when you think of librarians…

Forwarded by a friend…Cat and Girl.

giving in to lazy library patrons

And the Dewey Decimal System falls victim.  From the Denver Post:

By the end of the year, all six Rangeview branches and the district’s outreach office will dump the iconic Dewey and its numeric organizing system for one that relies on word categories such as “history” and “science.”

…

“For years, we’ve had focus groups and people consistently tell us, ‘I cannot, for the life of me, figure out how this library works,’ ” Sandlian Smith said. “So we decided to turn things upside down, and so far it seems to work well.”

I got a lot of problems with this.  First, Dewey already contains the categories they’re using, they’re just categorized numerically. If patrons can’t “figure out how this library works” then a librarian can give a brief introduction to the Dewey system.  It’s kinda what we do here.  Second of all, the movement toward the barnes and noble/borders categorization is ridiculous because patrons will always become lazier and eventually want librarians to hand deliver all their materials to them without them ever doing any work.

And really, has anyone consistently found exactly what they’re looking for on the first try? At least Dewey will ensure some organization in that similarly topical books will be found within just a slight deviation of the call number.  Part of the fun of browsing through the stacks is finding not just the object of desire, but those pleasant surprises that hadn’t presented themselves earlier.  Dewey ensures more precision of similar subject matter than in the store.

Also stated in the article:

Ken Neely, a 17-year patron of the Perl Mack branch, said he’s happy with the new system.

“I think it’s a good idea, especially if you are new to the library and don’t know the system. You don’t have to go to one of the librarians and ask for help,” Neely said. “That means they can spend more time helping people and doing research for you.”

Arrgh. We’re here to help people learn how to sharpen their information literacy skills, thereby becoming better researchers; we exist not to do their research for them.  Not only that, but how can we spend more time helping people if they are being conditioned not to ask for help in the first place?

This here, is the caveat of Web.2.0…the more people are tagging, friending and stuff-and-such like that, the lazier and more apathetic they become to learning how to use an OPAC, where they can find what they’re looking for just as quickly, if not more so, by reading a brief tutorial or getting a two minute instructional session on how to move through the stacks and where to place their eyes.

I’m all for keeping up with people’s technological or taxonomic proclivities, but laziness doesn’t fall under the Web 2.0 schema. Even LibraryThing’s Open Shelves Classification project doesn’t completely dismiss Dewey,  as its emphasis is to collaboratively reclassify rather than assign quasi-arbitrary taxonomies. Dewey shouldn’t become a martyr because patrons refuse to acknowledge their own numerophobia.

Here’s an idea, why not just paste subject heading labels, taken from Dewey, throughout the stacks? Or would that not be upside down enough?

review – the graveyard book

Reading works of Neil Gaiman, I’ve come to notice several intricacies in his writing that are admirable.  The first of which is that he seems to resist well the temptation to write any sequels to his works (other than the Sandman, of course).  Yes, some of his characters occasionally recur in his short works of fiction from time to time, but merely as a distant flash or strike of lightning. Some books are best when they stand alone.

A second observation could be that Gaiman’s knack for a good story hinges largely on how much he can keep you guessing, in the dark, as it were, for more detail about his characters and settings.  As his stories unfold, there is always left a nagging sense of wonder about what he has deliberately left un-described, resting in the shadows, taking form within the reader’s sense of wonder.

Such is the case with The Graveyard Book.  Admittedly inspired from Rudyard Kipling’s The Jungle Book, this story concerns the life of a young orphan, Nobody Owens, as he matures in the graveyard that is his home.  It is here that he finds family, knowledge, and ironically, a bit of shelter from the cruel living world beyond the locked gates of the cemetery.

Though considered a work of juvenile literature, The Graveyard Book is doubtless a cheeky, though spine-chilling, work for all readers. It is Gaiman’s puzzle for the reader to deduce which environment, that of the living or the dead, is most cruel and dangerous. More often than not, the choice is most eerily inconclusive.

At the very least, this is a wickedly and expertly told story; readers may wonder what life, or perhaps the lack of it, would be like on the dustier side of a ghoul-gate, compared to a chance meeting with an  “Every Man Jack” on a cold, pitch-dark and misty street corner.  At its best, The Graveyard Book is that plus more: growing up, the thrill of adventure, as well as living death, or perhaps even life, to the fullest.

epiphany

Master storysmith Neil Gaiman brilliantly incorporates the necessity of libraries and literacy within his latest, and lo, a Newberry is bestowed.  As it should be.

year of the ‘brarian

librarian.net just highlighted what US News and World Report have broken in their ongoing investigation…librarianship is groovy.

From the article:

That effort to land a job will be well worth it if you’re well suited to the profession: love the idea of helping people dig up information, are committed to being objective—helping people gain multiple perspectives on issues—and will remain inspired by the awareness that librarians are among our society’s most empowering people.

Seems about right.  If I could think of any simile that would approximate my approach toward the profession, it may just be this:

digitization – the process

Digitization is one of the groovier things I am involved with as a librarian.  The process  serves two major purposes, preservation and promotion.  Regarding preservation, digitization may not last as long or be as durable as having an item copied in microfilm, but having a sets of backups on discs and servers definitely can’t hurt either.

As for promotion, digitization gives libraries flair, highlighting the stuff that normally just gathers dust in our archives. Preserving it is priority, but promotion is aces too, since libraries always need a little work in the PR department.  Having a collection posted serves to gather more attention for the library, institution, etc.  For example, we just created a collection of one of the college’s past traditions of having a Christmas tableau, where a senior would be selected to portray The Virgin Mary with The Infant Jesus (I work at private institution as you may surmise).  This tradition of the Christmas Madonna was interesting to digitize because it really displays the atmosphere (as well as the mission or vision) of the particular time period of the college.

Rather than describe the whole process, I’ll highlight the first and most essential phase of digitization, the planning stage.  Whether you have images, audio or video, or even realia, the way I’ve learned to approach a digitization project is to plan as much as you can.  Thorough planning involves not only organizing the equipment and storage capabilities, but organizing the content and more importantly deciding upon your metadata scheme and workflow.  Considerations include:

• Accessibility – should all the public be able to view the collection?
• Metadata – what type of scheme (Dublin Core/EAD/MODS)? Will it be updated?
• Who will be doing the work, and how will it be divided (scanning/metadata entry/updates)? Will it cost to train? How will IT be involved?
• How large is the collection?  Could it and should it be reduced to more specific and  smaller sub-collections (yes, in my opinion)?
• What are the rights associated with the items to be displayed? Do you have a copyright statement established? Should you have one?
• Does any of the content need permission to be added/posted? Will there be objections by the institution and/or the public?
• What’s the cost? Think in terms of software, training, hosting, the actual work and maintenance.
• How does it fit in your library’s and institution’s vision and mission?

Patient planning can prevent massive migraines.  It reduces the chance one will have to completely restart their project if any key component is missing, inaccurate, or just wrong.   Proper planning makes every phase that much smoother.  Next installment…the technical stuff.

comic life

Egads.  With little to no artistic talent, I never thought I’d be creating something like a comic strip, much less a coherent, respectable piece of kitsch.  I almost feel ashamed, as the digital age can create any armchair artiste through a set of clever pixellation.

Such is the dilemma I’ve encountered after finding Comic Life, an insanely inexpensive piece of software ($30 for the deluxe version) that allows a user to create comic strip content with the ease of editing a powerpoint slide.

The beauty of comic life is its sheer potential.  All you need is some uploadable content, photos most likely, and import them into one of the many comic templates available; or if you’re feeling super imaginative, create your own template and arrange your layout accordingly with a chic click-and-drag. Complementing the myriad of templates is a plethora of fonts to style your text, background colors and gradient options to intensify your graphic oeuvres.

The downside:  There is the functionality of using lettering (as opposed to text), a rather unimaginative set of inflated fonts in Chuck-E-Cheese- o-vision, looking like the happy-fun-time vomit one would would expect after eating a fresh meat pie served by Mrs. Lovett.

But it’s well-worth overlooking for the sheer functionality.  Convert your work into JPEGs, or even export it as a movie (.avi for windows, .mov for Mac I assume).

Why libraries? Use it for posters, instruction guides, floor plans, newsletters.  Hey, why not even create a plain old comic strip, just for old-time sake?

resisting google: not so futile

Not too long ago I mused upon the idea of how some search engine companies are trying to provide more  human interaction when one has an online reference question, by either doing the searching or providing suggestions on how to perform the search.  This quasi virtual reference seems to be catching on, and librarians are suddenly becoming more recognized for the credibility they provide in their reference work.

This sentiment is the impetus for a new project that aims to compete with likes of the great goog, Reference Extract.  The project, an ever-increasing collaboration of libraries, aims to differ from Google in the credibility taken from the shrewd linkages that librarians provide in applying sound information literacy principles. Said better than myself:

Users will enter a search term and get results weighted towards sites most often referred to by librarians at institutions such as the Library of Congress, the University of Washington, the State of Maryland, and over 1,400 libraries worldwide.

The issue of credibility is interesting when compared to the measure of relevancy and popularity Google bases its index on.  The issue of credibility is more fully explained:

In essence linkages between web pages by anyone is replaced by citations to web pages by highly trained librarians in their daily work of answering the questions of scholars, policy makers and the general population. Instead of page rank, the team refers to this as “reference weighting.”

…

That is to say, it is no great leap to believe that working one-on-one with a librarian would yield highly credible results, but it also appears that gathering the sites librarians point to across these one-on-one interactions and making them searchable continues to yield highly credible results. Further since the librarians answer question on very wide range of topics, their answers can be applied to a general purpose search engine.

I find it clever that the organizers of RefEx measured their index by using the custom search engine provided by Google…beating it at its own game perhaps.

It is important to note that by using the Google Custom Search Engine service the exact same technology was used to search and rank the results, the only thing that varied was that one was an open web search, and one was limited to only those pointed to by reference librarians. So, even outside of the library website context the credibility of librarians is retained.

We may index less pages, but the ones we point to are more informationally literate. One question to walk away from with this: does less material indexed = more reliable?  Philosophically speaking, words like popular, relevant, and usefulness will cause debate; academically speaking, this justifies the librarian’s attempt to wean those frothing, zombie-like patrons away from The Google and more toward our subscribed databases, online resources and guides.  And with RefEx, Google’s helping us do it.

LibGuides vs. the OPAC

Getting students to use the library catalog is difficult.  With limited time for library instruction, they don’t get the motivation to learn what’s in the collection, and getting them to ask questions is damn near impossible. Typically, they only get really interested once finals time come around.  LibGuides looks to partially solve this problem since it can lessen the intimidation factor among students; rather than asking questions they have a place to begin and explore the research process.

So here is a dilemma.  As much as we want to teach students how to search the catalog on their own, and considering their propensity to use it only when they are forced to, are students better served by having a generous, steaming portion of titles listed for their subject? And does this mean less searches on the library OPAC, and ultimately diminished searching skills?

It seems like I’ve chosen that option for my guides.  Creating them, I have a much more in-depth knowledge of my library’s collection. For students, though, I do suppose it can take away from the searching process by displaying a thorough listing of what’s available.  Though we do have NetLibrary titles added and accessible via LibGuides, the other titles do require students, if they so choose to accept their mission,  to actually go and retrieve their books. For what it’s worth, students will learn about the LC call number system, the library floor plan, and and the frustration of finding their books already checked out.  I suppose that’s the price for not checking the catalog prior to entering the stacks.

It’s easy to make this issue into an either/or, polemic argument that students’ searching skills simply won’t develop when instantly given the title and location of relevant items. Perhaps true, but as this doesn’t mean we are abandoning in-class instructional sessions, there always exists the possibility of planting some seeds of library nerddom within those few conscientious geeks out there.  Not discounting the possibility of accomplishing both, it does echo a sentiment I’ve previously considered about whether LibGuides will make a library OPAC obsolete.

Depending on your type of library, LibGudes can be a primary or supplementary resource.  Whatever gets students motivated and prepared for research should be emphasized and promoted as much as possible.  Either way, students will be served; LibGuides will help students find particular resources for a variety of courses, and if they’re curious enough to search the OPAC for related items, then good on them for turning to another resource of ours (it’s not as if they can’t search the OPAC from the LibGuides interface).  But it’s important to mention that LibGuides expediates research, making it easier and more efficient for student research.  And it’s not as if we can’t create a guide for using the OPAC.

LibGuides

One of the fruitions of my library’s attendance at a recent conference was to become more fully introduced to the increasingly popular service called LibGuides. After attending a session on it, the first thing my director mentioned was something to the effect of “I don’t care if it’s coming out of the budget, but we’re getting this.”  We’ve got it, and it’s living up to the hype.

For those not in the know, LibGuides is an online service geared toward libraries that allows for innovative  design of information-centered pathfinders and subject guides.  In plainer English, it’s a way to better deliver helpful information resources and course specific guides to enable better information seeking behavior among library patrons. Reasons why to consider LibGuides:

• online interaction of users – submit polls, feedback boxes, enabling of comments for every section text is entered
• HTML/Javascript embedding allowed for display of more dynamic content
• uploading documents – word, pdf, ppt, etc.
• embedding media – easy embedding for youtube, though not so for vimeo
• linking to one’s OPAC, databases, proxy connections
• RSS embedding
• online tech support
• complete customization of page – tabular or dropdown guides (or both)

We are in the process of transitioning to LibGuides and for me, the amount of options for customization is the greatest obstacle of the system, which truly is no obstacle at all.  So many things to do, getting beyond the first steps of the planning stage will probably the hardest part of the whole process.  Our approach has been to create a basic set of guides for general disciplines by dividing subjects according to liaison assignment.  Next, we are contacting faculty to see who’re interested and how we can improve those guides and create more in-depth ones for courses or even particular assignments.

I’m curious about the future expansion of LibGuides.  It is a hosted service, meaning that people are coughing up the moolah for it, yet the amount of subscribing libraries seems to be increasing each week.  Could it eventually replace a library’s traditional Web page, even OPAC?

Take a tour.