LIS Demo

The NYTimes First Look Blog asks: Have you visited a library Web site lately? Maybe you think you have no reason to, especially if you’re not a regular patron of your local library. But on most library sites, you can do much more than look for a book: public branches offer everything from digital photo archives to podcasts to holiday cards. With so many services available, you might even forget to search the catalog. Here's the Dallas Public Library's homepage, featuring the bestseller list.

Read Me: A Century of Classic American Book Advertisements This witty and heavily illustrated volume features more than 300 vintage book advertisements—startling and strange, beautiful and funny—that together reveal a kind of secret history of American literature over the last century. New York Times book critic Dwight Garner brings together original ads for some of the most acclaimed and best-selling books of the twentieth century, including The Great Gatsby, Ulysses, On the Road, Invisible Man, Lolita, Silent Spring, The Joy of Sex, Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail '72, White Noise, and dozens of other classics. These ads show us famous books when they were simply new volumes jostling for attention on bookstore shelves, not yet icons of our literary culture. And the ads capture many beloved authors—Toni Morrison, Cormac McCarthy, Susan Sontag, and Kurt Vonnegut among a great many others—at moments before their careers were assured, before their personas had hardened into those of "famous writers." In his introduction, Garner explains the changing styles of book advertising; explores the cross-pollination between literature and the world of advertising, in which many writers—including Don DeLillo, Salman Rushdie, and James Patterson—worked before publishing their first books; and makes a convincing case that these vintage ads are important and lasting literary documents.

Precious: Based on the Novel Push by Sapphire Movie review at NPR Interview with author on NPR: Sapphire's Story: How 'Push' Became 'Precious' Movie trailer for Precious Four star review by Roger Ebert

Any similar boxes out there?

From The Patriot Ledger: About 200 library staff and trustees from across Massachusetts gathered outside the Statehouse in BostonTuesday, and they weren’t using their inside voices. Holding signs and chanting, “Don’t close the books on our libraries,” the librarians hoped their demonstration will help stave off further budget cuts to the state library system next year. Last week, Gov. Deval Patrick cut $277 million from government offices under his control. Nearly $800,000 of that reduction came from the Massachusetts Board of Library Commissioners. The cuts were part of an effort to close a $600 million revenue shortfall during the first three months of the state’s fiscal year.

Editor’s Note: Here we share a report from the 2009 LACUNY Institute authored by guest poster Sarah Laleman Ward, Outreach Librarian at Hunter College Libraries. We greatly appreciate Sarah’s contribution to ACRLog in which she shares with our readers the highlights from the Institute. The 2009 LACUNY Institute was held October 23, 2009 in New York. The Institute theme was “Library Leadership: The Next Generation”, and the program included a keynote speaker, two panel discussions, and a poster session. The overarching themes I took away from the institute were those of collaboration, communication, mentoring, and flexibility. Stanley Wilder delivered the keynote address, entitled: “Demographic change in a turbulent era: technologists and the humble subject liaison.” Wilder is no stranger to the topic of demographic change in libraries, having recently posted on this blog about the prophesied but as yet unfulfilled librarian shortage. Wilder’s most salient points were those related to collaboration, flexibility and willingness to adapt. He referenced Jim Neal’s 2006 Library Journal article, saying that with the increasingly technological needs of libraries, so-called “feral professionals,” who may have different backgrounds and training than traditional or “domesticated” librarians and are less likely to hold an MLS degree, are entering the profession at a higher rate. These new professionals are not necessarily young, but they bring a different set of values and skills to librarianship, and will continue to grow in numbers and influence. Wilder encouraged librarians to view this as an opportunity to stop apologizing and start leveraging ourselves. What he calls the “Holy Grail” for academic libraries is the fact that we are already closely aligned with the core academic mission of our institutions. Wilder suggested we collaborate more with other campus units, such as instructional technologists and computing staff, inviting them to work with us to form a broader network engaged with the institutions core academic mission. His final point was that ultimately, we should not have to choose between librarians and technologists, because both are necessary for the future of libraries. These themes carried throughout the panel discussions, which were both moderated by Marie Radford. The first panel, “The Graying of the Profession: Intergenerational Collaboration and Succession Planning” was ostensibly composed of two “Gen-X” librarians (Jenna Freedman and Erik Sean Estep) and one “Boomer” (Shelly Warwick). The second panel “Issues in Next Generation Librarianship” included panelists Erin Dorney (a “Millennial”), Emily Drabinski, and Jason Kucsma (both “Gen-X”). I reluctantly use these designations because everyone seemed understandably uncomfortable with generational labels. However, since the panelists were clearly chosen to represent differing generational viewpoints I thought it was appropriate to mention. Several of the panelists agreed that generational labels are artificial and that the real issue is communicating with people as individuals: genuine interpersonal communication can trump the generational divide. Both panels discussed the necessity of mentoring; not just “mentoring down” (veterans to newbies), but “mentoring up” as well. Radford mentioned that often, the trouble comes not from the aging of the older generation but from the marginalization of the younger. The first panel agreed that what they would like to see in newer professionals is a focus on service. The second panel focused on collaboration and flexibility as well as the “next gen” influence on 21st century libraries resulting in organizations with flatter, more team-based structures and cross-institutional collaboration. The newer generation’s willingness to move around and change jobs may be perceived as disloyalty by managers and this way of thinking needs to change, since turnover is vital to keeping organizations alive. Staying in one place for one’s entire career was mentioned as an older (or, “Boomer”) ideal, and that newer professionals will stay in places that respect them and their work. All the panelists emphasized the importance of remaining flexible, adapting, changing and trying new things while respecting professional core values. My complete notes from the Institute are posted online here, and there is more information about all of the speakers on the 2009 LACUNY Institute website.

I hope you took some time to take a look at the latest ECAR report on undergraduates and their use of and attitudes about technology. In addition to Barbara’s post and some good discussion over at COLLIB-L, I commented (on the discussion list) that I had brought up some of the same issues in my ACRLog post about the 2008 ECAR study, and that not much has seemed to change in two areas: (1) student use of the library website and (2) students self-reporting high levels of research and information evaluation skills. Students reporting they have outstanding research skills is nothing particularly new, and it certainly shouldn’t surprise us because having an exaggerated sense of your own capabilities is just one more innate human failing. I recall a small study I performed for a research methods course I was taking in 1993 or so. At the time I was working at a library where we allowed students to search Dialog using the classroom instruction program. Now you would probably agree that searching Dialog is just a bit more difficult than searching the Web. But in a survey of students who used Dialog at least once a week, approximately 90% reported that their search skills were as good as or better than those of professional librarians. They either had a highly inflated sense of their own skills or they severely underestimated just how skilled the librarians were at searching Dialog. As part of the research project I had the students and librarians conduct the same searches, and the students came not even remotely close to doing as well as the librarians. But in their minds, the students thought they were just as good or better. Part of the problem that afflicts all of us is a bad case of overconfidence. Maybe, just maybe, do you think that the economic collapse of 2008 may have been caused by a slight case of some financial gurus being overconfident in their ability to maintain control over a complex mix of investment and economic risks, as well as totally unpredictable human behavior. In fact, some recent research indicates that many high-profile disasters (think world wars, Vietnam, Hurricane Katrina, etc.) can be blamed on human overconfidence. You probably see this all the time. In almost any survey in which people judge their abilities, say on a scale of 1 to 10, everyone is above average. At a presentation I attended some years ago, the speaker shared the results of studies that suggested you could predict in advance that anytime people were asked to rate themselves on anything (e.g., how well do you drive) the mean would be 7.7 – and that it was statistically impossible for that many people to be above average. If we’re all above average drivers who is that person making a right-hand turn from the left lane? But here’s the funny thing about overconfidence. Despite the inherent risks of overestimating your abilities at just about anything – and when students overestimate the quality of their research skills they can turn in a pretty dismal final product – the researchers who studied overconfidence believe there is a clear advantage to being overconfident. Not surprisingly you’ll find others who don’t see it this way, such as this NYT op-ed columnist who points out that government overconfidence is to blame for misguided thinking in the current handling of the executive compensation mess. Overconfident individuals, suggest the researchers, are likely to have a clear competitive advantage over ordinary individuals. “Overconfidence boosts ambition, resolve, morale and persistence…and the greater the risk the more overconfident individuals become.” That doesn’t sound like such a good thing to me. Despite what the researchers have to say, I’m going to come down on the side of advocating we should beware of overconfidence, both in ourselves and our students. I don’t know to what extent it might be helpful to share the ECAR study’s relevant results with our students. Perhaps it never helps to try to warn someone of the dangers of being overconfident; we just can ‘t seem to help ourselves. But I do think it would benefit us professionally to be mindful of our own flaws when it comes to being overconfident. In Jim Collins’ latest book, How the Mighty Fall, he profiles companies that were at the top of their industries but subsequently went through the five stages of decline. Some were able to recover before becoming completely obsolete. In nearly all the cases the decline begins with overconfidence, too much risk taking, resting on one’s past accomplishments and thinking they could do nothing wrong. Did we academic librarians become overconfident about the ongoing loyalty of our user community? Did our overconfidence blind us to the almost certain likelihood that our users would become more enamored with search engines than what we had to offer them? Looking back at how academic libraries transformed from having a near monopoly on providing access to information for their communities to a state where we are now just one possible resource among many, and quite possibly not even the most valued resource, we may have allowed our overconfidence to lead us into thinking that our user community members would always be loyal to us and value our resources over all others. That’s not how it turned out and we paid the price. At one time few academic administrators or faculty would have questioned the need for an academic library. Now we find ourselves having to justify our right to exist. So the next time you are asked to rate yourself on anything, or to rate your library’s importance to the user community be mindful of the dangers of overconfidence. Should you ask your students to rate themselves as information researchers – be prepared for some exaggeration. But as savvy academic librarians, I think we will find a way to turn it into a teachable moment.

A New Courseware Trend? This news item caught my eye. It announces an agreement between Blackboard and NBC in which the former will now offer access to the latter’s content. It states: Blackboard is providing academic users with access to historical multimedia resources from NBC Learn. The two companies today announced that that they’ve inked a deal to make historical and current events materials from NBC News accessible within the Blackboard Learn platform. Through NBC News Archives on Demand, college and university students and faculty will have access to thousands of video and audio files, as well as textual materials, covering a wide range of topics, from politics to health. The details indicate that there is only a free building block that enables access to the NBC News Archive. There is a fee for the content. But we’re already paying hefty fees for access to text and multimedia news content found in any number of library databases. I wonder if this is the start of some sort of trend where content providers of all types, including the traditional library database producers, will seek partnerships with Blackboard and other courseware vendors to integrate their content directly into the product. That would raise an interesting question about who would pay for it, and what access options would be possible. To some extent, academic librarians are working to integrate the library content into courseware. Perhaps this just takes it to the next level. The question is, as the traditional campus negotiator for and provider of research content, how do we fit into this scenario? How Do Your Meeting Rooms Smell? I had to chuckle when I came across Acadamit’s advice to new colleagues to avoid meetings scheduled for the campus library: Do not attend any meeting being held at the library. Those conference rooms always smell mildly of piss, the chairs are uncomfortable, and the coffee shop makes terrible coffee. Our stacks supervisor once reported an oddly yellowish, wet stain among the book shelves that gave off a quite foul odor. We wondered if a student had brought a dog into the library or whether someone’s small child had an accident of some sort. We never did unravel this mystery. But as far as library meeting rooms that smell like a rarely traversed subway concourse (you city dwellers know what I mean), that’s a new one for me. Better perform a smell check on your meeting rooms – and keep a bottle of Lysol handy just in case – or a container of your cafe’s coffee. That might make a pretty powerful disinfectant as well. ALA DIS-Connect? A colleague with whom I serve on an ACRL committee made an interesting comment about doing our committee work on ALA Connect, the relatively new community for ALA members. While you can find and link with friends or create you own sub-community (like this one for ALA members who love cats) most of my interaction with the system has involved committee activity. On one hand the system succeeds because it does provide a platform for communicating with fellow committee members. There’s no need to set up an email distribution list; just post your message and it goes to all committee members. If you have a document to share, you can upload and attach it to your message. If fellow members want to reply, they need to log in to Connect. That’s what my colleague pointed out. We were pondering why so few of our fellow committee members commented on a document we shared. He pointed out that when he served on the committee two years ago, there was great interaction on the committee with lots of exchanges. Now you might say that a different set of people will respond differently. Or you might say that creating a barrier, such as having to log in to ALA Connect anytime you want to add your voice to a conversation, could potentially reduce committee discussion. I did point out that all members get an email with a direct link to the committee community, so it’s not that hard to respond to a colleague. Still, you need to log in first, and then you can reply to a posting. That’s not much of a hurdle to jump, but it might be just enough to discourage someone’s desire to connect. What do you think of ALA Connect? Has it impacted your participation for better or worse?

Last week was Open Access Week, and my library hosted an afternoon program for faculty. We started things off with a brief introduction to open access scholarly journal publishing. After a quick review of the origins and history of OA, we discussed the benefits of OA journals for faculty, students, libraries, universities, and the general public. We also demonstrated how to find open access journals in the library and on the internet, using an article written by one of our own faculty members as an example. Next, a faculty member from our Nursing Department spoke about her experiences publishing two articles in an open access journal. We kept the presentations short to allow plenty of time for discussion (fueled by coffee and cookies, of course). There was a smallish group in attendance with a nice mix of newer and more seasoned faculty from many different disciplines across the college. Many junior faculty members (including me) are concerned about how articles published in open access journals will be regarded in the promotion and tenure process. It was great to have a forum to share the information that there are open access journals with prominent scholars on their editorial boards that employ a rigorous, double-blind peer review process, just as do subscription-based journals. We also spent a fair amount of time discussing the means of production for open access journals. At the beginning of the program my library colleague mentioned the Open Journal Systems platform, an open source system that can be used to publish an open access journal, including managing the peer-review process. As the discussion progressed we began to consider the feasibility of publishing an open access journal at our college. It was a fascinating (and enjoyable) direction for the conversation to take, one that I hadn’t really anticipated when we planned the program. I’m hopeful that our lively discussion indicates an growing interest in open access scholarly publishing at my college. Recently we’ve seen an increasing emphasis on faculty research at the college and university, and perhaps open access scholarly journal publishing will have a role to play. We’re pleased that our Open Access Week program was a success, and are already thinking ahead to planning for next year’s event. Did your library plan any events to celebrate Open Access Week? Did you learn anything new about faculty attitudes towards scholarly communication on your campus?

The new ECAR study on students and technology has just come out (thanks for the tip via Collib-L, Bill Drew!) and as usual, there are interesting findings. Nearly 90% of students come to college with a laptop now, and an even higher percentage of them use the library’s Website at least once a week. That’s a higher percentage than those who download music or videos (86%). Update: Bernie Sloan at Collib-L points out an interesting tidbit from the report: “…the percentage of students who reported using the library website daily has increased from 7.1% in 2006 to 16.9% in 2009.” Texting and use of social networks are nearly ubiquitous, but instant messaging is dropping, which has interesting reference implications. The number who report they contribute content to the Internet through videos, wikis, or blogs is under half, and when asked about their use of these technologies for academic purposes, the percents drop into the single digits. Sorry, blogs and podcasts – they’re just not that into you. But they figure they know their way around searching. Eight out of ten say they’re proficient Internet searchers; about a third say they’re experts. One finding that hasn’t changed much over the past few years – students don’t want a whole lot of technology in their courses. About 60% prefer a “moderate” amount of technology; only a small percentage wanted no technology, but they outnumbered the even smaller percentage that wanted their courses delivered entirely through technology. In their responses to the final open-ended question of our survey, students wrote explicitly about a preference for “real books and people” and said “shiny new tech is still no substitute for well-trained, passionate instructors.” Of the many comments expressing this sentiment, perhaps this one sums it up best: “There is still a big disparity among academic staff when it comes to use of IT in class. Some professors are obsessed with their technology and some don’t like to use it at all. There needs to be a balance between human interaction and IT-based learning. This is one of those studies that I read each year, a useful snapshot of emerging technologies and the role they play in the lives of our student. This one makes me think about ways to add texting to our reference repertoire, and reassures me that our Website is important to students. It reminds me that students thing they’re pretty good at searching and that I will need to persuade them they could be better. But it also reminds that these “digital natives” are not full assimilated into the Borg; they still prefer face-to-face learning with some, but not too much, technology involved. CC-licensed photo courtesy of Frank Farm (frankfarm.org)

Anonymous. American Libraries. Chicago: Nov 2009. Vol. 40, Iss. 11; p. 54 (2 pages)Available Formats: Abstract, Full text, Full Text - PDF

Leonard Kniffel. American Libraries. Chicago: Nov 2009. Vol. 40, Iss. 11; p. 21 (1 page)Available Formats: Abstract, Full text, Full Text - PDF

Anonymous. American Libraries. Chicago: Nov 2009. Vol. 40, Iss. 11; p. 12 (2 pages)Available Formats: Abstract, Full text, Full Text - PDF

Sean Fitzpatrick. American Libraries. Chicago: Nov 2009. Vol. 40, Iss. 11; p. 30 (1 page)Available Formats: Abstract, Full text, Full Text - PDF

Beverly Goldberg. American Libraries. Chicago: Nov 2009. Vol. 40, Iss. 11; p. 18 (1 page)Available Formats: Abstract, Full text, Full Text - PDF

I could go in chronological order in this post, but that would require me to “bury the lead” and talk about Lawrence Lessig’s presentation in the middle of the post! Lessig is a rock star in my world and it seems only right that when writing about a copyright guru I “steal” his bio from [...]

After spending the better part of a day traveling and with only 14% power left on my iPhone (I never like to get below 20%) and with only six minutes before the close of registration on Tuesday night, I checked in at the Educause 2009 registration station and collected my conference materials! For those of [...]

Tom Conroy gave the first session of the second day on repairing tools. Tom is a book restorer and fine binder who spent 7 years in formal training under Anne and Theodore Kahle and also earned an MLIS from Berkeley. Tom currently teaches at the American Bookbinders Museum in San Francisco. Tom spent [...]

I woke at 4:30 am, arrived at Greensboro PTI in time to see WXII send off the Flight of Honor, checked my bags, went through security and boarded the plane for Philadelphia. The plane left the terminal and the pilot abruptly announced we would be sitting there on the runway in Greensboro for an [...]

On Oct. 30, Leslie attended a webinar hosted by OCLC, detailing OCLC’s preparations for the soon-to-be-released new cataloging rules, RDA (Resource Description and Access), which will succeed AACR2 (Anglo-American Cataloguing Rules), the standard that has been in place for the last 30 or so years. A poll of webinar attendees, posing the question “How is your [...]

zsrlibrary posted a photo: front row: Bobbie Collins, Mary Scanlon, Giz Womack, Lauren Pressley, Kaeley McMahan, Ellen Daugman, Kevin Gilbertson. back row: Jean-Paul Bessou, Erik Mitchell, Tim Mitchell, Roz Tedford, Susan Smith, Barry Davis, Molly Keener. Not pictured: Sarah Jeong (we missed you!)

zsrlibrary posted a photo: Seated: Wanda Brown – 30 year club, Judy Simmons – 40 years, Carolyn McCallum – 10 years, Roz Tedford – 15 years, Standing: Chris Burris – 15 years, Cristina Yu – 20 years, Charles Bombeld – 10 years, Erik Mitchell – 10 years, Kaeley McMahan – 10 years, Mary Scanlon – 5 years, Lynn Sutton – 5 years, Linda Ziglar – 10 years, Not pictured: Patrick Ferrell – 15 years, Lauren Pressley – 5 years

zsrlibrary posted a photo:

zsrlibrary posted a photo:

zsrlibrary posted a photo: