Boston Librarian Discovers Librarianship

Wow!

2010-03-03T06:01:00.000-08:00

I can't believe that it is already March...where has the time gone?!?! Historically my spring semesters have been a little lighter than my fall semesters, but that has not been the case this year. Today I am headed to the Boston eBook Summit for Academic Librarians hosted by Springer. I am looking forward to hearing the speakers and panelists!

Informing Innovation

2010-01-11T15:38:00.000-08:00

Booth, C. (2009). Informing innovation: Tracking student interest in emerging library technologies at Ohio University. Chicago: Association of College & Research Libraries.

This title is the comprehensive report related to the paper "If you build it, will they care? Tracking student receptivity to emerging library technologies," which was presented by Char Booth and Chris Guder at the 2009 ACRL conference.

I did not take away any new insights regarding the outcome of the surveys conducted at Ohio University, but I did find this report to be quite valuable. For me the value was in Booth's discussion of the project as a whole. She devotes a lot of time to explaining the process behind the creation of the surveys, including the types of questions to be asked and the wording of the questions. Conducting social scientific research in the field was a topic that my library science education lacked, but it something that would have ultimately benefited me professionally. Booth's explanation of the process is professional yet easy for a novice to understand. If I conduct social research in the future (which I hope that I will!), I will certainly return to this book for guidance.

In addition to the insight Booth provides into the process of her study, Booth also provides a nice bibliography (which I made sure to photocopy before returning the book!).

Desperately Seeking Citations

2010-01-06T08:36:00.000-08:00

Leckie, G.J. (1996). Desperately seeking citations: Uncovering faculty assumptions about the undergraduate research process. Journal of Academic Librarianship, 22, 201-208. Retrieved from http://search.ebscohost.com

This is my Director's favorite article and understandably so. Our Library is fortunate to be integrated into the College's First-Year Seminar program. We have three graded library assignments based on an online tutorial that all first-year students are required to complete, and each seminar is required to hold at least one in-library workshop during the semester (several opt to have two). We also distribute pre- and post-tests to determine how much the students are learning from the assignments, tutorial, and in-library workshops. In addition to our involvement with the First-Year Seminar program, we have an active IL/BI program with other intermediate and advanced level undergraduate courses. We often notice that there is a disconnect between a student's actual level of understanding/competency in a particular discipline and the assumed level of understanding/competency on the part of the faculty. Reflecting upon my own undergraduate experiences, this certainly held true in both of my majors. (I remember conducting research for an intermediate-level foreign language course on Lexis-Nexis...this makes me cringe now that I realize I should have been using scholarly articles, not newspaper articles.) In this article Gloria J. Leckie discusses the reasons for this disconnect (using the research paper assignment as a foundation for her argument) and how librarians might be able to help remedy the situation. Although this article is over 10 years old, I think it is certainly applicable to undergraduate education today.

Leckie identifies "four distinct components" that contribute to this problem:
"Faculty and the 'expert researcher' model;
The research paper assignment and students' limitation;
Identifying faculty assumptions; and
The in-class experience." (202)

"The ['expert researcher'] model requires a long process of acculturation, an in-depth knowledge of the discipline, awareness of important scholars working in particular areas, participation in a system of informal scholarly communication, and a view of research as non-sequential, non-linear process with a large degree of ambiguity and serendipity." (202) Quite the opposite is true of novice, undergraduate researchers, which makes them develop a "coping strategy" rather than an "information-seeking strategy." (202)
Not only do undergraduates lack the in-depth knowledge of a given field in order to begin their research, they often do not understand the difference between various materials types (encyclopedias, magazines, books, scholarly journals, etc.) to know what is appropriate and what isn't. (204) (Note: Click here to read a "Keywords From a Librarian" blog entry on this topic.) In addition, faculty often limit acceptable resources for an assignment to scholarly articles often causing students to avoid encyclopedias and other sources of general background reading that might ultimately prove useful in their research endeavors. This has certainly happened to all of us at the reference desk. I recommend that a student starts with an encyclopedia article or two to gain some general background knowledge on his/her topic and receive the response "My professor said I'm not allowed to use an encyclopedia as a source." For most of us it is an exercise in futility to explain that you can use an encyclopedia article as a launching pad into more in-depth research that will ultimately provide that student with acceptable source types. Sometimes faculty forget what it is like to be starting research in a new field and discount resources created for this purpose as being inappropriate for the level of research they expect of their students.

It's possible that faculty are assuming that undergraduates are beginning their college careers with more research experience or skills than they actually have. Most high school students are required to write at least one research paper (or "term paper"), but perhaps this is not adequate preparation for what is expected of them in college. As a high school student, I was required to write at least 4 research papers. I can say with confidence that those papers did not prepare me to perform college-level research. In high school, one has a finite set of resources to use (small reference collection, small book collection, some articles, perhaps the public library), but the resource possibilities become almost endless in college. I had no idea where to begin. I could have easily asked a librarian for help, but I didn't know that was a possibility. I also probably would have not taken the time to ask a librarian when I was a freshman because I probably would have thought that it wouldn't have been worth the while. (This is my dirty librarian secret...I am sharing it with the world!)

This leads me to my next point (which Leckie also addresses in this article), which is time constraints (or perhaps time management) of undergraduates. Most undergraduate students take 4-5 courses per semester, and depending on the disciplines of these courses they could have 4-5 research papers to write at about the same time. Even for upperclassmen, this can be quite an overwhelming workload. (I am not suggesting it should be reduced, just pointing out that it is overwhelming.) For a first-year student even 2 research papers can be a overwhelming workload as they are acclimating to college life - both academically and socially. As students become overwhelmed, they can become both frustrated and impatient. Trying to juggle multiple assignments does not always allow them to dedicate patient reading of sources in order to select the best ones for their papers. This is when students resort to a "coping strategy" rather than an effective and efficient "information-seeking strategy."

How can librarians help remedy this situation? Leckie argues that faculty need to create a "stratified" research assignment, in which students complete the steps throughout the semester. (For example: selecting a topic, narrowing a topic, literature review/annotated bibliography, thesis statement with general outline, rough draft, final draft) But many faculty don't realize that their students struggle with research assignments, and they usually don't seek librarians' opinions. (Leckie writes, "...despite calls in the literature for librarians to be partners in research with the faculty, there is very little evidence that this is happening, or ever will happen." (205)) However, some librarians have started to transform the way in which faculty view their students' research abilities. I recently attended a meeting of the New England Library Instruction Group (NELIG) where Nicole Brown, Laura McCune-Poplin and Karen St. Clair gave a presentation about their experience in creating an "Information Literacy Faculty Learning Community" at Emerson College. This group met for 4 one-hour sessions to discuss how faculty and librarians can address the information literacy needs of students. The librarians "assigned" readings which were discussed at the sessions. One of the activities was for faculty members to choose one of their assignments and analyze it through the lens of information literacy. The presenters said the faculty enjoyed this activity and took away some new insights regarding students and the research process.

This article certainly gave me a lot to think about regarding my involvement in the First-Year Seminar program and general BI/IL programs as well as how I assist students at the reference desk. Discovering this disconnect and relating it to my own undergraduate experience helped me to better understand those who I am helping. I am hoping that this understanding will help me to become a better teacher and librarian.

Thank you for reading!

Happy New Year!

2010-01-04T11:15:00.001-08:00

After 2 glorious weeks of vacation and visiting my family, I am happily back to work. Hopefully I will have another post up this week.

In the meantime, I leave you with a cartoon that my Dad cut out for me:

Happy New Year!

If You Build It, Will They Care? Tracking Student Receptivity to Emerging Library Technologies

2009-12-16T07:34:00.001-08:00

Booth, C., & Guder, C.S. (2009). If you build it, will they care? Tracking student receptivity to emerging library technologies. In Mueller, D.M. (Ed.), Pushing the edge: explore, engage, extend. Proceedings of the Fourteenth National Conference of the Association of College and Research Libraries, March 12-15, 2009, Seattle, WA (pp. 247-257). Chicago: Association of College and Research Libraries.

The title of this paper is a question that has been lingering in my mind for the past year or so. "If you build it, will they care?" As I've mentioned several times in this blog, my Library has implemented a number of Web 2.0 tools. As a staff we have been quite excited about their implementation, but they have not provided the interactivity with the community that we had hoped for. Just as I did in my last post, I am going to highlight a couple of points from this paper.

Background: This paper is based on the results of two surveys conducted at Ohio University. These surveys were fueled by "discouraging results from several of our more experimental pilot programs." (248) The findings presented in this paper are selected. The authors write that "a more comprehensive treatment of survey findings will be published under separate cover." (250) (I believe this separate publication is Informing Innovation: Tracking Student Interest in Emerging Library Technologies at Ohio University.)

"...led us to consider whether our approach to public service innovation privileged technology itself before user needs." (248)
I think a lot of well-intentioned librarians (myself included) take this approach. We become so focused on integrating new and exciting technology intending to enhance or improve our patrons' experience, that we sometimes neglect to address what our patrons actually want or need regarding technology. We simply assume that if we build it, they will come, they will use it, and they will love it. The authors of the paper point to Michael Stephens' use of the term "technolust," namely the "belief that inherent library/information potential lies within every new social networking application and mobile communication technology." (248) Librarians need to keep their "technolust" in check when integrating 2.0 tools. However, this does not mean that we shouldn't take 2.0 risks...perhaps our patrons don't know that they want or need something until we offer it to them. In addition, we might be able to reach a very specific group or groups of users that we would otherwise not be able to reach (e.g. Second Life-ers, gamers, etc.) We need to be very clear about our 2.0 goals and audiences when planning for implementation.

"These assumptions underestimate a critical element of successful technology development, namely, that the local climate of library , information, and technology use at a given institution is paramount in determining the need for and potential success of a given service." (248)
This is, obviously, one of the remedies to the "technolust" phenomenon. However, as I mentioned in yesterday's post, many of us (myself included) have a tendency to make assumptions about our patrons that aren't necessarily true. In order to remedy this, Ohio University conducted 2 surveys to learn more about their patrons. I think that interviewing patrons or holding several focus groups would be other great ways to gain a better understanding of patrons. However, getting patrons to participate in these is a problem unto itself. Ohio University held prize drawings (prizes were $100) in order to draw more patrons to their survey, but not all libraries have the resources to do this. Of course, there are less expensive options - donated gift cards from the bookstore, candy or other edibles.

I found some of the surveys' results to be quite surprising:
"Only 6% reported owning a 'smartphone' such as a Blackberry or iPhone..." (251)
I expected more of the participants (81% of whom were undergraduates) to own smartphones. This is a great example of a false assumption.

"Contrary to assumptions that digital natives spend more time online, higher age and academic status are both closely correlated with increased time spent engaged with the internet...graduate students and digital immigrants were twice as likely to spend over 40 hours per week online as undergraduates or digital natives, who are more likely to spend 21-30 hours online per week." (252)
This is exactly the opposite of what I expected to read.

"Students were most likely to indicate interest in us[ing] downloadable toolbars in Firefox and/or Facebook library applications." (253).
Because toolbars require the patron to be proactive (they must download the toolbars to their computers), I assumed that they would not be popular. (In my mind, the least amount of work or clicks is better...perhaps another false assumption.) Also, I was surprised to read that students were interested in Facebook apps. Many articles that I have read regarding Facebook and academic libraries indicated that students didn't really want the library to infringe on their turf. Perhaps this is a sentiment that varies from institution to institution.

This article left me wanting to know more about how the authors and Ohio University used the surveys' results in the implementation of new technologies. If I get my hands on Informing Innovation, I will let everyone know if it is worth the read!

Thank you for reading!

"Face It! Reference Work and Politeness Theory Go Hand in Hand"

2009-12-15T08:37:00.001-08:00

Now that the hectic pace of the fall semester has started to wind down a bit, I have been able to catch up on some professional reading! As I mentioned in my last post, one of my professional resolutions for the upcoming year is to use this blog to document some of my favorite (or perhaps least favorite) articles/papers/essays. I am hoping that this will serve as a public annotated bibliography that will serve me and other librarians! So here is my first posting...

Aldrich, A.W., & Leibiger, C.L. (2009). Face it! Reference work and politeness theory go hand in hand. In Mueller, D.M. (Ed.), Pushing the edge: explore, engage, extend. Proceedings of the Fourteenth National Conference of the Association of College and Research Libraries, March 12-15, 2009, Seattle, WA (pp. 235-246). Chicago: Association of College and Research Libraries.

I was browsing the contents of the 2009 ACRL Annual Conference Proceedings, and this title jumped out at me. When I was a new librarian, I (naively) thought that if a library offered its patrons the resources that they need or want, they would obviously flock to the library to use those resources. Additionally, they would naturally ask librarians for help if they didn't understand how to use a resource. I have come to realize that collections are resources are really only half of the equation...the reputation of the library and its staff are the other half. Now, I know that I was not or am not the first person to have this realization, but I had never come across it in professional literature.

There are a number of excellent points made in this paper that I would like to highlight:

"The relational dimension of reference service has a direct influence on the perception of the library by its users." (237)
Well, yes, obviously. However, I think librarians sometimes forget about the word-of-mouth marketing that our patrons do or do not do for us. This statement reinforces the notion that every reference encounter we have (at the reference desk, at the circulation desk, in the stacks, in our office, etc.) has an impact on how our community perceives us. If a patron has a positive experience with a librarian, not only will they be more likely to come back, but they will also (hopefully) tell their friends/colleagues about that experience. Likewise, if a patron has a negative experience, they will be unlikely to return and could possibly advise their friends/colleagues to avoid the library and librarians. I believe this is something that librarians need to keep in mind any time they are working with or around patrons.

"Users, however, evaluate reference transactions primarily in relational terms: first and foremost are librarian attitude and relationship quality, and then approachability. Information and knowledge base follow these interpersonal dimensions in importance." (237)
This is really interesting, because, as the authors point out, this is the opposite of how librarians perceive the reference transactions. Librarians tend to place the emphasis on the information retrieval/knowledge aspect of the reference transaction. The authors attribute the value the patrons place on the approachability and attitude of the librarian to Brown and Levinson's politeness theory. This theory has two aspects: negative-politeness (in which people do not want to inhibited by others) and positive-politeness (in which people hope that their "wants be desirable to at least some others" (238)). Perhaps, as a profession, we need to shift how we perceive our transactions, as well as how we train our future professionals to handle transactions.

"The reference desk setting reflects this orientation through the high power differences that exist between the librarian as the information expert and the patron as the information novice." (239)
The authors go on to state that this creates a "high social distance" between the librarian and the patron. The authors also point out that many patrons are afraid to look "stupid" or be chastised for not knowing how to do something. This statement will certainly make think about my non-verbal actions when I am sitting at the reference desk. Not only should librarians seem approachable with respect to not looking completely engrossed in other work, but we need to be approachable with our body language and facial expressions. This also made me think about the IL sessions I hold for faculty members. If I can, I prefer to have the students gather around me while I sit on a slightly elevated chair. I don't like to stand in front of them lecturing at them, and I think the reason is that I don't want to create this "high social distance" between them and me. I think it removes some of the intimidation they might feel and perhaps makes them more comfortable, not only with me, but the librarians in general.

"The preference in the academic library for patrons to engage in self-help first contributes to the potential for criticism. Massey-Burzio points out that users assume that they ought to be capable of doing research in a library, and they could be subject to censure if they fail to do so." (241)
Being active in the First-Year Seminar program here, I found this passage to be quite interesting. I don't believe that my colleagues expect undergraduates to be capable of doing all of their library research on their own, but the patrons seem to have a different perception of our expectations. Perhaps we as professionals need to be more clear with our patrons as to what levels of proficiency we expect from those individuals with certain levels of attainment (e.g. first-year vs. sophomore vs. junior vs. senior). It's possible that we think they understand what their proficiency level should be, but I think we are making a false assumption. If we present our expectations to our community more clearly, they will be more comfortable approaching librarians for help. Having said that, what if a patron has difficulty with a certain aspect of research in which we feel they should be proficient - will they then feel alienated/ashamed/embarrassed?

There is one other passage I would like to highlight, but I will not elaborate on at this time:
"Gers and Seward note three librarian behaviors that significantly affect accuracy: using the questions to probe for users' information needs, showing interest in users' questions, and being comfortable with users' questions, which increase the likelihood of a correct answer by over 100% (in the case of showing interest, accuracy is increased by almost 150%)." (237)

Although this article served to reinforce my beliefs about relationships/experiences being quite influential on our user population(s), it did give me a number of things to think about when I am at the desk or in an IL session.

I would love to hear your thoughts/comments/opinions, etc. on this topic!

Thank you for reading!

One year later...

2009-12-10T05:39:00.000-08:00

Wow! It's been a year since our Finish Line event at the BPL...my how the time has flown! Over the past calendar year we've implemented a number of 2.0 tools in my Library, and I now have some time for some 2.0 reflection. I hope some of my fellow 2.0 marathon runners will find them helpful.

1. We've implemented our blog! We were in the planning stages during the 26.2 course, and we went live in January 2009. It hasn't been the vehicle of interactivity that we had hoped for, but we do feel it has been successful in disseminating information to our patrons. We conducted a online survey last spring regarding the blog, and we received positive responses overall. The committee continues to meet once or twice a month to discuss the blog, but we've since transformed the committee into a general outreach group that focuses on improving our outreach to the College community.

2. We did decide to implement a Twitter feed. The feed has been added to our Library web site using a widget provided by Twitter. We have been using for general announcements and updates (perhaps some snow closing announcements as winter continues...) and to direct patrons to our blog. It has been easy to implement and does not require much staff time. Overall, we have been happy with this implementation.

3. I continue to maintain the Library's Flickr site. In addition to highlighting print discretionary purchases, I have also added "mosaics" of titles that we now get through Credo Reference and photos from the ongoing Alumni Archives digitization project. I continue to use notes for the book "mosaics" with links that direct our patrons to the online catalog or directly to Credo Ref.

4. This semester we had our Library student workers make two videos to place on the blog - a Welcome Back video and a Reserving a Study Room video. The student workers have had a lot of fun with these videos, and we hope that it makes them feel like this is their Library too. We hope to do more of these videos in the spring.

So, what now? I don't have any immediate 2.0 aspirations, but I am constantly looking for new 2.0 ideas that we might implement here. I am attending the ACRL Institute "Text Messaging, Twitter, and Libraries" presented by Joe Murphy at ALA Midwinter. I am really excited to learn more about texting/SMS implementations in libraries. I am also planning to attend the SPARC-ACRL forum at Midwinter to find out what is going on in the OA/SC world right now. Maybe I will see some of you at these events!

Non 2.0 aspirations for 2010...
My professional New Year's Resolution is to start using this blog as a vehicle for my thoughts regarding libraries, librarians, professional literature, etc. (My personal New Year's Resolution, for those of you that are interested, is to increase my 'cinematic literacy' by subscribing to Netflix and allowing my friends to control my queue...they sometimes ask if I even know what a movie is.). By doing this I hope to have a place where my professional thoughts are gathered and perhaps engage with other librarians on a range of topics. I also plan to continue working towards some of my long-term professional goals: becoming more active in professional associations (I hope to apply for the Emerging Leaders program...this is my last year of eligibility), contributing to the field, and, when I'm eligible, applying for the Fulbright Specialists Program.

I hope that 2009 has treated you all well and thank you for reading (my very looong post)!

How long until lunch?

2008-11-25T07:04:00.000-08:00

Yum! Yesterday I got my first issue of Food Network Magazine in the mail, so this is a timely Thing. Lately I have been getting most of my recipes from magazines at the checkout aisles at the supermarket (Family Circle, Good Housekeeping, etc.). I try to find quick but healthy (and relatively inexpensive) ideas for our dinners, and these magazines give me a lot of good ideas. Having said that I certainly do use the Food Network’s website for recipe ideas. A nice feature about this website is that you can keep an online recipe box, which saves on paper. However, the recipes sometime disappear, so I also email them to myself and keep a recipe folder.

I am a huge macaroni and cheese fan (really anything with pasta and cheese is ok in my book), so here is a recipe I want to try soon!

For this Thing, I decided to try Recipe Source because I am unfamiliar with it. I really like how you can browse by ethnic dishes or by the type of dish. Even though I am not really a great cook or an experienced cook, sometimes I like to look at ethnic recipes to see if I can “spice up” (pun intended) some our favorite dishees. Chicken Korma is one of my other favorite foods, so I was happy to see that there was a recipe on this site. I am also a proud cat mommy, so I was excited to see “Cat Food & Treats” as a category on Recipe Source. Here is a recipe for Mikey’s Mackeral Cat Munchies that I know my kitties would go bananas over!

Thank you for reading!

Tweet away!

2008-11-25T06:34:00.001-08:00

As my Library has been planning for our blog over the past couple of months, we discussed having a Twitter feed on our blog (or also on our Library’s homepage). Our original inspiration was theUniversity of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign’s Undergraduate Library’s use of a Twitter feed (see UGL Alerts on the right side of the page). We thought this would be a great way to inform patrons of more urgent information such as snow closings or technical issues (including when databases are down). It also makes the website dynamic, so patrons know to check it often. Even though I still really like what UIUC has done with Twitter, it seemed like we would be duplicating a lot of information that we hope to have on our blog. Students could still subscribe to updates using RSS or FeedBurner, so the mobility part is also covered. Having said that, I think after we have our blog up and running for a few months, it’s possible that we will revisit Twitter.

I use Twitter in my personal life to keep in touch with family and friends. Sometimes I put up a funny story from the day or a website that I like. It is so quick and easy to do! Twitter has replaced instant messaging in my personal life.

Thank you for reading!

Internet radio

2008-11-18T08:38:00.001-08:00

First I have to say…FNX rules! Ok, now that I got that out of my system I will move onto Internet radio. I do listen to Internet radio on a regular basis. My favorite is Hit-Radio Antenne 1 from Baden-Wuerttemberg.

I had never heard of Pandora, so I decided to check it out. What a great concept! It seems somewhat similar to Genius in iTunes, but it is not limited to music you own. It was also very easy to use. I typed in “Supreme Beings of Leisure” and it immediately got started. I then decided to create an account (because I definitely plan on using this resource again), and it took me all of 30 seconds. I like that you can create different radio stations, because my music mood changes from day to day (and sometimes hour by hour or minute by minute). The one downside that I found was the lack of German artists. I tried to create a station based on Silbermond and Juli (two very popular German groups), and I couldn’t do it. I also tried to create a Bollywood station and couldn’t. Maybe in time these types of music will be added. I am very excited about this resource though!

I remedied the German pop/Bollywood problem by going to Seeqpod. When I first went to the website, I wasn’t exactly sure what to search. So I clicked on one of the items they were featuring (which happened to be Bollywood). I did a search for Silbermond, and there were a lot of results. I clicked on the “Discoveries” tab, and it listed similar songs/artists. Overall I found this site to be less intuitive than Pandora, but it did fill the gaps that I encountered in Pandora. I will definitely use this resource again!

Thank you for reading!

Internet Archive

2008-11-18T07:36:00.001-08:00

I love looking at the Wayback machine! Here is my Library’s current website, and here is the original site. What a difference! This was such a fun Thing. My coworkers and I loved looking at the sites for our College and our Library.

I took a look at the Moving Image Archive, because we do get students who are looking for video clips to use in presentations (and they are not always comfortable using YouTube, which makes us happy that think about the source of their information, even though there is some good stuff on YouTube). I took a look at the News & Public Affairs. The television sub-collections were really great. I took a loot at the September 11 Televesion archive. If you scroll down a little bit, they have links to videos from the major networks throughout the day. This was hard for me to watch, because I remember quite vividly where I was at what time and what was on television. I think these sub-collections will be quite useful when I am helping students at the reference desk.

Thank you for reading!

E-books

2008-11-18T06:48:00.001-08:00

As a librarian I am quite excited about books infiltrating the world of technology and gadgets. As a reader I don’t care to read my books on the computer or on a hand-held device. (The thought of straining my eyes like that gives me a headache.) As an information seeker and a naturally curious person I am ecstatic about the number of colleges, universities, institutes, and organizations who are making books, journals, and images available through digital collections.

I first looked at the World Public Library, because I had heard of it but had never taken a look at it. I wasn’t really sure what to search, because I know that these sites are not always comprehensive and I wasn’t sure what it would actually have. This site does give you the option of browsing their (125!) collections. The first collection that caught my eye was the Asian Classics Input Project. This collection contains a number of Buddhist texts that can be viewed in both Roman and Tibetan script. I was really quite impressed by this! I was saddened to see that it cost money to access these texts though. Even though it is only $8.95 a year, I am not willing to spend money to look at these texts. However, this is an affordable price for a graduate student who is doing research in this area. I then went to the Digital South Asia Library to see what type of information they would have. They do have a number of interesting texts that are free to view, but a lot of them are on disparate topics. They aren’t a “collection” as such, which makes this resource a little less appealing to me. I also looked at SARAI (South Asian Resource Access on the Internet). Of all the resources, this was my favorite. I liked that you could browse the information by country, by type of resource, or by topic. Using the topical links, I found The Sanskrit Library, which is another free resource.

Again, I love the fact that people have access to books and manuscripts (for pleasure and for learning) more now than they ever have. I still prefer to read my leisure materials in print, but I love to search online digital collections related to my own personal curiosities. As a librarian, I don’t feel at all threatened by books shifting into the electronic milieu.

Thank you for reading!

IM/chat reference

2008-11-12T07:54:00.001-08:00

IMing is something that I was quite familiar with in college; I think most of us at that time would IM someone over calling them. For personal use it is great, because you can talk to a couple of people at one time.

I think (in my Library) IM/chat reference would be a little hard to implement. First, our reference desk gets really busy, so it would be hard to manage face-to-face questions, email questions, telephone questions, and IM/chat questions at once. I like the idea of having a person who is not on the reference desk monitoring this feature, but our staff is so small that if you are not on the desk you are probably trying to get everything else done. Email questions are nice because you have time to think about the best response, but you don’t always get an immediate response or any response at all from the patron. The nice thing about chat is that you get instantaneous feedback from the patron, so you know if something is working or not.

Overall I think IM/chat reference is a great feature to offer to one’s patrons, and maybe someday my Library will look into implementing it.

Thank you for reading!

Social bookmarking

2008-11-12T07:30:00.001-08:00

Like RSS, I have tried to implement social bookmarking sites into my personal life but to no avail. I really like the concept of them, but I just find it hard to make them relevant to my life. I went into Clipmarks, because I had never heard of it. I didn’t really like interface and didn’t find it intuitive to use. I also looked at Digg, because I see buttons for it a lot on my favorite websites. Digg seems to be very similar to Clipmarks, but for whatever reason I find it a lot easier to use. I did a search for Bhutan, and it retrieved a couple of articles and a video. Although the results were interesting, it was not worth my time to search this site. Next I went to Delicious, which I have used a couple of times before. I did another search for Bhutan, and the results list was much bigger than in Digg. This is one of the results that I retrieved, and it is something that I would like to read occasionally (if it is ever updated again!). Overall I think I liked Delicious the best; I found the user interface to be easy to use and my results list was much better than in the other sites.

Thanks for reading!

Exploring my classmates' findings

2008-11-05T11:06:00.001-08:00

I love this list of my classmates’ findings, because I try to get to everyones’ blogs but that doesn’t always happen. Here are a few that I chose to look at:

Because I really began looking at the list on Election Day, the first place I visited was538. This was the first post that I read, and I found it interesting because I just purchased Gelman’s book Red State, Blue State, Rich State, Poor State for my library’s collection. (Please note that there is some unsavory language in the comments of the post.) I kept this post in mind as the election coverage began last night.

Next I went to Unshelved. Although the humor of the comic strip isn’t really my cup of tea, I really got a kick out of thePimp my Bookcart contest and pictures. I immediately sent these on to my colleagues, and we agreed that this would be a really fun thing to do!

I had been introduced to AquaBrowser in the past, and I wasn’t too impressed with it. So I decided to revisit AquaBrowser to see if my opinion of it has changed. There are many features I like about this particular browser – the tag cloud and the list of limiters on the right side. However, I find the screen to be way to busy. I think sometime like the tag cloud would be useful to our students for the purposes of refining their topics/search strings or thinking of related terms.

Overall, I found the diversity of everyone’s interests to be fascinating.

Thank you for reading!

Dream Big!

2008-11-05T08:34:00.000-08:00

I first have to say that unfortunately I am not the creative, big thinker, so I will probably not have as many grand ideas as some of my classmates. My strengths are organization and implementation.

My library has already started to think about how 2.0 tools can be used in order reach our patrons. One way (as everyone knows!) is Flickr. We have also started to plan a blog, which we hope will not only be informative but fun as well. We hope that the mixture of Library information with fun items will enhance the Library’s approachability factor and make our patrons a little more excited about the Library and its resources. Another tool our Library has recently implemented is SubjectsPlus. Our SubjectsPlus includes an A-Z list of our databases with descriptions, links to our e-book collections, subject guides, custom class guides, and FAQs/How do I … ? (both general and subject-specific). This tool has proven to be a tremendous supplement to our website.

I guess my only “dream big” idea would be short video tutorials that show patrons how to use our resources. These could include the online catalog, our e-books, and various databases. They could also be done a different levels - basic, intermediate, advanced. These tutorials could be seamlessly added to our website, SubjectsPlus, and/or our blog. I am excited to read my classmates’ big ideas!

Thank you for reading!

Google Docs

2008-11-05T07:43:00.001-08:00

I have found the Google online tools to be quite helpful in both my personal and professional life. In addition to being a full-time librarian, I am also an online teaching assistant at one of my alma maters. My counterpart is lives in Louisville, KY, and our boss is in Pittsburgh, PA. We have been using Google Docs in order to collaborate on spreadsheets and documents. This has proven to be quite helpful! In the past couple of months, the staff at my library has started to use Google Sites to organize workflows for a number of different projects. Although Google Sites has been useful, we get the bulk of our work done in our weekly meetings.

Thank you to everyone who voted in this election! It was so great to see such a large voter turnout and general enthusiasm about the election!

Image from:

http://www.ace-clipart.com/american-flag-clipart-02.html

Etsy!

2008-10-27T10:52:00.000-07:00

I have a love/hate relationship with Etsy. I love, love, love it, and my bank account hates, hates, hates it! I stumbled upon Etsy a couple of months ago when I was looking for pictures of cute penguins. This adorable set of felt penguins came up in my results lists, and then I followed a link to a book on how to make them. The book was listed in Etsy, and thus our relationship began. I have ordered a number of things from Etsy – jewelry, switchplate covers, prints – and I have been satisfied with everything. Just as Jennifer suggested, I have already purchased a few holiday gifts on Etsy. I find the quality of the things I buy to be quite good, the items are unique (you can’t necessarily get them at the mall or big department stores), the prices to be reasonable, and I really like supporting independent artisans. I like the “Main Showcase” feature on the front page of Etsy. I try to browse this once a day to continue getting ideas for holiday gifts. I also like how I can add items and sellers to a “favorites” list; however, I wish that I could make my list public so I could give it to my family for gift ideas. I haven’t yet found a way to make that possible. Here is a link to one of my favorite sellers. I really do think that this is a great way to business, and I don’t think that a lot of these sellers will be badly affected by the economic downturn. As I said, the prices for the most part are reasonable, and I find this to be a much better option for my shopping than going to the mall and buying mass-produced items for the same price or more.

I also took a look a MOO, which I had never heard of before. I think I might take advantage of some of the products they offer for the holidays. For instance, I have a 3-year-old niece who just loves stickers. I think she would go nuts if she saw herself on a sticker. Again, I like how these items are unique and special, but are also affordable.

Thank you for reading!

Really, in my own backyard? :)

2008-10-27T08:26:00.000-07:00

This was another thing that I enjoyed, because I wasn’t really familiar with these tools. Overall, I liked WickedLocal better than American Towns. I don’t have any good reason for it other than WickedLocal was simply more appealing to me. However, I do like that American Towns is national, because I am from PA and go down there to visit a few times a year. So I do see American Towns being useful to me. One link I found that might be useful is this one about Halloween.

I also found Placeblogger to be great, because it is international in scope. What a great tools for someone traveling to a new destination (that is, of course, if that destination has a placeblog). I was excited to find some placeblogs for Germany, but none existed. However, I did find on for a location in Austria. Many of the blogs that I viewed had no postings, so they weren’t really useful to me at all. I think if this tool was updated more, it would be a really great tool.

Thank you for reading!

LibraryThing Thing

2008-10-27T07:36:00.000-07:00

I was excited to see this week’s LibraryThing Thing (does that make sense?), because it is a 2.0 tool with which I am unfamiliar. Of course I have heard about it before, but I haven’t taken the time yet to explore it. I really like the ability to search the user-generated tags; I wish I would have known about this when I was working in a public library and had to do reader’s advisory! Signing up for a free account was really easy, and within a couple of minutes I had already added books to my library and joined a group. I decided to do a tag search for chick lit, as that is my favorite genre and I haven’t be able to keep up with it for a while. I found this general tag search useful, but what I really liked were the tagmashes! What a great idea! Most genres have a number of sub-genres, and most people prefer one or two of these sub-genres to other sub-genres. I clicked on “chick lit, travel” and found some books that I might like to read and others that I have already read and enjoyed. Two that I might like to read are Weekend in Paris and When in Rome. Another tagmash that I might use is "chick lit, humor, mystery". I also like how Danbury incorporated the tags into their catalog; again this would be great for reader’s advisory in the public library. I also think it would be useful for students who trying to find books for their research. LCSH usually provides a great start, but I think that user-generated tags would be better understood by college students.

I do use Visual Bookshelf on Facebook, but I usually only update this with books that I am reading. I do not use this to create a catalog of the books I own, but I could see myself doing that with LibraryThing. Overall, I like LibraryThing better than Visual Bookshelf, because I think it gives users a lot more options.

Thanks for reading!

Podcasts

2008-10-22T10:47:00.001-07:00

One of my majors in college was German, and I love speaking and hearing the German language. However, I no longer have a way to hear it or speak on a regular basis. So this one reason I really like podcasts. One of my favorites places to go on the Web to practice my German is Deutsche Welle’s website. Luckily for me, they have many different podcasts that I can listen to on my computer or download onto my iPod through iTunes. This is a great way for me to hear native speakers and keep my listening comprehension up-to-date. I also used to listen to Rick Steve’s travel podcasts a lot when I didn’t have cable and couldn’t watch the Travel Channel. I was able to learn about a number of destinations and glean many tips from Rick Steves and his guests; however, it was difficult for me to hear about a destination and not see images of it. So it was harder for me to listen to these on a walk or a jog, but nice if I could sit at my computer and look up images of the destinations.

I know that many libraries are podcasting as well. If you go into iTunes and search the podcasts for “library”, you will get a number of different types of podcasts from many different types of libraries. I think that podcasting is 2.0 tool that is a little bit more difficult to implement in libraries, because you really need to have an audience that is already captivated.

Thank you for reading!

YouTube

2008-10-22T10:34:00.000-07:00

I was surprised by the different types of library videos found on YouTube. When I was in library school, I took a marketing class. For this class, we had to undertake a large marketing project related to libraries. One group of classmates created a video that they placed on YouTube to market the use of libraries in general. I thought that this video was very creative and well done. The other type of video that I was surprised to find (although I probably shouldn’t have been) was instructional videos FOR librarians. I was not surprised to find that many libraries were advertising themselves and their services (including video tours) on YouTube. I am a online TA for my alma mater, and the students were asked to evaluate library fundraising videos on YouTube. From the evaluations I read, the students believe that the video had to have an obvious purpose/agenda, needed to be fairly short in length, and needed to be put together well. This does not mean that they thought the videos needed to be professionally done, but done well enough that it was obvious there was care and thought put into the creation of the video. I expected to see more instructional videos that librarians have created for their patrons (for instance, how to search the OPAC or a database). I know that some libraries have started creating these types of videos (See the “Finding articles from a citation” video tutorial). I think putting more of these types of videos out there might be a better way to reach our patrons.

Thank you for reading!

Photos on Yelp!

2008-10-15T07:43:00.000-07:00

As I’ve mentioned before, I use Yelp a lot. One of the things that I look for when I go to Yelp is pictures of the location. This is especially true of restaurants. When I look at the pictures of restaurants, I determine if the place is clean and kept up well and also what type of dress might be the most appropriate if I go there to eat. One of my favorite places to eat is Border Café in Cambridge. I looked it up on Yelp to see if there were any pictures, and I think that the pictures posted on the site were accurate. You can see from the exterior pictures that the restaurant seems to be kept up well, and you can tell from the group shots that it is a fun, relaxed, and casual place to eat. I also looked up Cambridge 1, which is another spot that I try to frequent. There weren’t as many pictures for this restaurant, but there was one that showed their pizzas. I personally think it looks delicious and makes me want to go eat there! Also, you can see from the pictures that this restaurant is a little on the darker side, which makes me think that it is probably a more calm and quiet place to enjoy a meal.

I also just used Yelp to see there was a yoga studio local to me that I would possibly try. The pictures were extremely helpful in this case, because they showed me the set up of the studio (in one of the studios passers-by could look right in), how clean the studio is, and if participants are using any equipment other than a yoga mat.

Thank you for reading!

Photosharing

2008-10-15T07:19:00.001-07:00

Thank you so much to Jennifer for the publicity to my Library’s Flickr page! We’ve worked really hard on it, so it is nice to see that other people will view it. If anyone has any feedback on the page, I would certainly love to hear it (good, bad, or otherwise).

Photosharing tools are something that I have taken advantage for many years, as my family lives in Pennsylvania and I have moved around a lot. I like being able to take pictures of what I am doing up here, and not only get to tell my family about, but show them as well. In my personal life, I use a Flickr Pro Account. I have found Flickr quite easy to use, both as a poster of pictures and a viewer. I have yet to find a photosharing tool that I like more than Flickr.

I first took a look at Photobucket for my discovery activity. I do like some of the special effects that you can do with your pictures, but I didn’t really find anything that I would use personally or professionally. I did a search for cats and looked at some of the pictures (very cute!), but again, I cannot see much of a use for this particular tool in my life. UPDATE: I had my picture taken with the stars of one of my favorite TV show this weekend, and I went onto Photobucket to see if I could create a funny greeting card for Xmas. I was able to use the sticker function in order to put Santa hats and winter apparel on us. It was really cute and pretty easy to figure out!

I also took a look at Picasa to see if it is something I would use to edit or organize my personal photos. I didn’t like that I would have to download software to my computer, even if it is from Google.

I also took a look at SmugMug, which is a site that I had never heard of. Although it is a little more expensive than Flickr, it is a tool that I would consider switching to for my personal photos. I like the idea of themes for my photos. I have a number of travel photos, so I think it would be nice to select a theme for these photos. Other than that, SmugMug didn’t seem too different than Flickr.

Thank you for reading!

RSS

2008-10-06T09:41:00.001-07:00

Although I read several blogs everyday, I have not found RSS feeds to be useful. I have tried to implement Bloglines and the Google Reader in my personal life, but I have never been successful. I think this is because I like going straight to the source; receiving the RSS feeds feels somewhat cold and distant.

Having said that, I can certainly understand why they have become so popular. I would imagine that many people enjoy having all their content accessible in one location. One of the reasons my Library would like to implement a blog is because feed subscribers could receive emergency updates very easily through RSS technology. I have also heard of libraries using RSS feeds to notify patrons of new purchases within a certain subject area, which I found to be clever and efficient.

I will keep trying to give into feed readers, but I am not sure that I can be converted!

Apartment classifieds

2008-10-02T05:52:00.000-07:00

I’ve moved a lot in the past few years (fortunately I am going on my third year in my current apartment, which is a record for me!). I’ve used Craigslist for my moves both around Boston and out-of-state. I really like this website for apartment listings, because you get all types of people posting. You get a person who is looking to sublet, you get the person who owns a few rental properties, you get small management companies that don’t have much money to advertise, and you also get large management companies who are trying every outlet they can. The one thing I don’t like about Craigslist for apartment searches is that sometimes the results list is a bit overwhelming. Although you can search within the results list, I don’t always find this to be very effective (maybe it’s because I am a librarian and I’m picky about these things). Having said that, I find Craigslist in general to be an interesting concept. I haven’t thought of using it for things other than apartment rentals, but I am certainly going to explore the site a bit more.

I have also used Boston.com for apartment searches. I find that the types of postings are a bit more narrow than Craigslist. It’s usually (although not always) medium to large companies who probably have a bit more money. (This is not always a bad thing when looking for a home though.) The one think I do like about Boston.com’s website is the number of limiters they give. You can search in one town, for number of bedrooms, for maximum rent, etc. quite easily. However, due to the fact that there are not as many postings at Craigslist, you can sometimes narrow yourself down to no results.

In summary, I like both of these websites for apartment listings for very different reasons. If I have to move again in the next few years, I think that I would use both of these sites in my search.

Thanks for reading!

Reviews

2008-09-30T07:57:00.001-07:00

As I mentioned in a previous post, I do use review websites (frequently) in my personal life. I also use them in my professional life. As a collection development librarian, I read a number of different review resources in order to purchase the best content I possible can for my collection. I really like to use Amazon, because it not only gives tidbits from sources like Publisher’s Weekly, Choice, and The Washington Post, it also shows user reviews. If there are a number of substantive, unbiased user reviews, I will take these into consideration when selecting books. If a number of college students commented that they found a particular book to be very dense and hard-to-read, I will take that into account when selecting books.

Here is a link to a review I wrote about one of my favorite books

Thanks for reading!

Social networking...personally and professionally

2008-09-29T12:23:00.001-07:00

I must say that I’ve been using social networking tools in my private life for a few years now. In high school, I was online AOL all the time chatting to friends or using the discussion forums to practice my German. In college, I was constantly on AIM; I think I used it more than any of my phones. Currently I use a number of social networking tools in my personal life. I am addicted to Facebook, as it helps me to stay in touch with family and friends from high school, college, grad schools, etc. I use Flickr to keep in touch visually with my family in Pennsylvania and Twitter to share my random thoughts with friends and family. I also use Yelp all the time to get reviews on everything from restaurants to yoga studios. Etsy, although not purely a social networking site, is another addiction of mine. It introduces me to new crafts and unique handmade objects that I normally would never have seen.

I have had a much harder time finding a use for social networking sites in my professional life however. I am on Linked In, but I haven’t really taken advantage of that tool yet. I do join ALA-related Facebook groups to get information and news, and I also read some professional blogs. Some of the reference librarians at my Library are currently attempting implement a staff planning wiki. We hope to pilot this wiki with our blog planning, so I don’t have any feedback to report on staff planning wikis yet. The same reference librarians have also created a delicious account. The reference librarians collect links that they have found useful and post them on delicious to share with the rest of the staff. This is also a very new project, so I don’t have too much feedback yet. I have toyed with the idea of creating a Facebook page for our library, but I have not really seen a successful library Facebook page yet. (Although I would love to hear of others’ experiences with this tool!) I am hoping that by reading some of my classmates’ posts that I will get more ideas for the implementation of social networking tools in libraries. Has anyone used Second Life professionally? I have heard of some libraries/librarians doing this, and I am really curious to hear how they did it/how it was received.

Thanks for reading!

What's a library blog good for?

2008-09-26T06:08:00.000-07:00

Hmmmm…now that’s a good question. My library is currently in the beginning stages of planning a blog, so we have already started to think of answers to this question. All of us realize that if it isn’t going to help or interest our community, it’s not worth the time and effort. However, we do feel that there are a number of things that the community would find helpful (and maybe even…dare I say it…fun or interesting!).

First, we think that it would be a great way to showcase our collections and services to our community. Our school is increasingly getting into online education, so we will not always have patrons who will be able to enter the physical library. This would a great way to reach this particular population. We’ve thought of doing something like “the database of the month” and perhaps highlighting that database with related trivia questions.

Also, we have displays in the library that we could also do online. One example of this is our “Word Wise” program. One of our part-time reference librarians picks a word a week and makes signs with two examples of how the word has been used in sentences. We then post one sign on the reference desk and another above the dictionary stand (with the dictionary opened to the word’s entry). This could certainly be done online with links leading patrons to our online subscription to the OED.

Another way to use the blog would be to update the community on general library news (quiet study hours, group study rooms, library events, keeping valuables safe, etc.). For more temporary news bits, I think implementing a Twitter feed on the blog would be really great. (See U. Illinois UC’s Undergrad Library’s UGL Alerts for a great example of this : http://www.library.uiuc.edu/ugl/). It is not uncommon for us to have a printer or two go down for a little bit during the height of the semester, and this would be one way to inform our patrons. In addition, we have 24 computers in our library’s reading room that serve as our dedicated teaching space, so we could alert patron’s to these computers’ availability and direct them to the computer lab if need be. And of course we can also inform patrons about snow closings, which is always an issue in Boston!

Finally, our staff likes that our community could receive updates to their emails, feed readers, or mobile devices. This means that patrons could stay up-to-date at their convenience, even when the library is closed (including during longer holiday breaks or the summer).

I’d love to hear other suggestions or feedback, as we are meeting next Tuesday to start planning and dividing the work among our staff members.

Thanks for reading!

Welcome!

2008-09-25T07:18:00.000-07:00

Hi everyone! This where I will be sharing my adventures in libraries and 2.0. To see one of my current projects, please click here. Thanks for stopping by!