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How Google Can Beat Facebook Without Google Plus - http://www.theatlantic.com/technol...

Thursday from Tumblr - Comment - Like - Share

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Pull quote: “But think about Scholar as a latent social network. Each paper contains its own social network that Google already crawls. Every bibliography is filled with other social networks. And people searching Google Scholar are likely to be as interested in connecting with the researchers who created those papers as they are with the papers themselves. Why isn’t Google making it easy to connect the searchers with the searched? And sure, build a whole other set of social tools on top of that, which make it easy to share with networks of researchers. You want every college kid in America to start engaging deeply with your social network? Make it easy for them to get their papers written.” - Stephen Francoeur

LSW: Rachel Walden

Yep, I'm a grouch about people using Ovid MEDLINE instead of PubMed MEDLINE for systematic reviews.

May 18 - Comment - Like - Share

aarontay, Kirsten, Betsy and Joe liked this

Why, asked the medlib naif? - Don't feed the Steve

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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

LSW: 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?

May 21 - Comment - Like - Share

aarontay liked this

our craptastic catalog did not come with a functional call number browse. we had to ask for it - Rochelle Rochelle

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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

discovery layers don't support wildcards? Summon does. I just tried call no with wildcards it works, that's pretty much a browse right? - aarontay from BuddyFeed

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

Betsy we have both also but why can't encore include both ?? - aarontay from BuddyFeed

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

LSW: lris

Inflammatory statement: "Transliteracy" is what people who've been doing BI and calling it IL are now calling IL now that they're finally on board with IL's goals.

May 2 - Comment - Like - Share

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

53 more comments

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... more... - 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

#goIrisgo - Catherine Pellegrino

*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... more... - 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.... more... - 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... more... - 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,... more... - 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... more... - 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... more... - 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... more... - 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

RudĩϐЯaЯïan to RudĩϐЯaЯïan's feed, LSW

Is anyone using Mendeley Institutional? What are your thoughts on it? (via http://friendfeed.com/rudibra...)

April 9 - Comment - Like - Share

Elizabeth Brown, John Dupuis, suelibrarian and 3 other people liked this

I'm also curious about this. - lris from iPod

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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

hmm I am a bit slow . why do you need our holdings to summarise what people are adding? - aarontay from BuddyFeed

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.... more... - See Wah

Hi See Wah. Welcome and thanks for clarifying that. - lris from iPod

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

thanks. - aarontay from BuddyFeed

ωαřмaiden ☆Team O'Otto☆ to ωαřмaiden's feed, LSW

#SaturdayLibrarian librarianating for the greater good. Bring me your information-overloaded, your tired, your yearning to break free of poor sources. Also, your people who need a flat place to nap, whose own computers have crapped out, and/or whose roommates are too loud.

April 21 - Comment - Like - Share

marthalib, aarontay, Kirsten and 8 other people liked this

Mouth off to me when i am giving you a laptop, though, and you'll catch some sass back. #Saturdaylibrarian is also #Tiredlibrarian - ωαřмaiden ☆Team O'Otto☆

LSW: RudĩϐЯaЯïan

I'm pulling together a proposal to do a stressbuster a la Jenica's event (http://www.attemptingelegance.com/...), and was wondering if other folks have done it, and what they might have tweaked? I'm also interested if anyone in a bigger library has tried something like this?

April 12 - Comment - Like - Share

aarontay liked this

The undergrad library often hosts this: http://www.news.wisc.edu/18033 Several libraries also kick out the jams for exam week, e.g. http://library.wisc.edu/showcas... - RepoRat

4 more comments

funny, i'm pulling together a proposal for the same type of thing at my library - weelibrarian

We have done similar stuff, inspired by that same post. Coloring sheets / coloring contests seem to work well. We have done more elaborate things with massages and smoothies, which ended up being such a pain for the staff (making smoothies) that we backed off those kinds of events. Our compressed block schedule means that we don't really have finals weeks, or we'd probably try and do... more... - Don't feed the Steve

Bubbles! I almost forgot about bubbles!!! - RudĩϐЯaЯïan

I saw your photos, Steve, and I was thinking that the smoothie thing looked cool, but there's no way we'd pull that off. - RudĩϐЯaЯïan

Yeah even here the smoothies ended up having a Lucy & Ethel feel to them. - Don't feed the Steve

laura x to laura's feed, LSW

Do you check your work email when you are home sick?

April 6 - Comment - Like - Share

Robert Anstett and aarontay liked this

it depends on how sick I am. if it's just sinus crud then most of the time, if when I move I feel like I'm going to pass out heck no - Sir Shuping is just sir

19 more comments

Usually. - Marianne

depends on how sick I am. usually once or twice during the day, but I don't live there. - DJF

(I only write back in extraordinary circumstances though. Just like to be sure there aren't such circumstances, unless I am so deathly ill that I couldn't do anything about them anyway.) - Marianne

depends on how sick i am. and how bored i am. - ~Courtney F.

Yeah, depends on level of illness. Usually I'll check in once just to make sure there are no exploding fires. - Hedgehog

Usually, but not if I've got a migraine (or if I'm sick enough to need a nap). - Jennifer Dittrich

same as Ms. Hedgehog, usually. - holly #ravingfangirl

I'll usually check (just to clean out all the crap that won't need my attention when I get back - such as automated notifications, newsletters, etc.); but will rarely read and/or reply. - Fried Curdys

Yep. Professional OCD. - teleken from BuddyFeed

I pretty much never do and then feel guilty. But when I'm sick, I tend to be really sick and asleep 90% of the time. - laura x from BuddyFeed

If I'm well enough to use the computer, yes. But I seldom actually do more than read subject lines to avoid surprises or terribly dropped balls - Don't feed the Steve

Depends on what kind of sick. I try not to, though. - Rochelle Rochelle

yup. too much. - jambina

Depends on the type of sick (with migraines I generally don't) and if there is anything particularly important going on. - Katy S

yes, unless I'm really sick. - Elizabeth Brown

Yes, too much. - ωαřмaiden ☆Team O'Otto☆

it depends. i don't want them to get too used to getting quick answers when i take a sick day since they'll expect that every time i'm sick. - henry

nope. sick, vacation, weekends, any time i'm not officially on the clock - that is my time, not work's time. - Christa

If I'm the kind of sick that requires being home, I'm usually sleeping most of the day. If it's a cold I just don't want to spread around, I'm on email and working from a distance. - Kaijsa

what Kajisa said. If I'm too sick to work, I'm too sick to work. If I'm trying not to be Typhoid Mary, I'll generally call that "working from home" instead of being out sick. - RudĩϐЯaЯïan

Hedgehog to Hedgehog's feed, LSW

Here's the almost done Bibliography Citation Software poster. If anyone is interested and can review, would appreciate it. Bibliography on poster is not yet done, also Rebecca is still working on Vendor support section.

Bibliography Citation Software.pptx 132 KB

April 2 - Comment - Like - Share

Stephen Francoeur, Jason P, Sir Shuping is just sir and 4 other people liked this

Can I get to it tonight? - Joe from iPod

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Yes! Rebecca's working on it tonight, I'm hoping to send to Kinko's first thing tomorrow. - Hedgehog

Looking closely because some colleagues are reviewing our bibliographic software. Nitpicky copyedit-ish thoughts: headers under getting started have inconsistent capitalisation; will your users understand "screen scraping"; and under the basic features I think you have "Researcherscan" (unless formatting's come through wonky here). But otherwise all looks nice and clear and very useful. (Any problem me forwarding it to said colleagues?) - Deborah Fitchett

@Deborah Thanks! I've been staring at it too long so nitpicky is good :) Let me get it finished and I'll send you a final version to share with colleagues. My coworker has strong feelings about various vendor support that might be useful for them - Hedgehog

:-) I'm no stranger to strong feelings myself.... - Deborah Fitchett

Zotero does now have a find duplicates feature. - Jason P

Check the Basic feature box for a missing space between "researchers can". Looks great! - Jason P

Thanks Jason--I couldn't find one in your book :) (Which I've now read almost cover to cover!) - Hedgehog

Yeah, they keep adding features. Very irritating and I wish they'd knock it off. - Jason P

Right? They're supposed to be like RefWorks--who put up a "coming soon" sign six months before releasing the new Write and Cite. :-p - Hedgehog

I've also got a researcherscan, but this is viewed on an iPod touch mind you. The black text with the blue background was a little tough to read in the center column. Otherwise, great! - Joe from iPod

Did you ever see this comparison chart? A little on the old side now.... http://blogs.plos.org/mfenner... - Joe from iPod

Thanks Joe--I had seen that one. I found it rather confusing. Also, couple software updates have filled in some of the gaps. - Hedgehog

LSW: Marianne

If I were the CEO of Elsevier, I would move every "buy this article" price over one decimal place to the left, reprice journals accordingly, and stop selling packages. All in one day. The company would either make an even bigger shitload of money, or go bankrupt quickly and free everyone involved to try something new. #notthatanyoneaskedme

March 31 - Comment - Like - Share

Mark Kille, Galadriel C., Joe and 6 other people liked this

The contract laws broken would be countless; but I suspect no one would be unhappy with the new contracts... - Marianne

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(I suppose the middle way is that they would make less money, but still oodles, and in a much more sustainable and ethical fashion, that wouldn't result in their stultifying, long-drawn-out death, or continued amoralization. But that doesn't sound as exciting. ) - Marianne

I think you are on to something. Price point is key -- which is why Amazon is so adamant that all ebooks should be $10 each. Scholarly publishers *want* the price point of an article to be $30, but that's clearly too high. The first major publisher who drops the per article fee to $3 will change the whole game. - copystar

At $3 an article, libraries would cancel subscriptions ASAP. - Don't feed the Steve

I think the pointless journals would evaporate, the broken tenure system would get ditched, and, see above re: repricing the journals. Imagine if *high quality* peer-reviewed journals cost 200 / yr for libraries, 15 bucks for individuals... we'd have a thriving journal economy again. Elsevier could be using their evil empire powers for good, if someone powerful enough *wanted* to. Might even come out on top because of it. - Marianne

I guess they'd rather imagine that one sale at $30 is better than ten sales at $3 each. At a glance, the lower price point means the potential for an article to be cited ten times (thus increasing its scholarly value, imo) by a wide spectrum of scholars rather than just once by the one that can afford it. No, that just sounds too wacky. - Andy

(don't get me wrong, I think we're going to end up with a university-sponsored free-to-readers thriving journal economy any one of these days now, and elsevier will be screwed. just, if I were in charge of Elsevier, I'd be thinking it's time to gamble with ALL the chips.) - Marianne

The $30 price point exists for two reasons: libraries buy articles for that price for folks and think its a good deal but it's not cheap enough that libraries would say "pay for it your ownself." It's also juuuust high enough that we might think twice about canceling a high-use journal. That said, I do think there's something in the lower prices = healthy subscription environment. I just suspect that it wouldn't be the 30+% profit margins that companies are used to. - barbara fister

they'd have to reduce the cost of making a sale. they've built an infrastructure which puts the cost of an article less than $30 and more than $3. did single articles ever cost *more* than $30? - henry

Not sure about Elsevier, but RSC Chemical Communications articles cost 34 pounds each. Oh, look - articles in ElsevierTetrahedron cost $41.95. So .. yes. - barbara fister

Mary Carmen to Mary's feed, LSW

Sometimes I think about my Fantasy Library Team. If I could build a library from the ground up and invite folks from everywhere to work in it. What that would look like. *sigh*

March 26 - Comment - Like - Share

Derrick, Galadriel C., Kirsten and 7 other people liked this

I would happily tend the library cats. And write some grants. I'm pretty good at that. - Katy S

LSW: tara

is your library circulating iPads? loan period? fine level? do you allow students to download apps? if not, how do you manage apps? how do you sync? do you have one of these: http://apple.bretford.com/product...? i know, i know, so many questions.

March 16 - Comment - Like - Share

aarontay, Julian and Sir Shuping is just sir liked this

NCSU has been circing them since May 2010, you might ping one of their circ folks. I know they have a process for wiping and resetting them. - ωαřмaiden ☆Team O'Otto☆

6 more comments

thanks! - tara

Apple just made it WAY easier to deal with iOS devices with the release of the Configurator: http://www.apple.com/support... They had enterprise tools before, but they were not nearly this easy to use. I just wrote it up for my Library Tech Report on gadgets that comes out next month (PLUGPLUG) - Jason Griffey

My branch has 2 iPads. 1 day loan, fines same as reserves. Students can download apps or whatever but would have to use their own iTunes acct. I'm pretty sure we use iTunes to resync when they are returned. - John Dupuis

thanks! heard about The Configurator (rawr) haven't found anyone using it yet though.... - tara

<threadjack>Am I the only one who hears "Configurator" in Marvin the Martian voice?</threadjack> - Catherine Pellegrino

1 week loan. 2$ a day fine. download away. wipe them upon return. http://www.mcgill.ca/library... - jambina

10 iPads, 3-day loan, I don't know about fines. They can synch to their own iTunes account, but we have a default "image" we synch to in one of those carts. They're wiped upon return and re-synched. My department has another set of 10 we're using for instruction, and these don't get circed. We have apps we use, but don't have a cart. I'll be investigating the Configurator. - Kaijsa

LSW: Walt Crawford

LSW question (while cleaning up Diigo tags): Is "librarianship by walking around" dead or just sleeping? http://thelsw.org/librari...

March 18 - Comment - Like - Share

aarontay liked this

Well, if it's dead, we've just inadvertently created Zombie Librarianship; if sleeping, Sleepwalking Librarianship. The jokes write themselves... - Pete

Since you can't like a comment, I'll just say: +10 Pete. - Walt Crawford

*bows* - Pete

Heather to Heather's feed, LSW, DeathByLibrarySchool

The library I intern at has a comment board that's well read by the students and faculty. They've just posted the some of the most recent comments and replies on Pinterest: http://pinterest.com/dallibr...

March 15 - Comment - Like - Share

aarontay, Galadriel C., lris and 4 other people liked this

The classics and the marshmallows are killing me. - Amandadon't

Very nice use of Pinterest! - Kaijsa

LSW: copystar

LSW focus group: there's a link to the online "Dictionary of Psychology" on the imaginary website before you. Do you want it to link to : 1) directly to the resource 2) to the OpenURL menu or 3) to the catalogue record? [example links are in the comments]

March 13 - Comment - Like - Share

aarontay liked this

http://ezproxy.uwindsor.ca/login... - copystar

19 more comments

http://sfx.scholarsportal.info/windsor... - copystar

http://windsor.concat.ca/opac... - copystar

Directly to the resource. Because that's how the web works. Links to print resources (ie, to catalogue records for books) should have the GMD '(print)' associated with them on the website. - DJF

students want direct. many librarians usually want one option 2 or 3 - weelibrarian

Fair enough - but if the server name changes, the links break. Which is why I'm inclined towards 2) and 3)... - copystar

If the server name changes, the links will be broken everywhere until you fix them, right? So the problem is link checking in a third place, in addition to the catalog and SFX? I'd still go with option 1, though, since an "if this thing happens it won't work" scenario isn't as frequent as "if student clicks on link and gets a weird menue, they'll be confused" scenario. - lris

I want the item record in its own platform (not the OPAC), rather than just opening full text. That is, I want to choose what chapter to go to, if I want to download it as a pdf or read it as html, search within the work, etc. I suspect this is "super user" behavior, though. - Kaijsa

Definitely not option 3. I would prefer option 1. We have links occasionally go down when URLs change, I just ask my students to let me know if they see it and we'll get it sorted asap. I have a heavily overworked and extra super awesome electronic resources team tho - Hedgehog

Thanks for this. I am wresting with what is best for the user and what is best for the poor librarian who has to manually fix links when server names change (me). I don't like what I'm hearing but it's important that I hear it ;) - copystar

... which makes me think that the best option is making use of a url shortener so that the user gets to where they want and that link maintenance can be done in bulk outside of the web environment. - copystar

Ooff, that's too bad if having things work the way people expect them to means too much grunt work for you, though. Is this work that a student worker could be trained on? I know I did it as a student worker. [ETA: Yes, that sounds like a good solution] - lris

We have an eresolver program that interfaces directly with our eres database so we can encode a direct link which can change if the vendor changes the url. It also detects when you're off campus so it can call ezproxy. http://www.library.yorku.ca/eresolv... - John Dupuis

thx for timely topic. just found out it's likely we're going to be using resolver in records, so we'll be offering option 2 - weelibrarian

Don't call it a link shortener; call it a persistent URL service. ;-) - DJF from Android

Which leads me to the question... why don't our vendors provide PURLS/ urms / urls that don't change? (Not that it would stop them from changing their server names because of a corporate merger or acquisition. ) - copystar

Purls don't help when we switch vendors, though. - DJF from Android

No, they're just part of the ARGURLS rage. :-) - lris

Of course, using the link resolver in the catalogue and on the website is, in effect, using it as a PURL service. SFX lets you bypass the menu, if there's only one option on it, so that might be something to consider setting for the databases, so users don't see the intermediate screen. - DJF

DJF.... hey, that's so crazy it just might work! - copystar

yeah, we've never activated it because I THINK it's a global setting. If something goes sideways when a user is trying to access a journal, there's no way for them to easily check the catalogue, since the menu isn't there. - DJF

RudĩϐЯaЯïan to RudĩϐЯaЯïan's feed, LSW

Elsevier is saying the pdf save issue is an Adobe X problem, and instructing users to save files to desktop, or set browser to open pdfs in Reader, not browser. http://www.info.sciverse.com/support

March 11 - Comment - Like - Share

aarontay liked this

Since this problem is only Science Direct, I want to call bullshit. Since their workarounds interfere with my ability to get PDFs into Evernote and Dropbox (which is where I want them) I need to be right on calling bullshit! Are there other/better solutions, or ways to get Elsevier to own the problem? - RudĩϐЯaЯïan

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I presume this is code for "We got fancy-schmancy software to make our pdfs with and can't be bothered supporting the little people who have older versions"? - Deborah Fitchett

I hate it when PDFs deviate too far from the ISO standard. *also shakes fist at US government* Guiltily, I occasionally instruct users to do exactly the same when a PDF doesn't want to behave perfectly, or a web server does not have its MIME types properly configured (several exist for PDFs and PDF-like files -- e.g. FDF). - Julian

I heard something about a Proquest PDF problem earlier in the week, but I forgot to get the details. You want I should email you tomorrow? - Jaclyn Bedoya

Yeah, I'm not convinced it's just an Adobe problem, but I haven't been able to replicate it to see. - Rachel Walden

Too bad that Elsevier operates on a shoestring budget and doesn't have the resources to fix anything. - marthalib

*snort* - Amandadon't

Sir Shuping is just sir to Sir's feed, LSW

Have any libraries used Kickstarter, or another website similar to it, to fund a project?

February 28 - Comment - Like - Share

aarontay liked this

Denver Zine Library is using IndieGogo, but I bet you were looking for a more established library. - Don't feed the Steve

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that still works! I'm just looking for some examples at the moment for an idea that's percolating in my brain. what are they using it for? and I hadn't heard of IndieGogo before so thanks for mentioning it. - Sir Shuping is just sir

DZL is raising what I guess you'd call "operating funds." They are small and under-funded and this seems to be a good way for them to hold a fund-raising drive. But I think that for a more institutional library to use a similar mechanism to fund a project, that's and intriguing idea. - Don't feed the Steve

One caution is that I think both Kickstarter and IndieGogo vet all the projects on the site, and I don't know if an academic library trying to fund a digitization project (for example) would fly on those particular sites. - Don't feed the Steve

I backed Uni which is an open air library setup... but it's not from a library: http://www.kickstarter.com/project... - copystar

Steve yeah that's something that I worry about with Kickstarter, but I know there are a few other sites that allow fundraising and they don't vet everything. Digitization is one of the things that I was thinking of, also furniture perhaps. I'm not sure how rewards would work, but...it would be a different way to raise money. thanks copystar for the link - Sir Shuping is just sir

It also frustrates me that Kickstarter requires payment via Amazon, which I'd otherwise like to boycott. OTOH IndieGogo I think requires Paypal, which others would like to boycott, so... - Deborah Fitchett

LSW: Joe

Some dude writing for the London School of Economics thinks librarians should watch from the sidelines and not participate in defining the future of scholarly communication. We should just deal with whatever the [scholars], authors and publishers come up with.

February 28 - Comment - Like - Share

aarontay liked this

http://blogs.lse.ac.uk/impacto... - Joe

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He said "The role of academic libraries here should be, as ever, to support the process of scholarly research and communication. We are not here to try and define its course." - Joe

Sheeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeesh. - Joe

Well, I shall just not work on my presentation for the Writing Group, eh *g* And, also, what about librarians who research? - Pete

I'm not trying to be glib, but isn't the author trying to "define its course" by writing that entire blog post? It seems strange to me that there are many paragraphs of his opinions and feelings about the movement, wrapped up with a "but we shouldn't try to define its course", as if that last paragraph was pasted in from another discussion. - Amandadon't

I thought that was strange, too. I wonder if he was thinking of "boycott" in terms of not licensing the journals for libraries? Because I think that is a much more sane and relevant argument, that libraries shouldn't band together and boycott the licensing of the journals. - Don't feed the Steve

When you watch from the sidelines, you are participating by not participating. #fuckyeahpostmodernism - barbara fister

you can still throw molotov cocktails from the sidelines. - jambina

Bah. This discussion was over a decade ago when libraries opened IRs. LSE dude can just piss off and die. - RepoRat

I commented elsewhere, both that (some) librarians have been *trying* to join the discussion for many years now--and that you need to distinguish between libraries boycotting the journals (which is pretty much impossible for most major research libraries) and librarians boycotting Elsevier and similar publishers. To say the latter is inappropriate is just wrong, in my opinion. - Walt Crawford

LSW: Amandadon't

"Sifting through a list" exercise: does anyone use a particular method of helping students learn how to skim/narrow down/generally deal with giant lists of results?

February 23 - Comment - Like - Share

Sir Shuping is just sir, aarontay, Megan F and 3 other people liked this

Right now I'm working on an exercise where students bring a list of 10 search results into the library session. They break into groups and, as a group, discuss how they found relevant resources (which databases, search methods, etc.) Then, as a group, they report back to the class which methods of "sifting through the list" were most effective. The discussion was great, but the prof said the students didn't really apply what they learned to their papers. Do you have any sort of exercises specifically around that, getting students to not just pick 5 journal articles but pick the 5 *most relelvant to the paper*? - Amandadon't

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Hmm. That's an interesting question to which I have no nice neat answer. I think for me, I try and emphasize that they aren't slotting in the five "most relevant articles." They are working through a process in which they are choosing ideas and opinions that they want to engage with, or they are finding evidence to support or refute a claim. So if the idea is interesting and they have... more... - Don't feed the Steve

But. If I needed to devise an exercise closer to what you seem to be looking for, I'd talk about how a librarian reads a citation. What can you deduce from all the different bits of information you get in a citation? How do things like publication date, number of pages, name of the journal help you? At what point do you have to RTFA to know if it is relevant? What is your minimum... more... - Don't feed the Steve

Present them with 6 articles and a topic. Three of which are *the best* Then have a competition to see who can figure out which ones those are. seems like it might be a good idea to have categories and a rating system to illustrate bestness. - Jason (not an Argonaut) from Android

That is the question. Seriously, we suck at this. Want lots? HERE! Want less? Uh ... here's lots. - barbara fister

I'm having an information literacy crisis of faith. - barbara fister

I talk about discipline / domain specifics where I can- get them to look at terminology, methodology, links to other papers... - Pete

Also get them always to consider 'what is my question', step back from papers from time to time. - Pete

In medicine, it's often the population, quality of the study design, specific intervention, etc., and whether that is relevant to what the requester is thinking about. Here, we do filtered summary packets for docs where we are selecting just a few of what seem to be the best articles and provide summary of the key points and issues. So maybe try to focus on some pretty specific... more... - Rachel Walden

We've got Summon, so "Want lots? HERE! Want less? TICKY-BOXES!" (Almost literally - was given 15 measly minutes to cover everything they need to know for their first research assignment ever, don't get me started.) - Deborah Fitchett

Barbara, I'm less bothered than you are, I guess because I think this is where the intellectual work really comes in. While I do like to come up with some quick heuristics, I think at some point the answer is just "read them and think about them in relation to what you want to say." Or "stop searching the databases and talk to some people who know something about this topic and take careful notes on what they think is relevant." - Don't feed the Steve

I love this thread. I may go rogue on some hapless "How to find journal articles in an EBSCO database" class someday and implement one of these lesson plan ideas, because they sure as hell would be more interesting and more useful than me telling the students, yet again, about date limiters. - Catherine Pellegrino

^^^^ this. What we do as we organize information has frankly not that much to do with how people make meaning. But I feel I should do something to acknowledge that the library's tools are a teeny piece of what has to happen. And that this is an area where what we provide - LOTS! and even ticky boxes - doesn't do the work that has to be done. We make it seem as if searching databases and choosing what you'll use is research. - barbara fister

Also, this is where I'm coming from - maybe we should be thinking more about filtering than finding - http://lj.libraryjournal.com/2012... - barbara fister

"We make it seem as if searching databases and choosing what you'll use is research." Yes, let's stop doing that. - Don't feed the Steve

I saw a new tool some clever grown-up college students created that not only can be used to store notes and create citations, it lets you line up your cut-and-paste quotes in a document so that you can handily fill in the transitional sentences. Voila! your paper is done! That's the problem, right there. - barbara fister

Not that we created it, but we too often enable it. - barbara fister

That's fascinating. It reminds me that I have video interview footage of a professor's notes where she has copied-and-pasted quotes and citations (some of it still retaining our library catalog's formatting) into a Word document. So again, it's not the initial practice that's a problem (because I have reasonably high confidence my colleague is doing good research and writing), but what happens around those practices. Too much student research and writing is half-baked. - Don't feed the Steve

You are all awesome, and this is totally helping me think through my goals here, circling around teaching students how to deal with abundance rather than scarcity. "Filtering" exactly. I want to say to students "Oh, you found a big list of search results? Whoopdee-do, I can find a big list of results, too. Now what?" I also take Steve's point about needing to address the ideas within... more... - Amandadon't

I should mention, too, this is for a first-year class, although often when I think my upper-level classes will require a different approach they need as much review as new "advanced" techniques. - Amandadon't

Yes, I quite like "how to deal with abundance rather than scarcity" as a goal. - Don't feed the Steve

Ooh, ooh! I have a metaphor, but I don't know if it will resonate with 18 year olds: doing a literature search is like conducting a search for someone to work with you Your database search is the job description, and if you make it too general, every idiot will send you his resume. Make it too specific, and you have described a person who only exists in Latvia and he's dead. The... more... - Don't feed the Steve

If nothing else, students seem to get it when you quote Doug Downs: "sources are people talking to people." I also sometimes use the metaphor of choosing expert witnesses to testify on behalf of your idea, though that makes it all sound like winning is the goal, which it isn't. (You should be open to withdrawing your claim if an expert witness says you got nuthin' whereas most lawyers will just go get another expert.) - barbara fister

Yeah, and you want all your witnesses to agree on the stand, while you want your sources (often) to disagree usefully. - Don't feed the Steve

More like detectives trying to figure out what happened based on the evidence before handing it over to the DA who just wants to get a conviction. - barbara fister

Just wanted to say that I love this particular thread. Some of my colleagues would respond to a long list of results with MOAR BOOLEAN until you get a small set of results. My metaphor is "if you are lost, turn to someone you trust for direction." So the answer I *want* to give is, narrow down the results with using the names of publications that you already trust (as this is what I tend to do) -- but this answer admittedly doesn't really work for undergraduates. - copystar

Obligatory Pegasus Librarian post, this time being "Know Your Results Before You Search": http://pegasuslibrarian.com/2007... Particularly this bit: "We move back to the result lists and figure out how to leverage a 'messy' keyword search by analyzing the results, quickly opening anything that looks remotely relevant, and gleaning search terms... more... - Don't feed the Steve

I'm wondering if I can take Steve's job search metaphor and re-work it using online dating: if you make your personals ad to general, every idiot will send you his resume; make it too specific, and you've described a person who only exists in Latvia and he's dead. - Amandadon't

Yes, I was thinking about the online dating angle, too. - Don't feed the Steve

Jenica

"How to I subscribe to your blog so it magically appears in my inbox?" My role as blogger is not "teach librarians how to use the internet."

February 14 from Twitter - Comment - Like - Share

Mark Kille, Gypsy, Catherine Pellegrino and 6 other people liked this

Sounds like spam. And isn't there some magic sidebar widget that does just that? - Andy

2 more comments

"magically." heh. - ωαřмaiden ☆Team O'Otto☆

it was a direct email, Andy, from someone whose gmail includes "deskset". So... librarian. - Jenica

Ah, the joy of disintermediation. - Don't feed the Steve

EBJT to EBJT's feed, LSW

I have a bunch of paper citations and I would like to do batch citation analysis, either in Google Scholar, ISI, WoS, or something else. How can I do this?

February 2 - Comment - Like - Share

aarontay liked this

What format are they in, and what kind of analysis do you want to do? I think you'd need to do a search that got those citations as the results and then analyse from there. Or possibly Publish or Perish would let you import references? - Deborah Fitchett

3 more comments

Right now it's a xls with titles, authors, dois and some other info. How many times each paper has been cited and some other stuff. I think we'll need some brute force, sadly. - EBJT

With dois you can concatenate ~500 together at a time with "DOI(xxx) OR " (or something like that) and submit to Scopus and export citation counts. If you have access to scopus. Otherwise WoS might have started supporting DOIs recently? I know they are planning to. - Heather Piwowar

Oh cunning! Yes, just checked WoS and that allows a DOI search with ORs - haven't checked how many. - Deborah Fitchett

Hmm... I don't think Scopus will work since this is all transportation engineering stuff. WoS will, but it's not the most ideal. Will try. Thanks! - EBJT

LSW: Galadriel C.

Thrilled to share the excellent news that LSW's own Jen Holman (http://friendfeed.com/jsholman) received a most deserved promotion to Associate Professor! Congratulations Jen, on the recognition of your excellent work! *raises glass of champagne and passes the bottle of bubbly along with a silver platter of exquisite chocolate*

February 2 - Comment - Like - Share

Marie, Elizabeth Brown, Megan F and 17 other people liked this

Yay Jen! - RepoRat

5 more comments

YAY JEN! Congratulations! - Rochelle Rochelle

Woohoo! *has a piece of chocolate* - Kirsten

Congratulations Jen!!! - Hedgehog

yay congrats! - Sir Shuping is just sir

Yea! - Joe

Huzzah! - Stephen Francoeur

LSW: ellbeecee

Librarian CVs. How much detail? (I have to update mine for this year's evaluation process, but then, I need to update anyway). Taking this as an opportunity to revamp. So, I see this style - http://sarahglassmeyer.com/SarahGl... and this style - http://www.attemptingelegance.com/wp-cont...

February 1 - Comment - Like - Share

aarontay, awd, Sir Shuping is just sir and 2 other people liked this

I should share that I HATE writing these, so really need to build a good base to go on with from here - I've done lots of resumes over the years, but the full CV gets updated rarely. I lean toward perhaps Jenica's style (the second one) because I could always pull detail out when I need a condensed version. But what are the general opinons? Please. *grumbles about the necessity of doing this* :p - ellbeecee

6 more comments

Hm, well, not sure if this is helpful, but I have two: one for internal purposes (way more detailed and jargony) and one for external. - Meg V. Meg

I will admit to blatantly stealing Griffey's formatting when I was reworking my resume into a more CV like style--it's closer to Jenica's. I prefer that version and I think it's more helpful for anyone looking at what I'm actually doing. Mine is: https://docs.google.com/documen... Jason's is: http://jasongriffey.net/curricu... - Hedgehog

Mine is everything and the kitchen sink--though I'd narrow things down if I was applying again - Hedgehog

I'm like Meg: the cv I use for tenure and promotion internally is a whopping 14 pages (and I just got voted for tenure), while the one I use for external purposes is about 8. My publications and presentations are broken into categories like peer-reviewed, invited, etc. That might be why mine's longer than other people at this stage in my career, but it's important for my institutional reviews. - Kaijsa

Sarah's is more of a traditional CV, Jenica's is more hybrid, which is the style I use. Pure academics don't need to explain their content, they teach classes, get grants, write things, etc. Librarian's titles don't clearly express the duties and activities that make up the job, so I feel like they need more explanation. I;d say the most important thing for you is that your CV is easily usable for your eval process -- what content does it require? And how can your CV help you fill it out? - RudĩϐЯaЯïan

Thanks all - this is definitely given me options to think about as I do this. Much appreciated :) - ellbeecee

I use the kitchen sink approach, though I've not been as good about keeping up the 'professional development' section. (I may take it off altogether, even as an evaluator I'm not so much interested in what someone attended as I am in what they did with it.) I maintain two, one for librarystuff and one for poetstuff. - ωαřмaiden ☆Team O'Otto☆

Jason P to Jason's feed, LSW

Does anyone have a good "what is a literature review" handout I could crib (with credit)?

January 30 - Comment - Like - Share

aarontay, awd and Blatantly LB liked this

i stole NC State's and a couple of others - Christina Pikas

4 more comments

Not a handout, but this video tutorial from MFPOW is super-awesome: http://www.lib.ncsu.edu/tutoria... EDIT: Christine beat me to it! - Catherine Pellegrino

This is super awesome. This tutorial has basically done my lecture prep for tomorrow afternoon. :) I just need to come up with a brief paper handout now. - Jason P

i remember this book being helpful: http://www.worldcat.org/title... (i think there's a newer edition) - Christina Pikas

Cool, we have that one. Thanks! - Jason P

I'm amused that the 1998 edition's subtitle is "from paper to the internet" and the 2010 edition is "from the internet to paper." - Jason P

LSW: Jen

I can't stop thinking about this article: The Declining Value of Subscription-based Abstracting and Indexing Services in the New Knowledge Dissemination Era By: Chen, Xiaotian. Serials Review, Jun2010, Vol. 36 Issue 2, p79-85 http://www.sciencedirect.com/science...

January 17 - Comment - Like - Share

marthalib, marlene, aarontay and 11 other people liked this

Is it time to take a second look at the hundreds of thousands of dollars we spend on indexing services? - Jen

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Public Back-Channel ILL request... Nothing like a paywall to get in the way... I've already placed a traditional ILL request (and am timing it to see how long it takes to arrive) - awd

I want to read and post pull quotes from that article - but I refuse to link to a paywalled article ~ cogintive dissonance - awd

inbox says.... - Hedgehog

pull quote: "With 94.4% of journals' tables of contents and/or article abstracts and keywords posted freely on the Internet and with all kinds of free services based on the free contents, such as email alerts, RSS, API, free search services from publishers' native search engines, general and specialized search engines (Google, Yahoo! or Google Scholar) and free databases,... more... - awd

I find it hard to take seriously an article that uses "API" as a proper noun. - DJF

btw, yay for directly contacting (responsive) authors! Professor Chen has some interesting recent(ish) articles (which I still need to completely digest) http://hilltop.bradley.edu/~chen... - awd

Hedgie, the author beat you by little more than a minute ;) - awd

Chen's conclusion: "Are subscription-based A&I services still worth the costs in the rapidly developing knowledge dissemination era? The answer from this study is “no,” since the unique contents they have are disappearing. Libraries with tight budgets may want to shift some financial allocations from subscription-based search services to full-text journals or other areas where libraries can offer unique or better services compared with free resources and free services." - Jen

And sorry about linking to Elsevier - I meant no offense :) - Jen

Is freely available publisher metadata really equivalent to the professional metadata we get through A&I services? Not sure of the answer, would be interested in studies that get at that. Not sure if I'm being articulate, but one of my biggest beefs with discovery services is that the facets and drill-down options are often capricious in function, and the culprit is usually the shallow,... more... - Amandadon't

(Thinking through this, so bear with me.) In other words, in today's syndicated environment with APIs and layers and RSS and re-posts, is clear metadata more important than ever? Just because publisher stuff is out there for free doesn't mean it's got all the structure necessary for quality re-use. Again, not sure if I'm being overly-reactionary here. - Amandadon't

Sure, A&I service metadata is much cleaner and ultimately makes searching more efficient. But, we used to have faculty who also believed that. Maybe it's just MPOW, but every year I get more new faculty who primarily use Google Scholar. Might be interesting to survey faculty to get a better idea...I'll get right on that! - Jen

Can someone who's read the actual article, and not just the abstract, tell me whether the author's sample included journals from all disciplinary areas (not just STEM fields)? In my highly anecdotal experience, there's a considerable chunk of the humanities literature -- especially older stuff -- that Google doesn't know about, but that could be changing rapidly. - Catherine Pellegrino

Haven't read the article, but that was my first thought when Google launched GS: there go all the databases. - barbara fister

I guess the study in which I would really be interested is something more like Jen's: how do these free tools hold up in deep research scenarios. I'm also coming from a humanities area, so may be influenced by that, too - think of the scholar frustration with crap Google Books metadata. - Amandadon't from Android

@catherine he used the Thomson Reuters WOS lists (not just STEM) from here http://ip-science.thomsonreuters.com/mjl... - suelibrarian

GBS is much worse I think because they went with BISAC and didn't add LOC subjects which would be better than nothing. Journal articles are better at indexing themselves than books are and journal publishers seem smarter about search than book publishers have been. Especially now that they sell articles by the piece. - barbara fister

It's funny, I always feel weirdly simplistic when this topic comes up: what about teh metadatas! Don't use GS, needs moar metadatas! Maybe because I get the research questions that come up when GS/GBS fail? I just have such a strong reaction when people suggest free = same as what it replaces, as evidenced by my inability to stop commenting on this article. - Amandadon't from Android

(Or less "don't use GS!" but more "don't think this is all that could be!") - Amandadon't from Android

Whereas I generally find more useful stuff via GS than databases - probably because of what I look for and how I look for it. - barbara fister

And to be fair, when I get the grad students saying "Google Scholar didn't have specifically what I needed", it could be as much that they aren't using the best search strategies as GS "not having it". - Amandadon't

Not the only article. Are A & I Services in a Death Spiral? http://www.istl.org/10-spri... & A&I, full text, and open access: prophecy from the trenches http://www.acsu.buffalo.edu/~abwagn... - Joe

Thanks for those two articles! Really appreciated the hard numbers comparison between A&I and GS in the first. The first also touches on something of interest to me: if we rely on publisher metadata, search algorithms, and Google Scholar, do we completely outsource the scholarly record to private, for-profit companies? Not that societies are always the answer (*side-looks at ACS*), but... more... - Amandadon't

(Reading the OUP for-hire business has got me thinking worst-case scenarios, frankly. Let's say in fifty years you're a scholar with a wide net all over the web, but then you make Google angry...) - Amandadon't

(AmandaRR: See Doctorow's Scroogled - http://craphound.com/scroogl... ) - ellbeecee

ellbeecee: Exactly! What I seem to be saying is, in sum: if we cancel all the A&I indices, the Googlecleaners will get us in the end. Or, in more seriousness, I far prefer the approach of the Tucci article, in which differences in coverage and selection are acknowledged, and professional A&I is *not* simply equivocated with free search. - Amandadon't

not being a "real librarian" I am not quite sure if the metadata from I&A services are really better than the publishers or free ones. but as many of you know ebsco discovery service has being touting their advantage their service has over Summon etc on this very point (summon has "thin metadata" blah blah), so I suppose if one goes one way rather then other it will accelerate the trend away from usage of I&A?( summon does have a recommender system that recommends I&A services but do people click on that?) - aarontay from BuddyFeed

That database recommender thing is usually wrong, too, so I tell peeps to ignore that. - Joe from iPod

Feel free to throw things at me, but the way I think of it is that A & I is like the typical white-gloved upper-class breakfast of the 1930's complete with silver service, attentive serving man/maid, five courses and an ironed newspaper ... Undoubtably superior but - given the "good enough" alternatives & where resources could be redirected, probably no longer worth the cost to most. - Kathryn says love n peace

Tiffany's vs Chipotle. [Note, I don't recommend Chipotle's for breakfast.] - Joe from iPod

A lot of my feelings about the importance of A&I/professional metadata is that people are starting to expect the sophisticated faceted search they see in commercial products (cf Zappo's), and our web scale discovery tools don't work that well yet because of the junky, non-normalized metadata behind the scenes. This is clearly a weird soapbox for me, but if we want to move into robust... more... - Amandadon't

Catherine Pellegrino to Catherine's feed, LSW

ACRLog » Convenience and its Discontents: Teaching Web-Scale Discovery in the Context of Google - http://acrlog.org/2012...

January 27 from Bookmarklet - Comment - Like - Share

Amandadon't, Marianne, aarontay and 4 other people liked this

"Web-scale discovery is doing about as much for these students as we could reasonably expect, and, in doing so, offers teaching librarians a challenge and an opportunity. Both are at root about our thinking, and they stem from the same fact: these tools offer an unprecedented convenience. For all the familiarity it allows students, our decision to make library tools more similar to commercial web search can reinforce the idea — primarily amongst students, but also, potentially, amongst administrators making personnel and workload decisions — that information literacy instruction isn’t necessary because students know how to get what they want from Google. If the new tool is like Google, then why does it require instruction?" - Catherine Pellegrino from Bookmarklet

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I love just about everything about this post. And it has made me do a complete 180 on my views on whether we should get a discovery tool. - Catherine Pellegrino

Thank you for sharing this! I'm amazed at the rounded perspective this post offers, and how well it represents the questions that serve both teaching librarians as promoters of new technologies and their students as recipients of new means to access information. - Lily

great post, we implementing SUmmon too and I suspect teaching ILP is going to be interesting now - aarontay from BuddyFeed

Yes, I liked this post a lot, too. I think the emphasis in discovery layers on delivering *something* at all costs leads to the phenomenon of getting not-very-satisfactory results. Then again, it could be that the students are looking for the magic source, and would be unhappy with any discovery tool. - Don't feed the Steve

LSW: Meg V. Meg

ATTN: EndNote mavens! What's the best way to get EndNote to incorporate your proxy info into URL's? I am going crazy.

January 19 - Comment - Like - Share

aarontay liked this

ping @uinen (Meg F) on friendfeed. she is our endnote genius (and we recently moved to ezproxy...) - jambina

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See the right hand column here (I know it looks awful, it's on my to do list to fix) http://researchguides.uic.edu/content... - Hedgehog

(Also, I hate endnote) - Hedgehog

Where are said URLs that need to be proxy-ified? In the individual records in a library? Or do you want to set it up in the "find full text" function? - Megan F

Megan, whichever works best? Or whichever works most like having a link resolving option (SFX in our case) next to each record like in RefWorks, I guess. If you edit it in the library, doesn't it make your reference list wonky? And if you edit your "Find Full Text" preferences, then that kind of makes it seem like EndNote will be able to find fulltext (which may or may not actually be the case, depending if there is an identifier that it recognizes). - Meg V. Meg

Note: I am not saying RefWorks is ideal, just trying to make EndNote work better for people who are more familiar with RW. This may not be possible. - Meg V. Meg

Just to clarify, are we talking about the desktop version of EndNote, or EndNote Web? In the latter case, you can stick your proxy prefix onto myendnoteweb.com to prompt users to authenticate before signing in to their EndNote Web account, after which your SFX links would appear. - Megan F

There are various ways that EZProxy might affect functions on the desktop version. Yeah, inserting the prefix into records would be tedious and it would appear in the bibliography. But if users just want to open the URL in a record from the library, they can right click and choose the Open URL option. This will put the URL into your SFX resolver and then they'll be prompted to authenticate when they click on a target. You can enter the SFX link in the Find Full Text preferences - Megan F

Does my babbling make sense? - Megan F

Oh, and about find full text--yup, it's hit or miss, but if users want to have EndNote try to grab the PDF, you would need to set it up as described on the UIC guide - Megan F

And one more thing: you can't use connection files with EZProxy at all - Megan F

Thanks everyone. I'm now thinking that people are having problems with our OpenURL path instead. Bleah. - Meg V. Meg

Stephen Francoeur to Stephen's feed, LSW

Dear FriendFeeders, I've been struggling to find a decent way to share here the blog posts that caught my eye in my Google Reader account. Until Google Reader revamped the interface last year, I was able to easily use a "Share with note" feature in the interface that let me send the posts with a pull quote to my Google Reader link blog. That link..

January 18 - Comment - Like - Share

aarontay, lris, SteVe "Glory Juice" C and 3 other people liked this

blog in turn was fed in here to FriendFeed. The way that feed displayed was awesome: the post included a link to the original blog post in my Google Reader link blog and, below the post on FriendFeed, the very first comment was my pull quote or whatever I had added as a "note" in Google Reader. That functionality is now gone from Google Reader. After trying lots of options (Delicious, Diigo, Evernote, Pinboard, etc.), I was unable to find a way for a feed to be fed in here that would include my notes as the first comment. I've now settled for sending items from Google Reader to ... - Stephen Francoeur

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...a Tumblr account, which is in turn fed in here. My annotations on Tumblr don't appear here in FriendFeed, though. If you'd like to see the original Tumblr page, it is here: http://stephenfrancoeur.tumblr.com/ and the RSS feed for it is here: http://stephenfrancoeur.tumblr.com/rss - Stephen Francoeur

Thanks for the update! - Jason (not an Argonaut)

I settled on Tumblr because both Google Reader and Feedly have a "send to Tumblr" function. Tumblr in turn gives me an RSS feed that I can then repurpose in lots of ways (especially if I use IFTTT to connect Tumblr to my Evernote, Delicious, etc.) So now I'm back in business of sharing, curating, and creating a personal archive of notable posts. - Stephen Francoeur

"now I'm back in business of sharing, curating, and creating a personal archive of notable posts" Awesome! Now I don't have to pay attention to anything on the internet except Stephen's FF. :) - Catherine Pellegrino

RepoRat to RepoRat's feed, LSW

jstor opens limited free access option non-subscribing scholars | Inside Higher Ed - http://www.insidehighered.com/news...

January 13 from Bookmarklet - Comment - Like - Share

aarontay and Joe liked this

Opinions? I'm o_O about this. That slope is as slippery as a greased pig. - RepoRat from Bookmarklet

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I'm also kind of o_O that there's no individual-pays option. - RepoRat

I want to say that there is actually an individual-pays option, but I can't find it at the moment because JSTOR knows I'm at MPOW and is serving up my institution's link resolver instead of a pay-per-article interface. (AS WELL IT SHOULD.) There was a whole fracas back in summer 2010 about link resolvers in JSTOR; maybe there's info there? (see: http://friendfeed.com/cpelleg... and http://bit.ly/bSFFIM) - Catherine Pellegrino

Oh, that's better, if there is. Because "your personal info or bust" is a bad, bad forced choice for independent scholars. - RepoRat

Well, it's not clear to me that it's an either/or between personal info and $. I think you have to give them at least some personal info just to register for the system, and I'm not sure exactly how "personal" the info is: name, email, institutional affiliation, field of study. All of which could easily be faked, I would assume. Or is there a nefarious or dangerous use case that I'm not seeing here? - Catherine Pellegrino

yeah, this seems great to me. Give some personal info and get access, or don't, and have the same non-access you already don't have. - Don't feed the Steve

I guess (she said meekly) I'd rather see people have an explicit choice between $ and info. JSTOR needs moolah, okay, I'm not arguing. But personal-info-for-info -- isn't that a choice libraries have tended to resist? (Certainly the EXPLOITATION of such info we've resisted tooth and nail.) - RepoRat

Gives me an idea for a nonprofit org, tho: the Independent Scholars' Library. - RepoRat

I need to supply personal info to get a library card--information that is more personal than the information JSTOR is asking for. - Don't feed the Steve

The info you supply to your library is probably legally-protected, and the library can be trusted not to sell it on. I haven't seen JSTOR's ToS, but I wonder. - RepoRat

Ah, OK. Good point. - Don't feed the Steve

I wonder how many of those 150 millionannual turnawsys are affiliated folks operating outside of their IP range? Also, the eagerness of the publishers for the data makes me nervous. I had no bright red flags until that quote from Chicago... - RudĩϐЯaЯïan

I dunno... People are giving that same personal info (and more) to Web of Knowledge for their scholars ID thing, to Google for their scholars ID thing, to Zotero, Mendeley... I've probably given that info to dozens of less reputable places than JSTOR to get less reward. I'm having a hard time being mad at them. - lris

I gave more than that to ALA, and I'm STILL reaping the spam rewards for that. - lris

On the whole, I think this is a good move, though it could be MUCH better. (Really, can't we do better than treating scholarship like products to sell in an Amazonian mode?) I do think scholars and scholarly publishers should be above the marketing games that trade publishers and Amazon and Google play by collecting and using personal info. People are getting numb to it, but it's wrong. Sharing what we're reading should be the sharer's choice. - barbara fister

read JSTOR's privacy policy lately? jeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeezus. - RepoRat

RepoRat to RepoRat's feed, LSW

Discovering What Works: Librarians Compare Discovery Interface Experiences — Library Journal Reviews - http://reviews.libraryjournal.com/2011...

December 21 from Bookmarklet - Comment - Like - Share

Joe, aarontay, Kirsten and 2 other people liked this

Apropos of the discovery-layer discussion. Jonathan Rochkind (from whom I stole the link) correctly points out that the article is very one-sided: no discussion of bumps in the road or *any* negatives whatever. - RepoRat from Bookmarklet

19 more comments

Also, I like LJ's new(?) look. Decidedly more readable and less Times New Roman. - RepoRat

Now that I've actually read the article, I will recommend it as a source of good assessment criteria. These folks are showing their work, which is nice. - RepoRat

Ah, it made me cranky. But if you liked it, I'm going to guess that this is more of a measure of how close to cranky I am today, rather than the quality of the article. - Don't feed the Steve

In part I was responding to what seemed like a "we love and identify with vendors" vibe. Calling themselves "EBSCO shops" and so on, not mentioning Blacklight, etc. - Don't feed the Steve

Does Blacklight have an independent index it runs searches off of like these systems do? - lris

Yes, I think so? Like this, you mean? http://search.lib.virginia.edu/catalog... - Don't feed the Steve

That one's a combination of a catalog search (on the left) and a Summon search (on the right). - lris

Well shit. - Don't feed the Steve

It doesn't really matter. I was just wondering if that's why it's not on the list in this article. - lris

My understanding is that it indexes whatever you give it to index. - Don't feed the Steve

Blacklight runs Solr as an independent (local) index. I'm pretty sure. - Marianne

So, like, it indexes ProQuest? - lris

It'll index whatever you can give it. Can you get ProQuest data? I don't know. - Don't feed the Steve

Ok. Sorry. I was just curious because I pushed for it here a while ago, but we didn't have anyone who could do the back-end wrangling so it was a non-starter. - lris

Yeah, well, my reference interview skills are rusty. I wasn't sure what you were asking. - Don't feed the Steve

Iris: UW Forward is Blacklight-based. It has a Solr index built from our Voyager catalog and OAI-PMH harvests from the IR and digital libraries. (For circ info, holds, and suchlike, it queries Voyager directly via Voyager's API.) It could conceivably add Summon results via Summon's API (I'm told; UW doesn't have a contract for Summon, so nothing like that is in production), but it couldn't add Summon metadata directly to the Solr index, if I understand things correctly. - RepoRat

But yeah, the difference between "search engine plus bells and whistles" and "whackload of article metadata" doesn't often come through in these comparisons, and it really kinda should! they're not the same thing, and IMO they shouldn't even be force-bundled the way the vendors are doing. - RepoRat

Thanks for the clarification, RR. - lris

reading the article - the bit where a faculty member told the library with its new Ebsco discovery service that it was "relevant again." Man, I'm glad I don't work there; I'd have punched him in the nose. - barbara fister

I haven't read the article yet (too tired for that now), but I hope they make the distinction between pre-indexed discovery interfaces like Summon (which uses Solr for the indexing but gets the content from many sources) and UI improvement discovery interfaces like VUFind (which pulls from ILS and other sources, but doesn't pre-index article content and such). It's like comparing apples and oranges, as far as how these things work and what they are capable of doing. - bacon futurist

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