ACRL 2009 notes

Just the highlights, as I saw them:
• BYU matched 438K records from their catalog and also in LibraryThing. There were ~ 1 million LCSH, ~16 million tags. For a price you can augment your OPAC LCSH with the tags (cleaned up by LT to get rid of non-descriptive tags like “to read”, “unread”, etc.) and you will get far fewer 0 hit searches. Many tags were very likely to help with selection as opposed to traditional LCSH.
• Quote from session Ron attended re current budget cuts, etc.: “use this time to transform, or use this time to muddle through as usual”
• Dreyfus model of skills acquisition: formally defines skill acquisition, from novice to advanced beginner to competent to proficient to expert. Move is to an analytical/intuitive “tacit understanding” vision of what is possible, and you can’t go back! Move from looking up every rule to becoming more emotionally engaged. Graduate education takes you only to advanced beginner. Could be used to describe stages for RPT, to build career ladders, to create succession plans. Things on my “to read” list include:
o Benner, P. E. (2001). From novice to expert : Excellence and power in clinical nursing practice (Commemorative ed.). Upper Saddle River, N.J.: Prentice Hall.
o Dreyfus, H. L. (1992). What computers still can't do : A critique of artificial reason. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press.
• Resolved: MLIS is not relevant to the future of academic libraries. Both sides made convincing points and all agreed that what is taught and hired needs to change to meet new challenges. Need innovators, creative, agile, analytical people with can-do attitude, who are comfortable with sudden change. Need team-building, problem-solving skills, data analysis training.
• All four keynotes I attended were great: Sherman Alexie (“when we’re alone, we call ourselves Indians”); Rushworth Kidder (most ethical decisions are hard because they involve right vs. right, one such category is justice vs. mercy); Robin Chase (how do we take advantage of “unused capacity”, like she did with Zip Car? Think about the % of time you actually use your car, how much it cost you to have it, how unsuitable it is for some of the things you need it to do, like hauling the Christmas tree); Ira Glass (using stories to teach a lesson, how to slow story down to stay in the moment by asking “what did you say next?”, how to use drama (music?) to create hooks to keep people interested and get them to care)
• Thriving in bad budget times:
o “Measuring performance is an exercise in measuring the past; use of that data to plan and improve the future is what is all important”; we don’t have the right data, don’t understand what we do have, aren’t asked for it, don’t know how to present it, don’t want to use it, find it hard to use for positive change. Our core business is changing; users want different things: undergrads want a place, grads want timely access to resources and services, faculty want collection support. See Transformational Times.
o Administrators are often in untenable positions about what they are able to communicate, but still need to do it (even if it’s “we don’t have enough info at this time, but when we get it, we’ll tell you”); underpromise and overdeliver; tell everyone at once.
o Think about the skills that you have trouble finding (e.g., project managers) and develop consortially. Stay in tune with changes in leadership—opportunities may arise that weren’t there before. Fail in fruitful ways.
• New models in e-books: can change the point of acquisition to when a user actually uses material (load records, pay at click—various models of this with different vendors, but all moving this way.) Con says you lose control of what you have in the collection, “librarians are known for knowing, that’s why I got into the profession, the power should stay with librarians”. Yikes! But some good points also: they can see the collection as a whole, know curricular and research needs, can balance money. One study showed 4-5 X higher usage of materials purchased this way vs. via traditional approval. Things to think about: others can see our catalog, could they initiate purchase? ; would we end up as libraries filled with “this year’s supplemental class materials?” Need to think about ILL, simultaneous use. See presenter's blog.

indexing

I have a bit of a pet peeve-- I try to stay up to date with reading articles and then I want to then save them to my "2009" folder on RefWorks so I can find them again. Of course I can type in the citations (slow and old school), but prefer to find references (in LISTA, in Library Lit) and export citations to RefWorks. Only it takes months for new articles to show up in those indexes.
Is there a better way? And why, again, do we pay for indexes? The articles I'm looking for aren't (yet?) in Google Scholar, Emerald doesn't seem to offer exporting of citations, but if/when Google figures out to get articles in Scholar faster, will indexes die? Do you use the value added (questionable for indexes like the two mentioned above) controlled vocabulary to mine these databases or would a google scholar search do it for you?

Index to Google Docs

When Linnea was home she looked through lots of recipe clippings and typed some she wanted into GoogleDocs and shared them with me. I was encouraged to type more and share them back-- and thought it might be a good idea to create an index of what we had already captured. Today I discovered that I can hyperlink from the index to the document itself-- something that might prove useful to those who are going to capture meeting minutes, etc., there?

Linking your GoogleDocs

Practice with pictures

OK, so here's a picture from last summer in England at the British Library.

Flickr and the Pollak Library

Something that comes to mind immediately for our Flickr photos is to have Veronica put up the historical photos that are on the photo abacus. What I loved about the LOC Flickr photos is that what was originally written as the title/context of the photo could be commented on by those who may know more, and then checked and edited by LOC to be more accurate about who was portrayed, significance.

the PL blogs

RSS works-- I can now follow those who do keep up their blogs (and I thought some posts were very interesting, insightful) and won't see them if people never post again.

Grants talk

We had a meeting with a rep from a DC area grant organization today about the new stimulus grants. Some interesting general thoughts:
-- your abstract is key, not too short, not too long, just right is best. Be clear about your research target, your hypothesis, and your quantitative and qualitative evaluation strategy (need sound, reasonable measures for the impact)
-- don't use passive voice
-- after the abstract, the most important section is the budget
-- Obama is serious about accountability and follow up, your money could be taken back if you don't do this

Some ideas that I would like to develop, if anyone is interested in working with me and/or others across campus:
-- one thing mentioned was "graduate research fellowships", is this something we could work on with SJSU library students to do work in our library?
-- a perennial idea with me: work with local high school librarians on information literacy needs for college level work (possibly could partner with Freshman programs to assess against a control group?)
-- work with Troy Tech interns for Information & Learning Commons jobs: are there projects they could do with the various components of the ILC, and could we have a cohort so that we get biggest bang for training?
-- another idea we've toyed with before: work with our student assistants on job/career readiness, turn our jobs into training grounds for specific skills needed by employers
-- something for the CSU virtual library infrastructure OR to fund projects that could help CSU libraries really work together on some key jobs we all do (I want to try "federated staffing"-- ask me!)

Notes from ALA midwinter 2009

Before I go to ACRL to learn even more things, here are some of the things that struck me at midwinter:

Products, new and improved:

Biblios.net: you create the catalog record, you can deposit it here (open source), anyone can use it

Overdrive: streaming video (~10,000 at this time); would this be useful for us?

RefWorks: has “grabit” bookmarklet, can pull in references anywhere there’s an isbn, such as amazon, catalog, etc.; is now accessible (well, Jaws can read anyway); can now set your shared folders to “site defined” so that anyone within IP range defined to WorldCat will be able to see their own link resolvers—neat for collaboration!

Schedule 3W: are we still using this to schedule ref/circ/av desks? If so, can we see some of the reports it can generate? If not, why?

Info about researchers: Community of Scholars (COS), they say it’s free to deposit info if you are a researcher, but I couldn’t see how? The brief info links up in the RefWorks cite…. Should show to various offices on campus (e.g., graduate studies, Faculty Development Center, Analytical Studies) in case they would be interested

Similarly ResearcherID by Thompson

Libramation media bank or libramate: RFID technology, standalone pickup and return stations for DVDs or even books, can reserve on web, card swipe pick up: could this be useful in media commons or as pick up for hold items, or during our reduced service hours?? Might Patrons fund?

Books:

William Bridges: Managing Transitions; he has grid to think through readiness for change

Ideas or good questions:

Why do we care if something has the same call number as something else?

Can we have librarians, staff write formal proposals for Patrons to fund? Keeps money flowing to ideas we, not just they, have.

NISO is working on “is authenticated by” tag standard

Systems librarian: we need to think about the role of IT in libraries, in universities, to see which things are uniquely handled in the library (need to sign up for listserv)

Staffing for the future: first make sure your processes are improved and streamlined, then make any cuts you need to, prioritize services according to your/campus, and only then look at staff talents in order to make a new staff plan (Maureen Sullivan in Organizational Development Discussion group)

You need to honor the past because it got us to where we are today; you don’t need to stick with it though

Can’t we put together a system of “self consultants” within our libraries, consortia, in order to take advantage of expertise?

Dashboards of quick and meaningful statistics

Shouldn’t we pursue relationships with some offices on campus to ensure that they know what tools we have or could purchase that can help them: citation indexes, journal citation reports, papers invited, community of scholars, refworks, etc?

Universities want to know what faculty publish, what impact that has, what collaborations, etc. (could we host page with organized, self submitted, lists of faculty publications (as RefShares??)

Library 2.0 here at the Pollak Library

I think there are many uses we have found already, and know we will find more as additional people in the library give it some thought.
I'd like to use del.icio.us more to share good links-- could we substitute a shared account (or more than one) to take the place of some of our rather antiquated links pages?

Guidelines, etc.

I found this thought provoking, and wish we could agree on such conventions here.
A guideline is simply a suggested practice established to assist people in performing some function, as in "Guidelines for Preparing a Teaching Portfolio."
A procedure is a standard practice that a department adopts in order to ensure consistency and efficiency, as in the steps for filing a complaint.
A policy is a formally adopted procedure, or set of procedures, that binds people to certain actions, as in a university's alcohol policy.
And a rule is an even stronger restriction or prescribed action set by the institution's trustees or some other legal entity, and thus has legal status. Violation of a university rule or policy usually exposes you to serious consequences.

From Chronicle of Higher Education, Chronicle Careers, 3/6/2009, by Gary A. Olson.

23 things on a diet

Now starting the process of our library "10 things"-- thanks to those who set it up. It's been awhile since I blogged, hope to start it up again as I reflect more on my day when I do.