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aarontay › Comments
What one word do you consistently mis-type?
When I used to work at the Natural Resources Library at NC State, it was "environment*" Missed it every damn time.
- Catherine Pellegrino
Truthfully? My own given name, dammit.
- RepoRat
transportation
- EBJT
I'm sensing a theme here... I don't have trouble typing "Mary's" in text, but when I try to type someone's email address it inevitably comes out as saintmaruys.edu or saintmayrs.edu
- Catherine Pellegrino
account (as acocunt - which is just horrible)
- awd
education (educaiton). Also, my own name. I regularly type Kayra before I look at what I typed, then have to go back and fix it.
- ellbeecee
i also screw up institute a lot, which is great since i work for the institute of transportation.
- EBJT
grep
- Blake
information. also: , and (becomes: worda, nd)
- RudĩϐЯaЯïan
Ell, I mistype the -ation on just about everything. Education, Information, location.....
- RudĩϐЯaЯïan
librarian (as 'whiny bunch of miserable people DIE DIE DIE'). You'd think by the time I hit the caps key I'd have noticed.
- Andy
"Sec"
- Soup in a TARDIS
the/teh
- Katy S
digitization - which i have to write very often...
- jambina
Reserach, I mean research.
- Kaijsa
My name as Larua; hte for the.
- laura x
I've never typed "Kayra," but I'm a frequent "Larua." *fistbumps the Lauras*
- Blatantly LB
Dupusi
- John Dupuis
informatin or informatoin or informatino
- Joe
Public without the L.
- Yvonne
institution
- Marie
the/teh - it's so, so bad.
- Jen
congress (I write congrees instead, I have no idea)
- Meg V. Meg
salon/salong--i tend to add a g to words that end in n. i don't really understand why.
- Rochelle Rochelle
Am I really the only person who types hte instead of teh?
- laura x
from BuddyFeed
hellz no
- jambina
i'm with RepoRat. I can't type my own name. It's gotten better with my married name. And Laura X, my computer autocorrects teh to the, so i don't notice it anymore :)
- ~Courtney F.
Rochelle - did you ever do some sort of typing tutor program? Even now my fingers automatically want to finish typing "falls" "keel" etc. if the words start the same.
- Jaclyn Bedoya
My name
- Mary Carmen
CARY MARMEN
- jambina
lololololo....actually i type Maru instead of Mary a lot
- Mary Carmen
I have a good friend from high school whose nickname is *still* a mis-spelling of her own last name. She was turning in a test under time pressure, mis-spelled her own last name, myself and one other friend saw it, collapsed into laughter, and never stopped calling her by that name.
- Amandadon't
my password. honestly. we have a "three strikes and you're out" policy, and having the chief systems guy be locked out is kinda funny and sad all at once.
- henry
"collegue"
- aarontay
Withing
- Rochelle Rochelle
print (I type Pring)
- barbara fister
Shoudl
- Joe
Anything I type on the iPad :)
- marthalib
Quick question - are your information/reference desks open the same hours as your library building?
No- we have extended hours during which the library is staffed by security.
- Pete
No - we poop out at ten pm, but the building is open until 1 am. (Except now, when the semester is over. FINALLY.)
- barbara fister
Nope, is shorter
- aarontay
Nope; we go home at 9:00 Sun-Thurs, but the building is open until midnight. And we're not here at all on Saturdays.
- Catherine Pellegrino
Nope.
- Meg V. Meg
Yes. Seeing as reference closes the building
- Jason (not an Argonaut)
from Android
during the fall and spring nope Circulation closes it. During the summer when we close at 7 reference is here till then
- Sir Shuping is just sir
Yes, because we have a combined information/reference/circulation/everything desk.
- Deborah Fitchett
Nope. Significantly shorter in the regular school year, marginally shorter in the summer. (The circ desk hours match the bldg hours.)
- Marianne
No. Circ is open all of our hours. Ref desk is presently open 8:30-7 during fall/winter/spring; 8:30-5 summer. Trying to move to a one desk model though because question volume doesn't support current two desk model. No reference on the weekends.
- Hedgehog
Nope. Reference librarians are done at 7 pm, but we're open until 1 am, with similarly shortened Sunday hours. And no librarians on Saturdays at all.
- Jenica
Another nope: our building is open 24 hours during the semester, Circ is open until about 11:30pm, and Ref is open until about 9pm. The exact details of that can change, but generally Ref closes a few hours before Circ, which closes late.
- Amandadon't
Catherine above nails our hours, too
- awd
"ALA President Molly Raphael's response was swift and consistent with our message to the membership." http://viewer.zmags.com/publica... There's really nothing like having your professional organization sound like a Soviet-era Party newsletter.
Joe, Galadriel C., Sir Shuping is just sir and 2 other people liked this
*snerk*
- RepoRat
Sounds like they took a lesson from the North Koreans. Actually, I would look forward to more ALA publications if they did write like that. "Our valiant and eternal leadership is feared by our foes and universally admired by the people of the world for the principles and values that librarianship offer the greater society."
- Andy
I assume they call their group "Dickwig"
- Don't feed the Steve
Argh! My Eyes! That Horrible "REPLECTAE THE PRINT LAYOUT AND BEHAVIOR"! Eagh!
- awd
All snark aside, there's a very good piece from Jamie LaRue inside: "Librarians could sit it out and just wait for the wise vendors to figure it all out for us. But that’s not the only option. Instead, we can engage in this new world—experimenting, testing, and building new partnerships. We don’t exist in isolation. We aren’t the only player. But we are the only player—except for the reader, as above— whose main concern is to make as much content available as possible, to all."
- laura x
I don't agree with all his decisions (I find putting links to retailers in your catalog a little squicky), but I'm 100% behind building our own systems.
- laura x
The other day, I had the thought that librarians led the development of most of our systems at the beginning of the library automation drive. How and why did we cede ALL of that to vendors?
- DJF
Before my time. But i think with this move towards the cloud and away from local hosted systems, this trend will accelerate. More and more system librarians or just library system managers who can modify/hack the system will move towards vendor companies as their skills are less and less needed and people like me can do the job.
- aarontay
Since it's NOT before my time, I can identify one thing that happened in some cases: The librarians who developed the systems became vendors. Or, in some cases, the groups hired by librarians to build systems became vendors. And even the largest university libraries gave up (mostly) on rolling their own.
- Walt Crawford
Walt, I don't know how much you actually worked with GLADIS, but I don't miss it.
- EBJT
I never actually worked *on* GLADIS, and have no opinion (I left Berkeley in 1979...)
- Walt Crawford
Now GLaDOS on the other hand, is still alive.
- Don't feed the Steve
GLaDOS the Hands of Fate.
- EBJT
Yep, I'm a grouch about people using Ovid MEDLINE instead of PubMed MEDLINE for systematic reviews.
Why, asked the medlib naif?
- Don't feed the Steve
My main reason is reproducibility - PubMed is freely available to anyone to use. Ovid MEDLINE is part of the Ovid subscription. While Ovid (and prob some other subscription versions) has some additional options like adjacency searching, I find using a public database preferable, and personally find PubMed searches to be more readily understood when reported, especially as a "whole" search rather than line by line pieces like the one I'm looking at now.
- Rachel Walden
[This is also why this library teaches PubMed to students and residents instead of Ovid MEDLINE - because they will continue to have access to PubMed no matter where they end up]
- Rachel Walden
I don't like the Ovid interface.
- Hedgehog
I don't like it either.
- Rachel Walden
So, the output, the product is search results? That's not an interim step that ends on the cutting-room floor? Because in the disciplines I'm familiar with, no one would say "I searched MLA International Bibliography using the EBSCO platform to find Nabokov criticism."
- Don't feed the Steve
Well, the product would be a systematic evaluation of and reporting on the existing research. The whole point would be to say "here's what currently exists as published evidence on these key medical questions, how good it is, and what it found." For medical systematic reviews, the search methods are a piece of the overall research methods, because if you searched the wrong places, searched poorly, omitted relevant terms, etc., then everything that follows is suspect.
- Rachel Walden
So knowing exactly where you searched matters, because future researchers might do an update of your review, or want to reproduce your methods, and the different handling of a MEDLINE search on different platforms makes the resulting set of citations to deal with different.
- Rachel Walden
Here's an example report - http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books... - with search methods at http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books... - and some more background http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki...
- Rachel Walden
Excellent, thanks for the lesson.
- Don't feed the Steve
No problem! I do a lot of work with systematic reviews as part of my job here, and am facilitating a roundtable on the topic at MLA next week. Happy to answer any questions about it.
- Rachel Walden
We had a similar debate over ERIC - Ebsco, which students find easier, or the free one, which students can use after graduation? I lost. So did public ERIC, which didn't try very hard.
- barbara fister
from iPhone
"public ERIC, which didn't try very hard" - lol, too true. :)
- Rachel Walden
In 2009-2010, I was looking in to "evidence based librarianship" and wound up co-authoring a systematic review. We had a hard time explaining to authors of the Journal of Academic Librarianship and College and Research Libraries that it was not simply a literature review, but an actual research methodology. Even still the editor of the journal that did publish it asked us to take out...
more...
- Idiot Librarian
that's hilarious
- Meg V. Meg
uh huh
- Idiot Librarian
from BuddyFeed
Maybe the title should have been "Using the Methodology of Systematic Reviews to Examine Evidence-Based Librarianship" with a paragraph explaining what this means and why EVERYONE should do it. A lot of lib lit seems to be arguing for a methodology borrowed from another discipline as much as for its findings. But evidently it needs to be labeled "hot new methodology" or it will be seen as just a weird way of doing it.
- barbara fister
Rachel if one wants to start learning how to do medical systematic reviews do you have any recommendations on what to read? How difficult is it to do a decent one?
- aarontay
Hey, Aaron, catching up from MLA, but will share some stuff soon. Remind me if I don't get this done in a few days. Barbara - in my situation, we are doing systematic reviews on medicine, for publication in medical journals - so it's not applying another discipline's methodology, it's working collaboratively in that discipline, just to clarify.
- Rachel Walden
Jumping in quite late here, but really, a good systematic review could probably use both Ovid MEDLINE and PubMed. And Embase. And WoS. And Scopus. And whatever other database is relevant.
- mlrethlefsen
Be prepared to introduce people (email them in advance for bios; edit bios as needed). Don't let them intro themselves; there's a good chance somebody will try to drone on for 15 minutes. Have questions prepared, enough for the full session UNLESS it's an audience Q&A, in which case have an icebreaker question or two and an accomplice who can take the mic around the crowd. Be prepared...
more...
- RepoRat
Panels tend to be fun and high-energy (at least, the ones I've been on). Don't stress about this.
- RepoRat
I think RepoRat gives great advice. Depending on your time frame, I also think it's a good idea to give a little authoritarian framing for the Q&A portion, something like "since we have a lot of participants, I'll ask everyone to start with just one brief question or comment". That way if you have to interrupt people, as RepoRat describes, you've already planted the idea that it's your job to do so. I also agree that panels are generally fun.
- Amandadon't
Well i had fun when i was a panelist once. But moderating seems a lot harder since you have to help regulate the experience. To me Upping the challenge is the panel won't be consisting of librarians, which what worries me the most. The idea of the panel is to inject non-librarian ideas and/or hear from them how they perceive Social media. Perhaps it's an illusion but I always feel more...
more...
- aarontay
From the audience perspective, panels are far more interesting and engaging when well-moderated. A moderator who sticks to pre-defined time limits and keeps things moving is a rare and wonderful person. The only additional advice I have is when asking your own questions of the panel, it's best to avoid multi-part questions. The panelists have a hard time answering them completely and/or being concise.
- Kaijsa
I second the point about sticking to time limits. Also definitely try to call on panelists who are quiet - you sometimes get people who will dominate a panel and hog questions.
- Sarah
I usually ask for speaker bios or find a short bio for a speaker online. Anyone experienced at this will have one they can send to you.
- Elizabeth Brown
I've gone so far as to have a conference call with all the speakers to kind of thresh out the issues and get a sense of what everyone might want to say. I I guess it depends on if you are moderating by asking questions or taking questions from the audience.
- Idiot Librarian
Oh, one other small thing -- make sure panelists know whether they need to have a prepared statement or presentation. Some "panels" are really just ordinary conference sessions; I nearly got trapped into total unpreparedness earlier this year by thinking a panel was, y'know, a *panel*.
- RepoRat
RR's suggestion is NOT a small thing - it's a big one, actually! Making sure all the panelists are on the same page about what's expected of them is critical, especially since in this case it sounds like your panelists are coming from varied backgrounds and may have differing expectations of what "panel" means.
- Catherine Pellegrino
If you have a chance, try and get everyone together for five minutes before the session itself. Also, make sure they understand that you don't want them to only be nice or agreeable about library stuff. It's ok to say exactly what's on their mind, even if they think it might be controversial.
- John Dupuis
Thanks all good advice. It's more of a moderating by me asking questions rather than taking questions from audience, so i better have a clue where it is going... Yep, getting a bio from them to flash on screen while I am briefly introducing them, but still need to research they may know social media but they are not library types... Will be sending them another email on what they should...
more...
- aarontay
Oh did I mention I just found out the other day it's going to be livestreamed? *Pressure*
- aarontay
My kingdom for an e-resources librarian.
Galadriel C., Betsy, Kirsten and 4 other people liked this
ER + Science = shallow pool?
- Hedgehog
yup
- Mary Carmen
its more like ER + engineering
- Mary Carmen
Ahh, wading pool.
- Hedgehog
yup. the health sciences pool was great.
- Mary Carmen
How about an e-resources librarian + subscription to ASTM standards? Problem solved! I got jokes, engineering jokes!
- Marie
dont make me come and steal you, marie.
- Mary Carmen
let's see, if I could combine both of my siblings...(ref librarian + chemical engineer)
- Hedgehog
:D
- Marie
I wouldn't mind a spare engineering librarian if anyone has an extra lying around.
- John Dupuis
engineering librarians are hard to find. as someone said to me, "if you were an engineer, why would you become a librarian?"
- Mary Carmen
Science and engineering librarians is one of the few areas I've seen no experience required in the job ads in the past year or two.
- Hedgehog
there is no way we can get away with that here. we have a new MS program starting.
- Mary Carmen
I'm an engineering librarian to the extent that my degree was in linguistics but I currently attempt to help engineers... (The job ad said engineering background desirable but that was just a "Hey, you never know" thing. My colleague has engineers in his family, and that's as close as we get.)
- Deborah Fitchett
Our engineering librarian has an MS in environmental engineering, and two science BS degrees. Is this super unusual? My other friends who are engineering librarians elsewhere aren't engineers, but are science undergrads. My one-year stint covering sci/tech subjects included computer engineers, and I have to say they were way easier for me to work with than the other science folks I had.
- Kaijsa
I'm an engineering librarian with a humanities background. I can see both sides of the argument.
- EBJT
My tweet about the job ad didn't bring in hundreds of applications? Drat.
- Joe
We are extremely engineering, comp sci and natural science heavy on this campus. In the past, we've had non-science backgrounded libs covering the disciplines, but it has not been optimal. We really want someone with a sciences or engineering background. But, yeah, I see both sides. I was a health sciences librarian with a history background, altho I took lots of pre-med coursework, so I know that one thing does not equal success at the other.
- Mary Carmen
It's hard finding the right balance of expertise and personality sometimes. We're a very science and engineering heavy campus, but a lot of the librarians in those areas didn't get their degree in science or engineering but have a lot of experience and are really engaged.
- EBJT
Totally. I think you hit the nail on the head with engagement. The faculty really want someone they can partner with and I guess they feel that having subject expertise in the discipline makes that easier???
- Mary Carmen
It can, but not always. (Though I am also very involved with transportation stuff, which the faculty seem to like?) It's hard because everybody's hunting for a unicorn.
- EBJT
Yup, you're correct.
- Mary Carmen
you should change the job title to library unicorn!
- Marie
My wife is an (mechanical) engineer ... does that count?
- awd
to be fair, i know a lot of my engineering nous does come from asking my partner questions and also taking the IS courses. wait... that does give me a techy edge. huh.
- EBJT
I'd settle for a library centaur or leprechaun or something.
- John Dupuis
library unicorn - very apt metaphor
- Elizabeth Brown
Every couple of months I play a different type of librarian. These days i am inching towards playing a e-resources librarian.
- aarontay
Quick question for a friend (OMG I SWEAR IT'S NOT FOR ME): do you have Chrome installed on any non-staff computers?
all of them which is 5.
- EBJT
I sneaked it onto the ref desk machine (Mac).
- Kaijsa
We have it on all our library computers (except if staff didn't want it on their own). According to our tech guy there is a different/more streamlined install to use if you are putting it on a lab image? Anyway, yes!
- Marianne
whoa, really? It seems fine for me?
- Meg V. Meg
ours works
- jambina
Public computers -- yes. Most of our staff non-shared computers (will) have Chromium. Shared staff computers (e.g. those on service desks) -- no.
- Julian
yes, on all of our public computers. IE, Firefox and Chrome are on all 65
- ~Courtney F.
Yes, campus computing has it as part of the image on all of the public computers.
- Hedgehog
Yay, thank you.
- Meg V. Meg
Yes, we have chrome on 65 public access PCs.
- Joe
Sorry, to clarify login to ezproxy is currently blocked on chrome only on ours (on purpose by useragent).... Don't ask me why, or a volcano will erupt. I know of another library besides MPOW that does this, but they fixed this last week.
- aarontay
Why do you need ezproxy if the computers are on campus?
- Meg V. Meg
Can you not browse by call number in catalogs anymore? Do most places have a discovery layer now, and no way to page through the stuff?
aarontay liked this
our craptastic catalog did not come with a functional call number browse. we had to ask for it
- Rochelle Rochelle
We have no discovery layer on our catalog (though it's indexed in Summon), so we do have a browse, and I teach it to students. My English majors seem to love it, though not as much as being able to text the call number/location to themselves.
- Kaijsa
And it looks like, because truncation/wildcards aren't supported in discovery layers (in favor of stemming), you can't even search for a range of call numbers.
- Meg V. Meg
We lost that function with last catalog migration. We can still do it through the "old version" which is how I deal with patrons who hand me a slip of paper with a call number.
- Hedgehog
A catalog that doesn't allow call number searching is ridiculous, unless the items aren't shelved by call number. This makes me furious, and it's not even my library.
- Kaijsa
Polaris 4.0 does, it is just not the default, and you have to select each call number to see the listing.
- ♫410 I Coach 'em Up♫
wahey! we can do it!
- EBJT
Our systems librarian is coding a browse by call number function into our discovery layer.
- Don't feed the Steve
We've still got it in Horizon/HIP. It's the best way to figure out what's happened to a book a student can't find. (Unless the reason they can't find it is because they jotted down the ISBN or the bib number instead.)
- Deborah Fitchett
Deborah, how does that help you find missing books?
- Don't feed the Steve
Maybe because the only information they jotted down was the call number?
- Catherine Pellegrino
Ah, ok. I was thinking browse as opposed to search, as in the OP. never mind.
- Don't feed the Steve
oh how I hate discovery layers! they make finding anything so very difficult. Usually, Meg, you have to use the classic version of your OPAC to do the call number browse.
- RudĩϐЯaЯïan
I was looking at a few today that didn't. They had stemming, so if you wanted to search Q10, it would return results including Q10. A2 and Q10.3, but there wasn't any way to search for Q10.3-Q25, for example (and no way to browse up from a Q10.3). Which I realize is totally picky, I just hadn't realized that you couldn't do that anymore in some/many(?) OPAC's.
- Meg V. Meg
Discovery layers are not expert interfaces. While most users looking for a shelf browse list are librarians, there are expert "civilians" who use that feature. Since the discovery layer and the catalogue are now different things, it needs to be clear to users how to do what they want to do.
- DJF
Sure sure, I know this. The thing is that there used to *be* a public-facing catalog or expert interface. Like, at some places there still are (usually called "classic" catalogs, as Rudy points out), but other places, there is nothing anymore. Johns Hopkins is one of the ones I was looking at that was like this. I'd have to check my notes for the other ones.
- Meg V. Meg
What Catherine said. Our search brings up a browsing interface, in this case, so I conflate the two a bit. Though sometimes searching for what they've written down reveals that they wrote it down wrong. (Other times it reveals that they failed to notice the out-of-library status or in-another-branch location.)
- Deborah Fitchett
This is a great discussion, started to test a bit more and found out a couple more things in Summon. And yes Summon has auto-stemming and I asked they said currently there is no way to turn it off. Drives librarians crazy. Still , I wouldn't expect it to affect call number searches. My testing now is inconsistent.
- aarontay
When we got Encore (keyword based, with facet filtering), we still kept the classic OPAC (Innovative) (search by subject, author, title, call #, ISBN, series, author/title, or keyword). For some things, Encore is best. For several other things, Innovative is way best. I hope we never have to do with just one of the two.
- Betsy
Data Point: OCLCs Worldshare uses Worldcat Local as the frontend/opac...no browse at all, and call number searching is troubled to say the least.
- Jason Griffey
Our VuFind opacity can't browse. Browsing by call number saved me once at LoC - I was researching a topic that got a LCSH about 10 years after books were being written about it. Luckily, they tended to all be classed in two areas. Room on the shelf before the terminology settled down.
- barbara fister
from iPhone
Auto correct to opacity when I meant OPAC - how perfect!
- barbara fister
from iPhone
You can call number browse in Horizon, as Deborah notes, but it took me awhile to figure out how just now.
- laura x
CALL NUMBERS ARE FOR OLD PEOPLE.
- Zamms
google doesn't need a call number.
- EBJT
That's a Phil Collins song, right? "Google, don't you need that call number, cos the title's not anywhere that I can find it"
- Zamms
god I love you
- Meg V. Meg
I was trying to sing that to the tune of "Ricky don't lose that number," and thinking "This is a Genesis song? And Zamms messed up the scansion something awful," then realizing "oh."
- Don't feed the Steve
Sorry, I forgot to footnote!
- Zamms
No, no. My bad.
- Don't feed the Steve
Does anyone have a A-Z library jargon list? Is it well used? I am also looking at http://www.jkup.net/terms.html and the only Singapore study looks absurdly good for users compared to others studies. 70% know what is document delivery? 85% Bibliographical list/bibliography, 85% Author catalogue , 85% Title/subject search etc ?
Sir Shuping is just sir liked this
I havent read the full paper just the summary in the table , so it might be due to biased sample (maybe all researchers), or some other flaw of what counts as understanding. Or.. it could just be people here are all mini-librarians, so do I need a jargon list?
- aarontay
We have a jargon list at http://library.canterbury.ac.nz/general... It's hilariously out of date. I haven't had any volunteers to update it so I'll probably just delete it.
- Deborah Fitchett
You have any usage stats for that page Deborah? Personally I have just being tossing such definitions into our FAQ (LibAnswers) when i see people searching.. e.g What is closed stacks...?
- aarontay
Hmm, apparently 141 hits in April 2011, compared to 2,126,157 for the whole site, 126,869 for the homepage, and 2,991 for the hours page. (I'd give you April *this* year except our stats site is for some reasons giving me 0 for June '11 onwards. <thumps side of box>)
- Deborah Fitchett
Kind of related, I like this page that reviews usability studies for problematic jargon http://www.jkup.net/terms.html
- Amandadon't
from Android
Thanks Deborah for the stats. Amanda yes that's the page that shows a usability study from Singapore, with unbelievably good results.
- aarontay
Yikes! I don't know where my brain was, Aaron, posting *the exact same page* back at you. Sorry 'bout that.
- Amandadon't
from Android
I'm in ALA, LITA, MLA (medical).
- Hedgehog
ALA, LITA, kinda GLA (georgia library association)
- Sir Shuping is just sir
ALA, ACRL, RUSA. (rethinking RUSA with the next renewal cycle.)
- Catherine Pellegrino
none
- lris
ALA, ACRL, state association, regional association. Have dropped RUSA, LITA, Modern Language.
- Kaijsa
SLA, TRB, WTS, YPT, SPUR
- EBJT
None, currently.
- ωαřмaiden ☆Team O'Otto☆
ALA, thanks to continuing membership. Dropped LITA. Never belonged to CLA.
- Walt Crawford
Two state associations (the regular library one and a serials interest group).
- Kirsten
ASEE & Ont. Library Association.
- John Dupuis
Illinois Library Association, ALA, ACRL (I think that's it right now.)
- Jill
ALA (RUSA - though I keep trying to drop that in favor of ACRL, it's problematic b/c of committee appointments) . GLA - well, I'm a member, but I've not done anything with it yet.
- ellbeecee
ALA, ACRL, INSNA
- Marie
JOIN ALL THE THINGS!!!1!!11111!!!!!@211! (er, wait, no... that was two years ago... just ALA, ACRL, LITA, and a slew of ALA Round Tables... that's plenty...
- awd
SLA (several divisions and chapters), ALA/ACRL/STS, and I used to be in ASEE.
- Joe
SLA (lots), QLA, ALA, ACRL, CLA, CALJ.
- jambina
ACRL and ASIST, but my professional home is really DLF even though that has an institutional membership model. DLF is where my heart is professionally and where I have the closest network of colleagues.
- Sarah
ALA & PLA.
- holly #ravingfangirl
ALA, LITA
- John: Clockwork Librarian
None currently, although I consider LSW and ALA Think Tank in my head to be the best kind.
- Andy
MLA. The medical libraries one, not the modern language one.
- Rachel Walden
Only Maryland Library Association.
- Alan
ALA & PLA, but I'm tentatively planning on letting those lapse at the next renewal cycle as work doesn't pay for memberships.
- Katie
ALA, ACRL RUSA. Can't recall if I am still in LITA....
- RudĩϐЯaЯïan
None.
- Don't feed the Steve
Oh, and Southern Chapter of the MLA. I did SLA as a student, have never done ALA.
- Rachel Walden
Currently, none. My shame ovr this grows less as time goes on.
- Rochelle Rochelle
Why? You're in the organization that matters.
- barbara fister
SLA, ACRL
- Meg V. Meg
LIANZA
- Deborah Fitchett
LAS
- aarontay
really wonder if "citation linkers" like http://js8lb8ft5y.search.seria... are really easy to use for students..
I know that was something we got asked about when we pulled it off our page. It's since been reinstated. Granted, I think part of that was staff working with incomplete references but it does get used. Especially if you have a doi or pmid it makes life a whole hell of a lot easier.
- Hedgehog
ours is from 360link like http://js8lb8ft5y.search.seria... and looking at it , i think most users might ask.. what's genre?
- aarontay
Every once in a while, I encounter a student who assumes that they can get any book the library owns as an ebook. You know, they find something in the catalog and then call or IM to ask, "how do I read this?" or "I can't seem to get to this online." These individuals seem confused or perhaps just disappointed when I tell them that
Ingrid Thomson, Sir Shuping is just sir, Joe and Anika liked this
Every book is not an ebook. So, we are buying a few big packages of ebooks from Project MUSE and starting a patron-driven acquisitions program with EBL next academic year. It will be interesting to see how it goes.
- marthalib
Do any of you have similar interactions with patrons?
- marthalib
Also, thinking about this, I feel quite old :) Sonny, when I was young, we hauled around stone tablets and chisels. Hard on the back.
- marthalib
Martha- yeah. Quite a few expect that any book will be available as an e-book, and that if we don't have the e-book it's because I am a bastard, not that the book isn't in that format ;)
- Pete
While the fact that Pete is a bastard is, in fact, totally independent from the fact that the book isn't in electronic format.
- Don't feed the Steve
Indeed!
- Pete
We get that as well. In particular when I first added a chat link to the catalogue, we got a lot of "what does the mark for export button do?". They basically expected it to export and download a online copy of the book. I promptly created a faq, which is still one of the more popular ones despite being fairly new.
- aarontay
Zomg, yes. I've had one or two encounters where a person has come in and asked about how they can download the library. They were shocked when I told them that not every book we have on our shelf was available in eBook format.
- Andy
Most of us have probably seen this already, but: http://noteonmydoor.blogspot.com/2012...
- RepoRat
I just got an email asking this very question. Sigh. And it was a recent book too, in our law library. Also a grad student just walked into my office uncomprehending that an article from 1985 isn't online anywhere.
- John Dupuis
Med students and faculty definitely seem to be of the opinion that "if it isn't online, it doesn't exist." We do desktop delivery for my side of campus (can't support east side) but I always tell my students that if it's here in print, it's faster for them to walk over than wait for the student workers who do the scanning.
- Hedgehog
Been a problem for astronomers since 1998.... A1 Stevens-Rayburn,Sarah T1 'If it's not on the Web, it doesn't exist at all': Electronic Information Resources -- Myth and Reality YR 1998 VO ASP Conference Series volume 153; ASP Conference Series volume 153 [ASP=Astronomical Society of the Pacific.]
- Joe
I heard that verbatim from a chemist once.
- RepoRat
"You mean I have to walk to the shelves!"
- Ingrid Thomson
This is far more advanced in STEM than in H-SS, but it's yet another strong argument for open access. You want to be part of knowledge? You have to show up (in search results).
- barbara fister
Hedgie, you all are more generous than we are. If we don't have it, we'll ILL it for free, but if somebody just doesn't want to make their own scans, they order it through our document delivery and have to pay per article.
- Rachel Walden
Yup. Often. Not, however, at current place of work.
- RepoRat
yep
- Sir Shuping is just sir
...not yet. ;)
- Catherine Pellegrino
Yup.
- Heather
Oh boy, have I ever!
- Andy
I'm too timid to attempt anything that could be even faintly construed as negative, for (at least one) excellent reason/person.
- Yvonne
nope. my boss tried to, once. but turned out she was wrong about it, so...still nope. :)
- Christa
Not really. I wrote in La Crosse knowing my director regularly read my blog and I'm aware that several faculty at UIC read it (though only one librarian afaik). Writing with that in mind has helped--though does limit the very much occasional wished for flying off the handle wth is wrong with you people.
- Hedgehog
no, but my boss is largely not online, so...
- ~Courtney F.
yep, but i was in the wrong, and corrected it. otherwise, mpow's administration by and large sort of shakes their heads at me and grins. As in, "*I* wouldn't say it out loud, but boy was that ever true."
- Jenica
No. But I'm fairly sure hardly anyone here who could give me trouble reads my blog regularly.
- John Dupuis
No, but I've gotten in trouble for things I've said in person on numerous occasions.
- laura x
Laurax, you really have to stop nice shirting people at conferences. We've talked about this ;)
- marthalib
Nope. My boss/colleagues occasionally make a comment, but no 'in trouble.' Some raised eyebrow when my dean sent my grumpy post about watching students get awful service elsewhere on campus to our Provost, though.
- ωαřмaiden ☆Team O'Otto☆
Almost. I had someone tell me she's glad she wasn't on my hiring committee now that she knows I'm a blogger. And once a random person in the college's IT department told me warningly that he'd be careful what he said in meetings now that he knew I had a blog and that I should consider such ramifications before saying things. Around that time, our director heard these rumblings and...
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- lris
I never got in trouble for my blog but i did get in trouble for a mailing list. a local college was hiring mls librarians at like $10/hour who had years experience, would work in the inner city late night, could lift 50lbs, etc... so i said something about self esteem and how that wage was insulting. i sent my response from my work e-mail (oops!)
- Christina Pikas
Got in trouble for something I posted here :( Also, I have no idea which one of you works at MPOW and turned me in.
- Idiot Librarian
No, even despite Sergio's best efforts. http://stevelawson.name/seealso...
- Don't feed the Steve
yep. we got complaints about my Twitter feed so I made it private
- John: Clockwork Librarian
Not yet.
- Joe
Oh yeah.
- Nikki D.
Oh yea (including stuff I may have posted here).
- Angel R. Rivera
Oh wait, I forgot. One of the anonymous letters from my second tenure file commented that I occasionally post weird or irrelevant things on my blog. That's as close as it comes. And it's what started me doing the Friday Fun posted explicitly as Friday Fun rather than just randomly posting stuff as I see it.
- John Dupuis
John, so your blog is part of your academic practice? Or were they attempting to restrict your academic freedom? Or... I don't know. Blogs: Not actually professional writing, except when we don't like what you say?
- DJF
No, but I've been quiet lately on the blogging front. I'm fairly careful about the scope of what I say and what I post. I have some definite rules and try to stick to them.
- Elizabeth Brown
Definitely my blog is part of my academic practice and figured prominently in my case for tenure. As for academic freedom, I don't know. I don't even know that the letter is question was from someone internal. If I dug it out now I might be able to figure it out, but I don't remember. I vaguely recall that it was positive in the other things it said.
- John Dupuis
not yet ;-). But, I know that I have a boss who gives me lots of leeway and who himself rarely shies away from controversy. And, if I'm going to blog about something related to MPOW that might be controversial, or not quite public yet, or on which he & I have a difference of opinion, I warn him first. He has not once tried to talk me out of anything (except stuff that isn't public yet, which is totally cool).
- Chris Bourg
No, but I don't blog much these days. I have been getting (neutral and positive, so far) comments about my twitter and Pinterest, both of which I use for mostly personal interests, but occasionally they veer into professional interests.
- Kaijsa
I don't blog on work or librarianship, except rarely about things like MeSH terms, or the Research Works Act, or whatever. Nothing about the specific workplace unless in positive terms. However, I am very explicit on my blog about my pro-choice feminist views (there's a lot of repro rights posting there). It hasn't been an issue where I am, but I could totally see somebody on a hiring committee having a personal ideological issue. And I don't want to work for that somebody.
- Rachel Walden
I did some really dumb Twittering shortly after I started my job 6 years ago. I reported myself to my boss. She didn't think it was that bad, but it got me off to a bad start as a manager with one of my staff (thinks are all good now). So, I locked that puppy down, and pretty much never write about work stuff, unless it's general or positive. or in a problem-solving way.
- Rochelle Rochelle
I actually won the faculty scholarship award a couple of years ago largely on the strength of blogging (and because the woman who nominated me really wanted non-trad work to get the nod).
- barbara fister
from iPhone
Define "get into trouble". I started off blogging only very techy stuff, round up of library ideas by other libraries and like Rachel nothing work related usually. Still I knew it would eventually get noticed (not always a good thing), because you can count on one hand the number of blogs by librarians here in Singapore. But it was a point in my life where I felt I had nothing to lose,...
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- aarontay
I wish librarians were automatically afforded academic freedom, with or without faculty status or tenure. Academic freedom does not mean, by the way, freedom to slack off or say outrageous and unsupported things. It's an agreement that scholars can say unpopular things about the subjects in which they are expert. We need more recognition of expertise in our discipline as well as more faith in transparency and ... well, support of intellectual freedom would be kinda nice.
- barbara fister
Blogging etc's been purely positive for me; but then I'm very careful about what I blog/tweet. (A little less careful here on Friendfeed - things are less likely to pop up high in searches, and I tend to phrase for extra search engine sub-optimisation.)
- Deborah Fitchett
I just opened up the print edition of Library Journal and noticed that three of the six letters to the editor have their name withheld by request. And they really weren't saying anything controversial.
- Andy
I used to think we were a chickenshit profession. Now I think (based on experience) we're a very controlling, demeanor-policing one.
- RepoRat
You mean "I find fault in your tone more than the words that you said"? I can see that.
- Andy
I think that "RepoRat" will find that he will not gain many sympathetic ears using such derogatory and obscene terminology.
- Don't feed the Steve
Yeah, that, Andy, but even more: I have found that saying something perceived as library- or librarian-negative *even in the most unemotional tone possible* is verboten. There are whole swathes of issues that apparently must not be spoken of at all. The F-word ("failure") is a major one, of course.
- RepoRat
I mean, Roach Motel and I been publicly lauded for "saying things no one else would." Even CavLec used to get that sort of praise (though, admittedly, CavLec had some genuine tone problems). What I want to know is why the FUCK this profession (some of it, anyway) apparently thinks it's okay to use me as a human shield. Some others in LSW have, I think, had similar experiences. (I mean, even some "I am Spartacus!" would have been nice, you know?)
- RepoRat
(Speaking of tone problems. *g* But I'm genuinely deeply angry about this.)
- RepoRat
Yeah, I've gotten thanks for saying things out loud. (Personally, I think it's a common character trait of the LSW group.) I have always found that to be a weird compliment for a profession that holds intellectual freedom to such a high standard but perhaps not to the same practice.
- Andy
Could be we value intellectual freedom so highly because we have so little of it...
- Deborah Fitchett
Dave Pattern, "A week on Summon (revisited)," Self-plagiarism is style - http://www.daveyp.com/blog...
Pull quote: “I guess the big question here is why the disconnect between the ‘students don’t use facets’ mantra and the actual usage data?”
- Stephen Francoeur
Never heard of that mantra. Well okay i heard it once or twice. But is it known to be common wisdom?
- aarontay
I've heard it said for years that students tend to ignore options for refining searches. My own informal usability testing of Summon last year echoes Dave Pattern's findings that in fact faceted search is used notably (if not overwhelmingly).
- Stephen Francoeur
I think somebody (ITAL? Lib Hi-Tech? gah, I skim too damn much) just published a research study on interface use. Might even have gotten a nod here in LSW? Anyway, there was a huge hole in the study, namely that the faceting interface sucked the big one.
- RepoRat
Has Second Life Lived up to Expectations? | Ariadne: Web Magazine for Information Professionals - http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue68...
I think we kinda all knew this, but it's not a bad thing to see it laid out in pixels!
- RepoRat
from Bookmarklet
I'm just assuming the answer is "no"?
- Deborah Fitchett
Pretty much, yeah.
- RepoRat
"No. Next, we'll look at user tagging in the catalog..."
- Don't feed the Steve
eh, well, I think Blyberg admitted pretty quickly that that one wasn't working.
- RepoRat
Yeah, I was trying to think of other stuff that I thought seemed pretty interesting once upon a time.
- Don't feed the Steve
Single search boxes!
- laura x
Institutional repositories. You knew I was gonna say that, right?
- RepoRat
I still want a discovery interface that allows for filtering results by the colour of the book cover.
- Deborah Fitchett
ooooh, GOOD one.
- RepoRat
on the topic of user tagging, has anyone used LT for Libraries? I would love to import those user-generated tags. It's the only way I know of to do this at scale and with some editing.
- barbara fister
Second Life, otoh, always seemed like a weird kind of shopping mall to me.
- barbara fister
My students have done job talks on LTFL with somewhat wearying regularity. (I'm changing the topic list to "standards, protocols, and APIs" this fall; I'm just BORED with the damn job talks, after four years.) They have no trouble finding public libraries that pull in the tag clouds, covers, reviews, and whatnot. I think I've even seen the occasional academic that's done so, though I can't offhand remember any specific ones.
- RepoRat
I don't know if any of these libraries have an active LSW agent, but Library Thing has a list of clients, and searching on "College" turns up a bunch, including some schools similar to ours, Barbara: http://www.librarything.com/wiki...
- Don't feed the Steve
Diverging from tagging: I only skimmed this, and a colleague pointed out a sentence in the conclusion that struck her and I missed, “It certainly does not deserve the sometimes hostile reception it has received from many academics.” Speaking for myself, yeah, it kinda does. I am hostile to the evangelizing of SL because it doesn't solve any existing problems that aren't better addressed...
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- Kaijsa
I agree, Kaijsa. The only thing I would add is that people who experimented with SL to see if it solved any problems don't deserve hate, yet have sometimes gotten it. Overweening SL evangelists, SL itself -- they deserve some o.O, IMO.
- RepoRat
Right on--nobody deserves hostility for trying new things, and I have been on the receiving end of criticism for playing around with new tech too much. The folks who are like a dog with a bone about SL and keep trying me to reconsider using it are the ones who make me run the other way. But I'm like that about evangelists of all kinds!
- Kaijsa
Thanks for indulging my threadjack and for the link - I had talked to Bowdoin about it, and they were happy with LT for Libraries. Now if I could find some money and talk my colleagues into it.....
- barbara fister
Barbara besides LT which scales, Bibliocommons and Encore release 5 in theory will have some mass because they are designed to share user generated content across all institutions if you have it. As for academic libraries on LT , NTU (the other University here in Singapore) uses it. https://opac3.ntu.edu.sg/uhtbin... (not sure if that is stable)
- aarontay
I once spent 3 months almost every night hanging out on our SL island, and was toying with the idea of some library presence. But while it was fun I saw maybe 10 regulars and the odd student who had to come in for a mod, but few stayed. The lead evangelist got pissed with me when I mentioned to someone else on SL that. Oh well... Understandable I suppose when your performance review is tied up to a huge project like that.
- aarontay
Thanks, Aaron. Isn't there also social tagging in Worldcat? but I don't think it has gotten much play among users.
- barbara fister
I brought up user tagging because I personally had high expectations which didn't pan out the way I thought they would
- Don't feed the Steve
My sense has always being user tagging if it works, is probably on the public library side. Amazon i think popularized the idea that we should collect user generated content like tags, reviews etc. The one thing they popularised which I thought could be of value is book recommendations, unfortunately relatively few library systems seem to have this. I am unsure if this is because of privacy reasons.
- aarontay
Betsy liked this
Yes, I'd say that the deep web/invisible is still a huge issue. My college has a huge undergrad and graduate business school, and I know that most of the resources our students need will not be found in Google or Google Scholar.
- Stephen Francoeur
True for business...
- aarontay
Definitely true for data: dragon-on-hoard reasons in industry, cultural reasons in academe. And there's a ton of little info sources who aren't savvy enough to build porous firewalls. And ones of all sizes who don't see why they should bother.
- RepoRat
Three reasons why Google Scholar is not (yet) a replacement for library databases: 1. Not all disciplines are equally represented in GScholar, as Stephen and RR point out. My anecdotal experience is that the hard sciences are very well represented; social sciences less so; and there are big gaping holes in the humanities. GScholar will generally work for gen-ed-level satisficing, but...
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- Catherine Pellegrino
What C says. Also, the vast majority of books exist only in print.
- marthalib
Well, speaking for myself only, back in 2005-06 I probably WAS stating categorically that Google couldn't tap into the the same kinds of deep web resources that library databases could. But -- again, speaking for myself only -- I'm not emphasizing that line of reasoning nearly as much now as I did then, because it's simply not (as) true (as it was then). There's been some careful and...
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- Catherine Pellegrino
We have two positions open, one for Sociology & Psychology and one for English & Comp Lit: http://library.nyu.edu/about... Come work with me!
Marianne liked this
To me, the pre-coordinate to post-coordinate search-continuum has a place for boolean... on the pre-coordinate searching side. I'm more of a post-coordiante search man, myself :)
- awd
I say I teach it 'by special request only' but the thing is that sometimes people do request it. So...
- Deborah Fitchett
Yes, I've heard this a lot myself, and shunned it for a while. Now I'm convinced that novice searching at the undergraduate level is primarily hampered by lack of access to the most useful search terms (see http://pegasuslibrarian.com/2010...), so I have ended up teaching Boolean a whole ton as an end result of exploration, reading, and some concept mapping (see http://pegasuslibrarian.com/2007...)
- lris
I focus on the practicalities/annoyances of using specific databases, so it depends on what subject/databases I happen to be teaching. Even so, it's not Booleans exactly, it's like "Okay, so you have to type *this* like *that* to make the computer know what you mean" with a lot of examples (and hopefully with a lot of input from the class). I don't address Booleans conceptually, like with Venn diagrams, and I don't say the word "Boolean" because I feel like it's unnecessarily intimidating.
- Meg V. Meg
So then, it's not that I don't care about information literacy? Is it? Having higher level concepts explained to me has never been as persuasive (or sticky) as building/extrapolating them myself.
- Meg V. Meg
I find that making a decent search in EBSCO (at least with the settings we have) cries out for knowing something about boolean, since the usual Google strategy of "throw all the keywords together on one line" doesn't do what I want it to do. It's also simple and effective to explain that each seach box is for one concept. When you have multiple ways of describing that concept, you use OR to connect them to say that matches on either term is good enough for you.
- Don't feed the Steve
What Steve said
- marthalib
About library databases vs google way. There's a big discussion right now on the Summon mailing list because Summon is not working precisely like a normal library database, as it seems stemming etc is always on even if you add boolean operators (which shouldn't be happening according to support file which states once you add Boolean it drops into an exact search). There's also some...
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- aarontay
In short, it seems to be a argument between a google "smart" type of search where you can't tell sometimes why a result is pulled out vs a exact predictable search typically with Boolean. Google is known to pull out synoymns such as cars getting automobiles so if a system is that smart would you need OR operator?
- aarontay
Aaron, I call bullshit on "Summon not meant for that" , unless a library is also providing access to the advanced search module of the OPAC that Summon is sitting over. Which would just confuse users. Summon may not do that, have it in its product design, but it sure as heck should be able to meet the needs of all searchers, not just those who only have Google Goggles. (Did I mention before that I think Discovery Layers are a bit of half solution to what they claim to solve?)
- Kathryn says love n peace
Oh but Kathryn, it'll all be ok because they have a computational linguist on staff to teach the system to parce queries. Everything will be perfect. </sarcasm> (I'd like to see Google with ONE computational linguist on staff.)
- lris
I'd be astonished if Google didn't have more than one computational linguist on staff. Doesn't mean they necessarily rule the place, though. From the tiny interplay I once had with Google, it appears that they have a fair number of highly-qualified people from a variety of disciplines; I'd almost bet computational linguistics is one of them.
- Walt Crawford
my point exactly
- lris
If librarians want the ability to test results sets from their discovery layer, then they should invest in Blacklight and not Summon, IMHO: http://www.miskatonic.org/2009...
- copystar
Fresh off the press http://www.daveyp.com/blog... - counter-reaction.
- aarontay
My point of view is there is no harm having advanced stuff, as long as it does not clog up the interface but I have noticed a schism between people working on the library IT side or the techies and librarians. The techies feel google type relevancy is good enough and that the aim is not to turn people into "mini-librarians" and there is no need to teach or use Boolean 99% of the time or...
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- aarontay
I think too often we forget that "librarians helping people" are a core user base of our interfaces.
- Don't feed the Steve
The technies tend to feel it is librarians who have lost sight in their librarian obsession to do things natural to them and force others to follow..... I am on the fence about this. A report i read said that google is changing expectations so either we change the way library tools works or try to change user behavior using Information literacy (the tool using part), obvious which one is supposed to be better...
- aarontay
just a small point. I wouldn't call it 'the techies v. the librarians'... because the techies *are* librarians. (other asides: The interface is not your teachable moment. The librarian is not the interface)
- copystar
copystar, your points are both good, however the second one strikes me as rather simplified. It's my job to provide *efficient* service, and libraries don't buy separate systems for librarians and patrons. The interface has to work for me as well, and for the people I serve who express a desire to learn to search more efficiently.
- lris
from iPod
I didn't mean to suggest that interfaces that don't work for patrons are a good thing because they give us more opportunities to help (if that's what "the interface is not your teachable moment" is supposed to mean). What I mean is, discovery layers and other simplified search interfaces sometimes eliminate very useful functions and views in the name of simplicity. Then when people come...
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- Don't feed the Steve
I was aiming for "pithy" with my comments (not piss-ey, as they may have sounded - my apologies) and they were a response to a wider ranger of arguments I've heard and have had to respond to interface issues (basic v. advanced screens, the number of links to offer on a subject guide, etc, ) I am on the "relevancy rules" side of this debate
- copystar
Laura Norvig liked this
It's my impression that SAGE doesn't. I haven't done more than curse about it though.
- barbara fister
You can probably still find ancient DSpace installations that don't. They finally fixed that default, but I'm pretty sure some existing installs didn't.
- RepoRat
Our ebscohost is set for implied phrase serching.
- Don't feed the Steve
Lexis does implied phrase
- Pete
yes, it seems a lot of databases allow you to customize. My library generally sticks with defaults , our databases tend to be implied AND. Shouldnt that be the default? #1 Google does it #2 Relevancy ranking tends to float phrase results anyway. Whats the advantage of phrase search by default?
- aarontay
for lexis? at least some searches are case names, for which it makes the most sense to phrase-search.
- RepoRat
and for legal concepts too; it's still a bugger for students, though ;)
- Pete
FWIW, most Solr-based services, if their configurers have the sense $DEITY gave a mushroom, do a high-recall search and then juice phrase matches (if any) so that they appear toward the top.
- RepoRat
I didn't know SOLR could do that - I need to consult with Acquia about our SOLR config.
- Laura Norvig
from iPhone
Possible this happens at another layer of the Blacklight stack, but I *think* it's Solr.
- RepoRat
It probably is. We have it on our website and I always have trouble getting clarity on what we can tweak and how.
- Laura Norvig
from iPhone
Ah yes, lexisnexus is implied phrase searching for us... finally..
- aarontay
aarontay, Jason (not an Argonaut), Amandadon't and 17 other people liked this
oh dear og! mean, on the one hand, if i never hear BI again.... but on the other, you know, just change your pedagogy already, not the word!
- RudĩϐЯaЯïan
If this conference I attended last week on Transliteracy is right, then Transliteracy is Information Literacy. It's only "new" compared to stereotypical Bibliographic Instruction.
- lris
do what now?
- MoTO Poppet
MoTo, years ago, library instruction was called "Bibliographic Instruction." Typically people think of Bibliographic Instruction as "here is how you use an index, and here are the 4 best indexes for your topic, and here is the library catalog and here are the important parts of the library catalog." Very much about teaching the few, finite ways to find sources. Then about 20 years ago...
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- lris
what Iris says is true. also, I do hear BI used
- marthalib
Thank you for the succinct recap, Iris -- Imma steal this (once I've memorized it)
- awd
I do use "BI" as shorthand with other librarians for "I taught a class session where we talked about research in some form or another," but having said that, I totally agree with Iris.
- Catherine Pellegrino
Iris, that was beautiful. I struggle to understand what the difference between IL and TL is. Every now and then, Lane Wilkinson says something that perks my ears and brains right up, and I grasp the difference for a minute (and it is in the area of transferability of skills, usually). But IL? Was clearly a response against "teach the tool"!
- RudĩϐЯaЯïan
(what was last week's TL conference?)
- RudĩϐЯaЯïan
Because I'm feeling feisty, I blogged it. Bring on the hate. http://pegasuslibrarian.com/2012...
- lris
*admires Iris's big brain*.. thank you sweetie
- MoTO Poppet
Love it. And while Transliteracy folks might not like it, I don't see a lot of room for hate: if they are really trying to stake out ways to enhance teaching and learning, they shouldn't care that you are fine with the old label.
- Don't feed the Steve
You know, I probably mostly still do BI, then. Because typically I have one hour for the class, and it may be the only hour they have to see me in their *entire degree*, so as much as I want to talk about general transferable skills, they also really need to know that our catalogue, databases, standards collection, subject guides, and virtual reference service *exist*. When I know I stand half a chance of seeing them for an hour next year too then I can loosen up a bit.
- Deborah Fitchett
I think a lot depends on the institution's over-all goals, Deborah. For mine, I'm in the same position in that I have no guarantee that any student will have any more than the hour (or even 15 minutes) that I get with their class. But my department's goals are more about sparking imaginations, hoping that gaining our students' interest will help them know when to seek help for more...
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- lris
It only takes a minute to let them know that things exist, right? So then you have to decide whether to use the next 14 or 59 minutes teaching them how to use those things, or why they might need to use those things, or whatever other thing you feel you need to convey.
- Don't feed the Steve
Yeesh, maybe that sounds preachy of me. I guess what I mean is that I feel tugged in both directions--the need to demonstrate some databases, but also the need to couch things in terms that will resonate with my students. I personally zone out when people try to train me on databases, but I get excited when people want to talk about how what we read and think and write works together....
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- Don't feed the Steve
I'm with Iris, but the point she makes about the model to back up the instruction sessions with reference and consultations is KEY. Also, I really, really want to work somewhere with that model again. I try to do course integrated, info lit, instruction sessions, but I can't do follow up consultations, which just kills me.
- marthalib
A tangent: just came across another term, via Google, no less: "search literacy." http://www.google.com/insides.... Has anyone else looked through this "Search Education" site?
- Megan F
Yeah, I definitely try not to teach it in a *boring* way - I always start from asking what they already know and what they want to learn, and talk in the context of whatever assignment they have, and finish with a minute feedback paper and reminding them how to contact me for consults etc. (But our students don't so often followup in this way.) And with the content I focus more on when...
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- Deborah Fitchett
I'm smiling because I almost never teach refining options and nearly always end up teaching boolean (though I don't call it that -- I use it in conjunction with concept-mapping that generates potential related terms that would fall within items on a topic). But yes, this sounds to me like BI. And I think there is absolutely a time and a place for that. With my students (all undergrad,...
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- lris
(Oh, and if anyone's interested, Lane stopped by to clarify some points over on my blog post.)
- lris
That exchange reminds me of Chomsky on Universal Grammar, i.e. "it is what I say it is (never mind that what I say it is changes by the millisecond)"
- RepoRat
See, that's interesting, because I'm motivated by patterns that I see during practical use. More deductive than inductive, I suppose? This is why I am a terrible liberal arts major.
- Meg V. Meg
It may partly (but probably isn't only) that I'm working with science and especially engineering students who tend to be more practical/goal-oriented and less interested in general discussion of ideas. There are fantastic exceptions always, but as a trend. Also and I generally don't understand their research, which adds its own limitations...
- Deborah Fitchett
Repo, I dearly hope you're not referring to me with your Chomsky analogy. I haven't changed my take on transliteracy since I first started in on it. You can Google that. Word.
- Wilk
Lane is always great. And while I generally don't understand TL, I do love the emphasis on transferability of skills. It's sort of impliedin the IL standards, but library lit is really weak on the topic, and if calling IL TL gets us to talk and teach and write about the transferability of skills along with the ability to identify an info need, and determine the best tools for meeting it, and evaluating what you find and using it effectively and ethically, then I don't care what we call it.
- RudĩϐЯaЯïan
Thanks Rudi! You know I don't sit kindly for bullshit. I'm just trying to see if TL has anything worthwhile behind it.
- Wilk
I'm just glad you accept my inability to grok TL! And insistence I'll take from it what I want!
- RudĩϐЯaЯïan
I accept the hell out of it.
- Wilk
It's easy to see how I gave the impression that I was interested in talking to students about ideas as general things, or that the sessions I teach aren't grounded in practical work. I hope that neither of those things are true, though. For my part, I have the luxury of usually teaching small classes. I usually tell them that the library session is a chance for them to get real work...
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- Don't feed the Steve
Enjoyed the talk last Friday, Lane
- marthalib
I do a bit of that, I think. It's just, there's a lot of questions of that kind where I ask it and I get blank stares in response. This depends on the class and the time of day of course. But for the undergrads I teach typically, "what have you been discussing in class" tends to get some version of "Dunno, stuff, I guess."; they're more likely to ask me what they're supposed to do once...
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- Deborah Fitchett
I know some of my colleagues talk about having departmental cultures that don't really allow for much more than skills-conveying in class. I think that's part of what Steve was saying about giving them a classroom experience that is similar to what they've had in the rest of their course, as much as possible. I also know, though, that it took me a long, long time to learn how to set up...
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- lris
Maybe it's too simplistic, but my reading of the differences between 'transliteracy' and 'literacy' is that TL encompasses visual culture as well as the written word. For example, if a person wanted to create an endorsement for a particular political issue but didn't know how to make an online video, you could say that person had a particular form of illiteracy. Or, more controversially, someone who could read but couldn't use the Internet also has a form of illiteracy.
- copystar
I'm not suggesting that everyone should teach like me. Sometimes I don't think that I should teach like me. But my goals are to help students fit the library research part of their class into what they are are learninig in their regular class time, rather than seeing it as something totally separate. I also want them to see research as an engaging way to get from ideas to writing and not as a mechanical process.
- Don't feed the Steve
I would argue that "information" is broader than "published written literature." We've concentrated on that because that's a lot of what we do, but I think that if we think of information in that very foreshortened way then of course we'll start coming up with new literacies right and left.
- lris
Iris: I agree. WRT semantic information, I think it's best to follow Floridi's general definition: information is well-formed, meaningful data.
- Wilk
Copystar's raising my personal issue with how I see "transliteracy" defined. By that definition, lack of competence in *any* area could be considered illiteracy--which makes every one of us illiterate, which renders the term meaningless. I'm oil-painting-illiterate, recognizable-drawing-illiterate; many librarians are statistics-illiterate (including many who use statistics)... It really does negate the term "illiterate" or redefine it as "human."
- Walt Crawford
Copystar: I agree completely re: various illiteracies. But, information literacy standards do not mention or limit media formats. We do that. IL says have an info need, determine best way to fill it, fill it effectively and ethically.
- RudĩϐЯaЯïan
from Android
Wait--using information effectively: does that cover the production of the final product, in whatever format?or did I just notice that IL is about consumption, not production??
- RudĩϐЯaЯïan
from Android
I believe it does cover the production of the final product, at least insofar as it involves the integration of research materials to one's argument or existing knowledge.
- Don't feed the Steve
Copystar's example specifically says production, not just consumption. (Although where statistics and numbers are concerned, I think you can make the case for broad "illiteracy" anyway--but that's why some of us use "innumeracy," to keep "literacy" a discrete, clearly-definable term.)
- Walt Crawford
Information Literacy does not just include consumption, though. The standards include *using* information effectively. And I'm kind of at a loss about your innumeracy vs literacy point. "Literacy" has already been appropriated for far more than written text, so I think that ship has sailed, decades ago. My point is that *information* is not about just written, published text. Numbers and visual information are also information.
- lris
OK, the ship has sailed. But it really does strike me that Copystar's definition means that everybody's illiterate--which may be a good thing, but also means that illiterate and human become synonyms. Certainly true that information isn't just text.
- Walt Crawford
[Oh, and if I had a horse in the "IL doesn't need to be renamed TL" race, I think I'd be on your side.]
- Walt Crawford
Only if you think of there being two states: literate and illiterate. I think all of this assumes that people are varying degrees of literate in varying circumstances.
- lris
I can't imagine that anyone really likes to think of themselves as "illiterate" or see themselves referred to as "illiterate." So while I sometimes may use the term "information literacy" because it's the term that has traction with (some) faculty, I think I'd avoid implying that anyone is information "illiterate." No one is starting from zero, everyone has a context from whicih to build.
- Don't feed the Steve
^ Steve's point here is why I like to use terms like"novices" and "experts" when discussing people's abilities.
- Katy S
Yes, Katy. I'm particularly enamored of John Bean's "expert insider" construction, since it gets at that while also including important elements of genre/discourse theory
- lris
And Steve just said it: The real reason I regard expansion of "illiterate" as unfortunate.
- Walt Crawford
interestingly, the education field is calling this 'multi-modal literacy' with a slew of publications and rubrics
- awd
*plugs fingers in ears* LALALALALALALALALALALA I CAN'T HEAR YOU LALALALALALA WE ALWAYS HAVE TO INVENT EVERYTHING OURSELVES LALALALALALA
- Meg V. Meg
the writing instructors also call multi-modal multimodal. http://multimodal-research.wikispaces.com/
- Joe
I am pretty sure I do BI. My experience is closer to Deborah's. The one time I tried to be diff, i got comments to just teach the database! That said, i heard from colleagues who were teaching the UPS peeps (basically kinda Liberal arts) , they did manage to pull off the encourage thinking , discussion type sessions so it all depends on the audience. Oh well next up is the Yale-NUS peeps..So we will see...
- aarontay
Question mostly for library folk, but if you have a comparable situation in your workplace, feel free to chime in. Do you have any non-degreed but experienced staff who make more than beginning degreed folks?
The background: I feel it's not bad for part-time circ staff (who usually don't have an ML(I)S) with 4+ years of experience to make the same or slightly more than just-hired part time reference staff (who usually do have an ML(I)S).
- laura x
I would assume we do, as we have a promotion pathway for non-degreed staff that leads up to a salaried position.
- Rachel Walden
Yes. Less that 1/3 of our staff holds MLIS degrees. There is one beginning MLIS-holder (me) and I make significantly less than anyone else.
- Soup in a TARDIS
I imagine we do. Most are probably in a supervisory position.
- Hedgehog
I think so. I don't know what my colleagues make, but looking at what it takes to get into different brackets here I'm pretty sure a couple of non-MLS staff are quite a bit higher than me.
- lris
the caretakers make much more than me - does that count?
- Helensleydale
Thanks, all--very helpful.
- laura x
Er, I am not allowed to talk about how much I make in public, even in vague terms. Will DM. Can say that it is *theoretically* possible for even full-time staff without MLSes to make more than very junior full-time librarians with MLSes but no experience, but we don't really hire inexperienced librarians so I doubt this ever happens in practice. Or if it does, it's rare.
- Marianne
Not allowed? Huh.
- lris
It is common in the private sector for organizations to consider publicly discussing (or even with coworkers) one's own compensation package a firing offense. There are lots of good reasons for this, if you're management. If you're a worker, not so much.
- DJF
Yup, I got reprimanded once for having noticed and not been pleased about the fact that people I was training to do exact same job as I was were being paid more. That was in days of medical publishing. Here, my salary is public record since we work for the state.
- Hedgehog
Yes, if anyone else is in a similar situation, feel free to DM me, or email newrambler at the gmail.
- laura x
http://www.broward.org/HumanRe... For Broward Counties pay plan. The job titles with Librarian in require MLS, Library Specialist Library Aide are non-MLS. Spec II and up needs a BA/BS
- Robert Anstett
In Australian public libraries, clerical staff/library attendants get penalty rates (overtime?) when they work nights and weekends as required. "Professional" staff do not. This means that clerks are often earning just a few thousand less than new graduates for less skilled work with less responsibility
- Kathryn says love n peace
Yes. Happens here. Particularly for newer professional staff. I am coming to 5 years and even then there are a few non-degreed staff on par with me or a bit higher. the average/mean pay of non-degreed staff is higher than the average/mean of the lowest grade of professionals and a touch higher than the next level up. But then most of them have worked here 20+ years.
- aarontay
Yes, for sure. We have specialists who have been at the university for 30 years, so it kinda makes sense they'd make more than a new librarian. Our staff pay is criminally shitty for the most part, though, even worse than our faculty pay.
- Kaijsa
It is well known that we have new librarians who were making a higher take-home salary while on strike than they do even now after the strike, so yes, I expect that there are quite a few staff who make more than that without a degree.
- DJF
Blatantly LB, Jen, Kaijsa and 9 other people liked this
AHAHAHAHA!
- jambina
Well, there goes MY methods section :-p
- Hedgehog
well, what's you DO, but that's not how you report it. ;-)
- DJF
"A search of Library Literature & Information Science Full Text on the query 'clue' yielded zero results."
- Don't feed the Steve
Whoa, good diagnosis.
- Don't feed the Steve
I've been working on an article for the past several hours, worrying that it's total crap and won't get accepted; I seem to be in better shape than your example though, so thanks for posting this.
- Idiot Librarian
How about "several" searches of x databases?
- aarontay
hahahahahahah
- lris
ACRLog » Can We Flip the Library Classroom? - http://acrlog.org/2012...
Lily, Megan F, marthalib and 5 other people liked this
"We could ask them to view or read tutorials or research guides about the library catalog and databases before their one-shot, so they can jump right in once they get to the library. But will they do it? And are there other ways that we can take advantage of the flipped model to help students get more out of library instruction?"
- Catherine Pellegrino
from Bookmarklet
I'll be watching the comments to this post closely. (Also, in answer to the question about how to "flip" discussion-based classes, I would say: you already have. Which is pretty much what the article here (linked in the ACRLog post) says: http://derekbruff.org/?p=2108)
- Catherine Pellegrino
in a way flipped classrooms are like "clinic style" sessions except you give some prepared material to frame the session. I do think it could work with people doing theses but I sort of already do this before meeting students for their thesis I suggest stuff to try based on what they tell me they need then we meet to work on specific things
- aarontay
from BuddyFeed
This sounds like what I'm already doing in some sessions, and I have to say it only works half the time. Many students still come unprepared, and a single workshop seems less important to them than a regular class period. When I do more than one session and students know they'll see me again, it seems to work better. They will also do things for points. Sigh.
- Kaijsa
Yes, it's the "will they do it" that's the kicker. I got all excited a couple years ago about re-jiggering many of my instruction sessions so that the students would watch some database tutorials first, and then be ready to dive into active-learning activities in class. Didn't happen, because they didn't watch the tutorials (even when told to do so by their professors). I'm beginning to...
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- Catherine Pellegrino
Heheheh. A flipped discussion class would have the students reading in the classroom and discussing things in their free time.
- Don't feed the Steve
More seriously, "Can we flip the library classroom?" may not be the question to ask. The question may be more something about "what do students get out of a flipped classroom? How can I incorporate those desired outcomes into my teaching?"
- Don't feed the Steve
Maybe we don't need to ask the students to do more work before they see us--they are already doing plenty of work for that class. Maybe we need to be the ones to do a little of the work the students have already done, so we have that common reference point?
- Don't feed the Steve
(I'm totally tickled by Steve's flipped discussion class. Following the shiny, indeed! :-D ) (Actually, a flipped discussion class might be kind of like some of the undergraduate classes at my first graduate institution, where the students attended lecture 2-3 times a week with the prof, and then a discussion section [called "recitation" on some campuses, which I find hilarious] once a week with a TA.)
- Catherine Pellegrino
I really try to be familiar with the course content, and definitely think that gives me credibility with students. That said, I don't think having student prepare for a research session is extra work. It's PART OF THE CLASS.
- Kaijsa
I had a great collaborator who let me develop assignments for before and after he brought his classes in to me, which made sense as part of his whole course goal. I think flipping would require a similar kind of collaboration from the instructors -- if they don't assign the work the night before, students won't do it. And if I have that in, would I want to use it this way? or to...
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- RudĩϐЯaЯïan
Although, to the reading in class point, I used to do a lot more critical reading instruction in classes, which I should pick back up. A lot of college students won't know what faculty mean when we ask them to read, and they don't know how to quickly evaluate a text.
- Kaijsa
Yes, I've come to realize that I need to do more of that as well. Parts of reading critically that come naturally to me, do NOT come naturally to 18-year-olds, and I need to work on that. The other thing I want to incorporate more deliberately into my library instruction is skimming a results list and picking likely options (another thing that comes easily to us but not to undergrads)....
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- Catherine Pellegrino
Catherine, that's huge for me -- how to make sense of the search results is a vastly bigger priority for me for class time than "how to search EBSCOhost". And includes the always shockingly informative bit on how to read citations and why it's important.
- RudĩϐЯaЯïan
Thirded. Processes that have become invisible to me are really hard to teach students, so I have been doing a lot of metacognitive reflection on my evaluation and reading strategies. It's a perpetual challenge.
- Kaijsa
This ^^ (metacognitive reflection on my evaluation and reading strategies) is what instruction librarians do better than anyone else!!
- RudĩϐЯaЯïan
I've worked with two short sessions that were "flipped" in a sense: the professor had students do a search beforehand and bring in their "best" 10 results. Then as groups we discussed (a) where they searched and why they chose that place to search and (b) how they sifted through their initial results and decided what was "best" for class. The prof made it an actual course assignment, bringing in 10 articles on topic XYZ.
- Amandadon't
Thinking about it more, I don't know if that's really "flipped", but we generally wanted to have students do some grunt searching work outside of class and use in-class time to discuss their critical approach (or lack thereof) via group seminar format. Rather than me walking them through the technical details of searching, what I think I typically do, we wanted to use class time to discuss the "evaluating what you get" portion. (Not feeling articulate today, not sure if that makes sense as "flipped".)
- Amandadon't
Is anyone using Mendeley Institutional? What are your thoughts on it? (via http://friendfeed.com/rudibra...)
Elizabeth Brown, John Dupuis, suelibrarian and 3 other people liked this
We just started our trial. First impression? Not worth paying for. Wholly on the early, possibly premature understanding the the link resolver integration is what we would want to spend the $$ on. Because it only works on searched items from searching the Mendeley database. It does *not* integrate link resolver into your own library items.
- RudĩϐЯaЯïan
I'll post more impressions as I play with it more.
- RudĩϐЯaЯïan
I haven't gotten it but wrote a long speculative piece on what it could eventually morph into, but currently no it doesn't seem to be that powerful yet though they clearly have ambitions to become a facebook for researchers. I believe you can get the link resolver added even without the instutional version. I asked the presenter why the library should upload our holdings he wasnt very sure.
- aarontay
The big idea about the Institutional Package is the analytics. Who's reading what, where are faculty publishing and who's reading those items, & what impact that's having on other researchers & their field. Uploading your list of holdings is what allows us to personalize the stats to your institution.
- Mr. Gunn
Hi I am a Mendeley employee responsible for the Mendeley Institutional Edition project, and I can answer this question. The ability for a librarian to upload the holdings data in Mendeley Institutional Edition means that they can at a glance compare what journals their library is subscribing to vs what the researchers are actually reading (or publishing in). So this goes back to Mr....
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- See Wah
That's what I mean, aarontay. We can see what researchers are reading, but we don't know what holdings you have, so uploading your holdings allows us to put the analytics we can provide in the context of your holdings.
- Mr. Gunn
Thank you See! That makes more sense, and gives me an access point for considering the value. Which is only going to be a value for us if we are going to put human time into looking at the analytics :)
- RudĩϐЯaЯïan
You are welcome. Thanks for the feedback do far.
- See Wah
Probably a naive thought but: Does Rick Anderson recognize that being a contributor to Scholarly Kitchen basically wrecks his library credibility--especially as SK seems to have morphed into flat-out hard-core Limbaugh-like attacks on OA and the like?
RepoRat, John Dupuis, Galadriel C. and 2 other people liked this
[Or did Rick Anderson have any library credibility to begin with?]
- Walt Crawford
I've often asked myself the same question. It's hard to unpack. I do respect some other things Anderson has written (I particularly appreciated his come-to-$DEITY article about "perception of academic libraries DOES MATTER"). One thing I take from it is that OA actually has a lot less library cred than we OA advocates like to think. And, I mean, that's not news, but it is? I'm not sure OA has really seriously engaged with the level of skepticism that's out there in academic libraries.
- RepoRat
IOW, I think SK and RA have a librarian fan club; far from damaging RA's library cred, SK may actually enhance it. I'm scared that the fan club is actually quite large. And I wish I could gauge its size reliably; I think that would be an important thing to get out in the open.
- RepoRat
I am a fan.
- aarontay
Of...?
- RepoRat
(found this, which I read back in the day: http://hdl.handle.net/1805...)
- RepoRat
Repo, are you talking about this article in JAL? http://content.lib.utah.edu/cgi-bin...
- Joe
yes, that's the one.
- RepoRat
SK blog... Don't 100% agree but don't see why they are considered evil... or something.. Can see the bias a little but still..
- aarontay
Aaron: You can see the bias *a little*? Interesting. I finally stopped reading SK because it was enraging me more than it was informing me--and when I find myself guided back to it (usually by a shortened link), I find that it's become far more strident. But maybe that's just me.
- Walt Crawford
More than a little plus Limbaugh-like scorn used in a setting where it seems highly inappropriate. Mud wrestling rhetoric.
- barbara fister
To be fair, there's some pretty muddy slams against publishers among OA supporters who aren't being terribly thoughtful about the challenges.
- barbara fister
But I think there's some innocent ignorance at play there - OMG THESE PRICES! INTERWEBZ IZ FREE! - whereas there's no way the SKadre can plead ignorance.
- barbara fister
Oh well, I think I am not so enraged about serial prices etc because I am very well shielded from knowledge of such things (I seldom am told how much things cost much less what the budget is). Oh sure I hear about 300% increases, my AULs keep telling me budget is tight (but no details), occasionally I get consulted on cancellign a database, but I don't really see the whole picture, just isolated cases. In case you are wondering it's not just me here, very very few people know.
- aarontay
I find with Scholarly Kitchen there's some weird misplaced ire -- libraries seem to be just generally "doing it wrong" in a lot of their discussions, which makes it difficult to parse out the actual interesting criticism from the angry rhetoric. So I may like it for a different point of view, there may be thoughtful analysis included in a post, but I've got to work to get past the rhetoric and general disdainful tone. I am just generally AMAZED at how some scholarly publishers seem to disdain libraries.
- Amandadon't
Yeah, the vibe I am getting is a "our product is fine, it's the damn customers that are screwing this up" from SK. Which doesn't strike me as a sustainable business model in an era where people are comparing notes about suppliers.
- Andy
So it isn't just lack of transparency about pricing *to faculty* that figures into OA apathy and SK susceptibility; it's the same lack of transparency *within libraries*. Interesting. (I can confirm Aaron's insight that very little information was shared librarywide about materials budgets at MfPOW, other than "this is the total amount we spend.")
- RepoRat
That sounds right--and I suspect the only reason I was clued in to the issue (other than at one point reading a whole heck of a lot) is that I was involved in a 10% serials cut--IN THE 1970s--and became aware just what a huge percentage of acq. money went to serials, esp. in the sciences. Did I mention IN THE 1970s?
- Walt Crawford
yeah, I remember my dad grumbling about this when I was a kid, IN THE 1970s. It ain't new. Which, seriously, academic libraries and academic librarians, WTF? This is another Jenica moment (sorry, Aaron): IT IS NOT OKAY TO BE IGNORANT ABOUT THE SERIALS CRISIS ANY MORE.
- RepoRat
[My two fond memories of that process. 1. Retroactively changing branch library acquisitions $ to include serial expenditures, which had been a joint pool, and watching the STM libraries shut the hell up about being so badly underfunded compared to the humanities (as their acq. $ suddenly increased 20fold). 2. Watching the second round of branch responses...after they were informed they needed to cut 10% of spending, not 10% of serials.]
- Walt Crawford
And, of course, this was before the huge costs of the online full-text services...and few print subscriptions were as outrageous as today's subscription prices. It was, to be sure, Berkeley, which at the time had a world-class set of journal subscriptions.
- Walt Crawford
RepoRat no problem. One of the many reasons why I don't feel like a real academic librarian :( Could be a institutional thing also, since budget matters at MPOW have always fallen under technical services and anything involving $ is super hush-hush so not many know except for high level people. Oh well, AFAIK we don't get that many complaints that the serials are lacking (well except...
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- aarontay
Which leaves the rest of us in a conundrum, because to reach OA we require collective action.
- RepoRat
I can't speak to the whole SK aspect of this thread, but having observed Rick Anderson in the serials librarian world for over ten years, I have come to respect him as being somewhat visionary. I think he has a deep understanding of libraries, trends, and serials publishing. I find him to be challenging, because he's often stridently advocating for some course of action I don't initially agree on, but eventually it makes sense to me, or at least aspects of it do.
- bacon futurist
Calling libraries with multiple branches:how is your website set up? Do you have 1 landing page for all or do branches have their own sites? Are they branded for a common look & feel? How do you deal with unique content?
right now, we have a landing page that should be for all libraries (main campus links to it) but branches feel it reflects the main library most. branches are presently using their own website homepages as the default on their computers. i think this can cause confusion. wondering if this is common in many other places?
- weelibrarian
My local pub lib has 20+ branches and basically everyone is on the main page http://library.nashville.org/ - there's a locations list with links to more specific branch info, but they don't have their own home pages
- ~Courtney F.
Our main page doesn't have anything about the "main" branch on it. All locations are pushed into "branch info" pages. The library's website is about the entire system, and for providing support to our remote users. Which, with 80% of access to the site coming from off-campus, is basically all of our users.
- DJF
Dalhousie has been using a main page for about 18 months but some of the branches use subpages as the start page on the learning commons machines. The Kellogg, for example, uses this page http://libraries.dal.ca/locatio... rather than the main page.
- Heather
Chicago public has a main page for everyone (chipublib.org) and branch info under that. Branches are not allowed to post anything on their own behalf, it all goes through a centralized location, which means dates for programs have to go in super early.
- Hedgehog
In an internal corporate context (internal sales and marketing communications) I've seen this addressed with a common look and feel and tabbed navigation. This meant maintaining 8 separate pages with often very similar content. It was a lot of overhead that kept the execs happy.
- Heather
our current is one main university libraries page, and pages for each of the other libraries but the sys librarian is working on changing that once a few other things are under control since we don't really need a different page for each library
- Sir Shuping is just sir
We only have a few branches, but we have one main website for everybody that includes very simple informational pages for the branches. Branch librarians have used LibGuides for unique info.
- Kaijsa
Ours is like DJF's, but many battles ensued before this was the case (branches were separate before)
- Megan F
One site, with a section for finding music resources that is managed by the music library, and the services for each library listed on the main site in all appropriate places.
- Jenica
One main page, then there are "microsites" for 7 different libraries. Some libraries like the Law library managed to snag a very prominent spot on the law school's main page and are getting tons of incoming traffic from there that bypasses the main page. I am still undecided if the microsites for each library is really that necessary but people want it so.....
- aarontay
We have five branches, but with a "We're all one library" philosophy so the website covers the whole library system and there's much focus on Consistency (and occasional struggles because different branches do in fact have different user groups with different needs).
- Deborah Fitchett
Karen Harker, "Fighting the high cost of scholarly communication," Being and Librarianship - http://beingandlibrarianship.b...
ωαřмaiden ☆Team O'Otto☆, Kirsten, Heather Piwowar and 2 other people liked this
Pull quote: “Refusing these ‘untenable’ conditions will bring pain to the users and the librarians, who must deal with declining collections and frustrated clients. But like those who fought the untenable labor conditions of manufacturing, farming, and transportation, we are beginning to see that uniting our efforts against the unsustainable practices of those who control the the capital of scholarly communication will stabilize the delicate balance of powers and enable the progress of knowledge.”
- Stephen Francoeur
As though "uniting" never crossed "our" minds before? It must be very late if I'm this cranky, sorry.
- Meg V. Meg
It really must be late, since you're not the only one.
- Walt Crawford
Is Open Access even a big issue among librarians? :) I am pretty certain I went through library school without it being mentioned , though I do remember reading about the "big deal" for journals and why it was a bad idea in collection development. Maybe things have changed since 2008 or I just didnt play attention in class?
- aarontay
Not nearly as big as it should be. Even less among the LIS professoriate. And please don't smile about that. I threw six years of my career into the OA pit, with near-zero support among my colleagues (LSW aside), and I don't think that's anything to smile at.
- RepoRat
Aaron: I think I'm getting a headache now. But, given the, um, "overwhelming success" of my positively-reviewed, from-ALA-editions attempt to get librarians (& students) better informed on OA, it's hard to argue with that. It *should* be a big issue, esp. among academic and special librarians. But...what RR sez.
- Walt Crawford
Thinking of ways to make processing book donations easier, do you have a favorite app for scanning book barcodes?
Jason (not an Argonaut) and Sir Shuping is just sir liked this
Ideally I'd go into a donor's office, snap a picture of the barcodes of the books on offer, and the phone/tablet would create a list. I know you can do this through Amazon apps, but I'd prefer a non-vendor solution. Here's a good, AskMeFi thread, anyone using a similar workflow in your library? http://ask.metafilter.com/158240...
- Amandadon't
What about creating a shelf in Goodreads?
- Blatantly LB
from Android
That's a good idea. Can you make private lists in Goodreads? Most donors might not care, but I'm thinking we'd need an option to create private lists just in case.
- Amandadon't
*click select all* *click delete* (just kidding...)
- ωαřмaiden ☆Team O'Otto☆
Does Librarything work for scanning barcodes? #stillhascuecat
- Hedgehog
I use Readerware at home.
- Meredith Schwartz
A colleague just told me about a shopping app that she thinks will first query the barcode against your library catalog, then make a list of what you don't own. She couldn't remember the name, but that could serve as a first pass in the field.
- Amandadon't
Should be fairly common, a barcode app that queries against your library catalogue, the question is what to do after that though so it gets transfered to a list.
- aarontay
The app my was colleague was thinking of is called pic2shop, though you're right aaron I imagine the trick is getting list ouput in a format I like.
- Amandadon't
from Android
Harvard’s library can’t afford journal subscriptions http://svpow.com/2012...
Cameron Neylon, Bill Hooker, John Dupuis and 3 other people liked this
I'm trying so hard to avoid being pedantic and pointing out that just because they're "the richest" doesn't mean that the money is liquid #ignoreme
- Meg V. Meg
If I weren't #ignoringMeg, I'd reply that the assets of less well-heeled institutions are presumably equally illiquid, so surely the argument (if even Harvard can't afford it...) stands? :-)
- Bill Hooker
Not true, from what I hear. The Ivies are particularly illiquid. That's why those budget cuts (whenever that was, 5 years ago?) affected them a lot. It depends how much of your riches is sunk in endowments #omgstillignoreme
- Meg V. Meg
Remember how much fun that was (whenever that was, 5 years ago?) when we could say things like "an institution might be well-endowed, but sometimes it's the movement of the market" with a straight face #sorry
- Meg V. Meg
useful point, meg. Hadn't thought of that aspect. I agree, is a little pedantic because the general point still stands, but it is useful context for those of us trying to deeply understand what is going on.
- Heather Piwowar
It is indeed a useful point. Beyond attempts to actually, you know, figure out what's happening, I suspect we will soon see Meg's point adopted by OA opponents and trotted out into numerous online discussions, with a fresh coat of FUD, as though it neatly and finally disposed of the entire issue of subscription sustainability. Pedantic or not, it might be useful to be armed ahead of time with data on the liquidity question, if such is available?
- Bill Hooker
See for instance: https://twitter.com/#!... https://twitter.com/#!... as examples of these arguments
- Cameron Neylon
Interesting: @endowossname has blocked me on Twitter. That's a first. I must be doing something right.
- Bill Hooker
Exactly. It's convenient yet problematic to conflate Harvard's wealth with Harvard as a cultural construct.
- Meg V. Meg
Their library/serials budget is a different matter (and more convincing argument)... are those ranked for ARL institutions? I think so, but can't check right now.
- Meg V. Meg
You could once get ARL statistics for free; now it requires a subscription: http://www.arl.org/stats...
- Bill Hooker
They also don't release the data files any more, but you can buy copies: http://www.arl.org/stats...
- Bill Hooker
From an old blog entry of mine: The mean serials expenditure for an ARL member institution was around $5.5 million in 2003 and $5.8 million in 2004; there should be more data but my blog is borked so figures and tables don't show.
- Bill Hooker
is there any indication this is related to their library restructuring plan? Not directly, of course.
- Elizabeth Brown
Huh, it's not free to ARL people?
- Meg V. Meg
Maybe I am ignorant but I would have thought Harvard's serials budget be a lot higher than 3.75 million a year..
- aarontay
That's just one publisher, I believe, Aaron.
- RepoRat
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