad and sorry list of "people of the year" for 2010. I suppose they're chosen for impact and not really "Fantastic Persons of the Year" status. In that case, I guess Zuckerberg may have been the most decent choice out of that pool.

2011 or Bust: The Commitments

2010-12-14T14:10:00.000-05:00

I'm not going to call these resolutions, since the very word reeks of failure, given the past thirty years. No, this year I am making some personal commitments to myself. They're all pretty selfish and me-me-me, but I also think they'll help me be better to others. They're very much related to my last post, "Making a Better Me: Lessons Learned in 2010.'

If I have my way, 2011 will be Colleen's Year of Busting.

1. Butt-busting

I'm going to admit it. I felt so much better when I was hitting the gym five days a week, two or three of those with a personal trainer. I felt better physically; stairs did not make me as tired, I had more energy throughout the day, and my aches and pains were minimal. I also felt mentally better - my gym time was a really fantastic way for me to downshift from work time to home time (which I have failed miserably at for 2010, and which, according to Tony Schwartz, is pretty important). I slept better. I felt more comfortable in my skin when everything tightened up just a wee bit. And I felt stronger. Not just stronger in my muscles - which was true - but in spirit. I felt capable, balanced, and in sync with myself.

I want that back. In fact, I've already emailed my trainer and asked him to get me onto his schedule, and if he can't (he's been promoted, and is much busier than he used to be), to set me up with someone willing to yell at me and deal with my grumpy, sweaty self. I need this, and I am going to make time for it. My excuses of "I don't have enough time" and "I'm too tired" are not helping me live the life I want, and they're not really the truth.

2. Bill-busting

I've got an excellent personal budget spreadsheet - I've forgotten the site where I acquired it a few years ago, but I've tweaked the Excel sheet to really work for me (and am happy to share it if you ask). It's kept me on track in terms of not overdrawing, but poor planning for random expenses (vet, conferences, medical bills, etc.) have kept me from really getting ahead on things. My goal for 2011 is to kill all of my non-student-loan debt. It is completely doable if I can be disciplined.

I have a good job with a good salary - it is ridiculous for me to maintain this sort of interest-bearing debt. I want to buy a house of my own. I'd like to do an international trip-for-fun once a year. I want to develop some financial security. This one is a no-brainer, and unlike the many years I spent as a student broke and living off cobbled-together part-time minimum wage jobs, this is doable.

3. Ball-busting

With too many balls in the air, I start to feel disorganized. Then things start to look disorganized, as papers pile up haphazardly first on my office desk, then on my office table, then on my home kitchen table, then the coffeetable. No more. While having many ongoing projects and rolling due dates is part and parcel of being a middle manager and active professional, I will be making a more concerted effort to (1) schedule things (particularly supplemental, outside-of-actual-work projects) so I don't feel like I'm struggling so much to keep my head above water, and (2)only volunteer for new outside-of-workplace duties when something else gets scratched off the list, leaving space for it.

I need more balance in my life, which is essentially what all of these resolutions have in common.

I've already decided that I'm full up for spring through summer 2011. For travel, I'll be going to Midwinter ALA for the Emerging Leaders program, presenting at Computers in Libraries and at the Tennessee Library Association in the same week in March, and then ALA Annual in June/July. I'll probably pitch a conference presentation or two for the fall, but I'm full up for spring and summer. Writing-wise, I'm full up for the year: I'm co-editing a collection titled Women and Poetry: Tips on Writing, Teaching and Publishing by Successful Women Poets with Carol Smallwood which will come out from McFarland, co-authoring The Accidental Access Services Librarian (out of Information Today, Inc.) with Mary Carmen Chimato, and volunteered to write a few chapters for Managing in the Middle: The Librarian’s Handbook, co-edited by Farrell & Schlesinger and expected out of ALA. I'll also be taking another 3 classes toward the EdD this spring.

I'm not even reading CFPs anymore, lest I tempt myself into saying yes to more than I can handle. This is my (admittedly warped) version of balance, and mastering The Force through conquering The To-Do List.

4. Wall-busting

When I get busy, annoyed, upset, sad, angry, or tired, I hermit myself, which removes me from the very people who energize, entertain and fabulous-ify me. I will make the conscious effort to make time for friends and stay in contact. I will not be erecting my usual barriers between myself & my friends. I will make the time to call, write and visit, because being with people I love keeps me sane and closer to my humanity.

5. Streak-busting

I have a really fantastic (or terrible, depending on the scale you use) streak of romance failures. While I know I can't actually commit to breaking that streak in 2011 [it takes two], I *can* commit to being more social, meeting new people, and being open to new possibilities, instead of my usual practice of a combination of (1) working myself to death just because there's no one waiting for me at home and, when that becomes exhausting, (2) racing home to whip off my pants and curl up on the couch to read vampire fiction while the dog snoozes at my feet.

These are the commitments I will be trying to keep for myself for 2011. A silly and worn-out exercise to write them down, but it makes me feel better having articulated them, and gives me a touchstone to come back to if I start to falter, or question why I thought they were important. The rollercoaster ride of 2010 brought me to a job I love with great colleagues, and so overall I consider it a resounding success. I'd like to really enjoy 2011, and I think the above commitments will help with that.

Making a Better Me: Lessons Learned in 2010

2010-12-12T12:45:00.000-05:00

Inspired by Justin the Librarian's "Eight Things I Learned" and Bobbi Newman's "The Four Most Valuable Lessons I Learned in 2010", I thought I would contribute my own list. (Meme, anyone?) I've actually been thinking quite a bit about this in the past few weeks, as I've been assessing what I've done, what I haven't, the person and professional I'd like to be, and the general rollercoaster ride of 2010.

Lesson #1: Overextension /= Overachievement

I have had the very good fortune of being invited to speak and write a great deal this year. I have a difficult time saying no (first of all because those invitations are usually a result of a proposal I wrote, and that would be rude; secondly, you never know when the well will dry up!). This resulted in a lot of travel, a lot of deadlines, a lot of late nights and working weekends. On top of my actual job (which is fabulous), the three courses I took toward the doctorate this semester, and my creative writing on the side, it was all too much.

I get myself into this with the idea that the sense of achievement when everything is complete will be overwhelming and incredible...and instead, I find that I am generally left feeling pretty poorly physically and emotionally after draining all of my energy. With this lesson now firmly learned, I am planning to be much more deliberate in the writing projects I choose and the conference presentations I pitch. In fact, I'm full up for 2011 on professional writing projects already, and will not be volunteering for anything new until 2012. My conference schedule is already fixed through ALA Annual. There is a sort of freedom in allowing myself the choice to say no, and for this next year I am going to wield the "No" as an exercise in self-care.

Lesson #2: If I Ain't Got My Health, I Ain't Got Nothin'

I know that stress makes me ill (hello, IBS), but this year I also had my gallbladder out, and have been plagued with shoulder and neck problems. Not taking more time initially to get well (in all cases), led to prolonging the problems. I've learned it's worth the time on the front end to get myself well instead of dragging my carcass along until I absolutely must stop. Sleeping until I am not tired should not be a luxury. Gritting my teeth and bearing it is not a long-term coping strategy. Replacing my gym time with more work time is not doing myself any favors. I realize this is an obvious lesson - "Take care of your health" - but it seems to be the one I consistently fail to learn. I'm pledging to myself that I will be much more deliberate with my self-care in 2011.

Lesson #3: Deliberate Joy

Two weeks ago, I was driving home from a poetry reading and got a bit lost in suburbia. As I was grumbling (a common enough thing when I'm driving) and fiddling with my Garmin, I was suddenly struck by the houses decked out in holiday lights. I stopped, slowed down, and smiled as I enjoyed the decorations. Later that night, I realized that I do not smile enough, I do not try to find joy, and I am not very happy with my lack in this area. I tend to focus on What Needs To Get Done Now, while living under the shadow of What Needs To Be Done Next. That doesn't leave much room for simply enjoying a moment.

I do not want to be a person so enmeshed in my own to-do list that I'm not enjoying the world around me. I want to be open to those small moments of random, unplanned joy.

Lesson #4: It's Not A Competition, Comparison or Contest

This feeds back into #1 a little bit. Working with such fantastic colleagues both in my home library and in the library profession as a whole, I easily slip into competition mode, where I measure my own achievements against those of others, and inevitably find myself lacking. While the benefit of this is that it helps me push myself, the downside is that it's a confidence-killer, and feeds my tendency to overextend. No one else is keeping score, or measuring me against anything more than whatever good work helps my library provide good service. It's not quantity, it's quality that is important, and it's not me versus anyone - it's me versus the work that needs to be done.

Lesson #5: Stop Taking Friends for Granted

I have a small circle of wonderful friends. These are the folks who know me well, and understand that when I get stressed, sad, mad, or into any other non-optimal emotional state, I tend to become a bit of a hermit. Unfortunately, with years like this one, whcih included a job switch and interstate move, physical ailments, and the deadline-oriented lifestyle of the overcommitted, my contacts with friends are the first thing to suffer. Not superficial internet communication like IM chatting, but in-person visits, good long phone conversations, and the sort of investment of time and emotion you are supposed to put into those you love. I know well I've fallen down on this in 2010, and it has been highlighted these past few weeks as those conversations (and even a visit!) have happened. I feel simultaneously guilty (for neglecting my friends), reinvigorated (because they make me feel loved, wanted, and not-as-crazy-as-I-probably-am), and simply comforted by being with those I love.

This should not be a tear-inducing luxury.

This should be a regular part of my life.

Simple lessons. Lessons I should already have taken to heart by now, certainly, but that were very much driven home this year. I'm looking forward to 2011, where I can demonstrate that I have really learned these lessons, and am making changes because of them.

Petsko's Letter to SUNY-Albany, the Mission of the University, and the Faltering of Humanities Support

2010-11-23T10:23:00.000-05:00

Have you had the chance to read Professor Gregory Petsko's open letter to the president of SUNY-Albany? If not, read the open letter here. If you have any interest in higher education at all, it is worth your time.

Essentially, President Philip announced that due to budget strictures, SUNY Albany would be eliminating the French, Italian, Classics, Russian and Theater Arts departments. Reasons included that 'there are comparatively fewer students enrolled in these degree programs' and that, as Petsko writes, "the humanities were a drain on the institution financially, as opposed to the sciences, which bring in money in the form of grants and contracts."

The letter goes on to detail the value of liberal arts as integrated into the university curriculum. Petsko is more eloquent than I am, and I leave you to read his letter for the rest of it.

But what I want to return to is this: what is the mission of the university? Petsko states, "the word 'university' derives from the Latin 'universitas', meaning 'the whole'. You can't be a university without having a thriving humanities program. You will need to call SUNY Albany a trade school, or perhaps a vocational college, but not a university. Not anymore."

I am inclined to agree with him. The business-model as applied to the university is having exactly the impact many predicted, which is to cull out that which made people holistic thinkers and to focus all attention on that which is profitable. That in itself is not an education.

Even more concerning to me was a discussion among high level library administrators (I was not involved in the discussion, merely an attendant) at a well-respected University. The discussion boiled down to the fact that these administrators actually felt it was a good thing that independent liberal arts colleges in their area were closing, since it would up the enrollment at the larger university. The conversation went on to address how great it would be if more humanities programs would close at the university so that those collection funds could be funneled "where they belong," towards collections more suited to the technical programs of a land-grant university.

Now, I know it is Pollyanna-ish to expect that academic disciplines have more in common than they have differences, but I expected some degree of respect to be shared. Is it a free-for-all with every discipline out for themselves to avoid the axe? If so, that's a damned shame. Particularly since there's no guarantee that being saved this time means that you'll be seen as something worth saving in the future.

And as American political discourse becomes ever more insular and hyperconservative, as xenophobia becomes more pronounced even as we are expected to be more integrated with other cultures around the world, doesn't it behoove us to value those humanities departments that give us a glimpse into other worlds and times? Economic recession is no excuse to start curtailing what is considered an education.

Multiple Personality Disorder: Service Migrations and Perspective

2010-11-19T14:51:00.000-05:00

I should have more sympathy for my campus's migration to Banner, which was finalized (mostly) in August. I should, particularly since I'm part of the ILS migration to WMS here at the library, and I know that bugs can be surprising, data can be unmungeable in teh short term, and that errors in migration occur. But I do not have much sympathy. This made me feel like a shabby person, so I am trying to tease out why. My reasons:

User Disruption. The Library has been very careful to keep our old systems up and running with no interruption while we test the new system. Yes, you can test our sexy new WorldCat Local install, but there are big red letters over it saying that the availability info is only available and up to date in our current catalog (which most of our users are accustomed to). We haven't jacked up any accounts, we haven't fiddled with anything for the user, because we are busy kicking the crap out of the tires before we set it loose on our users. While I'm sure the Records office and campus IT did the same, looks like there are a few important bugs that weren't fixed before going live for this (the second!) round of class registration.

Side of Migration. This, I think, is the one I'm most interested in, in terms of user perception. In our migration, I know all (or most) of the buggy stuff, the workarounds, the uglies and warts, and because I'm part of the team working on the implementation, I have developed - well, if not a certain patience, then a level of understanding that there may occasionally be moments of FUBAR. It's part of the process, it's normal. On the other hand - and yes, I know, shame on me - as a user, I have zero patience for that sort of thing. I want to be in, do my business, use the service as it is intended, and be on my way. Even as I rationally recognize that the Records office is facing an even more massive data migration with its own complications, I don't care. I want it to work when I have to use it. (Which it didn't.) I am not much interested in the intricacies or workarounds or all of the massive work that went into the system. I just want a working system.

This was a nifty kick in the pants for me today - as I get bogged down in details of WMS and how our data is displaying or not, and what is functional or not, my users are not going to be interested in the pieces that work. They will be interested in whether it does what it is supposed to do - in its entirety! - so they get the service they need and can move along.

I am consciously trying to be more generous about the campus migration (even though they had multiples new staff lines funded and added to the system for the project and spent kazillions, while we are making due with static budget. Ahem). I am. I try to will wait patiently for the fix that will get me into my classes for that doctorate I'm working on. I will try to make my user-self as sympathetic as my backend-self.

But I can't make any promises. As a user, I expect the same sort of excellent (fast, efficient, friendly) service provided to me as I and my staff provide when we're on the other side of the desk. I'm spoiled.

These Terrible Sacraments is Available!

2010-11-13T14:24:00.000-05:00

Most of the blog lately has been my notes on library conference sessions. Outside of libraryland, though, occasionally I accomplish other things important to me on a personal level. Making that list this month is that my latest book of poetry, These Terrible Sacraments, is finally in print and available for order from the publisher's online bookstore. (For the record, it is the same press that published my first book of poems, God in my Throat.

For my first book, I was excited simply to get my work published. This time, though, I'm excited for all different reasons. The book is dedicated to my brother, Patrick, who served with the U.S. Marine Corps in the 3rd Battalion 3rd Marines with tours in Iraq and Afghanistan. Some of the stories in these poems are his. Some are mine. The poems are written from the perspective of our loved ones serving overseas, as well as from the points of view of those of us who remain home to wait and pray.

It was a difficult collection to write, dredging back up fear and horror as well as tenderness and hope. I hope all of those who decide to read it, enjoy it.

Access Services 2010: Session VIII

2010-11-12T10:47:00.000-05:00

This is my presentation slot, Mapping, Managing, and Improving Staff Performance. Wish me luck!

Access Services 2010: Session VII InterLibrary Loan and Doc Delivery

2010-11-12T09:46:00.000-05:00

When Access Starts with Interlibrary Loan/ Document Delivery by James Harper

Access starts with acquisition... Unless the library wont buy it, then it starts with interlibrary loan. Where is ILL going, where does it need to go, how do we ge there? i'Ll is playing a big role in collection development, serving larger percentage of population, leveragigpower of consortiums. Striving to close the gap between discovery and delivery, expand the types of services delivered, diminis heffect of location and or ownership and acess for between branches, enlist. Rest of ADS in these pursuits.

Interesting statistics. 2001-2 was eleven percent of population. Last year, served twenty one percent of population, 6579 differetpatrons. Amount o fundergrads usigill and docdelivery growing in the same period. i'Ll used ot be only open to grad students and faculty through an oclc terminal and it took forever to get hints. Distance learners and extension personnel grown from 1084 to 4425 for use of services. Try to make them ot at a disadvantage just because they are at a distance. 50 -60% of what is sent to those folks is in collection, so it is tpstrit doc delivery.

Role in collection development. Old model of collection management is ot working any more, especially since we dot have as much money to buy what we want, so we are looking at it as a patron driven model. Since 2004, books on demand. If an ILL request meets criteria, they buy it. Call number range excludes areas that have specific call number ranges for grants. Account with baker and taylor gobi and amazon. 305 monographs ordered since 2004. Screen shot. Of ILLIad, link out to search gobi and can buy it from that screen. Consortially get rid of duplicating collections, they isolated a number of journal titles, combined for complete run, then a library elsewhere recycled their own. Saves shelf space. Part of agreement is that patrons wont suffer because of this, trln single copy task group.

Searchers do not distinguish between discovery and delivery, and delivery is the important part ot users. For many users, discovery alone is a waste of time. One of our challenges is bridging d to d gap. Ncsu. Allows. That every monograph has a request button. (geography of the forehead book of. Poems). Book checked out, can place hold on ncsu copy, or can ILL the item. Unc system uses two day ups, super fast delivery, way faster than waiting for item to be returned. See delivery options, and for distance students, that request goes to ILL who then fedexes or ups to distance learners.

Leveraging consortiums, trln andunc library express are their best. Catalog offers chance to search pac, world cat local, consortial catalog. In local have group catalog, so they can check availability of other unc schools in the system. They moved from sfx to serial solutions, so all databases have find text at ncsu button. At point nof discovery, gives you options for delivery. If article avail full text, link 360 helps you bridge gap. Tripsaver is their document delivery, even if owned they will deliver. Tripsaver is. i'Ll if not owned, campus book delivery from branches or out to distance, and doc delivery. Student only cares where it comes form only in terms of ho wrong it takes to get to them. Differentiaiting between doc delivery and ILL doesn't mean anything to students, it's just confusing to them and they don't care. Tripsaver form is populated.

Currently working on, building large new library; going directly from lender to patron, for distance folk. Right now, distance lives in charlotte, they want a book Charlotte has. Charlotte send to Raleigh, ncsu. Sends to charlotte to patron, patron returns to Raleigh, who then sends it back to Charlotte. Logistics is problematic. Crosstraining rest of ads staff to do interlibrary loan. Tripsaver has chat service, but only available 7-6 moon through friday, but want it available all the time. Need ads staff to answer those kinds of questions. Users don't think of divisions within departments and units. Faculty office delivery is costly, but wanted, especially with 2 million vols in new library facility. Or need free doc delivery.

Access Services 2010: Session VI - Semiotics of Customer Support

2010-11-12T08:57:00.000-05:00

How May I Help You? The Semiotics of Superior Customer Support at the Library's Service Desks by Frances Anne Pici and Colin Bragg

Purpose is to examine fundamental principles governing customer support by utilizing basic theories and analytical tools provided by semiotics. Thi approach can help define and improve customer support at service desks. Intro to semiotics, fundamentals of customer support, and signs of customer support at service desks.

Semitoics examines how humans represent worked through system of signs. Used to examine phenoms interdisciplinary, art, language, lit, music, media, performance studies, etc. Central is notion of sign. Broadly, semiotics is science of signs or study of use of signs. All human comm and interaction is composed of signs, a. Dhuman experience sociocultural system created, mediated and sustained by signs. In almost all human cultures, signs carry some info that we use to describe, reposing a d evaluate world. Words, images, symbols, images, gestures, sounds, facial expressions. Anything we do to make and share messages. One basic goal of semiotic analysis is to examine social function a d. Ciltiral production of signs in a given society and offer explanations of how they're used to communicate meanings. Takes into account signs formal structures and what shaped its. Production of meaning.

Example, for a sign to cary meaning, must be coded, then decoded. Meaning of sign found inn cultural and social context of it's use. Traffic lights and road signs convert a message into code, green equals go, red means stop. Drivers and pedestraisns decode into meaning. Sign is loosely defined as a pattern of data that when perceived brings to mind something other than itself. Anythign capable of standing for, representing or pointing to something else. Signs formal structure is union of three dimensions: physical (what is shown, seen, perceived that represents or points to something else), this is the signifier, the material part of the ,sign. Second is conceptual, relation of sign to the particular object idea or person being referred to. This is the signified, the conceptual component or the idea fo rwhich the sign stands. Signifier is textual word cat, signified is actual cat.

Third dimension is interpretive, function of the sign by which is stands for, represents, or directs attention to a. Object, idea or person. The interpretant draws reh sognitice connection between sign and idea/object.

Three distinct categories of signs. Symbolic, iconic, indexical. Symbolic when has arbitrary relationship with object. Iconic when resembles. Indexical when physically linked to object, caused by object, or part of object it represents. Symbolic= dove for peace, horseshoe, etc. Connection between sign and object is agreed upon by virtue of consensus, shared understanding, law, belief. No actual connection or inherent relationship. We have to learn what the symbolic sign represents so it has meaning. Words are also symbolic, letters forming words based on rules, conventions and cultural practice but arbitrary. The icon is dynamically linked to object it represents by likeness, qualities bear resemblance. Icon represents object mainly by similarity. Example is portrait which represents object, but is not object. Photographs, statues, maps, diagrams, actor playing a part. All these signify by resemblance. Indexical sign is a sign in which signifier is caused by signified, points to or connected to object by virtue of being physically linked ot or affected by or a part of object. Thermometer, smoke which is an index of fire, weathervane sign of winds direction, paw print is an index of an object that has vanished from scene. Paw print indicates "cat here before." hyperlink indicates webpage. Genuflection reflects royalty, subordination, authority. Knock at the door is index of presence of someone outside. The human agent establishes these relationships and contributes to production of sign.

Short story of speed limit sign near walking path, when sign hit, bears new meaning for walkers. Indexical. Any sign can be indexical, iconic and symbolic.

Semitoic analysis of customer support looks closely at ho customer service provider communicates with customer in support environment. Semitoics can be used as a base for how we envision andperceive customer support, and can guide us to look critically at customer service experience we produce, represent, wamt to improve. How do we contribute to production of meaning o customer support sign?

Super customer support must be a signal, sign, banner. We can encode message fo qualities, traditions, etc . When we embody thesse principles, adopt behaviors that represent that customer service sign. Service point, service provider, service provided.

All action begins when customer service spectacle revealed to customer as they enter the physical customer service area. They mnow a series of service related conventions and social practices have been activated and about to be played out. Conceptual: certain fundamental principles associated with customer service that we learn and recognize and come to expect when we think about customer service or encounter customer service sign. Here sign connects with idea for which sign stands. Conceptual relation between sign, customer support, and signified concept, is established and assiccaition is made between sign and what sign stands for. Intepretive, sense is made of customer service sign. Customers and providers contribute to production of meaning of sign. Meaning arises fromm communications between communicators, provider and customer.

A gew fundamental balues andbahviors governm customer support. Friendly, fast, efficient, finished, and followed with feedback. Courtesy, speed, accuracy, completeness, folowthrough. Desired and expected customer service actions.

Symbolic signs thrive atu library service desks. Announcement sand bulletins, schedules, directions, instructions, poicies, faqs. Slides fo. Emory library signs. Many answer the how do I sorts of questions, or the where can i find sorts of questions. Also the what is, who can i speak to, etc. Most signs designed so we don't have to unnecessarily keep repeating ourselves. Customer sign icons are representative, acting as an agent of the service. Primary icon at service desk is the service desk provider, human giver of customer support. Keep in mind success fo customer service transaction contingent on customer s expectations and interpretation of service provided, and their repines to it. Do your service folk look like they are fast, friendly and efficient? Customer should not have to disturb service provider to get help, as in case with texting, headphones, etc. The Back in Five sign also bad idea, see a line, see wait, what are odds of getting what they came for in fast and efficient manner? Seeing backlog and disoprder at desk makes customers feel you are not efficient, unable to find anything, etc.

Indexical places emphasis on physical connection to something unseen or unsaid but present and contributing to production of meaning in customer support, lilac mess. Capacity issues, workflow breakdowns, body language etc can be seen and interpreted by customer signs.

Basic dynamics of customer support transaction is pattern of interlocking events propelling pele into set of circumstances in which they must do something. Principles of customer service can be used to guide our service behavior so we know what to do, where to check, who to intact, what actions to take in ay context. Since customer support is a sign in which meaning can be made, then as service providers we can seize dynamics of sign creation process to control signs production and projection and proactively shape reality the customer service sign denotes. Customer veal of interaction defines service outcomes an dmatters most.

Access Services 2010: Session V

2010-11-11T15:28:00.001-05:00

You Want Us to do What? Practical, Data Driven Planning and Decisionmaking For Access Services by John Miller-Weels, Wendy Begay, and Robyn Huff-Eibl

They restricture frequently. Access and info services is traditional stacks, microform, govdocs, but not reserves. Now reference, portions of interlibrary koan and doc delivery. 32 staff and over 100 students. University of Arizona Tucson. Many services in one unit across many sites. Staff always saying "you want us to do what?" why bit her with needs assessment, resources involved, technology used, sources of data, tools they use, how. All of this feeds into outcomes and create an environmental scan doc ument and how that kids into strategic plan document, how it ends up with happy users.

Why data driven planning, why needs assessment? In the past decades with shrinking budgets, increased pressure om libraries ot maintain or cut costs while increasing variety and quality of services offered. Focus services that bring value while supporting education and research. Needs assessment, outcomes provide accountability and critical for org survival. Seventeen of twenty years they have had budget cuts. (slides with lots of text). Needs assessment and ebal allow door data based planning anddecisionmaking, not a one time effort but continual. Doesn't have to be scientific and statistically valid. Can create trend analyses. For ors to. Be successful with current and future needs, importance of continual assessment, culture of assessment, climate of assessment. We cant assume we know what is best for users without asking them or watching them.

Align strategic plan at library level with team and department level, and individual level for those with performance management responsibilities. They. Focus on. Customer as why and how they will stay relevant. Assessment, evaluation and planning cycle per slide. EnGge with various groups on campus, who appreciate transparency. Support library fee for students, andtell them where the money goes, which stakeholders support. Certain positions have responsibilities solely dedicated to data collection and statistics output. Overally. .55 FTE dedicated to numbers. Always look at customer activity as a source of info in planning, from ils, gate counts, shelving stats, specific service numbers fo ereserves, number and types of questions asked at service desks. Data is useful but incomplete, did not include customer's voices.

So, do library report ca linked off. Of main website, simple feedback form, comments and questions reviewed and answered each month. Many questions about library processes and services. Started to review and collect in 2002 after noticing recurring themes. Libqual each spring, sent to. Large sample of campus community via email, tool focuses on big library wide issues. Library services survey on management of equipment, staffing. And spaces through survey monkey, linked from public machines. Observational data gathering, like info commons headcount done one week per month, use of computers, laptops, study rooms, collaborative spaces. Overnight building headcount number per floor, number in group study rooms during safety walkthroughs. Knowing spread of people throughout building was useful because not there to use the stacks but the computers, rooms, etc.. Based on info gathered from headcount and building counts, seeing changed in behavior in info commons, using collaborative spaces more, computers less, laptops more, etc. Info collected at desks from service staff constantly, report unmet customer needs. Also surveys and focus groups usually tied to project or specific service. Found they could check out surge protectors, etc. Can net books meet student needs as well but cheaper?

Checking the data. In terms of all this collected information, staff conference summaries, webinars, listservs and benchmarking institutions,

access Services 2010: Session IV

2010-11-11T14:32:00.000-05:00

access Services, Innovative Management in the Changing Era by Dell Davis and Amy Chang

We need to think about management. Managers are busy people a d in mAnaging services we forget about internal piece. How change impacts access services, innovative management for change, some of the challenges. What causes change? Space,customer centered services, technology, administrative decisions, bottom up innovative ideas. How do we create and nmanage these spaces better? Customer based services through needs assessment. Checked through irb and questions were okay as long as they didn't want to publish, so started to ask students informally about services. Libqual Comments are best measure of services. Ex, deficient links in ere sources so folks now report through point of need through ticketing system. Srudents begging. For quiet spaces while we are focused on collaborative spaces, disconnect. Facilities issues. That management piece falls on. Access services in most environments. Also technology drives things - student in youtube video on UT San Antonio and how he connects to his library - STEAL THIS! So great.

How do we let admin know we need more money for these. New services. Admin decisions also drive change. Some are good, some are driven by reactions to chronicle of higher Ed like that we don't need librarians anymore. Campus development department identified a
Erson who wanted to donate money to library for at risk first gen students, and piece was written that library would hire first year first gen students to work the reference desk (!). Need to be careful when things are driven administratively. Revamped it in conjunction with other heads to be more of a learning experience than a service provision. Bottom up innovative ideas - cross trainings, ideas from staff like paging system for study. Rooms. Listen to ideas but change as necessary to suit.

Access services is not an entity unto itself and has never been, interconnected with all other public services. Most transactions from reference lead to access services. Now how do I get it? Thats our turn!

Usually several department heads, reference, access, etc. As access serviceanagers, we should. Take the lead in pulling together. Personalities adpeople and creating some tiype of collaborative working relationship because we operate as a whole. Establishing interconnectivity. Reference didn't know names of circ folk. Problem of continuity of services. Are you. Telling people same thing circ is telling them? Wrote a proposal to. Admin asking for a retreat for all public services under guise of Peking on strategic plan as a public service entity. Got permission to staff circ with students only, went to engineering building with large big room. Staff planned retreat, intended to get pele together to know each other. Brought facilitator to talk about strategic planning for public service group. Asked what folks wanted to hear about...how does exercise affect stss levels, a professor came over. And gave the talk. Admin funded a meal. Speaker was really bad and everyone bonded over that :) from there, joint public service meetings monthly. Not announcements, but sharing. Collaborative projects like deaccessioning where librarians and shelvers got together. Managers roles: assessing needs, projecting trends, updating staff, training, presenting results.

Know when to lead and know when to manage. What staff need to know: the strategic initiatives of the uni and library. Let then know where the change is leading, what the big picture is. Identify barriers, who is resisting change and why? Change responsibilities based on strengths and weaknesses, some folks might get new responsibilities during change.

Challenges: that's not what i s hired to do. If changigjobs, need to. Keep hr informed. Job descriptions and job responsibilities are different, design them to allow for. Future change. Longevity no tin age but years of exposure. Challenge now is reward/composition, make ksure when replacing a position, you work within hr guidelines. Establish solid working relationship with other managers. (myers Briggs example, presenter dislikes them bu tshe learned to identify personality types for communication). Relationships between departments. Introduce change gradually. Based on feedback, determine who and what. Of you're going to change something, who is it impacting, who might take well to it? Draft document in case of changes in responsibilities.work with admin and hr regarding impact, change in job grade. Etc. New position, internal or external? Develop program and service evaluation. DEvelop employees new role assessment and evaluation. Remember to implement change incrementally, establishing achievable milestones.

Questions for Dell: hard to motivate to take on new workloads with staff attrition. What if you cant compensate financially? Ey were able to. Look at vacant monies even from other departments. They get books shelf ready so they get three pele in tech services with nothing to do. Resignation, ask for that money. What can you give up because the data exists elsewhere?

Amy Chang - service is no longer circling books, is many services to many users, on site and off site. Have consolidated all service points into one, services becoming seamless and mtransparent. More user centered than policy and procedure driven. Innovative management involves ideas, technology and people. Pele are the k ey to success to goo management. Focus on people manAgement, focus on how ot communicate to become more effective.

Communication tools, why using statistics, how to use stats for service management and how to communicate stats. Elements to be considered for communication and challenges.

Digital tools include lib guide, intranet, blackboard, YouTube, blackboard, blog, one way communication, two way communication. Access services blog page has been very successful because staff found it easy to get in via web, don't ned to log in like intranet, can access from anywhere anytime. Easy to post announcements, store reports and policies. Customer service standards on blog, procedures, etc. Fun stuff area for staff recipes, trVel photos, etc. One way communication is announcement driven, policies and procedures that aren't changing, etc. Two way communication for feedback, input, ideas.

Using statistics as a communication tool. Statistics can help us make a right decision. Provides a real picture of service activities. Some madmin decisions can be based on not numbers or facts but snapshots. Stats can communicate about real picture of our services. Helps staff be more felxinle and adaptive. When staff get the picture and. Can see the number and patterns you generate from data, they are more likely to deal with situation better. As a manager of a department, you can see the changing needs. Don't just look T numbers, but numbers generate a pattern narrative of service from month to month or semester to semester. Know your users. Monitor changing needs, three year comparisons, analysis for particular month, traffic. Patterns, etc. Show productivity in overall activities, demo results ofdecisions. Used to. Do big circa stats, but now itemized. Otherwise other people tell you what is going on in access services. "circa is up encase of laptops, or group study. Rooms". Actually circulation of traditional materials not going down. Demonstrate improvement, new idea results, new devices, etc. Stats are good for demonstrating needs of staff or users, equipment, etc. Creates excitement when there are big jumps. Can map jumps over same months so they get a real picture of patterns and don't think things are one-off. Issues. Email her for examples of reports.

Elements to be considered when doing stats. What is the purpose? What do these stats meanfo r the services, staff and top administrators? How to collect and structure data? Prepare for questions and clarification, especially if opposite speculation or projections. There will be many questions, when, how, why, interpretation of numbers, etc. Need. To ensure accuracy, consistency, frequency, accountability. Challenges is to be illustrative but readable

Access Services 2010: session III - the customer comes first

2010-11-11T13:30:00.000-05:00

The customer comes first: implementing a customer service program at the university of minnesota twin cities

By jerrie Bauer and (someone) Llewellyn.

Why customer service, easily stages of the project initiated in 2006, customer service training from report, classes, measuring outcomes of good customer service. Process improvements and what they learned along the way, tips and tricks for implementing program.

Jerrie: why customer service? Folks have a good conept of customer service and what it is. They wanted a statement of service philosophy for access services why they think it is important. People ask why the staff? We compete for user attention with any other methods of delivery, and they believed that if they don't get good customer service users will seek out alternatives. Pele will just leave and find it somewhere else that they can get help. Front line interaction, and they wanted high and consistenn level of service to sets. Prior, no unified service expectations. They are an urban campus with fourteen different library buildings, around fifty thousand students. Individual libraries different service desks provided differing levels of service. They are heavily reliant on student employees, and are finding many students coming in don't have a good job background or prior experience, and don't knoW what customer service means. Early stages: worked on web based training for student employees. Module of twenty slides, basic knife. Instructions, tips, video, charts, examples of good and bad. In new updated version, focus on what they want people to do and development outcomes. What. You learn through your job, skills that move beyond service desk and shelving books. Demo of module.

Project was well received with good feedback. Ddecided to take next step and do at all service locations for all front line employees. Part of charge was also to develop system for measuring level. Of quality of service to users. Ddeveloped project report focusing on three topics. Critical practices, observable behaviors as examples like eye intact, greeting,. Acknowledge customer service into library background (overview of library Nd how they fit into overall library picture). Supervisory environment, unit culture. Front line interaction, where rubber meets the road. Good customer service begins with the job description. For library background, depth of knowledge about library services. Tours, training in unit policies and procedures, and resource guides that are system wide information Bout services beyond the unit. Who you call, what do you do? If ils goes down, if need ILL help, routing, macros, reserves, etc. Maintain contact lists for efficient referrals, and emergency contact lists maintained and kept up to date.

Supervisory environment. If culture changes, need supervisors behind it. Communication for keeping everyone aware of most current info. Performance standards. All position descriptions added customer service, now included in performance reviews. Culture of service. They do licit user feedback. Customer survey for user feedback, and focus on staff motivation of appreciation to create a welcoming work environment. Reading paper and not viewAble, slouchy isn't approachable, etc.

Prpoject report: front line interactions. Excellent cutover service equites approachability, a greeting, approach users. (physical but also verbal, do you need help, etc.). Photo examples taken by library staff. By having staff work on the project, get buy in so. Its not a top down demand. Post standards to assure users of quality and hold units accountable. Do you post something your users can see? Anticipating user needs: ensure users don't leave confused or frustrated by providing explanations of policies and procedures as well as providing alternative options to met user needs when mpossible. Help happens even off the service desk. All shelving carts direct users to ask shelvers for help if ey need it. Red emergency phones to a walkie talked staff. Someone in audience has student rovers directed via cell phone. Pagers dropped too many calls, so the presenters moved to walkie-talkies.

For many students, first job om front line, so they need training. Phone protocol, transferring calls give them number, email protocol to be professional, timely, standards for response time, etc. Some units staff were using personal email accounts and users responding to personal accounts, not trackable or folks went on vacation. Now, unit email accounts are monitored by multiple staff so none are dropped or delayed, a d conversation is threaded. Beware signature lines etc for individual personal accounts. User priority management, dealing with lines, keeping commitments to users, keeping signage accurate and up to date. Wayfinding is important. There is such thing as too much signage, though.

Diffusing difficult situations training on how to remain calm, dealing with complaints. Remove from desk, seated, mirroring, lowering voice, etc. This is very popular and has actually moved broader thann the library into the safety office for staff and students.

Referrals: detailed information on referral and followup.

Training implementation: group settings, vLue in interaction so in person. Trainers were university HR depRtment offered a train the trainer session to deal with adult learning and content delivery session. Brand new staff, long term staff, etc. Worked to figure out what staff felt was already working. Surveyed users to develop a baseline measure of service perception. Trainers paired into four pairs of two. Trainers developed course content. Three hour training sessions, each session limited to fifteen people/attendees of students and staff. 26 initial sessions over mix of day times Nd night sessions.221 full time and student employees participated. After each class, attendees gave feedback, and trainers held debrief sessions on what worked, what didn't, how to. Improve. Sessions chAnged quite a lot due to those practices. Continuous improvement: content revised, activities reworked, routine info by handout instead of lecture, more visual content through slides. Simple things important, like if doiglibrary. Business use the unit and not personal email. Didn't want just lecture, so. Had to plan activities.

Users are surveyed yearly, simple eight question survey with pain scale smileys with room for free form questions, done at point fo interaction with users. Surveys shared yearly. Signage is consistently rated low, referrals also need work. Secret shopper program instituted and there is a checklist and sample script. Started using student employees at locations where were unknowns. They report out the secret shopper results. Had to change the scripts more because if they were too similar, and the library was a small location, they could tell a secret shopper. Reported in the aggregate, doesn't point out individuals. if got nine out of ten, got sent a certificate to supervisor to give to employee. Acknowledgement was important, certificate or gift cards, etc.

Process improvements: what did we learn. Maintaining a program of three hour classes with trainers and sending students away was not. Sustainable, but it s a great place to start. Clasroom sessions were important for class developers and trainers. Scheduling everyone was hard due to staffing and rolling hires. Three hours away from desk significant for students. Now the training is online. Three interactive online presos. Self paced and can be taken independently. Each presentation is fifteen minutes. Live demo. After each press, viewers asked to submit evaluations, take quizzes, viewer participation recorded and sent to supervisors.

Tips for implementing: determine level of institutional support. Buy in fro front line staff is important. Expectations of participation made clear, no opt out, for everyone. Take advantage of available resources beyond organization in developing content and skills like with HR training office. Begin with baseline and expectation and continue to grow. Continuously seek improvements. Consider scalability when creating and implementing. Resources listed on handout and in slides.

Questions

On wiki, was it across the whole system? No, for entire library system all branches. Is it searchable? No, need to know the path. 221 people trained, what was student v staff breakdown? About fifty fifty. How open were the staff to this training? Very open. In having the staff help develop the training, got a lot of buy in from early on in the project. Students working the desk and trainers and everyone recognize places that have good and bad service. There are folks who don't want to wear a name tag, etc. Eventually it becomes part of the culture. Also need to explain why name tags. Folks lik eto ask for people by name, lr at least identify yourself as staff. From audience, some staff didn't want to give out names due to stalkers. How do you deal? Just something that says "library staff" is also useful identifier. One audience member mNdates name use. "I don't work at walmart" but nametages are everywhere now.

access Services 2010: Session II - Ereserves

2010-11-11T11:00:00.000-05:00

Electronic reserves: change is our constant companion by Linda Fredericksen and Michelle (Chelle) Batchelor

Brief history, current model, challenges, streaming, discussion.

History of reserves. Short term access to instructor material has been logtermm tradition in us academic libraries as early as 1880s at harvard, uMich, johns hopkins. Has been around a long time. Mor ethan a nerd years later, is changing gin a number of levels. From one type of ereserves tech to another, or a more fundamental level in terms of electronic reserves environment. Old print reserve room was bustling place, lot of work wen tint getting print item moon reserve, a d a lot of work in maintaining, then taking off reserve. Back end part of print reserve room was busy. Very location bound. Library controlled all of the access in terms of what came in and what went out.practice of circ based on first sale for these historical hard copy reserves. Despite problems of space limitations and single use access, most ARLs had used reserve practices and at a large ARL from. 120,000 reserve transactions per year.

Rapidly changing technology from nineteen seventies on touched reserve rooms. Photocopiers, scanners, computers. Early mid 1990s for electronic reserves. Solved many problems of paper based location bound service. Automated process for improving range, speed, quantity and quality of reserves. Copyright clearance, special equipment for scanning, server space for storing files. Ereserves vary widely in practice based on infrastructure, manpower, demand, interpretation of copyright law. Decline in physical reserves. Access faster andeasier, but other challenges including copyright permission, complexity and cost, concerns about fair use and first sale in electronic world.

Gradual decline. In number of courses asking for reserve, number of items on reserve. Seeing a change in format, more media being placed on reserve more than physical print books and articles.

Challenges of ereserves environment: wsu Vancouver declining stats and changes in format mirror elsewhere. nCES shows equaiva,net decline in reserve collection circulation. What is happening? In early 2010 kimberly godson at uc San Diego discovered that a number of libraries are discontinuing or radically altering ereserves system. New model of ereserves is self service with library at periphery. Course management systems have supplementary and required content beigloaded in individual class areas. Access facilitated through cms, but other work done by individual faculty or units outside library. oHSU Oregon pulled plug on reserves as cost saving measure. Done all throu course management system, they were in competition with library for limited resources. Library scans and posts if requested. Not at center of process anymore. Library is building copyright and fair use tutorial faculty must take before posting material. Seeking permissions, paying copyright and royalty fees is labor intensive and expensive. One way to adapt os to move services into other areas, combine staff, etc.

Right now it appears that as scanners revolutionized print reserves, maybe CMSes will revolutionize ereserves again. Or not. Maybe hose loading subscribed intent will run up against same issues as libraries; seeking copyright is difficult an dtimem consuming, it may come back to the library. Maybe institutional erection to send things back to libraries. Unsure what will happen next next. Critical challenge is copyright and licensing. Recent legal activity at Gsu and ucla. We suspect faculty aren't seeking permission once reeves move outside of the library. Do we have an ethical obligation to intervene? Who is getting permission? Is it being done at all?

As publishers are trying to change the game, we may be losing some of our rights with first sake and fair use as it moves into licensing discussion instead of copyright discussion. During-past ten years, enormous change. Changes in format and licensing with event of CMSes transform teaching and learning. We can only be certain of continued change on unexpected fronts.

chelle: faculty have started to ask for more media reserves in physical and streaming media with digital access. Evolving ereserves model. Significant challenges in tech, staffing and copyright law. She started researching because were piloting streaming media and wasn't working out well. Streaming audio media reserves: audio content via real timem streamigon net. Cant download, so isn't file sharing or providing mp3. Fairly established practice. Much of this done in music libraries supporting classes being taught. Streaming video is not a distribution method, they cant keep file, can only watch online. John donne and mark notice at educause video survey , see these. Slides for the web addres of that educause presentation. Of 150, only half streaming through the library, other using IT or Comm department.

How? Technically? Two parts. With audio, is implement, can use iTunes, convert to mp3 and you can stream on a server supporting that format. For video, digitization is more complicated to digitize. We can break encryption to digitize and stream clips for classroom use. Some places instead of breaking encryption, they use converter machine Microsoft expression (?) and then stream digitized file off streaming media server. Cant be downloaded, delivery mechanism only. Interestingly, latest version of docutek erez supports streaming. Password protected.

Real life models of how streaming media at UWash tacoma and Seattle. Full service, both steps one an two by staff in library. Media librarian, then grad student. Use play and tape method with a converter, not breaking encryption. If stream intent originating on DVD, got funding. To staff service, and legal counsel which was liberal asked faculty be required to fill out fair use assessment form, which is online, and indicate all four factors of fair use based on class and requested content. Process and stream what they are asked to stream. At UW Bothell, wasn't working. Streaming audio was fine, but media was bundled in, and bide was poor. Not scalable based on staffing model, and was very time intensive. High paid staff person beside computer steaming, but needed funding to hire additional staff. Student sin program using streaming were distance ed in remote regions of the state without broadband, some still have dial up modems and cant access that media file and have it play. So stats showed service use was low. Next will be requesting that files submitted in already digitized format where faculty comes in and works with library IT. It is a service for clips when it comes to video, but full audio file. Results of pilot will be in next year.

Fair use, teach act. Legal counsel, copyright. They believe well within fair use. Nature, purpose of copying, extent of items used and impact on market. Faculty think they're fine, but here's a lot of contention. Folks may argue against claim of fair use. Technology has changed. In 1976 when copyright act was last updated, wooden apple was first PC. Huge implications for what we are seeing right now in litigations and disputes over copyright law. Technology has changed and education has changed, and words to use defining copyright like face to face,
classroom use, copies, etc are inadequate in current electronic world. Much of redefining of copyright law is now being done through case law, so everyone is afraid of being sued. Cheers to Georgia State.

People are looking for hard and fast rules to follow. Copyright holders have forgotten balance of copyright and fair use originally intended. Copyright protects creator, fair use protects those who want material to learn, comment, criticize. We are in danger of that balance tipping. Teachinng and research is what we do in academic institutions. Where outdated law fails to. Address what we do, spirit of law is hopefully still on our side. What happens when someone threatens to sue? Scares us all. Copyright owners like films media group and oxford university press, would argue our assessments of fair use and ereserves are not enough. uW starts with fair use, only pays copyright for things used a lot. First sale going away if we move into. Subscription and not purchase. We are increasingly expected to negotiate licenses that are more restrictive with journals, evokes, etc. We must bhe diligent in negotiating these licenses. Streaming media is another no, just because you bought it doesn't mean that you can provide access to. It in the way your instructors and students need. You need to pay to subscribe and steam it and you still don't own it. When axes come up, ee fall back seeking safe guidelines, eroding our own practice of fair use.

Future: fear or freedom? Great guidelines and best practices by arl and video roundtable with ALA. In process axes with gsu or ucsd. Interesting things in world like creative commons, which allows for use of content, open access academic publishing. Will help us with these issues, a way lf fighting. Back. Revolutionizing the way we think about ownership. We are fighting for sprit of creativity and progress which s orignially in spirit of copyright. Should it be based on what faculty and student scan afford to buy pay per view, or do we go about providing access for best possible access for providing access to the information.

Questions.

They have cheapie blackboard, and password protection is easily hackable and anyone can sign up for a class and blackboard account. Too many holes in enterprise blackboard. Better to post under Docutek. Copyright form, similar to Crews form, but she doesn't like parts of their form. In terms of clips, is there a limit? Kenneth Crews, just because it doesn't make one factor it doesn't mean its not fair use, need to weigh other three factors. What about duplication of clips? Currently no mechanism for logging those. Docutek has player embedded in the page. At first, was too easy for someone to actually save the file, but now you can change setting and make it unsavable.

They have faculty fill out the fair use checklist? Or do they take their evaluation? They just believe faculty.

If it's fair use once, it may be fair use again. Just because used last semester, doesn't mean they cant use it again without paying. If it met four factors first time, may meet them again. Every request needs to be looked at as a new use. We bought it, we should be able to use it as we want to. Fair use was constructed to support teaching and education. Library of congress ruling recently definitely made that similar argument of fair use in spirit of education.

Access Services 2010: Session I - Ending the Turf War

2010-11-11T09:47:00.000-05:00

"Ending the Turf War: Circulation, Reference, and Instruction on One Team" by Ken Johnson and Susan Jennings from Appalachian State

Circ ref and instruction on one team to address interteam issues. Approach is figure out way. To say yes as much as possible. Reducing service differences between teams helped them do that. Lot of folks have ventured down this path. How many have actively combined circ and reference in the library? How many people think it's intriguing, how many people think it's awful? Libraries differ organizationally and culturally. We think we were successful at it. Ken johnson is coordinAtor pf learning and research services team. Susan Jennings is lead librarian for desk services, teaks desk services for user centered services. True commons. Responsible for material delivery and delivery to faculty offices.

Appalchiannstate in NW corner of NC. Has sixteen thousand five hundred students, part of unc system, new library in june 2005, gate count is over one point two million, forty one faculty and forty-nine staff members.( Slideshare? I'm getting queasy with the swooping slide moves.) traditional organization, access, ref & instruction, independent service standards. Team based, so as coordinator he is sort of head but the librarians report directly to university librarian, not a lot of authority and folks are autonomous. Staff have more direct reporting line. Access were rule enforcers and logistically moving m aerials, reference and instruction were the yesmen.

Service culture had been dated and rigid policies, enforcement mentality, no food and drink. Eye to protecting collection from pesky users who might damage. Strict fines model, inflexible library hours. Policies hadn't been reviewed in two decades. No appeal, strict interpretation of fines. Only enforcers in library of food and drink, nobody else seemed to care. Resisted pleas to increase hours from student government and felt they couldn't accommodate requests to increase from 114 hours per week. Eleven staff and one library faculty coordinator. Reference team, nine librarian faculty, web librarian, two staff and two. Part timem adjunct libs.

Impact factors creating opportunity for change. First, new building opening in 2005, termed library and information commons, collaborative space, computers, campus units that hep with student learning, faculty development for online courses. Tremendously popular building. New strategic plan, library admin felt that once were settled in new building needed to look at org structure. And student body had been pushing for extended hours.

New strategic plan had new mission statement to change culture, and focused on improved and elevated cuts service expectations, extending hours andaccomodating weds, expanding services, better use of space. Old vs new mission statement. Old is not memorable, 42 words long. New is mission of app state is to assist those who pursue knowledge. They can emphasize that with all incoming library workers, that is what The work is about. Brandable, water bottles, tshirts flash drives, grocery bags.

Reorganization. Does org still meet needs of patrons moving forward? Guiding principles were to improve communication between teams, better decision making, innovation, service orientation. Get people who need to be talking together every day on same team or department. 2008. Formed Learning and Research Services team. Not happy with name, but thats it. With structure, original access was one librarian eleven staff. Coordinator reassigned, doc delve staff split between acquisitions and collection management. Interlibrary loan borrowing went to acquisitions, lending went with collection management, stacks manta went with collection management. Reserves staff moved to tech services team including web efforts. Remainder was circ desk manager, microform and periodicals, and night supers went to new team. Reference and instruction coordinator promoted to assoc uni librarian. Librarian promoted to head, web librarian to tech team, two sup staff team went to tech but do front line tech support. Retained two part time librarians and other libs. Now eleven librarians and seven staff, new org chart makes more sense. Eighteen people, largest team in library. Coordinator, directly supers three night supers, librarians titles changed. Six info lit liBrarians. Lead desk services librarian with three desk supers under that position as well as microform staff member. E learning librarian does anything related to reusable learning objects, training materials for student assistants, etc.

Susan: combined team focus. Had to come together philosophically. Focus on more user centered environment, former decisions made based on what was good for the librarians and staff. Wanted to raise the bar in customer service, did not want to say no all the time. Wanted to work together in team environment providing middle ground for public services. Wanted to develop new services but tweak existing because hadn't been evaluated in long time. Before merge, reference libs thought access only checked out books. Now they know it's a lot more. Goal to develop more blended service. Hope was for no pointing between desks. The physical difference between circa and reference in new library is twenty feet. Didn't wan tot pass them off but address point of need. Major priorities were to evaluate and revamp policies. Extending loan periods, relax loans, i plement grace periods.d train librarians, staff and Students on three service points. Approached by taking core believers, four members were cross trained in first wave at circulation desk. Two more waves. Now seventeen of eighteen are completely crpstrained. Struggled with appropriate level of knowledge for running each desk. What were basic needs to effectively work that desk. Then needed to change groupthink of enforcement. Idea of brusque enforcement, wanted to get away from it for better library pr. Wanted to try new things, develop new services. Like study room reservations automated. In process of transforming larger group study rooms into collaborative group spaces, putting in whiteboards, TVs. Began trying to communicate in new ways. News blog on website, kids walking around with iPhones, facebook, tweeting. Needed to go where students were. Wanted to eliminate boundaries. Access services decisions affected all, but rarely got external input from other teams in library. Wanted to take cues from outside the library successes. Ucrops grocery store in Richmond with great customer service, family owned. Chick fill a great customer service. We forget the niceties of those courtesies.

Did we succeed? In many ways yes. Engaged librarians in day to day operations of library. Expectation of number of hours per week of public service desk work. Wanted to help patrons at point of need. Reference librarian mentors students and staff and provides service. Training was a two way street, staff at reference desk, etc. Cross trained and shared forty student assistants of one hundred. Have student training summit, four hours of training, great thing waS bringing folks from all over the library to train students. Centralized scheduling- prior was paper for access, reference was electronic. All electronic, nominal fee per year for their system with trade board, etc. (get what software this is). Systematic way of collecting stats. Access hadn't collected anything but the Typical Week. E dedd up consolidating and tech folk created electronic tick system on every system that dumps into back end. Newly created thirteen member student advisory group. Volunteers from student body who wanted to improve library, solicits feedback from everyday users, use them as guinea pigs.

Examples of service improvements. Making policies humane, esp those not looked at in twenty years. Not just for patrons but for staff, sometimes you feel brutalized in enforcing. Example is laptop policy. Person is one minute late. Auto ten dollar charge, PR nightmare. Fifteen minute grace period. Has made life so much easier, especially if desk is busy and cant get to it right away. Video replacement policy was that if you lost it you got charged five hundred twenty dollars because ed sets cant be bought of a piece but in whole set. Charge for lost book was forty dollars with twenty processing. Now also allow replacements. Wanted more connection with tech services, so connected services with tech support via walks and instant messaging. Especially at night is helpful. Improved chat service, just a widget with choices for reference, tech and distance learning so you can choose who you talk to, no login required. Just added text to library feature, publicizing with magnets. Eliminated no food policy. Transformed to 24/5 facility, long process because when moved into new building, was expectation access services would be third shift, did not sit well with staff. Working with library admin, they outsourced the overnight. They didn't want services, just the space. Security monitored atrium. Three person security from two am to seven am, no third shift library. Got the money because students put up one hundred k of student fees to fund it so they could get the space. They close building at midnight to community members, guards check for ids at midnight and if you don't have it you must leave. Makes students feel safer.

Key factors were administrative support, a core of believers, coordinator that understands the big picture. Lead librarian that understands and can figure out mechanics and details, motivated staffer to take on student training, developing trust between disparate teams, open communication. Coaching approach.

Challenges. Culture shock of guardians vs free access. Appropriate roles for librarian faculty members. They are faculty librarians with ex
Ectations of scholarship, service and teaching. How do you balance those competing demands? Is time beat suited working the desk?
Outside perceptions, from other teams within the library. "lot of money being paid to check out books to people." occasionally service issues, but fewer issues. Keeping eighteen members engaged and up to date. Determining appropriate training levels, a d. Staying ahead of the curve, some policies not looked at for a long time.

Access Services 2010: Keynote, Tim Daniels

2010-11-11T08:50:00.000-05:00

Tim Daniels, Manager for Lyrasis Technology Services, formerly assistant state librarian for technology and infrastructure at Gergila Public Library Service. Cloud, content and discovery.

Has had a lot of jobs, doesn't mean he cant keep a job :) he doesn't know a lot about access services other than coolest job in library that no one else gets to do, we get to say no! A great access services head is the one thing you must have because they mMs everything work. If someone is not willing to draw the line and enforce rules with some logic and balance, it can go bad fast, so critical to have that layer of folks on the desk. As he was looking at technologies and how we would apply them, better to talk about what he'll talk about, then discuss how it applies to our situations.

Gartner Hype cycle. The gartner group studies technology, writes four page reports and charge five thousand dollars. One of things they developed was Gartner Hype cycle. Chart that shows for any given technology, a rise of populArity of a given technology until people realize it doesn't solve every problem, then it falls into trough of despair, some techs fade Way, some come to a plateau where it is usable. Like blogs, we had to have them everywhere, but now...doesn't serve all of the problems and has settled out as communication tools. Garnter just came out with new cycle yesterday. Pasted new hype cycle over old one (tech probs, no. Slide). Cloud idea at top and ready to start falling. Idea of broadband through electricity lines tanked before it got to any certain level. Head of Galileo had called him to forward a guy who had issue with public libraries. The issue was that guy thought there were hackers using broadband over power lines to get into his library account so he would have overdue fines, became global conspiracy. He had assumed hacking was broadband over power line. That tech had tanked, so we are all safe, hahaha.

"if there are such things as angels, i hope they are organized along the lines of the mafia."

Newspaper from forties or fifties, predicted that people would. Record television and have video library, tapes would reproduce thread immersions, and TVA would be shallow as pictures. It took a lot of timem to happen. Projection of microfilm books to ceiling at home. Neat look at how some techs evolve as we think, but not in some cases. Horizon report on technologies, timem to adoption, etc. Mobile imputing, open content, ebooks, augmented reality. Assumed students would bring own laptops. They have them, but they don't want to carry. At what point does it get too onerous for us. When you went to lib school, did you think you'd be managing tech for a living? Tim Spalding of library thing had said public libraries would be obsolete in ten years due to ebooks. What will technology evolution past augmented reality look like? Glasses you plug into iPod like a visual field screen. RFID and augmented reality overlay, student can look at collection with augmented reality layer, here is book, here is synopsis, here is online version, and they don't have to have laptop or major handheld computing device with em. Far future, good potential. Guy at Georgia tech is ultimate in wearable technology,.cylindrical keyboard, etc.

Roger's innovation curve. Innovators, early adopters, etc. Conscientious rejectors vs early adopters. What does it all meant us? These are indications of what our users want. WhT does it mean and how does it affect our decision making? Until tech jumps chasm from early adopter to early majority, is still experimental. Needs to make that jump to something people take seriously. Keep in mind where the new technologies fit. You don't want to jump in too early. When we talk about offering services, may be better to wait for implementation.

Cloudtweaks.com Cloud computing is big deal. What does that mean? Delivery of scalable IT resources over the Internet. You can expand or contract as much as you need. As library, subscribe to cloud service, you have content up there, tomorrow you need more storage space, you call cloud provider and say you need another hundred gigs, they charge you done. Very elastic idea, cuts down on IT overhead because expandable or. Contractable to. Your need. Think about it with digital collections. All the cloud is is servers somewhere with storage space and services on it. As libraries we are used to subscribing to things, why not IT. Upside, application is always available. Downside is will service always be there? Is this company long term? Software as a service, applications living in the cloud that you get access to. Google docs, zoho. Public libraries are talking about this. Thirty public acces machines, how to you keep up with patches? Depends on broadband connectivity, remote administration, patch and update management. Means users dont have to have disks or thumdrives because can get to solely with web access. Uptime, fewer hard ware purchases. Also means you're not paying for software license, makes it better and more usable model. Virtualization: build your own cloud in back and service your machines that way. Have software on central server, if you don't do this, lifetime of a machine is five to. Seven years, with virtualization, takes life up to ten years.

So we should put everything in cloud? Not exactly. Campus technologies, miracle, then cloud? IT guys have diff ways they think it works. Hardware and software not completely defined. wMS, records are then not yours, you're not buying them you're subscribing to them. What happens if you switch vendor? Apple model...application development in conjunction with software. Call up oclc, can i do x? Yeah here's an app for that! Heh. Ex, acquisitions hooked to amazon through firefox. Tell you how much you spent on that budget line, how much you've spent, and updates real time as you add items to cart. Great application of cloud services for libraries. Skyriver vs oclc.

Think about content. Open u iversity stuff, MITs big bank of free online classes, courseware and content, electronic resources. Cloud of services, then cloud of content, how do you make them talk? Google scholar has been talking to OCLC about partnering. Google university, they have digital access to content and courses. Get your degree from google. Campuses moving to google services. Columbus state in GA did this, whoe, campus is google. You sign up with google, students get email rough google, access to google suite of tools, and certain price but is modest, and they runn all your back end services for you. Students get gmail account branded for your university. Instead of IT wasting time managing email system, can develop apps for android. Smart phones scan student ids as their Id in the system, can check out books, buy stuff. Students showing you their proof of schedule as pictures on their iPhones. Putting all of this stuff into one basket. Are you comfortable with that? Oclc, need to make sure patron data isn't stored in another country. In georgia public board of regents you are not allowed by lAw to store patron data out of state. SmarTech is georgia states digital repository. Itu es content, podcasts, free and paid for. Itunes university. Overdrive is an audio download service, now work with iPod. Overdrive trying to link ebooks with e- audio content, to sync so left off listening, can pick up reading. Working with android and iphone for app development. Real time coordination. State libraries handle services for blind, how does that impact all the audiobooks they send out? When does it become redundant for federal government to develop and manage audio content when they could just grant to those services and send them overdrive subscriptions?

His wife is a medical librarian, and they don thane faculty but actual docs, who don't want to use ebooks. They are looking at
Atron driven acquisition for ebooks, so if docs want, they will buy. What ramifications does that have for access services if patron gets book, then returns it, how flow back through system to become available to others? How does it turn back into something someone else will use? Discovery layer is new buzz, now that we know federated searching doesn't work the way we wanted it to. Doesn't matter ils on back end because you can shape front end that pResents the data from all of your systems.ebsco discovery system, summon, vufind, Primo, III's Encore, Proquests library for k12 and community colleges. Talking about OLE very academic focused open source ils. But if you have a good discovery layer, does it matter what your back end is? Interoperability, must work with everything. Barcode scanner, phone will tell you availability, prices, etc. Book scans to world cat and tells you public libraries with the holding. Self checkout via phones right in the stacks. Will it be able to disable security? Heh. You wouldn't need security gates!

Ereaders. iPad, only other tech that came close to four point five million units in first three months was DVD player, which was far less. You're not even cool since everyone has one! Tablet type tech will have legs and stay with us for a while. Think about it as libraries, do we want to be in business of managing technology or managing the content and making sure content is accessible and available on whatever tech the user brings to us? big Question.

Nicholas Carr, 'Does IT Matter?' with the developments in cloud computing and remote resources, does it behoove company to focus resources on internal IT or can they farmm that out and go back to the business of their actual business instead of sinking budget into IT. Can outsource that and go back to their actual business, consumes so much attention they are not paying attention to other things. Can better balance reserves and focus. Especially as this technology matures. Hosted solutions are a lot less headache. Not only what impact lf tech on day to day, and would you totally do away with IT? Probably not. What can you let someone else manage for you? What can you let go? (this could be a great discussion on delegation at the macrolevel). at end of day, is about community and how we develop our community as to what techs we should focus on, what things we should keep and manage and what things we can let go. We're doing less with less, do you want to do less services or less IT management? Tim Daniels Tim.Daniels at lyrasis dot org.

Do you see us having the accountability issues we have with our library accounts now? He thinks oclc and open source will help change that attitude. Curreent ills vendor market don't let you build community and have partnership development. More community and more they will allow you develop for it, the better off.

Audience question, "where do mobile phones fit in here?" it'll go huge. Remember back in the say when we created our first library websites or gopher text sites? First things we put up were tour, address, hours, etc. What do we look to our sites for? To provide patron access to the data we have. Mobile phones, ipads, qr codes, will all mature to the point we don't see it as testing for easy pr, but actually providing serious access since folks live in that environment. We will develop our services to that end.

Access Services 2010: Welcome Address and Keynote

2010-11-11T08:23:00.000-05:00

By Dr. Nan H. Seamans, Dean of Libraries, Georgia State University.

Welcome to Atlanta. Why is Dean here to welcome us? From Georgia State University. Brand new football team, go Panthers! On Nov 18th playing Alabama, cheer for them as they get slaughtered. GSU very diverse campus, reflects student enrollments nationally more than anywhere else in the US. Has the best library learning space in the southeast. Vibrant, new, renovated three years ago. Copyright lawsuit involving GSU. Sued by camp bridge, oxford, and Sage, in litigation, they cant talk about it. Outcome of this case will affect what all of you do with ereserves.

Thank the four organizers! Dean has lived in Atlanta for 2.5 years. Peachtree - there are many of them! Thirtyfour peach trees. Sometimes intersect, sometimes connect. Streets change name as you're driving along. Goal that you have to. Get to lightbefore anyone else, very NASCAR. Welcome to 2010 Access Services conference, second annual. As you look at the program sessions, also discuss things in the halls. Serendipitous conversations, have in the back of your mind that library life as we know it is ending. Last week was the Charleston inference, looking at the report, two things: keynote by rick Anderson from mUtah, and other was conversation of attendees. rick from Univ of Utah was talking about changes in acquisitions processes, ebooks, print on demand, how different things will be. She reads paragraph from Library Journal: called into question interlibrary loan, distributed cataloging, big package subscriptions, outmoded by technology services, no longer serve the needs of current librarians. Example was clunky nature of docdelivery and interlibrary loan. We probably don't disagree with this, the innovations were thirty years ago but we are still living with legacy processes. This is the kind of conference where you have the opportunity to rethink those sort of things. Other thing she heard a lot about was the preponderance of sessions on PDA, not punily display of affection, but patron driven acquisitions. Think this is one of the ways we will retain our relevance as we serve our populations.

If we're going to be elegant, we need to think about these things. Struck by the different ways we talk about access, and how user centric things were. Points out commitment to providing high quality services, innovation, continuous learning, effective training, assessment, collaboration, technology as tools for access and service, well informed about legality of actions, and anytime anywhere support for users. She affirms that as we look ahead, it's not that users don't need us, just that they. Eed us differently. Need to focus on service provision, what users want and how to support, how to reinvent reserves, rethink ILL to make it not clunky, efficiencies in stacks management. What should we be doing to reinvent ourselves? Commend for variety of topics, there is collective wisdom in this room that can solve lots of problems. Brainstorm, innovate. We will occasionally fail and have to. Start over, but we are on the cusp of something exciting and we have opportunity to lead the way. Take advantage of these two days. Invitation: four stop Marta ride away, come. Visit georgia state. Let the wild rumpus begin!

Brick and Click 2010: Session VI

2010-11-05T16:07:00.000-04:00

Copyright 0 to 60 in One Year by Kati Donaghy.

Microcollege, small staff. Before writing copyright policy, description. In 2007, only paper reserves, no electronic reserves, no campus copyright policy, everything accepted for reserve. Reviewed policies of peer and aspirant groups, similar in size, demographic, budgeting. Groups had already been designated. Trilled admin and library sites looking for policies. Distributed to other staff in library for comments, met every two weeks, very collaborative effort. Also consulted college legal for the policy. Crew's copyright for librarians, Carrie Russel's Complete Copyright, see lipinski, Librarys Legal Answer Book. Made presentations to faculty an distaff, invited to fauculty retreat captive audience, conducted workshops. There had been no documentation or paper trail. Many staff and faculty didn't understand why extra step was needed, and workshops helped. Massive amount of feedback during first year of copyright policy and ereserves. See Www.copyright.Cornell.edu/resources/publicdomain.cfm

Copyright exemptions. First sale, fair use photocopying for libraries and archives, teaching exemptions (public performance and display). Moved reserves into library encase of photocopy rule. They have fair use checklist and reserve request form that must be submitted. All reserves are reserves. Fair use checklist is adapted from everyday guide to copyright. Ask for repeat submission because they classify fair use as first time only.

Only staff and faculty can submit items for reserve. No more handing to student to hand to circ desk, no teaching assistants. Must be accompanied by dated syllabus or reading list so they can keep an eye on the amount of the item being used in course because has an effect on fair market value. Must submit full bibliographic info, title page verso (copyright page), bc need that information to determine fair
use and fair crediting. They ask for folks to feel free to ask for assistance and clarification during submission.

Four factors of fair use. Purpose, nature, amount, effect. Purpose and character - does it add new info to original work? Fair use more likely to. Apply if noncreative or factual. Amount, portion short or less significant. Even a short piece can be an infringement if the extracted portion is the heart of the work, like printer smashing scene from Office Space. Open to interpretation. Effect o
N potential market value of piece. Ereserves policy has evolved into a course pack policy.

More ambiguous terms: transformative or productive use;, bad faith behavior; importance to favored educational objectives; portion not central to work; portion is central to work. How crucial does i thane to be to. Goals of syllabus? They talk to professor about it. No significant effect on the market or potential market: rule of thumb of one chapter or ten percent of the work. Note that is not a law but an interpretation and they may not have the 'right' to reproduce that amount. Lack of licensing mechAnism: public domain, no known licensing, author dead, estate fallen, publisher out of business. For good faith, keep running narrative of all contacted. Numerous copies made: one prof with fifteen students has six copies of required text on reserve. Pllicy is one copy per twelve students (by class size and student to faculty ratio); long term use (sequential semesters or years).

Need to be consistent, and reasonable people can disagree. Always a dialogue. Push envelope but act in the spirit of the law: risk
assessment. Copyright and intellectual property certification (ask her about how to get this).

Iltems on reserve: owned by libraries, personally created items, legally obtained, personal items.

Not allowed are ILLs, items narrowed from other libraries, rented videos and DVDs, rare or fragile items, copies in excess of one copy per twelve students, copies used to replace or substitute for anthologies, copying of consumables like workbooks and study guides, repeated copying of same item for same teacher from term to term without copyright permission, copying to substitute the purchase of books.

Timelines. Reserves must be in at least two weeks before beginning of term. Seventy two hours turnaround, twenty-four hour turnaround after first three weeks of semester. Cant promise to honor rush requests.

Ereserves are chapters, excerpts, articles, websites and podcasts. Default is. Now electronic, not paper any longer. Allows access from anywhere. Great bc so small has limited library hours. Fair use still applies. All ereserves are password protected. Library a.ways creates PDF, adds copyright statement from us code seventeen, can place original copy on paper reserve, but confidence in ereserves means this has declined. Accessing ereserves mDe easy with handouts, instructions on site, etc. Files saved to campus server, files removed at end of every semester because storing is bad faith. Used through reserve function in Voyager, no CMS software but moodle is forthcoming. Students can access assignments through opac. Disadvantage is not limited to just class, but wide community, so is not limited to class specific. But limiting access to extent technologically feasible.

Licensing and copyright still working right. For them, fair use is only first term, not subsequent term. Copyright clearance obtained through access services coordinator. Melick lib pays up to twenty dollars per course for licensing cost but has turned out to be more expensive. Copyright clearance for course packs soon to be be incorporated into cost of pack at bookstore. Thinking about implementing lab fee for students to cover those licensing fees.

Eureka college, medick library.

Brick and click 2010: session V

2010-11-05T16:06:00.001-04:00

I presented on Managing the Multigenerational Library to a PACKED house! Great questions, gat interaction and discussion. Thank you so much to everyone who came to my session, I had a blast :)

Brick and click 2010: session IV

2010-11-05T14:05:00.000-04:00

To inventory or not: findings from inventory projects performed in two different academic libraries by Jan Sung and Nackil Sung.

Six hundred years to open stacks. How many years until completely book less? Inventory is expensive, boring, and tiring. ;) Deans of major libraries say nobody is browsing the stacks. Future academic library is little more than special collections and study areas, says university provost of UC. Admin is fighting for facilities for rock climbing, and where do they get the money? Our budgets? Barbara fisted asks if we can sound real estate to house rarely used books. Easier in Midwest, but not in Hawaii. (anahouma bay?)

Moldy books. 2004 flood. Rebuilt servers on second floor. But air circulation blocked leading to mold, so annotate have compact shelving because tousle with circulation when the stacks are closed. Can't say weeding in Hawaii, but can say retire :)

Concept of inventory. Shelf list. Inventory should be like shelf reading. Inventory has been you compare shelf list to the books with a status and books on shelf. Usually there. Is a discrepancy, item not found (out of location or lost), items without barcodes, tmp or negative barcodes where legacy non barcodes get assigned a code in new system but not labeled. Books on shelf but mot in system.

Change of shelf list, used to be could use the card catalog as your shelf list. Ever dropped a drawer? Ack! Shelf list line by line is not fun. Nackil is a programmer, Jan asked him to. Create something.

Nackil: created a program, stacks management system. Voyager had flexible reporting system, could get shelf list easily.how the system works video clip. Allows for scanning of book barcodes, alerts you if something is out of order or has missing status, skipped book which will appear in a books not on the shelf later. Items not found. Exit program generates books not on shelf list. Generates other reports. Program is built inside ms access which links to main oracle database, used visual basic language to program it in access. Www.library.emu.edu/download/LSMS? Needs scanner and a wordless connection to save shelf list in server. Scan barcode, check length of barcode for correctness, if ann error, reports scan error. Then checks if barcode is in shelf list. If not, item not found error message. If in shelf list, checks to see if book should be on stacks or should have other status, if other status, pops an error message. Also checks if gem is. In correct order. Interface has both aural and visual cue so not too much time spent syringe at screen.

Data collected tome stamped to second because is lgged into system, as wdll as barcode, call number and status. Distance tells you number of books in between, and time. Eiu took two years to scan half million plumes, and Jaanalyzed three hundred thousand. Questions she wanted to answer. See journal of academic librarianship 2009. Misshelving rate found at eastern, books out of ordder by one book were thirty two percent. More than fifteen percent more than fifteen books away. Ratio is very similar for Hamilton. PSes infiltrating PRs. Charge rate, misshelving rate,correlated highly. Misshelved distances between first and second shelf readings very similar, patern almost identical. Whenn replaced, we used because is a heavily used collection. If you find misshelved books they will be used. Need to do shelf reading.

Challenges at ahwaii, books without barcodes, location confusion in same building (general, folio, east asia, etc). Tmp and n barcodes ,analyzed series. Many books turn nout not onn shelf because of this issue. 175 page tMp list. Flag tmps. Very labor intensive. Translate into excel, send to education liaison/collection developer. Flag issues, no room on shelf issues. If every book form patrons came back, out of space by twenty percent. Challenges, collection development policy about weeding nonexistent. Collaboration between collection development and selectors. Multiple locations, what is head of access's role in this?

Brick and Click 2010: Session III Lightning Round

2010-11-05T12:05:00.000-04:00

Lightning Round. (i couldn't resist, they'll be discussing website redesign, purchase on demand using ILL requests, electronic dissertations and theses, and a broad survey of buy not borrow programs - all things we're looking at in my library).

1. Current trends in library wen site redesign with CMS/Drupal by Elaine Chen

Linrary migrated to drupal in summer 2009. Design for interface took over six months, hard to design to be on homepage due to jockeying for position so did a survey. Stevem fox reviewed five. Hundred university home pages and identified three trends. She looked to see if they had same trends in design, navigation and technology trends. Focus on libraries using drupal.

Review process was two staged. First stage look at built with.com through fore fox browser. Stage two review design, test navigation, used google forms to collect data. Eva,uation criteria: Stewart Foss. Intiial findings, thirty one new library wensites using drupal. Two in foreign languages, one in word press, nine didn't returnnpositive for drupal, and so nineteen sites made it to second stage review.

Design trends. All have wider design and three d elements. News and events om home page. Wider dedsign uses full screen. Threed dimensional graphics. News events on home page. Centereed design, most no longer justified. Big footers. Site search box on upper right. Big top photos. Bckground designs rare. Navigation trends include popular and quick links, subset navigation in ajax increasing. Social. Etworking sites popular. One nerd percent used Ajax, CSS, and java. Half had mobile, thirty two percent had video intent created by library. Many trends align with home institutions but there is still of. A gap. Probbaly because of fictionality and bc we need to have a place for cataloging search. Libraries tend to have fewer resources with which to build these pages compared to university sites.

2. Purchase on demand: using ILL requests to influence acquisitions by Amy Soma

Summer 2009 after library director attended ala and saw purchase on demand session. Asked for workflow and purchase criteria. Running in fall 2009, so focus on first eight months. Purchase criteria, costs, workflow, pros and cons and plans for future. Purchase criteria fall withing colldev policy, not avail from free lending agreement consortial library, cost couldn't exceed limits for paying for Ill request m.which is twenty-five for student and fifty for faculty, exceptions for items unobtainable through Ill due to newness or media lending restrictions, buy regardless of cost. Need by date needed to be generous enough for ordering and rush cataloging. Workflow is mediated Ill request. Purchase criteria. If buy, fwd to acquisitions coded as rush order and determines vendor. Enter ill req number in acq modeule of ils, forward item received to cataloging. Cataloging had long established procedures for rush cataloging. Done processing, forward back to ILL for receiving and distribution. Counted as filled ILL and patron notified. Not publicized that they're doing purchase on demand, is completely behind scenes, they just get material they requested. All about meeting patron need, not workflow ease. First eight months, twenty items purchased at average of twenty-one bucks. One thousand dollars given. Sept throughh may, spent only half of initial budget.

Pros and cons. Pros: meet patron needs, builds collection by adding materials that we know will be used, improves collection use. Eighty percent of materials ordered circled, forty-five percent cried twice. 2.1 circus per item on average. Weaknesses, purchase criteria tilted in favor of faculty, so limited use to students. Increased turnaround because no. Amazon prime Ccount. Future: budget funds will supplement serendipity pleasure easing collection to improve services to students; investigate amazon prime account and work with admin to get such a credit card to decrease current seven to ten day turnaround time.

3. Electronic theses and dissertations: issues alternatives and access by Janice Boyer

University of Nebraska at Omaha. Theses cataloging. In 96 started with dissertations, sent off to umi/ proquest. Early in two thousands, approached. Grad council to. Ask about local digitization. Graduate council support was essentiAl, especially when it came to faculty. Proquest offered free access to digitized disserts from their institution. When they wanted to. Go. Electronic for all theses and not just dissertations. Proposal written, had to navigate many issues, seven drafts. Setting up site during proposal phase so folks were ready, and many faculty looked at this while under construction. They ask for a lot information when nailing out forms. Link to grad studies pages for single-updates in the future instead of multiple pages. When administrators assigned, make sure there is someone from the library involved so they can nrun reports, etc. Pilot project in summer 2007, two theses. Fall 2007 about twenty, in 2008 it became mandatory. Steps are simple. Select traditional or open access, info for pro quest, subbing manuscript, uploading. Optional steps include multimedia, supplemental material, copyright, order copies.

Issues: faculty concerns, concerned about embargoes, twenty-four page previews, embargo is up to two. Years. Formatting in PDF done by button. Bound copies for archives and stacks, decided didn't want stacks copies and not popular since students still have to buy copies for departments. Costs, now theses have to pay for publishing fees and higher. Now pro quest only charges if submitted by paper. Alternatives: network digital library of theses and dissertations, institutional repositories. Access: selling point to faculty was better online access. Archival copies still important in paper or microfilm.

4. To buy and not borrow: does it pay? By Brad Reel

October 2009 u of southern Indiana at Evansville. Wanted to see how they could refine and tweak based om what others were doing. Purpose of study was to identify academic libraries using buy not borrow or consideringone. Measure overall satisfaction of programs in place and collect overall best practices. Methodology was a twenty-two question survey via listservs and oclc message boards. Variety of question styles including yes no, scale, open ended. Four questions allowed for more than one answer. Invitation for additional comments. Made avail for twenty-two days. Questions based on lit reviews and usi policies. Fiftyone surveys, skipsmart. Twentyfive to thirty-nine responses.

What criteria are using to decide purchases?
How long have you had such a program? Twentyseven percent bend owing it three to five years. Restrictions in place: no textbooks, no theses, no popular fiction, limit on how old, no AV, no. Self published, nothigout of stock. Where are they buying their books? Amazon, alibis, other, baker and Taylor, barnes and noble, Abe books, . Others, black well, better world, Yankee, etc to check prices. Rationale: contributing patron driven requests to collection, expedite ILL, cost savings. Which patrons generate requests? Forty percent faculty, twenty-three percent undergrad, masters twenty percent, doctoral fifteen percent. Schools with no grad students may skew this data. Which areas of study generate? History most, then English. How likely to continue? Most a extremely satisfied, no one dissatisfied.

Best practices: not a lot of specifics. Purchase criteria suitable for institution; customized workflow, software like ILLiad and odyssey, direct request, get in system toolkit, j-tech, keep an eye on purchase on demand for ebooks and direct requests. Survey very successful. Agreed upon criteria was shipping availability, delivery time. Differences: price, av or not, publication date, catalog first v patron first then process. Conclusions: libraries and patrons satisfied

Brick and Click 2010: Session II, Catherine Pellegrino

2010-11-05T11:03:00.000-04:00

Catherine Pellegrino's "But what did they learn? What classroom assessment can tell you about student learning"

The room is packed! Reference librarian and instruction coordinator at st marys college in noter dame, Indiana.

Difference between traditional course evaluation tools and assessment of student learning, reasons for choosing one over another, looking at Minute Paper. Definitions. Course evaluations: how well did course reach intended goals, degree of satisfaction, did the session meet your needs, what new thing did you learn. Smple evaluAtion with five point likert scale - prepared, organized, helpful. Substantial body of research state that suck tools are neither valid nor reliable. Biggest problems are students who just mark one column all the way down, and that when they have free response, they're at end of form and folks leave those free responses blank. See her bibliography for the lit on this.

If not valid or relaible, why? We love numbers, they're easy, the faculty use them mand we want to assume the trappings of faculty. We've always done it this way.

Outcomes assessment - did the students actually learn something? Pre and post eats, decide in advance and then check to see of they've learned it. Tfaditionally we've measured in terms of inputs, sessions, students, books bought questions answered, gate counts, etc. Inputs don't mean X outputs or outcomes. Not what did we teach but "what did they learn". We don't care from whom or how they learn, just that they did. Outcom assessment overlaps with grading, similar tools with portfolios, exams, grades over time. But also informal options for assessing student learning. For one shots, no luxury of time for elaborate portfolios.angelo and cross "classroom massessment techniques".

Common tool is a muddiest point or minute paper. Folks in audience talking about minute papers. "most important you learned, least, and don't do again." ask students to write down to things. One useful things you learned, one thing you're still confused about.

WhAt you can learn from evaluations. To make sessions more interactive . Tell you nothing about what students are learning. Measures satisfaction, whether students were happy. Assessment measures actual learning. Happy important in certain contexts, but much more interested in whether they are learning than happiness.

You already know your preparedness if you're a reasonable reflective professional. Traditional veal highlights areas for improvement you already know. Included time mto practice: you ,now this, you were there, and there are reasons you may not have been able to give them time to practice.

Explaining and demoing search strategies relevant to research needs. The scale doesn't give you anything to work from, just says you did poorly, not how can improve. Handout wasn't helpful, butWHY? Rate the overall value of the instruction session doesn't actually fit likert scale.

Classroomm assessment minute paper. Showing actual excerpts. Comments transcribed into electronic document, wonderfully revealing. In e aggregate. Also transcribe spelling and grammar exactly. Reflects student understanding. Ex, students don't know how to locate articles in print. Journal title, volume, issue, etc is not intuitive for them. Change how handle print article instead of brief mention. Ex, flowchart of link resolver to full text was useful. (if you need a flowchart, I may be broken). Buoy no one else has said the flowchart was useful, but a screen cast was heavily commented on as beneficial. Important to transcribe quickly bc sometimes need tp translate the comments.

Need to let go of sense of absolute statistical accuracy. Is okay to not achieve that with non quant techniques. Useful though is word cloud generator for interesting view of what pops to students.

"something Im still confused about".

You cant please everyone. You will get contradictory responses. Or headscrathcers, students assume you are looking for satisfactions measures like "everything is great". As long as transcribing, share with faculty member whose course you are working with. Clear evidence of what students are confused about regarding faculty assignments. Evidence of lack of research experience thAt faculty simply don't identify with. Good opening to follow up eith faculty member and class to build collaboration and relationships.

Www.spurioustuples.net/bricknclick2010 see this website for documents and additional information. Article on "i already know that syndrome".

Brick and click 2010: the liveblogging

2010-11-05T10:58:00.000-04:00

Going to do my best to blog all of the sessions Im attending at Brick and Click 2010 here in Maryville. Using the iPad, so I'll have to come back later and cleanup the mistypings and autocorrects.

Also, i presented my session on leveraging technology and improving service by revamping how library billing happened at the NCSU Libraries during the first session. I think it went pretty well. Well, okay, i have no idea how I did, but my attendees were great, with interesting questions, interesting examples of how things worked at their institutions, and none of them fell asleep *grin* I hope my second presentation later today goes as well!

Also, just a note: this program is the most interesting, and likely the most useful, I've seen in a long time. You have to comb through ALA Annual's program to find this much useful and interesting information in a single day, and i don't think you'd be able to make all of them in a spread out situation like annual.

Internet Librarian 2010: failcamp

2010-10-26T16:35:00.000-04:00

Ontario libraries' AskOn online research help. Skype as successful voip reference chat. VR no face to face means no vernal or physical chat. Does adding voice to. Chat make communication efficient, improve ability to staff, help demo searching. Chat software live person thought could use call me button, but it didn't work. They needed one voip client, chose Skype. Canned messages for convenience. Roadblocks to data collection, staff forgot operator survey, visitors didn't fill out exit survey, others filled out surveys when they weren't supposed to. Sixty percent initiated in public, seventeen percent in uni. Top reasons for not using ask on were that visitor didn't want Skype, were at a Place where install was blocked, or Simply ignored it. Visitors liked ability to talk and search at same time. Biggest reason for unsuccessful was not meeting technical requirements, places blocked skype, shifts too busy to devote to one question, and staff were too shy to initiate calls and preferred oment of pause that chat offers. Work environment not condicive to calling, bad environment, didn't have equipment. Switchigplatforms between live person and skype was too. Complicated, too many constraints both technical and human. Younger staff less comfortable with immediacy of voice, older folks accustomed to phone reference. Most visitors didn't have Skype and didn't know what skype was. VR only for certain questions at certain times. Need better voice to text transcription for chat transcripts to offer printout. Ask for call button beside text button. Fails in software, staff, equipment. Assessed how would. Move forward.

Krista Godfrey - fails in second life. First canadian uni on second life. Not necessarily useful for traditional reference, questions on how to navigate second life, not used for other info needs. Offered teen hours a week of reference service in second life. Did not have enough time to do traditional, online and second life issues. Technical issues in second life, not user friendly when first enter. Seen as for girls because was not a violent game like wow, students didn't meet there, wasn't promoted well, students didn't consider it a meeting space, so not surprising not a lot of students coming. Another problem is that you don't really know who people are by their avatars, getting a lot of general inquiries, not a lot of uni person pickup. Mcmaster stopped the reference pilot, but their failures may not be yours. Works mainly if your students are there like utx or san Jose state who have thriving communities there. Learn from other failures but put it into proper context.

Char Booth - UC Berkeley. A lot of the discussion about failure is narrative that you spin within. Your org and within your own head. Internal narrative. Need to build failspace into your headspace and be more positive about it to help yourself. Not who caused failure, but what can i do to mitigate it right now? Failsafing. Figure out contingency plan. At Ohio university, video kiosk pilot. Librarian would have webcam pointed at face and be displayed on kiosk. The tech existed, there might be market for video reference. Lot of blowback about staff, uncomfortable to have your face onscreen all day. A year long. It wasn't used for reference but for public relations and humor. Kids made out and saved images. Tried to use for PR and make fun of the experimentation. Lessons learned in small failures that may lead to pulling the plug. Need to admit vulnerability in certain situations professionally. Need. The confidence to know you can pull it off or gracefully admit where you fell flat.

Q & A: We record our library successes, any failwiki? Hello to. Dedupe effort, collect lessons learned. Subject resource guides set up as wikis intended to have students participate in resource building and sharing, but no participation. How do you get to okay with failure when you know it was a good idea and you dont understand why it didn't work? Be careful of having professional personality riding on success of event or service. Resource is created and people may be using it, but they may not be contributing, you've still helped. Look for what part worked and what part didn't. After fails, do you debrief with everything, or just pull plug and never speak of it again? If something does fail we need to still assess it. Rochelle is sharing an abject failure: proposed to create a tool for campus, was awarded money with a group of folks in project; at no point did they articulate expectations; group never in same plCe, programmer independent . Programmer interpreted what docs had indicated, and produced something no one needed. Lucky enough to get sick and took off for a few months, hahaha, but now she knows a lot more about project management and getting stakeholders together.

Fine art of managing expectations. Don't over promise, imagine worst case scenario. Many failures start with overenthusiasm.

Internet Librarian 2010: learning from failure

2010-10-26T14:33:00.000-04:00

bobbi Newman, Matt Hamilton,

Bobbi: be aware of who your stakeholders are, know biases strengths and weaknesses. When starting a project, identify stakeholders, they will help you learn from failure. Admitting that you failed can be hard. Bobbi was to create a new site for a digital branch. Had to admit that it wasn't going to work to her boss. Admitting failure is hard work when you've put in the time and effort on project. Immediately folks want. To know what you learned, but you need distance. Some things take time. Plan for fallout for when stakeholders are unhappy. Be prepared to talk about what didn't work and how you will go forward. Then you need to move on, cant keep beating dead horse. Put a timeline in place for the process. Then you have to start over again.

matt Hamilton: anythink's greatest failures. There a some cynics in the library field, heh heh. Matt has encountered that they think this is smoke and mirrors and marketing. Will talk about culture of anythink and culture of risking failure. Three main risks of anythinks. The brand, design. Of buildings and move in, and aspects of customer experience. We change due to inspiration or desperation. They were a conventional library, cross between post office and prison. Old outdated website, featured on front page of paper as worst library ever. Originally part of Adams county government, then formed a district but were unfounded, then in 2006 increased operating budget by a bit, wch was a lot to them (pencils were rationed). In 2006, got excellent board of directors and interested community members. One of Matts failures was to not ask about board of directors and library commission. Got a visionary director who is interested in disruption, and asked them to look at system mat every level. Knows that good place needs happy employees. New district, no what, how do we establish personality of the library? Asked for input, pele wanted imaginative, intuitive, adaptable, etc. But how do you create a system that reflects that ? New mission stament to open doors for curious minds. Then created staff manifesto (love this). Community members have embraced this feeling. Other big risk is becoming Anythink. Shouldn't you be called something traditional like range view library disctrict? People disagreed that they weren't about book, or even collection of stuff. Ended up with the doodle as their icon, a doodle is the start of an idea, anything is experience that anything is possible. Consistency in colors, feeling, the "any" feeling has created a different sense of what library is and what buildings are and what they offer. Big risk was buildings for people. Did not start with x feet of shelf space, number of desks, etc. Started with i want space for x y and. Z. Finding an architect to work with them k ike this was hard. Redeveloped buildings to enhance neighborhood, not just a retrieval space but a resting visiting third place. Built four new buildings in a year due to bond timing, in next year, process of remodeling other three. First building, books got there before furniture, oops. Learned little hints about building and moves along the way. They shoot for eighty percent instead of perfectionism which can be confining and make us aid to take risks. Customer experience. They dumped Dewey. They e xploded concept that there is a single place for a book. Learned about categories. Weddings were in event planning, then they put it under relationships and get checked out much more. Went fine free on feb 14, "your library loves you" now staff aren't bad guys. But they have lost a lot of materials this way. Now they have to implement collection agency. Disrupting conventions in library programming: they took on summer reading, and were shocked when nteen and youth services folks wanted to do this. They brainstormed read, think, do, there were no signups, and no prizes. Programs tied into various subject areas, but community didn't pick it up, parents were upset that they had abandoned reading, signups, etc. People like that comfortable ritual of signing up and belonging. Great ideas, but forgot public wasn't in on that planning. anythink website is minimal, haven't upgraded ILS, catalog almost unusable. They are on horizon four versions behind on the client. For the transformation they want, the ILS is not a god to be worshipped, is just software and no other business holds up software the way libraries hold up the ils. Couldn't find anything that grabbed them while they were busy with buildings. Because of poor funding, they run lean. Staff is forced to be very flexible but also can increase camaraderie. Things get behind. Two Pc techs for seven buildings and one admin over many miles. Don't be afraid to take risks and try something new. Go for 80%, it can be worth it.

Internet Librarian 2010: fail! Learn! Share!

2010-10-26T13:29:00.000-04:00

Sarah houghton-Jan, Kim Silk, Beth Gallaway, Andrew Shuping, Margaret Hazel, Jeff Scott,

6 presenters, 1 winner of suckitude. panel discussing library initiative failures.

Beth Galloway. Failed at game design. Cartoon nNetwork has game creation area online. Required fast connection and lots of computer memory. Week two is game design called scratch. Correspondence to highlight stringent systerequirements, scratch needed to be downloaded. Computers reset with deep freeze, new it person on vacation, deep freeze ran right before game design program. Offered low-tech icebreakers and a powerpoint presentation. Talk to IT person directly was lesson learned, as well as having laptops available in case desktops fail. Flexibility and stretching low-tech and no tech elements like game design via index cards. Week two on scratch, teenagers like to make shooting games. Librarian didn't know how to make a shooting game, only collecting. Jumping and shooting involves animation and gravity. Had two hours, dozen kids, different levels of difficulty. Needed to spell out kind of game would be making. Lack of communication, delays, not delivering what users actually wanted.

Margaret Hazel: Eugene, OR. Town of 150,000. City manager wanted to consolidate websites to one portal, publicly funded money. City manager, city public info team didn't know anything about websites in charge of project, city info services who were internally focused, ci. Web coordinators with no. Power and lots of responsibility. Involved librarian. And ils manager. The project failed, but some felt it didn't. Bought portal project, didn't go down often, but did it measure up? You couldn't find anything. Search engine terrible, design was busy, no public involvement until after project was done and public hated it, and city staff didn't use the website. No scope set, no governance team, no review of resources to support complex product, people creating content had no authority. No training for future learning budget and organizational relationships shot by end of project. Directive from top with no input. Live in 2005, there was never a debrief. Now in the process of buying a new portal because this one was sunsetted by Oracle. Personal failures included trying to take on all responsibility for the library, playing Atlas, no staff buy-in because they weren't involved, and passion for doing it right made it feel like a failure. Personal failure for ranting and crying during a meeting felt like it set back her credibility. Don't sell self Horton, organize what you say and back it up with data, take risks,

Jeff Scott - 2004, acting director for public library working on clipboard system. Capital improvement project. Decided to go with open source product to auto boot people after x minutes. Three months on project developing and installing. Lasted five minutes. Until it slowed and stopped machines. Deputy city manager killed the project right there. Lessons learned: didn't ask right questions about the project, no successes, no formal rfp porcess, no other places had implemented successfully. Get details and be specific. Bookmachine project, discovered not 100k but 140k, and then ndiscoved other users had issues with the technology. Who implemented? What happened? Did they like it? Gathernodust.blogspot.com

Andrew Shuping: Learning commons failure. Library liked idea of learning commons, buzzword, popular. Summer 2009. Made interlibrary loan, emerging tech, and commons lib. No money, no building, no space, no overarching goal. Admin. Without clear concept of learning commons, after the fact feedback. No one could agree what a learning commons was. No clear reporting or organization lines. Too much change at one time. Staff turnover created issues with staffing in the middle of the project. Started July with classes beginning august 24th. No clear communication, reporting or organization. People hung up on tradition. Difficult to talk to partners because trying to meet with stakeholders individually. Having an idea and calling it that doesn't make it reality. Need definition, vision alone doesn't get things done.

Kim Silk: academic research at u of Toronto. Less bureaucracy than larger places. Geoprosperity discussion, boss said we have three or four terabytes of data and i don't know where anything is. So Kim has been trying to solve this. Purchased server with six tb and room for more. In data, docs, excel, raw data, gis shape files, maps video, audio, stats programs, etc. Tried data repository, dspace, confluence, blogs, share point, mediawiki. They have share point, not happy with it. Good for docs and Microsoft, but she is in Mac, Linux, pc. iT team is mandated Microsoft house. Has a Linux box off craigslist, but can never be public facing. Problem because has researchers Locally and around the world and can't acquire that data. Need to be able to get researchers their data in a secure manner. Supportive manager with a background in info systems and geography.

sandra Stewart: Sharepoint fail. Coming from a manager position, not an IT position. 2007, san jose public library has relationship wih san Jose state u. Not one but two large bureaucracies, two libraries, two different missions, etc. End of 2007, share point so folks could collaborate without attachments in email. Requires a lot of backend support, very expensive. Difficult to get staff going with learning share point. When got okay to use share point (was not part of pilot rollout) in nov 2008, forced staff to use share point by taking away their paper calendars. She was a bully. Put items on paper calendar into share point. Two years later, some staff still do. Not know how to use share point. Always let early adopters in first since they are your cheerleaders and can get people excited. Training is essential, can't stop training, there were three sets of training in beginning, and then only online. People need in person training. Must require they use it, cant give them an alternative or they will use alternative. What can everyone do? Their timecard! Once they use it, recognize it as a tool, even for all of it's faults.

Who sucked worst? Margaret wins at failing!

Internet Librarian 2010: Beyond 23 Things

2010-10-25T19:12:00.000-04:00

By Louise Alcorn, Christa Burns, and Jennifer koebern.

Louise: lessons learned from trying to produce such a program. Preview to failures track, heh heh. Original 23 things was Charlotte mecklenberg county libraries was a self directed learning experiential program for staff on web 2.0 stuff. Ther have been undress of iterations in several languages in all TypEs and sizes of libraries. Why? Encourage staff to explore web 2.0 to provide staff with tools and help support patron needs in ann experiential way, with rewards. Scale is important for places with large geo area and small clusters of populations sheer you cant get everyone tougher. Need to scale it and make it virtual for training for small libraries. Staff time; for training and webinar need to shut down library, so you need buy in from admin.

No statewide program in Iowa, but Weezy has been teaching across the state, training trainers. But difficulty is finding out if it was of Ny real use to anyone, there's no good feedback loop. weezy's example in her own library, no incentives except continuing ed program, ended up nagging, no motivation for folks to continue working on it. Check back in withh them Quickly after assignment given.

Regional attempt by Bonnie McKewon for NWILSA, pup platter of web 2.0. Did online but had homework that they had to send back to get continuing Ed credit. What worked? Attendance was 30 participants, mNy return users. Range of topics and instructors so not same voice or topic over again. Compulsive about dress rehearsals, dedicated Doberman connect room, a dedicated google web page, chat pods. Did not want to make asynchronous though so folks would be engaged instead of just clicking through. Homework was required, had to be turned in before could get credit for the course. What didn't work? Marketing, needed to do more ongoingarketing for long term programs that doesn't feel like nagging. Need positive PR approach. Reluctance of participants to get headset with. Ike for full participation. Surveys were a good measure of what folks thought but didn't use them for followup and planning future classes, which should be done. Buy in needed at every level, supervisors need to do marketing and PR part, put in job performance. Make it relevant to their work and lives.

Christa Burns: Statewide program in nebraska library commission back in 2008 for 9 weeks with voluntary participation. 36% finished, enticed sit drawing for mp3 players. Self sported with doubkecheck by program admin. Went statewide in october 2008, open to all Nebraska library staff. 23 things in 16 weeks. Lots of blogging and communication. 4 staff communicated to run the program, required a lot of coordination, and fifty percent completed it. Twenty percent completion is average for such program. They think it was because of the many ce credits offered. What next? A lot of folks mentioned they wished they could continue, so they looked around and found many built a second 23 things. Statistics demonstrate that because of failing to promote, folks didn't join after the initial start of the program. Blogs, Twitter, facebook, mailing l ist, and trainers also participated to promote. Promotion demonstrates new blogs created..
Rogram. Instead, they did an ongoing 23 things, may 2009 through now. One thing per month, rotated among the four staff.

Internet Librarian 2010: Mobile content

2010-10-25T18:16:00.000-04:00

By Megan Fox ( no not that one)

Data access surpasses voice on mobile phones. People want access more than talk. Mobile access bound to surpass pc in next 5 years. Games, followed by news, maps, weather, sports, movies are the content people are using. Hundreds of li braries have made mobile apps or mobile websites.

Not everything needs to be mobile. Hours, locations, maps, catalog, track checked out items, etc. Place holds, renew. NCSU mobile site in addition to standard, can see rooms and computer availability and have a web am on the coffee line, blackboard university apps. Boopsie is what many library mobile sites used.

Description of what libraries are using them for, more listing school by school. III allows mobile, among other vendors, sirsidynix, world cat, etc. Librarians also developing own interfaces for catalog - tricolleges for iii catalog, library thing's library anywhere.

Federated mobile web search tools, you can include your catalog as one of the sources that gets searched. In addition to basic catalog, users also looking for database access to specialized research tools. Wilsonweb recently introduced text to voice, and planning to have text to speech converter to avoid small screen issues. Refworks has a mobile interface, and free zotero. Ebsco was one of the first to offer mobile, which is good since we usually buy more than one ebsco item. Reports claim that. Folks use it for searching and marking, but not actually clicking through to articles, one percent view full text on mobile as opposed to 77% on pc.

Newest .content offering is sciverse. Libguides has launched mobile interface with almost all of the content items of real interface, though meebo widget doesn't work well. Small mobile collections are being created for an app on mobile web. Audiobooks, language courses, streaming, etc. Safari recently optimized for mobile ebooks. Harvard libraries mobile site actually includes "mobile research" not just basic reference, deeper level of engagement.

Users are going beyond library service to get their content. Only .5 to one percent is going through library site, so need to check app stores for reference, finance, health, etc for high quality resources. iTunes or droid market. Getjar is nondenominational and has second most apps after iTunes.

Your specific device enhances your content and search. Search is no longer complex boolean or a single idiot box like google. Mobile device reduces need for traditional search, you don't need to know what you're looking for.

Texting still matters.

Cha cha, google, yahoo, KGB all textable reference. Traditional search engines, google far surpasses all, then yahoo and bing. Google's universal search works as ready reference.

Voice and audio: google voice search,update Facebook by voice, etc. Shoutout is speech to text application, speak it 2.0 allows users to playback text messages, docs, articles, etc. Dragon search app. Dragon has been doing voice recognition for many years, powers a lot of the major engines. Aside from voice, touchscreen and accelerometer. Motion and gesture now count. Yahoo has a sketchasearch, you can circle a spot on a map. Another gesture way of sharing content is bump. Paypal has licensed bump, you can pay by bumping your phone against another. Magic 8 ball for book recommendations, a lot of fun and using new capabilities of devices.

Library locations, AAA discounts by location application, google results in search box affected by location; also the 'near me now' button and 'in stock' option due to linking into inventory systems. Public transit now adding mobile apps for what is near you (find home).

Beside location, visual: interaction via cameras. Searching visually is mainstream now with camera, qr code. Translations, etc. Omoby google goggles, barcode readers (redlaser), can put library barcode onto mobile device, cardstar can do it for Ll of your cards. Qr codes are enhanced barcodes holding much information. Gravestones and fast foo din japan use qr codes. When groceries picked, gap coupons, lousiville zoo has on animal cages, Facebook. Integrating them to users, on business cards, etc. Copy of books with qr codes in margins to supplement the text. Qr codes added to catalog, qr codes in stacks rerouting catalog for more info. Scavenger hunts using qr codes, marketing for library using qr codes, qr codes by blog taking you to reference SMS. Target has. Coupon campaign via qr code, and star bucks allow gift cards via phone. Google has integrAted qr codes into url shortened.

Another aspect of visual is augmented reality, a layer of extra info or enriched content over real image. Hours of store over image of don't store, links to wikipedia entered via wikitube (?). Google maps uses for street view, zagat to go puts info on restaurants over physical view. Map overlaid with driving instructions and upcoming locations. Nc state has the wolf walk, an augmented tour of campus for user with archival photos, pics of buildings that used to be there, etc, all location aware.

Search is actually third after bookmarks, urls, and something else. Mobiel used to be for fast quick snippets, but now moving to deeper searching, during downtime folks browse and discover. Not because of specific reference need, casual browsing. Not Wally searching becAuse they don't know what they are looking for. We are back to incidental search of serendipity, not keyword searching. This is more driven by social contacts and social searching. Morel about discovery than just searching for a particular answer or an explicit need. Real time. Push notification based on location specific information. Built on social and contextual analytics and filtering, personal, geo, and social footprint drives the systems.

Social augmented reality. Socialight. Augmented id. Picture of person brings up profiles, accounts, etc., layering that information on top of reality. Floaticons float around reality, aimed at social interactions with place. Augmented humanity should become regular search, adding human intelligence to how. We are searching and the answers we get. Looking at w3c potential standards.

YouTube video examples of how folks are marketing aimed at users. Definitely get the online slides for this presentation, some great data here. Google is going mobile first for their future development.

Internet Librarian 2010: Transliteracy and Technology Fluency

2010-10-25T14:14:00.000-04:00

Bobbi Newman.

Transliteracy ability to read write and interact across a range of platforms. A word encompassing what we talk about, focus away from the tools and putting it back on our patrons, which is what we need. There is a LITA interest group, a website, etc for learning more after the session. 2400 bc, papyrus scrolls, 1440, gutenberg press, 1986, encyc of america available on cd rom. 2001 ebooks. Kindle and iPhone in 2007. Changing how our users access information. Information overload mentioned about printing press in 1555.

People now sent online for info, health. Care, job apps, unemployment forms, taxes, etc. Fastest growing use of Facebook is seniors and women over 55. Basic life skill is now creating An unhackable password.basic instructions for new life not available anywhere. Unless you are connected to. Lifelong learning after school, how would you know. Access is becoming easier, while price is high, is decreasing, and wifi. Access needs to comma with skills and ability to use it well. School teaches us facts, but we can look that up now, it's not teaching critical thing skills. Gap. Exists now for students and people out of school who Ned to become active members of change society. How media manipulates, how advertising works on us, distinguish propaganda from facts, etc. Reading and writing is no longer good enough.

Transliteracy is not a destination. More fluid, always evolving, music, art, video, body language.

Knight commission: warning of second class citizens without ability to access and process information. Without access and skills, cannot participate, danger of new category of citizens. US ranks 15th in adoption with 65% adoption of broadband access. You don't need to actually do it, but id you wanted to, you need to think you have the ability.

If not libraries, then who? Some students don't learn these things in school. The only place in US anyone can go for free is libraries. We cant just be a container, but an access facilitator. If we don't shift our focus, we are failing our patrons.

We need to stop talking about the tools and arguing about it and focusing on meeting patron needs. The world is larger than the space you inhabit. We attending night now are very privileged, remember not everyone has movie phone or uses it the way you do. See Bobbi's blog for real world examples of what people are doing.

It is not easy.

Accept no excuses. THere's always an excuse for things you don't want to do.

Internet Librarian 2010: Faculty and Library Partnership for Learning

2010-10-25T12:57:00.000-04:00

With Amy Buckland (McGill University) and Doris Small Helfer (Cal State Northridge), and Rebecca Jones moderating (blogging via iPad, which means my clumsy fingers will inevitably typo, so i know I'll have to come back and clean this up - forgive some clumsy typing as i get accustomed to the onscreen keyboard.

Setting up about 15 minutes prior. Lots of cardigans in the audience - it's freezing in here! Also, lots of new faces - I felt like I knew everyone at IL08, it's great to see so many new faces interested in the intersection of libraries and tech. Glad to see the projector is very viewable, bodes well for my own slides, I hope. Sauers is poised and ready with his camera, as ever. Lots of glowing apples in the audience from matchbooks, and a few matte PC laptops, but the macs are definitely outweighing pcs by a decent margin here. Also, this is a great room, the comfy and wide chairs with flip desks, very handy.

Exhibits not open for lunch, FYI, will open later. Original planned speaker accepted position at Ohiolink, so new speakers here for this reason.

How do your libraries and librarians and staff work with faculty to support student learning and achievement? What challenges do you experience?

Amy on McGill: most librarians called liaison librarians. Not separated by instruction, collection and reference, each liaison does everything for their departments. Speak in all entry level classes for the disciplines and are also attached to specific assignments for research and info lit training. Librarians have posters that go up in faculty areas so faculty know the face, have office hours in various buildings. Amy in charge lf scholarly communication, talks to faculty about rings as authors, hints to think about when sending items to print and depositing articles, speaking to them as peers since librarians are also tenure track. Also support by going in on grants with faculty to support databases, building websites for faculty. Have been doing this since 1996, early digital collections created by faculty with librarians as full partners with students also involved in the development. Gets librarians involved in the faculty's day to day. Teaching is definitely strong point, between teaching classes and one on ones, liaisons find themselves very busy. Challenge is being liaison to multiple departments, which can be daunting, especially if the areas are unrelated. Depends on the size of the department. Do they have physical offices or spaces in the departments? If library is embedded in building, they have office. Of not, they do hold additional office hours in the faculty areas. Do librarians spend more time with faculty or students? Students. Work with faculty to get in there, and then continue with contact with students during the school year, during the summer work largely with faculty to develop courses and maximize lms.

Doris at cal state: similar organization. All do collection development, liaison, reference, etc. cSI has info competency initiative stresses importance of teaching info lit skills to faculty. Embedded info lit competencies into gene Ed requirements, which has led to developing additional courses and part of learning outcomes of department classes. Reach 22k students a year through deep embedding. A lot of teaching and working closely with faculty, target classes with research papers And other research assignments. Moving traditional print resource professors to online, demonstrating that databases have back files of older information. When csu libs made faculty, department faculty not impressed. Now that they see libs have a critical body of knowledge critical to student success, libs receive different level of respect. Also through working closely with them. Now math classes also receiving library instruction in math ideas class on math applied in society, which requires a research paper. Library also embedded in the university 100 program for at risk students. How was that partnership formed? There is a component in lms to embed librarian (moved from bb and webct to moodle which is more library friendly), makes it easy for faculty to use librarian resources like tutorials. You want to be there because your students and faculty are there. May replace face to face, but more likely simply to supplement. Faculty realize that librarians know more than they do about resources and see librarians as equals and partners. Faculty nominated librarian for a teaching award, which wasn't previously seen as the work of a librarian. Faculty targeted, and emphasize importance to student outcomes.

Q: embedding librarian in moodle. In elluminate can collaborate, can be added as an instructor, easier to embed databases, tutorials, YouTube channel (message in a minute project), assessment of effectiveness of library relationships. Lynne lampert article : getting psyched about information literacy ( reference librarian 2005).

Is there an assessment component at McGill? Depends on liaison, not institutionalized. At north ridge, clicker assessment did not work at all. Student evils required since they are faculty, though, and those evils can be brought to admin as proof of helping student outcomes.

Q: is the partnership more or less formal? Is there a reporting relationship? Mcgill : Liaison faculty sit in on department meetings when the library is located in the department, but the library faculty report through the library. Faculty comments are definitely considered though, but no direct sporting through discipline departments. Northridge: similar, try to get into as many department meetings as possible. Talk to dacoity about budget cuts, faculty will kick in part of costs of cuts, input into cut decisions. Example IEEE package, a piece kicked in by engineering faculty. Relating to faculty about why hinge will be lost, not that librarians enjoy taking resources away.

Q: partnerships ply as good as competence of both parties. What about when there isn't competency or willingness? Amy: "the but that's more work for me factor" can be an issue. Faculty ask why they should care about scholarly communication, why shouldn't they just put all readings into webct, or post all their papers on their website? Issues with getting faculty to see you as a peer. Need to open your ears, handle misperceptions, highlight "the library can help you with that" factor, be very. In their face about it

Restructuring and downsizing. Northridge: streamlined quietly, didn't replace some retirees. There are certain things considered essential, but don't man desks as in the past, mostly virtual and chat and text. Be sure to make clear to faculty the impact of the library, especially when they start new programs, they need to state what the cost to the library will be, not allowed to say there is no impact or need. Especially with adding phd programs, library estimates cost to get program up and equipped and that is now required.

Title of library partner impacts how faculty see them. The Teaching Chair of the Library as opposed to Librarian. Director of libraries vs Dean of Libraries to demonstrate similar relationship at McGill. Doris: librarians now have a space for presenting at the faculty retreat, topics of interest like ereserves, video furnace for streaming video, other high interest to faculty items. Amy: campus teaching and technology fair on campus yearly, library has a booth.

I want to ask about what happens when librarians and departmental faculty agree and want to implement a program, but higher admin is required.

Liveblogging Internet Librarian 2010, Sort Of

2010-10-25T12:47:00.000-04:00

I came to Internet Librarian 2010 without. My laptop. The un-internet librarian, if you will. But I do have my iPad, which i brought as an experiment to see if I could do without packing a suitcase of paperbacks. As internet signal permits, I'm going to try to blog the sessions I attend this year.

Internet Librarian 2010: Tentative Schedule

2010-10-22T15:29:00.000-04:00

Plans are, of course, subject to change, but this is my anticipated attendance schedule for Internet Librarian 2010 in Monterey. Looking forward to running into a lot of friends and colleagues, and learning a lot to bring back to Lupton Library!

Monday October 25, 2010

Opening Keynote: Adding Value to Your Community (Patricia Martin)
8:45am-9:45am

D101 – Faculty & Library Partnership for Learning
10:15 AM – 11:00 AM
Amy Buckland, eScholarship, ePublishing & Digitization Coordinator, McGill University Library
Doris Small Helfer, Chair, Technical Services, Oviatt Library, California State University Northridge

Rebecca Jones interview two practitioners about their approaches in working with faculty to support curriculum and deliver "learning". Hear how McGill liaison librarians (the bulk of our librarian staff) do instruction, how some liaise exclusively with faculty and grad students through scholarly communication and publishing initiatives, and how they partner on grants with faculty. Learn how CSU is embedding librarians into online courses in the Moodle learning management system, and more.

D102 – Libraries in a Transliterate, Technology Fluent World
11:15 AM – 12:00 PM
Bobbi L. Newman & Colleen S. Harris

The skills needed to be an active participant in today’s society are rapidly evolving. More is needed than the ability to read and write; digital literacy, media literacy, information literacy, 21st-century literacy, and other new literacies are all included in transliteracy. Newman begins the session, looking at the importance of transliteracy, the roles libraries play in educating patrons. and what we can do to ensure our staff and patrons are transliterate. Harris discusses the skills library staff must have to adapt to rapidly changing technologies and innovative implementations and how library managers can help staff develop and maintain the technical skills libraries need by using skill evaluation, development planning, peer-to-peer training, and more.

A106 – Next Gen Discovery Systems
4:15 PM – 5:00 PM
Frank Cervone, Vice Chancellor for Information Services, Purdue University Calumet
Marshall Breeding, Director for Innovative Technologies and Research, Vanderbilt University Library Technology Guides
Jeff Wisniewski, Web Services Librarian, University of Pittsburgh

What’s the real scoop on next gen interfaces? Come to this session and hear the good, bad, and ugly on how these next gen interfaces work in the real world. Our implementors pull no punches in evaluating and assessing the state of the next gen landscape of discovery system interfaces for finding what you really want.

Tuesday October 26, 2010

A201 – Fail! Learn! Share!
10:45 AM – 11:15 AM
Sarah Houghton-Jan, Kimberly Silk, Beth Gallaway, Andrew Shuping, Margaret Hazel

This panel features some of the most spectacular failures in the history of librarianship and the equally spectacular lessons learned as a result. Hear how we’ve failed in creating web portals, effecting change in our institutions, creating effective staff tools, training, getting staff buy-in, and jumping on board with tech trends just a wee bit too early. We are proud that we failed, as it means we were pushing the boundaries of the status quo. Learn from our mistakes, hear what we did wrong, and save yourself from the same spectacular FAILS!

B202 – Customer Analysis: Developing Patron Personas
11:30 AM – 12:15 PM
Jennifer Koerber

Any marketer or web designer will tell you that creating user personas is a great way to target your services, but just how do you do that? What are the steps involved, and how can we narrow the wide variety of people we serve down to 10 or so “types”? Through examples of step-by-step brainstorming and analysis, Koerber walks you through distilling anecdotal and objective information about your users into an appropriate number of patron personas. Utilize your own experience and understanding of your patrons to make tools to help you develop new programs, focus a marketing campaign, or redesign your website.

A203 – Failcamp
1:30 PM – 2:30 PM
Amy Buckland, Krista Godfrey, Jan Dawson, Char Booth

This interactive session focuses on things that we’ve tried that have failed, and what we’ve learned from the experience. We don’t often discuss our failures in libraryland, and frequently end up repeating the mistakes of our neighbors. Godfrey and Buckland discuss Second Life failures in academic libraries, Dawson talks about the failures of VoIP, and Booth looks at her experiences of using video as a chat reference tool. Bring your stories and share so that our lessons-learned knowledgebase grows!

C204 – Patron-Driven Ebook Acquisition
3:30 PM – 4:15 PM
Lisa Sibert, John Novak, Keith Powell, Holly Tomren

UC Irvine Libraries set about to develop a pilot project for patron-driven acquisition (PDA) of ebooks with the goal of saving money in the collections budget. The pilot was intended to allow ebooks to be purchased for current-year imprints as a means of replacing a portion of the traditional print approval plan acquisitions. As the various e-book provider models were investigated, and as we developed the framework within which the pilot needed to operate, we were met with seemingly insurmountable obstacles at every turn: from the publishers’ reluctance to release print and electronic books simultaneously — or at least within a specified embargo period — to the difficulty of integrating a PDA program with the print approval plan to avoid purchasing content in duplicate formats. We would like to share our experiences in the hopes that other libraries will join our efforts to convince e-book publishers and providers to make a patron-driven acquisition of ebooks program more viable for libraries which wish to replace their traditional print approval plans and better serve their user population.

Rip Van Winkle's Libraries in 2510
7:30 PM – 9:30 PM
Ernie Ingles, Erik Boekesteijn, Jaap Van de Geer, Stephen Abram

Where are libraries going, not just in 3-5 years, but in 500 years? Join our visionary panel; hear their insights then stretch your imagination to see if you can predict what info pros will be doing in 500 years, what new and exciting tools we’ll be using, programs and services we’ll be pursuing, relationships we’ll be building, and lots more. Check out the interview that sparked this program (http://www.vimeo.com/11440203) and create a video/or audio track of a song you would like to contribute to this program.

Wednesday October 27, 2010

D301 – Shifting Organizations
10:30 AM – 11:15 AM
Rebecca Jones, Jeff Trzeciak

McMaster University Library was the first Canadian university library to receive the Association of College and Research Libraries’ Excellence in Academic Libraries Award in 2008. Achieving excellence and moving into the digital, collaborative environment has, and will continue, to demand significant changes in how library staff work with students, faculty, and each other. Jones has worked with a number of public libraries in dealing with the changes in how they are working with stakeholders and the community. Some of the “shifts” that libraries are making in how they are organized is seismic, but the organization charts of today and tomorrow must be significantly different than the organizational designs of yesterday. Hear top tips and strategies for making changes in academic and public library environments to organize and shift the focus to work demanded for tomorrow’s success.

B302 – Internet Tools & Services to Enhance Learning & Inspire Participation
11:30 AM – 12:15 PM
Chad Mairn

Web 2.0 tools and services clearly have matured and are nearing ubiquity for most 21st-century computer users. They present technologies accompanied by an ever-increasing wave of information, leaving many of us overwhelmed. So, how can libraries add measurable value to what is consumed via the internet while enhancing lifelong learning and inspiring involvement in our new and fascinating “Age of Participation?” Mairn demonstrates interactively a variety of internet tools and services that can be incorporated anywhere online and/or in physical library spaces and highlights strategies to help provide more visibility to library resources. He discusses ways to help generate practical ideas for adding value, including creating useful Twitter backchannels to inspire participation before, during, and after a presentation; starting Google Waves to communicate and share ideas; having actual voice conversations with groups in social networks; sharing your desktop screen so that you can show off your library’s online tools over the internet; hosting live music concerts, gaming activities, and other library events; affixing QR (Quick Response) codes to book spines, ID badges, and doors to help guide mobile library users in your physical spaces to come visit your digital library space; and more.

D303 – Getting to Yes With Decision-Makers
1:30 PM – 2:30 PM
Frank Cervone, Rebecca Jones

Crafting an effective library strategy isn’t just about the points in your plan. In the competitive environment of our institutions, you need to know what senior administrators value and expect in order to get your plans implemented. In this presentation, learn how senior administrators look at library issues and hear some strategies for making a compelling case.

Nothing New Under the Sun: Fun Research Consult

2010-10-20T20:27:00.001-04:00

I had my first research consultation in awhile today. My former Bosslady of Reference and Instruction sent a wayward English major wrestling with an advanced-level political science paper my way. The student's paper was a comparison of rhetorical techniques used by women candidates during campaigns. An interesting topic, and my old polisci-nerd self was excited.

In the course of helping the student wrestle her topic into a shape she wanted, while keeping to the recommended direction given by the course professor, I recommended that she try to stick to female candidates who ran at the same level, with similar stakes. The student noted that out of her initial list of female politicians, Condoleeza Rice hadn't had to run for anything, and so didn't have similar speeches as Palin and Clinton, and that O'Donnell was running at a completely different level.

Older librarians may well laugh, but I prodded the student. "You know, Hillary Clinton and Sarah Palin were not the only women to vie for presidential/vice-presidential honors." I got a confused look in return. "Her name escapes me, but there was a female VP candidate way back in the 80s when I was wee." (Give me a break, I was five for that election, and my polisci chops are in international relations *grin*.) Seconds later, Geraldine Ferraro on the monitor, her speech transcripts beside those of Clinton and Palin, footage of her speeches and commercials during the campaign on YouTube along with the other womens'. The student's eyes went wide as we listened to Ferraro accept the VP nomination. They grew even wider at this really fantastic doomsday commercial from the 80s campaign. And her face as Ferraro snapped back at Bush Senior during a debate for sounding patronizing...priceless.

Oh, yes, good stuff. Living in the future is awesome.

Even better was seeing a very young woman's mind churning at top speed, the surprise on her face at the knowledge that yes, this had all happened before. A woman had reached for the Vice Presidency before. The commercials all addressed the concerns of the elderly about the inadequacy of social security, the concerns of parents about health care and education, and protecting jobs. And really, not much in politics at all had changed since 1984.

Some of us take this for granted, this feeling that there is nothing new under the sun, knowing that much of what we see today is more of the same pulled forward from former threads of history. At 31, I'm young enough that it doesn't happen to me often, but when it does -- wow.

It was fun to put my reference librarian hat back on and help a student out with an interesting topic. It was thrilling to see a new young voter doing some hard thinking and connecting dots on her own.

Come Visit Me at A Conference: Fall 2010 Version

2010-10-19T14:57:00.002-04:00

Finally healthy, I'm elbows-deep in e-reserves planning for next semester, planning to help my ILL librarian really hit the turbo button on ILLiad, and counting the days until WMS implementation. In addition to that, if you're on the late-fall conference circuit, I do hope you'll stop by and see me as I travel to Monterey, CA, Maryville, MO, and Atlanta, GA in these next few weeks.

For those of you going to Internet Librarian in Monterey, on Monday, October 25th, I'll be splitting the time with fantabulous librarian Bobbi L. Newman and talking about "Libraries in a Transliterate, Technology Fluent World." We're on at 11:00am, which should give you all time to recover from your hangovers. Um, I mean, from all that hard thinking you did on Sunday night. Ahem.

On Friday November 5, I'll be presenting at Brick and Click: An Academic Library Symposium. From 9:10 to 10:00am I'll be speaking about "Leveraging Technology, Improving Service: Streamlining Student Billing Procedures," and from 2:00-2:50pm I'll be presenting "Managing the Multi-generational Library." Please be sure and stop by to say hello at one (or both!) if you'll be in Maryville!

On Friday, November 12, I'll be presenting "Mapping, Managing and Improving Staff Performance in Access Services" at the 2010 Access Services Conference in Atlanta, GA. I've not been down to Atlanta in ages, so do poke me if you're around and want to talk libraries.

Safe travels to all, and I look forward to sitting in on your sessions and learning something new!

Professoriate Pending Outsource: BlackBoard to Sell Online Classes

2010-10-19T12:28:00.001-04:00

University and college adjuncts - and the professoriate at large - should brace themselves for the next blow, and the next round of layoffs. According to the Chronicle, BlackBoard is teaming up with a for-profit to sell pre-designed online college courses.

Once online courses became all the rage to cut costs (you can pay an adjunct less, and then distribute the course shell unto infinity even once they leave, decreasing the need for actual faculty, if the organization is more interested in their pocketbook than educational outcomes), this was bound to happen eventually. I suppose we shouldn't be surprised, but I do reserve the right to be disappointed.

For now, it looks like it's directed at students who need remediation. (Who, I would think, could actually use real faculty contact instead of pre-fabbed e-learning.) We'll see how long that lasts once Blackboard sees what they can make off of it. A number of universities have already moved their gen-eds online to deal with the overenrollment and lack-of-space issue - who's to say gen-eds won't be next? And is that a problem?

The False Security of Technology? What Might We Be Missing?

2010-10-12T18:51:00.000-04:00

Close friends and FriendFeeders know that I recently had my gallbladder out in early August, and was nagged by unrelnting shoulder pain afterward. My surgeon and my primary care doc bounced me back and forth, trading me out for MRIs and bloodwork until (six weeks later) I asked my PCD to feel my shoulder. He rapped on my trapezius. "Rock hard!" he declared. "It's muscular! Off to physical therapy with you." The physical therapist took the time to talk to me, ask about my symptoms, and then actually touched me, palpating the area where I said I was feeling all that pain. After I winced under her having me do various motions, and as she pressed various spots, she finally said, "This is not the ghost of your gallbladder. And yes, your muscles are tense, but that is not the source of your pain. You have," *tap* *poke* *prod* "four dislocated ribs."

I was baffled. My surgeon is a great guy, and very smart. My primary care doc is a pretty bright guy. Both of them work in the medical profession, which is the *only* area I've ever heard folks use the word "palpate" in any seriousness. They whipped out high technology MRI, exhaustive bloodwork...all of their high-tech, impersonal, shiny-shiny tools, and kept getting it wrong, when a simple hand to my back would have answered the question.

This experience leaves me wondering - as we as libraries move deeper into technology use, and as we seek to solve all of our patron's needs and desires with our tech tools, what might we be missing? What are we throwing money, technology, and intricate workflows at that really may just need a slightly older-fashioned, more personal, non-complex touch? Are we substituting "shiny" where a traditional method might be better?

I'm not trying to blaspheme - I'm as much for change and technology as anybody else, and more a fan than many. But we should be implementing it with a purpose, with an eye to the benefits and drawbacks. perhaps even with keeping in mind what very, very basic skills might rust with disuse with their implementation.

An ABD is Not an Island: Late Discoveries

2010-10-08T09:26:00.000-04:00

Reading Leonard Cassuto's recent "Do Your Job Better" column titled Advising the Dissertation Student Who Won't Finish, I felt a familiar pang.

I'm an ABD. Ask around enough (not that it's considered polite), and you'll find a gaggle of librarians who are also ABDs. While most of us address it with a grin and a shrug, I'll admit - this has been one of my greatest shames. It tastes like failure, and failure of the most epic sort.

There were a number of reasons I left my doctoral program back in 2003. One of them was my health. Another was that I was quickly realizing that while I very much enjoyed the coursework, I did not want to spend years writing a book on the subject I was studying. As older students were on the job hunt, I was surprised to note that you had to be completely geographically flexible if you wanted a tenure-track job as a professor in political science; it was not as easy as "Oh, I'd like to live in City X; I'll just apply there." My advisor was neck-deep in his own research, since he published like gangbusters, and made it clear that this was a sink or swim sort of program, and while swimming was nice, what he really wanted of me before I completed my coursework was a workable dissertation topic. I became disillusioned when I found that my research need not connect to something practical and usable, it just needed to be done. The faculty often quoted the old dissertation adage, "Good is not good. Done is good." And those who did leave the program without the degree were never heard from again - nor spoken of.

Entering graduate school straight out of undergrad, there was a lot I didn't understand (though I *thought* I did). I entered grad school loving my subject (international relations), good at coursework, and wanting to teach it at the college level. I was unprepared for the different dynamic of graduate school (older students, many already married, the fast splintering of our incoming class), the isolation of the program, and the heavy research. Coming from a teeny liberal arts college where the faculty were heavily invested in success, indifference from faculty was actually hurtful - I had assumed at a higher level, faculty would be even more invested, which is not always the case. I had no real idea what the dissertation meant, other than that it was post-coursework and exams.

Conducting my own research now on doctoral student retention, I have been both flummoxed and surprised that my experience was not outside the norm. I'm not the only one with the scarlet A of attrition branded onto my psyche; there is a large group of perfectly capable and intelligent individuals who also started - and failed to finish - the doctorate. There's an entire literature dedicated to them. To us. And the factors are all similar: personal reasons, personal network failures, failure to mesh with faculty, problematic relationships with advisors, financial reasons, ill-preparedness for advanced research, and the list goes on. Indeed, in academic librarianship, it appears many of us come to librarianship via that ABD-route, and we often joke about it. In my own case, an older graduate student who married and followed her PhD-ed husband for his job left with her MA and went to library school, which is where I got the idea to do the same.

Looking back, I wish I had done my library science work first, it would have made a great deal of difference in my research ability. I wish I had gone into graduate school more informed. On the other hand, since leaving that program (and I had some wonderful experiences there, too), the course of my life has been interesting, and in the masters degrees I've acquired since, I've learned a lot about who I am, what I am capable of, and what I want to do.

I am currently working on my EdD in Learning & Leadership here at UTC, focusing on academic libraries and student retention. Older and wiser, I quizzed the faculty deeply, memorized the program requirements and checkpoints, and walked in with my electives planned out and two likely dissertation topics, having already reviewed the literature, and not wanting to bomb a second time. The program has a cohort design, which creates unique friendships among students, and the staff and faculty of the program have already been incredibly supportive. I feel good about this. I want this. Most of all, I know (for the most part) what I'm getting into.

I'm already in a much better position for this program, and I feel it. Ten years between doctoral attempts has made its mark, in maturity, patience, and wisdom in better evaluation of what I am capable of. The ABD still stings - some of my friends joke about it every once in awhile, and don't understand why it makes me sullen. I suppose it shouldn't - there are better/worse things to be ashamed about. Oddly enough, as a librarian, I made faculty status long before many of my colleagues in that PhD program even got close to defending or going on the job hunt, since the short MLS is considered the terminal degree, which gave me some comfort. But who am I competing against? And for goodness sake, why?

I do occasionally feel that the ABD stain leaves me in need of some sort of redemption, but I'm tired of carrying that around all the time. I have enough emotional baggage as it is; I'm going to abandon this one on the turnstile. It seems I'm the only one who really cares about it, and there are better things to spend my energy on.

Some Thoughts on Change

2010-10-01T08:01:00.000-04:00

Change has been on my mind a lot lately. The calls for change that come out of every corner of librarianship, the calls for change we hear our library users making, and the change that occurs whether we want it or not that we have little control over - those changes caused by sharply declining budgets, natural disasters, and various other calamities.

I don't know that our profession is more or less prone to change than any others - I'm inclined to say more, for the simple fact that as technology providers and material distributors regardless of format, we probably see more than average, and also have to plan for three jumps ahead.

Here at the UTC Library, we are full up on change. We're still in-process with implementing WMS as our new library system. We are also awaiting word on what the WMS course reserves module will look like. We're planning for a new building, including the nitty gritty details of what speakers go where, where we want wiring, how we'll be handling laptops, and more. And all of this work-change, without even mentioning what library folks deal with at home when they take their librarian hats off (which for us include new babies, kids just entering high school, health issues, recent moves, and more).

Making major changes in the abstract, while a worthwhile exercise (particularly when it comes to planning for time, resources, dataflow and workflows) does not mean you can plan for every eventuality. I have been surprised at discovering things that we thought were obvious that fell off plans, and things that were un-obvious being major players. I've learned more about building layout and architecture, local holdings records, display issues, and the interplay of library data in general than I ever thought I would have cause to deal with.

I discovered some things that probably should have been obvious, but were not. For instance, that you cannot plan for every eventuality. That even when combing new systems for problems, you are bound to miss something. I am not surprised that six heads are better than one when tackling issues, but I have been surprised at *how much better* those many minds are at pulling a thing apart and identifying important pieces. I've found that while we advocate change, and - in the best cases - are willing to implement it, sometimes we forget how utterly exhausting it can be. I've found that in some cases a few problems may be better than one, because at least you can give your brain a break by moving onto something new for a bit. Good humor and genuine collegiality can alleviate tempers and soften a multitude of sins. Honesty can be both uncomfortable and productive. Transparency and conscious information exchange can nip mistrust and resentment in the bud. Some questions don't have easy - or satisfying - answers.

The change we've been dealing with at work has been an exercise in personal growth for me. My colleagues seem very good at this sort of thing - whether it is because they are uniquely suited to this sort of merry upheaval, because they have the wisdom of more professional years than I do, because we mesh well as a team with our various personalities, or some combination thereof, I do not know. In any case, I'm grateful to be able to learn from them, express my frustrations with them, and find solutions to thorny issues knowing we may not always agree, but we all have the same goals in mind. Those common goals give personality clashes, differing opinions and the occasional grumpiness more of a generous family feeling than the workplace stumbling blocks they could otherwise be.

Some days I go home weary in my bones, and others I go home energized and scratching out ideas into the late hours, with the dog left wondering when I will mentally come home from work. In all cases, though, working here, I am happy to come to work in the morning (though not, usually, to see morning itself). This makes all the difference for me - I can handle tsunami upheavals of radical change as long as I feel I have a supportive workplace based on real teamwork, honesty, and common goals. As a manager, this gives me something to chew on as I consider how to build and maintain that sort of feeling for my own staff.

Why Nobody Knows the Library is Suffering...and Why It's All Our Fault

2010-09-18T20:01:00.000-04:00

Several conversations both online and in person) with fellow librarians has me thinking about how very hard we work to make sure our services are not impacted by the significant budget cuts we've experienced over the past few years. And I find myself aggravated to the point of a blog post.

If you haven't already, you need to mosey on over and read the"Netflix in Libraries and Hypocrisy post by Meredith Farkas. In a nutshell, due to inability to buy media they need, libraries are using Netflix as a media ILL service. Which its terms of service explicitly prohibit. And yea, so libraries, Bastions of Fair Use and Copyright Banshees, are distributing content they neither own nor have the rights to, in a very teenager-like "Well, I haven't gotten in trouble yet" attitude. Because heck, if libraries can't afford it, our users still need it, and we promise to get it to them. Even if it goes against our professional ethics. Because our users need it. And so the foundation of service is sound...but the execution is not.

Over at Pegasus Librarian, Iris's post on the perception of what it means to be "doing well" highlights that just because you don;t see what cuts are made, and what losses are happening, doesn't mean those cuts and losses don't exist. Nor does it mean that they don't hurt, deeply.

I heard somewhere that an academic library should, in theory, receive 3 to 5% of the college or university's budget in order to properly develop. The Ivies come closest, but most of the rest of us languish around the 2% mark, and sometimes below, in bad years. Our collections get decimated first through less monograph spending, and then through rigorous serials reviews and cancellations. I've been at libraries who need to shrink spending even after those measures, which led to serious redistributions of work, closing and consolidating some boutique service points, and additional painful collections cuts. Furloughs. Layoffs. Not replacing staff and faculty who leave.

And through it all, we stiff-upper-lip it, and work as hard as we can to make sure our patrons feel very little of this impact. In most cases, the cutting of collections, consolidating staff and even layoffs don;t actually reduce the amount of work that needs to be done to keep library operations and services running. If anything, library staff and faculty take on more responsibilities (with static or reduced pay) to ensure the highest levels of service.

And still teaching faculty complain about the cute little media services center they no longer have, since it has been absorbed. They can't believe we can't order a thousand dollars worth of videos for them to place on reserve. Students are furious that the library does not purchase copies of required textbooks to directly support their coursework. And *everyone* gets pissed when library hours get shortened, not understanding the relationship between cut budgets and paying people to staff the building.

And why shouldn't they? Faculty get loudly aggravated when their curriculum is touched, when their department loses positions, and it makes the school newspaper (and perhaps the local one, too) when majors are sloughed off due to budget issues. Every student newspaper - and some national ones - decry the price of textbooks and the impact on poor college students every fall.

Librarians are polite and service-oriented. Our deans and directors may get red under the collar while pitching for funds in the provost's office, but to all outward appearances, we're doing just fine, and can we help you find something, dear?

Librarians do not agitate. People hear about the university budget cuts, but we rarely point out - loudly - what this means for the library, and those who use its resources. perhaps its time to let folks know what exactly lack of funds is doing to the libraries they use without thinking about what it takes to keep them running. No one would dare suggest that you can reduce teaching faculty and still maintain a high quality curriculum, but that's exactly the picture we paint when we let our library users think that our services and resources are unscathed.

Are we properly planning for the future? Not at the rate we're going, and not by grinning, bearing it, and pretending all's well, and we'll just work ourselves to death so nobody notices we've been cut to the bone. "Well," they must think, "I'm getting just as much service as I was before. They must not have needed that money after all. If we get flush again, why on earth should we give it back? They're functioning just fine."

We are not functioning just fine. We just find it too impolitic to say aloud. Are we afraid it would be rude? Afraid that we'll get back an "everyone else is suffering too, suck it up"? Interlibrary loan can only fill the gap for so long - most of us are finding that as we slash our collections and subscriptions, our ILL borrowing budgets are increasing astronomically, so it's not like it's not costing us. But our patrons wouldn't know that - we tout ILL as a free service.

I will admit I have been very lucky, but behind the scenes, I can see where the budget cuts are touching the library, and deeply. And I can see the massive amount of work librarians and staff put in so that our users are affected as little as possible. And while this is admirable and falls within our desire to serve, it can also have unpretty consequences.

Ladder to the Cloud: WMS Update

2010-09-18T13:25:00.000-04:00

The Cloud is puffy and waiting for us...but the ladder to get there is a bit more rickety than expected.

Our go-live date of August 20th proved a bit ambitious. While certain parts of the WMS system are up and running, there are important connections and functionality that we are still working with OCLC to get just right before we can jump ship from our current ILS.

If you're keeping track of us, you'll have read Jason Griffey's "Are We Live?" post from August 30. From there, we were hoping for a mid-September date, now we'll be pushed back a bit beyond that.

Circ is not ready yet to go live - while the check-in and check-out functionality is up and running, there are a few more things that make circ-side "go," and some of those things (like our billing practices and reports) have to be approved by folks like our auditors. The OCLC folks are shucking their buns to get us what we need, and we're currently having cross-departmental meetings declaring what we need immediately for a go-live, what can wait, and what can wait a bit longer. This is helping us all get on the same page about things, as well as realize some of the more finely-tuned interdependencies of our systems, data, and display that we hadn't realized. While it's a bit frustrating (we would *love* to go live yesterday), we want to do it right, and for now, that means waiting on OCLC's fast-paced development cycle to get us what we need. I've found this to be a really fascinating glimpse into the inner guts of the working of library records and systems. Even more interesting has been the division between what a vendor/partner thinks libraries need to function and what librarians think a library needs in order to function.

This is still a system I'm excited we'll be working in. The functionality - once it's all up and running - should prove a boon over our current system. But reality intrudes, in the form of some essential functionality, and in the end, our decisions to postpone our go-live date are based upon our attitude toward service. If it negatively impacts our patrons, whether through delaying our processes, item discoverability, or interface, we'd rather wait.

And such are the results of being a development partner. The system is still developing, and it's great to see how each update chews things off the list of functionalities we are waiting on - even as we're chomping at the bit and looking at the calendar.

And all along the way, we're preparing, altering workflows, debating patron as well as staff-side impact, cleaning data, testing WMS and making lists of needs, wants, and what's ready. There's a ways to go, and since we measure our professional lives in semester-weeks (and the paltry twelve of those that are left in Fall 2010), we don't have time to hold our breath. We're making plans, we're taking action, we're working hard...and we're waiting on the ladder to the cloudware to be complete.

On Book Burning and Responses

2010-09-09T17:37:00.000-04:00

Burning any book whatsoever goes against the very core of my personal and professional values. I joked once in college about having a grand end-of-semester barbecuing of our econometrics textbook, and couldn't bring myself to actually participate. I don't even joke about it anymore, mostly because I don't find it funny.

If you've been anywhere near FriendFeed (or the rest of the internet) lately, you'll have heard about the "International Burn a Koran Day" planned by U.S. pastor Terry Jones for September 11, 2010. If you're anything like any of the folks who have commented on the story, you're probably offended, appalled, or ashamed. To me, it's a despicable practice, to hold a whole group responsible for the actions of a few.

I am concerned, though, that the sentiment that "Christians the world over would be in danger over the Koran-burning stunt" paints Islam as a bloodthirsty religion. With Interpol, the U.S. Government, and even President Obama claiming that the burning could provoke "violent attacks on innocent people" result in a "recruitment bonanza" for Al-Quaeda, they've essentially undone much of the good work that has gone into demonstrating that Muslims are no more bloodthirsty and irrational than any other religious group.

I much prefer Stephen Abram's approach in his latest blog post, "We Strengthen Our Rights by Exercising Them," in whcih he recommends a counter protest on a personal level by reading the Koran, reaching some understanding, bringing light to ignorance. Please go read his post - he eloquently states, "The forces for book burning do have a right to their views and actions and good and decent people have a right to object to their views and actions." He continues with his recommendation for what that action should be. You might be surprised, but it's not to have a vitriolic counter-protest.

I have also been concerned and, to be honest, horrified at how folks seem more than willing to forgo the freedom of speech this *nonviolent* protest would have been, by not just protesting back or pointing out that pastor Jones is a bit of an ass for a so-called "Christian," but by actively seeking ways to prevent him from completing the exercise. Was the burning distasteful in the extreme? Absolutely, and an insult to followers of Islam who hold the Koran holy. Did it meet the "yelling 'Fire!' in a crowded theater" test of being disallowed as free speech? I'm not a lawyer, but I doubt it. And personally, I find the implications of those willing to toss free speech out the window for an offensive display far more vexing than one mediawhore miscreant's attempt to start a holybook bonfire.

And so, in the spirit of Mr. Abrams' post, I also ask that instead of seeking to limit the rights of one who would use them for personal gain and fame, exercise your own rights, whether it be loudly or quietly. When the only people who exercise their rights do so out of a damaging place, the rest of us are culpable for not speaking out, or dimming their example with our own. Why should a public reading from the Koran be planned only in response to something like Pastor Jones? Perhaps an interfaith reading would be the perfect way to commemorate September 11th, reminding us that this is a place of equality, that any who want to may speak aloud, and that we hope the most voices fall into a place of peace and attempted understanding.

And while I understand that it is your right to burn books (given that you've acquired the proper permits for a fire and such), I would really rather prefer you find a more eloquent way to make your point. All knowledge is worth having, and there has got to be a less blatantly ignorant way of getting your point across.

On the Great Myth of the Librarian Grays

2010-09-03T09:12:00.000-04:00

Lately, there's been a lot of discussion (and bitching) about the promised graying/retirement within the library profession that was supposed to open up endless job opportunities for new librarians. The LITA-L email list, a recent American Libraries article, and a post by Peter Brantley calling for an overthrow by the young'uns have all been pretty popular topics of late.

January 15, 2004, Rachel Singer Gordon published a piece in Library Journal titled "NextGen: Get Over the "Graying" Profession Hype". I say again: this was 2004.

It would appear no one took the advice, given that today - despite very obvious evidence to the contrary, American Libraries just printed an ill-advised article on recruiting undergrads to the profession, citing the graying of the profession as a reason for folks to sign up for library work. Jessamyn West, in her recent post "show us the numbers re: new librarian jobs", calls for more than the ever-present empty anecdata touted by library schools, ALA, and professional publications alike. And all of the librarians who have been pounding the pavement (or internet) jobhunting for multiple years agree.

The economy is in the toilet. Any librarian looking for a job is up against hundreds of his or her peers. Those recently out of school are competing against folks with decades of experience under their belt and probably wider networks (though social media is closing this gap quickly). A few things:

MYOPIA

For goodness' sake, how myopic are we? Librarianship isn't the only profession where the number of qualified grads outnumbers the available positions. Speak to any English PhD who received their degree in the past 30 years. Political Science PhDs have seen the same trend since I was working in polisci back in 2001.

In fact, while librarianship writ-large isn't "academia" per se, the job market for the profession certainly works a whole lot like that for would-be-professor PhDs. Jobs are very limited, check. There are more qualified degree holders than there are full time well paying positions, check. If you want to be a particular type of librarian (particularly academic, but it applies to other types too), you'll more than likely have to do a regional or national job hunt and not be terribly geographically limited, check. It's funny, but my becoming a librarian did not at all save me from the dangers of jobhunting as a PoliSci PhD.

We're not the only ones who suffer from this. We just act like we are. For all of the social networking we do with each other, we seem to have less a grasp on other professions. Talk to someone who got their master's in social work sometime. Navel-gazing: as a profession, we haz it, as the kitties say.

LEAVE THE LIBRARY

No, really. A lot of the folks who are burned that the grays won't retire so they can have their jobs (entitlement much?) are only applying for positions within libraries (per their anecdatal stories). Libraries, if no one has noticed, have been receiving giant financial wedgies for some time now, and the recent economic upheaval added some fund-draining noogies on top of that. No, libraries aren't hiring. No, library work often doesn't pay well. But you're perfectly qualified (if you took your courses with an eye more toward being useful than with an eye toward getting out quickly and via the easy route) to deal with knowledge and information management in the corporate setting. Also, the pay is better. Also, you'll be using your library science skills in a completely different environment, which may actually be just what you need in your next job hunt to give you a leg up.

QUIT ANKLEBITING

Also, public email list posts with comments like "...my current job is the second one that I have had where I’ve been working for someone who has been ELIGIBLE to retire for multiple years, and who for whatever reason will not give up their position..." - not going to help you much. You come across looking entitled at best, nor is this sort of attitude something those in the position to hire want to hear. Yes, we have old folk in libraries. Actually, we have five generations in the workplace now. FIVE. Diversity - getcha some. No one owes you a job just because you want one, and while I'm pals with a number of "young'uns" in the profession, some of the most effective librarians I know are in their 40s, 50s and older.

I'm quite tired of hearing that only those in their 20s and 30s can change the shape of the profession. From Brantley's post, there is "wide acknowledgment that the greatest sea change of vision and perspective among librarians, museum and archive staff, rests primarily among those (more or less) in their 20s, into their early to mid 30s. This generation has completely different expectations for information management, privacy, direct access to data and people, interaction with services, and organizational behavior." What folks seem to fail to realize is that it's midlevel librarians in their late 30s, 40s and 50s who will be managing those librarians in their 20s and early 30s for the next three decades. Another quote from the Brantley piece: "There should be no directors present, no associate directors present. This is not about them. It is about those who will truly redefine the future of libraries." How silly. The AULs? Are prepped to become ULs. Some of them are *GASP* even in their early 30s. And until this profession realizes that its managers and leaders are essential because they are the ones who fight for and acquire resources that we need to actually get things done, the Young Uprising will remain not much more than pie-in-the-sky talk.

You might also note that those in agreement with Brantley (and I agree with the sentiment, if not the entire post and mechanisms presented) span age boundaries. To be fair, perhaps the vitriol is directed more at ARL ULs than at older generations in general - but it's not phrased that way. This is a "get the old people out of the way" call. And "old people" are not the problem. Sometimes gray is sexy, particularly when it's The Grays who are accomplishing excellent things.

RESPONSIBLITY

There seems to be a general belief that a school has a moral imperative to let you know the degree they offer you has an oversaturated market and that the job prospects are poor. In fact, library schools are trying to stay open. In further fact, you look like delectable, juicy, tuition dollars.

At the point you are going to graduate school - and much is made the SLIS students tend to be older students, moving into librarianship as a career later in life - you are responsible for knowing what the job market is. Don't you think that rather than listening to the proselytizing of schools and associations that want your money, you should perhaps be scouring the job boards and talking to folks in the field? I have little patience for the "I was told there would be lots of jobs!" complaint. Every field is the same. No art department tells their students they won't be able to get a job as an artist. MFA programs are not lining up to announce that their terminal MFAs are being usurped by the development of creative writing PhD programs. And few graduate advisors tell their entering PhD students that they'll likely be ABD, crushed to death by a dissertation that bears little resemblance to why they entered their program. Law schools are not exactly running to shut themselves down despite a law market that has been oversaturated for years.

There is a serious abdication of personal responsibility when we blame the schools for continuing to graduate MLS folks, and I'm growing weary of hearing it.

I do think, however, we need to hold our associations and professional publications (I'm looking at YOU, American Libraries and ALA) to account for perpetuating false claims. If you find a good way to do that, do let me know.

And so, in closing, yes, the cake is a lie. The profession may be graying, but gray doesn't mean dead or retiring. There has been published work decrying this myth out for the better part of a decade or two, and older librarians remember being fed the same hogwash in the 70s. This does not mean you should be pushing your leaders down stairs in the hopes you'll get their jobs. It does mean that you need to drink a great big glass of suck-it-up-atine, work extra hard at the job hunt (you know who I'm talking about - I am STILL seeing Comic Sans, clip art, and crappy cover letters, people), and developing skills needed in places other than libraries.

Good luck. Go forth. Be useful. And gods forbid you should ever get older than 35, because your so-called colleagues will be plotting your demise.

Unpleasant Lessons: Learning to be Sick

2010-08-27T15:22:00.000-04:00

I spent five weeks seriously ill this summer before having my gallbladder out on August 6th. In my attempt to contribute to the library's preparation for fall (as well as our pending WMS rollout), and given my disgust with daytime tv, I only missed one full week of work, despite the doc telling me to stay home for two. My attitude was, "I can move. It's not like I do a lot of heavy lifting at work. And it's not as though there's not a ton to do." Turns out, you should listen to your doctor. (No, really. He's the one with the knife, after all.)

I am very lucky. While I was seriously down and out, my colleagues and friends went grocery shopping for me, offered to walk my rambunctious basset hound, and checked in on me regularly via phone, email, and visits with chicken soup. With continued complications, whereas I expected frustration and annoyance, all I've received is support and the expectation that I go home when I need to so I can rest and heal.

This experience has been incredibly frustrating - being sick was not on my calendar. I don't really have time for it, and I have a ton of other things to do. However, when I run myself down, it takes me longer to do those things. Lesson learned, mostly. Second, this has really made me appreciate my coworkers, and the comfort that a supportive work environment can give. I do not like to miss work - it makes me cranky, frustrated, and fearful that I will be seen as "not a team player" or as lazy. I figure this is a result both of a hardcore blue collar home life ("Are you bleeding from the eyeballs? No? Then you're well enough to go to school/work") and of experiences I've had at other jobs where when someone took a long vacation, if the place ran decently well while they were gone, they came back to a pink slip. I'm lucky to not work in that sort of environment any more, but it still echoes in my head.

I firmly believe in the need for renewal/sick time for my staff, colleagues, bosses. Life takes a toll. people get sick. People need a refresher. Life can be a sledgehammer sometimes, and it's not always within our control. I would never hold being sick against someone - not only is it out of their control, it's a miserable place to be in any case, and I would want them to concentrate on themselves and getting back to healthy. But I have a hard time applying that same acceptance to my own circumstances. With the help of friends and colleagues (nag, nag nag, guys - but I love you!), I'm working on it and trying to find a better balance.

My race to get back to regular life has created some problems with my recuperation, and now I'm re-frustrated that I've not healed as well as hoped, and will have some more downtime. As of today, I am working hard to: go home when I need to, instead of waiting until the collapse/dizzy point; not be afraid to ask my boss & colleagues for some slack if my health demands it; accept that sometimes I can't just gut through it and be fine; accept that sometimes downtime is necessary time. It helps immensely that I work with compassionate and kind people (who have been ordering me to do this since Day 1).

I am working on learning to be sick gracefully, as opposed to hobbling around like Quasimodo trying to get things done before falling apart. If the people I work with are not going to hold being sick against me or be resentful about it, then I should not be holding it against myself. Right?

And so before I continue cracking at my department's annual report, I am going to take a nap, because I feel terrible and it will still be there when I wake up.

Gmail + GVoice = GMe? Online Handles as Legal Names

2010-08-25T14:02:00.000-04:00

With Google's recent announcement that they are integrating gmail with GoogleVoice and that you can call (for free!) from gmail, I had three thoughts:

1. Uh oh, Skype. Youze in trouble.

2. I wonder when we'll start requiring folks to have their online handles as part of their legal names.

3. I wonder if Mom would get upset if I legally changed my name to Colleen Susan Warmaiden Harris.

Now, it's not terribly difficult to change your legal name - in some states, it's as little as a form, a short audience with a judge, and a small fee. There's the trouble of changing your license and all of your other legal documents, of course, but it's not more of a hassle than women who change their names when they marry have to go through. I'm sure people have done it already, and their legal names are now Jondamuur Dread, or some such thing. But I do wonder if this is going to become so ingrained as a part of our identity that it becomes folded in as part of our official identification.

Disturbing Trends at the K-12 Level and the Trickle Up Effect

2010-08-25T07:48:00.000-04:00

The strapped economy has every sector tightening belts, but the more I hear reports of what is being done at the K-12 level of education across the country, the more I am concerned. Concerned not only about the immediate impact for those children in K-12, but also about what repercussions we'll see in higher education as a result of those K-12 changes.

Georgia's State Board of Education has dropped mandatory class size limits at least for this year, per the Augusta Chronicle. Class sizes of up to 40 are expected. (Note that various studies, including this one by Finn & Achilles in Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis, finds that smaller class sizes are, unsurprisingly, related to higher academic achievement.

In Tennessee, many schools do not have the infrastructure to properly handle increases in enrollment. According to one Chattanooga Times Free Press article:

"Lunch starts even earlier at East Hamilton School — about 9:45 a.m. The school added about 350 new students this year and administrators have been forced to shuttle kids through the lunch line every 20 minutes. Because the dining hall was not built to accommodate East Hamilton’s student body of nearly 2,000, teachers and students must adhere to a very strict schedule."

Back in the school district I grew up in, teachers acquiesced to pay cuts and freeze of contracted raises to save jobs earlier in the spring. That's a huge concession, as the Brentwood Public School District teacher's union is the largest on Long Island. In any case, it didn't save them from significant layoffs. Teachers who were told back in the spring they would keep their jobs have been laid off these last weeks of summer, after declining jobs in other districts. In addition to that, our class sizes were approaching 40 students per class at the high school when I graduated in 1997 - at this point the high school is highly dependent on portable classrooms, and class sizes will be soaring over that scary 40-student mark.

California and New York have both been in the news for their massive teacher layoffs, and other states aren't faring much better.

We know that fewer teachers and larger class sizes create problems for student performance. Larger class sizes have been demonstrated to contribute to teacher burnout.

Fewer teachers with larger classes, unable to spend as much time per child dealing with differences in ability and learning style, spell disaster for an educational system that has already been highly criticized for years. And the issue of when these students make it into higher education now has a bigger "if" factor than ever before, as more higher ed institutions are now having their funding tied to student outcomes. The likely result? Already disadvantaged students will become even more so, and the colleges and universities that previously allowed them to do remedial coursework after admission will be less willing to bridge the education gap that is increasing between K-12 and college level work.

At what point will policymakers, local and state Boards of Education, and other stakeholders realize that our system can only sustain so many educational cuts before the decrease in quality of education becomes irreversible? And at what point will we in higher ed run be so immersed in remediation that we fall short of the ability to offer students the opportunity for a true higher education?

I don't have any easy answers, but the educational landscape of the U.S. is getting pretty scary.

SkyRiver & III Suing OCLC: Traditional (Read: Broken) ILS Vendors are Pissed

2010-07-30T12:56:00.001-04:00

Innovative Interfaces (known in LibraryLand as III) and SkyRiver are suing OCLC under anti-trust laws. You can read the full complaint here, and I recommend you do so. It's not an awfully long read, but it certainly is enlightening.

K.G. Schneider addressed it so well, you should read her blog post about the situation, which gets right to the heart of what makes this complaint stink.

At the risk of being a Ranty McRantypants, I would like to note that if you read the suit, III & SkyRiver are complaining that OCLC's innovation hurts them. Which is fascinating, since librarians have been *begging* III and other traditional ILS vendors to innovate - and making recommendations on how they could do so to fit our changing workflows and services - for decades. Now that they've found themselves behind the curve they want free access to what librarians & OCLC have built over decades.

Full disclosure: if you've read my blog, you know that my library's a development partner for the OCLC WMS. We are already seeing how we can save immense amounts of staff time in Acquisitions/Materials processing and Access with not having to duplicate work in multiple systems, as well as a better patron-side experience. And the thing isn't even fully built yet.

I've worked with 3 traditional ILS systems (VTLS, Sirsi, & Voyager), and the development cycles, responses to feedback, and customer service when things break have all been abysmal. Across the board. This looks a whole lot like those folks running scared of something that will meet libraries' needs. And complaining that OCLC is entering the traditional ILS world is flatly untrue. OCLC has cloudware. Muy diferente. How many of us have hobbled along with our traditional ILS systems that can't do everything through that software, so we order in one thing, receive in another, and do quite a bit of duplicate work simply because our systems won't talk to each other?

I see you back there. RAISE YOUR HAND.

Yes, OCLC is a behemoth and there are issues with pricing, with ownership of records, and the Michigan pricing thing was a complete hash. But I haven't heard of any librarian who doesn't understand how valuable OCLC has been for us.

What III fails to state in their paperwork is that they ALSO bilk libraries out of huge sums every year via lock-in contracts, except they request no input from clients nor do they respond to rapidly changing needs. That they frame OCLC asking members to participate in development of products as a bad thing boggles me. Yes, how dare they inquire as to how their products might impact our workflows and make themselves, um, useful. FOR SHAME.

Yes, I want a say in the systems I use. I want prompt response time, a development cycle that moves faster than a broken-legged sloth, and the opportunity to provide feedback that is taken seriously. The fact that companies failed to change systems they designed years ago to keep up with technology - and are now feeling the bite of it - does not impress me.

I keep hoping they'll televise the court proceedings for this. Librarians would be all over it. Like the O.J. trial, only for nerds.

The New Math: UT System Funding Model to Hold Schools Accountable for Student Success

2010-07-30T08:35:00.000-04:00

In an interesting (and long-awaited) move by the Tennessee Higher Education Commission (unaffectionately known as T-HEC), Chattanooga Times Free Press reports that "state universities and colleges will no longer be rewarded for just getting students in the door and will be forced to improve student outcomes if they want state support".

In effect, what this means to me is that front-loading the university with unsuspecting and ill-prepared students to meet enrollment goals (and, by extension, funding goals), will hopefully no longer be common practice. The law will likely produce some serious challenges, but it also offers a number of benefits compared to the current system. First, another quote from the Chattanooga Times Free Press article on how the funding model impacts UTC:

"Twenty-five percent of the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga’s future funding will be linked to the number of bachelor degrees produced. Another 10 percent will be tied to both the six-year graduation rate and the number of degrees per 100 full-time students, according to commission documents."

Obvious challenges. UTC's retention rate has hovered around a limp-tastic 60%, occasionally dipping into the high 50% range. In order to maximize the funding formula for an already bootstrapped campus, this is going to have to change drastically. On the bright side, UTC has been trying to deal with retention issues and has some programs already in place, such as the FAST program, as described by the University paper.

This may also make the University look twice at entering freshmen. In recent years, UTC has allowed entrance to students with serious deficiencies in writing and math, creating a situation where a student's first term or two might be completely taken up with remedial courses not eligible to count towards degree requirements. While this appeared in line with reducing barriers to a college education, particularly since our campus ~~serves a high percentage of first-generation college students~~ [edit: debunked - as pointed out by Ralph in the comments - turns out the Uni often said that without actual data; actual data does not support that claim], it also creates a situation where students are admitted to a university completely unprepared for university-level education. This saps resources, as faculty, space, and other resources are spent on teaching sub-level courses to the detriment of the actual university curriculum.

I firmly believe that we should help students succeed, and if they need remedial classes, so be it. I do not, however, believe we should be charging students university-level tuition for courses they take which will not have any bearing on the credits required for their degree. I also think it is a convenient camouflage for a problematic K-12 system that a university should need to essentially also become a second shot at high school - we're not equipped for it, and we're not funded for it. Yes, remedial program should exist so that these folks can get an undergraduate degree, absolutely. That should not, however, be at the expense of existing academic programs or at the expense of treatment of students fully capable of pursuing college-level coursework. Unfortunately, that is exactly what happens.

Betting the funding farm on huge incoming classes is problematic in terms of infrastructure as well. When you expand faster than your facilities - your parking, your dormitories, your classrooms, your libraries, and your faculty, you are inevitably diluting the educational (and, let's face it, physical) experience of education. Not only will you start seeing more 300-student classes (something I happily managed to avoid during my extremely extended educational career), you don't have enough parking to allow those students to get there on time. Nor, in fact, do you have anywhere for those sized classes to meet, if you're chasing the funding by enrollment numbers and not planning your infrastructure around measured growth. And riddle me this: if your campus network infrastructure struggles under the weight of 10,000FTE - - how on earth will you support 13,000 FTE and the concomitant support staff that comes with that sort of an increase?

In any case, I think it's an important shift in funding, though I imagine the impact in the first few years will be rough, particularly as our University continues to try to improve our student retention and graduation rates, and handled underprepared freshmen. Still, I think it's promising that higher education is realizing that more butts in seats does not necessarily translate into deserving of more state dollars.

UTC Library Mentioned as OCLC WMS Early Adopter

2010-07-22T13:23:00.000-04:00

Library Journal has picked up UTC's early adoption of the OCLC WMS. (As a fun aside, they also linked to both my & griffey's initial posts on the topic, which made me smile.)

We are going like gangbusters, with our ILS administrator running on popcorn and donuts as she does dark-hoodoo data munging, Griffey managing various aspects of this enormous project, various smaller area-driven implementation teams handling their business/planning and reporting out both to the larger implementation team and the library at large, cleaning data, and more.

I've been able to get my hands - or, more accurately, brain - into some areas I've never fiddled with before. Circ and lending policy matrices for the wireframe; not only which patron records we actually want to move over, but which *parts* of the records, and trying to standardize freeform notes; dealing with home locations, shelving locations, temp locations, and more; trying to reduce the number of patron-types we have; the dark mostly-unused corners of things we'll need to test. How I would integrate services and accounts and information if I could blue-sky things. Thinking about things from the user-side in terms of accounts and information. Chairing the circulation & course reserves implementation team has me waking up at odd hours thinking "OMG did we think of that??" - which someone inevitably has, or "Ooh, what about scenario Q sub-point four?" which always sparks interesting discussion.

Random thoughts: after looking at our free form notes fields to date, the idea of trying to run a report or munge data out of free-form makes me want to barf. Misspellings, word-order issues, synonymetry...humans - and circ staff - are nowhere near robotic enough to make that work well. Get to know the preferred pastry poison of your ILS administrator/IT team - it'll make you feel better when you can't change their Access database files into XML, but can give them an icing-filled donut. "WMS" is not sexy or fun - OCLC should name the cloudware something spiffy and give it a fun icon. There's an edge case for everything you can think of.

Everyone is running around crazy, but there's no panic-feeling (or at least not as much 'frantic' as you'd expect for a 30-day implementation of an untested library system). Getting into this sort of crazy with a bunch of folks who have a good sense of humor, common paradigm for service, generous spirits toward each other and an appreciation for the work others do - even if they know little about it - probably makes a hell of a difference.

30 Days to Cloudware? Moving to OCLC’s Webscale Management System

2010-07-15T14:10:00.000-04:00

Oh, yes. The University of Tennessee at Chattanooga's library is implementing the OCLC Webscale Management System, and if all goes according to plan, we will have it up and running in 30 days.

You read that right. My library team is implementing a full-scale, whole-hog library system migration to a heretofore unknown system. We’re making The Big Jump. We’re going to live in the cloud (it’s okay, we promise to write). We are divorcing the traditional ILS, taking the kids, and striking out on our own.

We are stepping into the future. And we’re doing it in a grand total of... thirty days.

Our Library has been batting around an ILS migration for years. We looked at the various vendors and decided that while our current workflows would likely conform just fine to another traditional ILS, it wouldn’t really be changing anything. We’d just get something similar that actually, most of the time, hopefully, would work, and with (again, hopefully) better response to service calls. There were a number of other factors, cost and budget of course among them. We also debated the wisdom of falling further under OCLC thrall.

But there was also the consideration of what this opportunity might mean. A chance to be in on the ground floor of building the sort of library system everyone bitches that we want but don’t have. A way to challenge traditional ILS vendors to do something more than patching their 1980s software, to build something that takes advantage of new technologies, new ideas, and isn’t just a giant workaround-enabler.

I’ve heard the argument against it, about OCLC hegemony, and the danger to our local holdings, but I posit this: If our users can’t *find* our local holdings – which in the case of our soon-to-be-former OPAC they can’t - those records may as well belong to someone else anyway. In fact, they may as well not exist for all the good they do.

And essentially, that’s what it boiled down to, in the end, which is why I love working here. It was not “Is this the most shiny toy?” It was not a matter of “This will be easy” or “we will be first.” We did not ask “Does this sound like too much work?”, although we did consider whether we had the capacity to do the work required. Our first consideration, the specter at the table at every meeting, and our last consideration was: “Will this move be the best way to serve our user community?” And because the answer was yes, we took the leap.

The leap was assisted by the fact that during the demo of WebScale, I kept breathing, “Ooh, that is sexy.” About a web interface. About a web interface intended to run a library. When was the last time your poor old ILS helped you out with your work so well, or got dressed up enough for you to call it sexy?

Yeah, us too. And so, we’ve told poor old ILS that we’re leaving, and we’re taking the kids.

[Sidenote: I will add that the fact that our decisionmaking in this library is primarily driven by the question above - “Will this move be the best way to serve our user community?” - is also the very reason I choose to work here. It’s not the party line – it’s practice.]

Oh yes, we’re crazy. Our IT team is crazy to take this on, but Head of IT Jason Griffey and ILS administrator Andrea Schurr are just badass enough to make it work, and are already hard at work wrangling data. Our Head of Materials Processing, Mike Bell, is crazy for taking on the massive amount of records work that needs to be done by his department. I’m crazy for throwing Access Services into a system that’s not quite fully built and demanding that we provide excellent service while the Library monkeys with it and help OCLC design what we think a working library system looks like. All of us are going to be (if we’re not already) insanely busy, breaking down all our processes, figuring out how existing workflows will be impacted, and working in tight, small implementation groups to ensure that the only impact our users feel is a positive one and that our change is an agile one.

And we know we’ll be impacted in ways we probably can’t predict right now. I’m not a technical services person, but from what I *do* know of technical services, OCLC’s WebScale seems to be a massive sea change in the time, number of steps, and ease of doing tech services business, and I expect that this – as well as a number of other new ways of looking at library systems as a whole – will allow us to evolve as we were meant to, without being shackled to software we pay a mint for and have very little input into making changes in. Our needs are not the same as they were fifteen years ago, nor are our collections, our technological capabilities, or our staff’s skill-sets. So why are we married to software that works the same way it did that long ago?

Because we haven’t had a choice. And while we’re still a number of weeks away from full implementation, the energy in the library is palpable. We aren’t just hoping this works, we are DEMANDING that this works. We are refusing to accept the old library and ILS excuse of “but this is the way we’ve always done it,” and are working hard to chart this new path. I hope it goes somewhere pleasant.

I think this is an exciting time to be looking at how we run our libraries, in light of OCLC attempting to develop the product libraries have been asking for, and as we wait to see what will come of the Open Library Environment (OLE) product over the next few years. Expect to see much more about this project here, as well as at Griffey's blog in the coming weeks as we kick the tires, find gaps, and test OCLC's commitment to service (as well as our own mettle).

You can read more about Webscale in Andrew Pace's archive of web-scale category posts, some discussion on OCLC's page on web-scale here, and at OCLC's official Webscale Management System page.

Old Spice to Libraries: "Stop Throwing Pigeons. Jump on that Giraffe"

2010-07-15T10:30:00.001-04:00

Taking hysterical advantage of Old Spice's invitation for twitter queries (capitalizing on their recent hit commercial), Andy Woodworth jumped on the internet meme, rallied the Library Twitterati, and asked the Old Spice guy to say something about libraries.

And don'tcha know...he did. And it is The Big Awesome.

It is impossible for me to see that video without laughing. Andy himself posts about the reaction to the video, about how it got tossed around the internet like a giant beach ball by librarians, library fans, amused writers, and any number of other folks.

It was fun to watch. It was fun to be included - it reminded me a lot of how we used to be able to send our names into the Romper Room show, and at the end, the lady would look into her magic mirror and names some kids she could see. It was always exciting to sit and hope she might say my name. This worked the same way - Old Spice certainly couldn't catch the tons of requests they received, but the fact that they worked so diligently - and quickly! - to respond personally was very fun to watch.

What are we doing that compares for our local communities?

In the Win Column: Why I Do What I Do

2010-07-14T20:34:00.000-04:00

Today I came home later than usual from work with my brain whirring with ideas, making notes about things to remember to send out to my department and to ask the Keepers of the Data. I absentmindedly microwaved and ate a quick dinner that tasted like a tired gym sock because I was busy churning at a Google doc of things to jump on tomorrow, or Friday, or next week, depending on the project.

I did NOT: stressbarf, bake and eat a stresscake, search for new jobs, or generally feel ill about my place in the world. I DID: get excited about my work, get focused on my users, think about the impact of upcoming work on my staff, think about connecting services in new ways, and become excited that I have smart, dedicated colleagues to share this experience with.

And tonight while discussing work with a close friend and fellow librarian, I had a striking moment of this is why I do what I do. Because I love it. Because I am *good* at it. Because given the right mix of colleagues, resources, and circumstances, I could never imagine doing anything else for a living.

Many people gave me the hairy eyeball when I decided to jump ship for this position, as my last three jobs have been for fewer than two years each. To them, I say:

"But, look. My road has taken me here. And can you see how happy I am? I can."

Sometimes, when you ask for ponies, you get them. You may, however, have to chase them a bit further than anticipated.

Shout Out to the IT Fixers-of-Things

2010-07-14T11:05:00.000-04:00

It is a hell of a thing to get to work with people who love their jobs, truly believe in the mission of their organization, and strive to exemplify service. If you're very, very lucky, know your Ranganathan and read your Arlene Taylor diligently, and do your weeding with one eye on your collection development policy like a good librarian, some of these those people live in your IT department.

Sometimes we don't know how lucky we are until things break. I am very, very lucky.

It is even more of a hell of a thing to work with people (*cough* Griffey *cough*) who face technological failure (oh, server migration and client update, ye bitches!) with grace, communicating issues and plans for fixes for an essential library service. Add to this that whatever failures are occurring are not within his power to control or fix. And he *still* hasn't kicked or smacked me for occasionally giving him the Query Eyebrow in an attempt to ask what's going on without nagging.

So yes, today I use my blog as a platform to send the stressed Griffey, who shares some serious project monstrobsities on his plate with his staff, a thank you. Because I know not just that something is broken, but how and why it is broken, the multiple plans he & his staff have implemented for fixing the brokenness, circumstances causing holdups, and what the backup plans are.

It's not every day you find someone so open with solutions, process, and general communication. Particularly when you consider that discussion delving deep into .asp something-or-others, virtual servers, and database backups make my eyes glaze over pretty quickly.

So, a thank you to Griffey and his staff of fixers-of-things. And a recommendation to IT librarians far and wide to trust us with information we need to make decisions about library services. And an earnest wish that all of the fabulous, hardworking librarians out there get rewarded by The Great Dewey in the Sky with an IT guy like mine.

Except not mine, because you can't have him. Back away.