LIS Demo

This is the final episode of Tech for Techies. The show will return to the Twilight Zone from where it came (for the time being). Stephen talks about broadcast transmission, be it radio, television or cellphones. Another Federal Government PSA from the Census Bureau, Profile America. My close explains the present situation at Erie Looking Productions. In connection with what I bring up in the close, I want you to read a recommendation from LinkedIn: “Stephen is a top notch podcaster and the writer, producer, and presenter of LISTen: The LISNews Podcast. More than that, he secured and conducted some fantastic interviews with people in the library world and in the fields of technology and media journalism. He brings a professional quality library podcast into an arena that sorely needs one. Because of this, he'd be a good source of information and consultation for a library (or any organization) with a desire to branch out into the world of Internet broadcasting.” That was written by Daniel Messer, alternatively known as the Faceless Historian and Great Western Dragon. Think about what he had to say. While there is an old saw about a kingdom being lost for lack of a horseshoe, should a podcasting effort collapse for a lack of greenbacks? One value, at the least, to what the network does is that it is not beholden to the ALA, OCLC, or any particular vendor. I want to thank you for listening and that the past shows will remain available on LISNews.

The annual Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest (for the best opening line to a fictitious novel) was won by this gem of a sentence: "Folks say that if you listen real close at the height of the full moon, when the wind is blowin' off Nantucket Sound from the nor' east and the dogs are howlin' for no earthly reason, you can hear the awful screams of the crew of the 'Ellie May,' a sturdy whaler Captained by John McTavish; for it was on just such a night when the rum was flowin' and, Davey Jones be damned, big John brought his men on deck for the first of several screaming contests." Runners-up and dishonerable mentions galore can be found at the contest website.

She was called the Miracle Girl in Peru. Now she's a librarian for the Zoological Centre in Munich. Yet she has a story to tell - a story of sheer luck, survival, and courage. She was the only survivor of the crash of a LANSA flight in 1971. As it happens, her adventure was only beginning after she survived a three kilometer free fall into the jungles of the Amazon rain forest. More from CNN.

Wooden ebook reader

The State Library of Kansas cataloged about 1,000 Wikipedia articles analytically at the State Library providing links via the Kansas Library Catalog, WorldCat/OCLC and the State Library’s consortium OPAC, ATLAS. Most all of the Wikipedia articles they've cataloged are concerned with Kansas, Kansans or current topics with few resources initially available via standard library resources. They had one of the first records in WorldCat/OCLC linking to information on then-Supreme-Court-nominee, John G. Roberts, as well as an early record on Hurricane Katrina. They followed these entries with other cataloging records accessing more substantive resources, but yes, the initial records were for Wikipedia articles.

When I tried to reflect on my first year of academic librarianship and what I should include as advice for other new librarians in my final post here at ACRLog, platitudes such as “if at first you don’t succeed, try, try again” kept popping into my head. So I thought I’d start with a short list of the somewhat obvious qualities that I repeatedly found helpful at work:  1) Maintaining a positive attitude  2) Persistence  3) Cooperativeness Then I thought of some more personal advice I would give (that I learned the hard way): 1) A workplace is a political minefield. Best do your homework before putting your foot in it. 2) It is better to be flexible than cavalier. Youth and energy are not endearing to everyone. 3) Leave your desk to have human conversations every once in a while. Librarians are perhaps more prone to use email and other text-based media, but I cannot count the number of times a solution has been more forthcoming when I approached people directly.  And because I am writing this during performance review season, here is a sprinkling of self-criticism and future goals: 1) As Susanna mentioned in her last post, I too am realizing that I might not be fit for a lifelong career in public services. I may not have the requisite gift of patience, and I am noticing that the areas of my job I find most enjoyable involve making systems and processes simpler and more efficient. When I moved to New Jersey last August I lacked the confidence to apply for systems librarian jobs, but now I am motivated to learn more programming and pursue work in that direction.  2) I would like to publish in the professional literature. Publishing informally online is great, but I am going to try and shoot for something more rigorous and official.  3) I would like to continue to interact and participate with this and other communities of librarians. They (we?) are wonderful. I hope some day I can be as useful to them as they currently are to me.   Thanks for reading and commenting — I have really enjoyed writing here! If anyone wants to continue to follow my thoughts, I post weekly to my personal blog, the librarian’s commute. And it would be great to meet you in person if you are going to ALA next week!

Did you have the opportunity to attend both the 2007 Baltimore ACRL conference and the 2009 Seattle ACRL conference? If so, which did you like better? I did get to both and I really wouldn’t compare the two. I think each conference needs to stand on its own. You have different cities, a different crowd, different themes, different speakers, etc. With so many differences a comparison could be difficult and not all that informative. It’s likely something worked better at one than the other, but every conference is going to have its ups and downs and it all balances out in the end. Yet, when I reviewed the results of ACRL’s comprehensive attendee survey for the 2009 Seattle conference, I was surprised to see a number of comments directed towards comparing the two, and a number of them expressed a preference for the Baltimore conference. That said, the reactions to and comments about the ACRL Seattle conference were overwhelmingly positive. I was especially pleased to see that many of the newer-to-the-profession first-time attendees indicated how much they enjoyed the conference and that they intended to register for Philadelphia in 2011. Here are just a few of the highlights from the official survey questions: * 94% indicated they’d recommend the conference to their colleagues * 87% indicated the most important reason to attend is “keep up with the profession” * The top response to the question “what is the most valuable part of the conference” was “connecting with colleagues” * Ranked from “most important” to “least important” here’s what attendees said they found valuable: panel sessions; keynote speakers; poster sessions; contributed papers; cyber zed shed * 55% of attendees reported that their institutions paid 95% or more of their conference expenses * When asked what are the top issues for academic librarians the most frequent responses were: keeping up with technology; managing change and innovation; dealing with budget issues * When asked what are the top issues for the academic library profession the most frequent responses were: technology change; demonstrating the library’s impact; maintaining relevance; managing change and innovation; declining support for libraries * There was an increase in the number of attendees between ages 21-30 to 13.5% of all attendees (up from 10% in Baltimore); the majority of the attendees (41%) were 51 or above. * For those of you waiting for librarians to retire only 8% indicated they’d retire in the next 5 years; 15% indicated they planned to retire in 5-9 years. There were tons of comments, far too many to even summarize here. Again, I’d say the bulk were positive and reflected great enthusiasm for the conference, the Seattle location and the “green” initiative. Here is a sampling from the comments: * We need to cut program dead weight; we cannot ask people to pay to come to boring and irrelevant speakers * The content was consistently very good; the scheduling to avoid conflicts was a blessing and everything was easy to get to * Too many session on instruction and reference; I want more sessions on management issues * Still the best conference for academic librarians * I want to be provoked by something new and creative * I come from a very small private institution and didn’t feel like I could connect with those from large research universities * Too much flat and outdated content; we need the latest and greatest in Philly * Too many posters and not enough sessions * Too many sessions and not enough posters Well those last two comments give you an idea of what ACRL is up against in trying to figure out how to improve things for the 2011 conference. For everything that some folks loved there were other respondents who disliked that same aspect of the conference. I was interested to see a number of comments suggesting that ACRL should model the conference on EDUCAUSE. There’s no question that the annual EDUCAUSE is a great conference, but I think ACRL already has a similar structure and in fact offers more programming variety and innovative activity such as the cyber zed shed. What to do? Here are a few random observations and thoughts: * Consider reducing the number of contributed papers and increasing opportunities for birds of a feather sessions. There were more than a few comments that indicated the topics are out of date by the time the conference rolls around; that’s not unexpected when proposals for papers and panels are due a year before the conference. You could debate that the contributed papers are the least interactive and dullest part of the conference. This is not good for a conference where the top reasons to attend are “connect with colleagues” and “keeping up”. Can we give this conference more of an “unconference” feel where attendees could identify the topics they want to talk about and then have BoaF sessions generated shortly before the start of the conference? Attendees want to connect with their colleagues, and they want to be involved. This could be a way to do both. What gets lost? Opportunities to list conference paper presentations on CVs. Then again, doesn’t ACRL have some responsibility to promote scholarly research at the conference through the delivery of contributed papers. Or is there another way to do that? We may have a conflict between tradition and changing attendee expectations that needs resolution for Philly 2011. * Attendees seem to like the format of the cyber zed shed - concise 20 minute “browseable” presentations (many comments indicated the need for a bigger room for this part of the conference) - that don’t demand much time and allow them to take in a greater number of sessions while at the conference. Is there a way to create a conference that shifts to more of these shorter format presentations? I don’t think we should entirely lose programs that need more time for in depth exploration of topics, but attendees could benefit from the ability to take in more content in shorter bursts. It could also create opportunities for more people to participate as presenters. * The flip side of shorter sessions would be to consider doing away with the three-hour workshops; that is the one content area where I noticed more negative comments than positive ones. You’d think these programs would offer the most opportunity for interaction and sharing ideas with colleagues but the comments indicated too many slides, talking head presenters and colleagues who seemed more interested in getting continuing education credits than talking with each other. Why not offer the workshops as virtual programs that ACRL can make available throughout the year so those needing continuing education credit can get it when they need it. Re-thinking the conference means figuring out what to eliminate as well as what to add. I’m going to wrap it up here. As a member of the conference planning committee for 2011 I know there will be much discussion about how we can improve the conference. These evaluations provide great food for thought, but innovative ideas can come from anywhere so please share yours with members of the Philadelphia planning committee (or send them to me - bells at temple.edu - if you like and I’ll pass them on). I’ll just finish with these three items: * Do you think “cyber zed shed” is a name in need of a change? Several respondents commented that they hated the name. Do you have a suggestion for something better (the complainers of course never have a suggestion for anything better)? What about “Tech Tips in 20″? * Who do you think would make a great keynote speaker? I’m co-chairing that committee so please feel free to send your suggestions directly to me. * Who wants to own up to recommending we have the conference in Kansas City? Oh yeah, and who said they wanted more handouts!!!

Now that the slower summer months are here I’m taking some time to work on a couple of big projects. Lately I’ve been thinking a lot about online tutorials. We have a large student population and a relatively small library, and I’m always looking for ways to extend our instructional efforts. Tutorials covering various research skills, information literacy competencies, and library services may be one way to stretch our resources and reach more students and faculty than we can in the classroom or at the reference desk. And tutorials delivered via video, audio or text can provide additional means of instruction to accommodate multiple learning styles. On our library website we link out to several great tutorials from other colleges and universities. There are also many online tutorial repositories out there with loads of good content, including ACRL’s own PRIMO: Peer-Reviewed Instructional Materials Online Database. MERLOT, the Multimedia Educational Resource for Learning and Online Teaching, also features research-related tutorials. But recently I’ve started to think that we should create our own tutorials. Local conditions are certainly a factor. Some resources, like the catalog, are unique to us, so we can’t just link out to another OPAC tutorial. But we are part of a large university system, so in theory we could link to tutorials for shared resources created at other campuses. There may be usability issues as well. When patrons open a linked tutorial from another library — even if it’s in a new browser window — I worry that we may lose them from our own website. If we use tutorials from other libraries, we must consider how to direct users to those resources from our own library homepage. What about training materials provided by database and service vendors — do they have a place alongside our own, librarian-created online instructional materials? There’s also the issue of branding: must our online instructional materials have our own logo and library name? I wonder whether local branding is important to students and faculty, and how our users feel when they’re directed to a tutorial created by another institution. Academic libraries come in many shapes and sizes, though we all share a similar mission of which instruction is a critical component. But no institution has infinite funding and personnel. While the tools for creating web guides, audio podcasts and video tutorials get easier to use (and less expensive) by the day, it still takes time and effort to create them. And many institutions have already created excellent online instructional materials. Do we spend too much time reinventing the wheel when we create local versions of tutorials on common topics? Is it smarter to link out to materials created by other entities? Or is a mix of the two the best strategy?

Are you a Librarian Entrepreneur? You might be. Would you answer “yes” to these questions: I am an opportunist. I am a creative genius (or part of a creative work team) I am persistent I am customer focused I connect the dots I am passionate I am a risk taker According to my research in preparation for a talk at Inspiration, Innovation, Celebration: An Entrepreneurial Conference for Librarians those are the seven core qualities of an entrepreneur; I learned a good deal about the characteristics and practices of entrepreneurs at my institution’s Center for Entrepreneur Research. Based on what I heard at various presentations delivered at the conference, at least one or more of these characteristics are indeed associated with with the work of librarian entrepreneurs. But for my closing keynote talk I raised a simple question: Is the term librarian entrepreneur an oxymoron? Considering what business and start-up entrepreneurs do how would academic librarians achieve entrepreneur status? I asked quite a few librarians if they could name a librarian entrepreneur. Ninety-eight percent could not. A few named someone entrepreneurial who created a library product or service, but who was not a librarian. If there are librarian entrepreneurs out there why don’t we know who they are? Part of the confusion comes from the uncertainty about the work of entrepreneurs - and does coming up with an innovative idea make you an entrepreneur? In the classic business sense an entrepreneur is an individual or group that comes up with one big idea and essentially puts all their resources (time, money, energy, etc.) into pursuing it to make it happen with the intent of eventually being profitable. I shared tales of entrepreneurs who had done just that, putting everything they have into a single business idea. Clearly not the sort of thing we do in libraries. I also asked librarians to name any entreprenuer. Virtually all had no trouble answering that question; the most frequently named entrepreneurs were high visible, business people, usually technologists and wealthy (think Bill Gates or Steve Jobs). So the characteristics we associate with entrepreneurs would, for most people, hardly fit a librarian. So even though I tried to raise some doubts about the viability of the librarian entrepreneur concept, it would be difficult to claim that librarians fail the entrepreneur test with the evidence delivered by the presenters. You can review the ideas that were shared at the conference site, and some of the presentation slides are now available. I liked the opportunism and creativity employed but the folks who developed a digital media center at SMU. Attendees were buzzing about the academic library that included an 18-hole mini-golf course in their library redesign project. At UNC-Greensboro they developed an A-Z journal finder that was eventually sold to a commercial vendor, and returned some profits to the institution. So while academic librarians rarely put everything into a single big idea with a go for broke attitude, there certainly are plenty of examples of projects that demonstrate creativity, innovation and some degree of risk. I closed the conference with ten tips for aspiring library entrepreneurs, and a few messages about creating an entrepreneurial library from some folks who I think have proven to be particularly successful at doing just that. Those tips, messages and clips from my librarian interviews are embedded in my slides if you want to have a look (the embedded videos will run best on a mac). If you think of yourself as a librarian entrepreneur, share an example of something you’ve accomplished at or beyond your library.

As Jennifer Howard of the Chronicle reports, collaboration between libraries and presses was a theme at the most recent meeting of the Association of American University Presses, but there seems to have been some heat generated over library/press relations and the open access movement. One option is the “Michigan Model” in which a press becomes a part of the library’s operations, sharing a common vision, but having to adapt to library culture or risk marginalization. For some presses, this probably sounds like “resistance is futile. You will be absorbed.” But Michigan is not the only press to be aligned with the library’s operations. As reported by Scott Jaschik in Inside Higher Ed, Penn State University Press is also part of the library division, and according to Patrick H. Alexander, that means adjusting to very different experiences. Presses, he said, “look outward” and are “very much concerned about professors at other institutions, relationships with external vendors — we work largely with people outside the institution. That is not the perspective of the university library,” he said. University presses must be constantly thinking about revenue, while libraries, he said, are focused on service. At a university press, he said, the motto must many times be “just say no,” as editors turn down book proposals they can’t publish and must do so all the time. The library, he said, is much more of a “yes we can” place, trying to satisfy the faculty and students of the campus. Maybe through this cultural collision we’ll both learn something valuable. Doug Armato of the University of Minnesota Press criticized the “polarizing and self-serving rhetoric” of the open access movement. This year’s president of the AAUP, Alex Holzman of Temple UP, predicted that the electronic revolution for book publishing is about to take off and change everything, though he doesn’t see open access as the future of university presses. But Michael Jensen of the American Academies Press (whose books have been browsable for free online for years) had a different prediction. In the conference’s final plenary session, “Directions for Open Access Publishing,” Michael J. Jensen, director of strategic Web communications for the National Academies Press, made an extreme version of the adapt-or-die argument for incorporating open access into scholarly publishing. Mr. Jensen entertained the audience with a description of his longtime obsession with crises that threaten life as we know it. Then he went for the Darwinian kill and linked print-based culture with global warming. “C02 must be radically curtailed,” he said. “Print is CO2-heavy.” How about a business model that would rely on 50 percent digital sales, 25 percent print-on-demand books, and 25 percent institutionally funded open-access publishing? “Open access in exchange for institutional support is a business model for survival,” Mr. Jensen advised, all joking aside. “If we fail to make these changes, we will be knowing participants in the death spiral,” he warned. “The print book must become the exception, not the rule, as soon as possible.” Inside Higher Ed has further coverage of the debate over open access and different possible models for long-term sustainability. More immediate threats to presses facing closure were also on the agenda. Take, for example, LSU Press. They have a terrific list, books that have won Pulitzers and become bestsellers as well as scholarly books that might not find a home elsewhere. Check it out - maybe you’ll find some books that fit your curriculum that should be on your shelves. And maybe it will help sustain a valuable press while together we figure out the best way to disseminate scholarship in the 21st century.

Anonymous. Science Letter. Atlanta: Jul 7, 2009. p. 1697Available Formats: Abstract, Full text

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For the last four days I have been in Nashville at the Peabody Library Leadership Institute led by Patricia Brevik and Sharon Weiner. The institute has been very informative and, although there are lots of ideas rattling around I thought I would take my hour of internet access to jot down just a [...]

On Thursday, June 18th, Bobbie Collins, Carolyn McCallum, Leslie McCall, and Sarah Jeong attended the 4th Annual Information Literacy Conference in Charlotte. As usual, the organizers of this conference did an excellent job pulling together an impressive group of speakers who addressed a variety of issues and trends relating to information literacy. The 100 attendees [...]

Today was the first official day of the RBMS preconference in Charlottesville. It’s the 50th annual RBMS, so we learned a lot about the history of the section. Plenary sessions began with a reminiscence by David Stam, University Librarian Emeritus at Syracuse, who had attended the first RBMS as a 23-year-old brand new employee at [...]

I know this is a bit late, but I’ve finally been able to dig myself out from under.The 24th Conference of the North American Serials Interest Group (NASIG) was held during the first week of June, and I served as co-chair of the Conference Planning Committee, with the spectacular support of Chris Burris as our [...]

First day at the Rare Books & Manuscripts Section preconference in Charlottesville, VA. Today was pre-pre-conference workshop day, and I attended “Beyond Show and Tell: Teaching Strategies for Special Collections Professionals”. Presenters were Julie Grob, Digital Projects and Instruction Librarian for Special Collections at U. of Houston, and Matt Ball, Outreach and Student Services Librarian [...]

zsrlibrary posted a photo: Ready for demolition to start. This is where the "back end" IS operation and offices will be.

zsrlibrary posted a photo: The empty area at the far end of the room will soon (late July) be filled with our microtext collection

zsrlibrary posted a photo:

zsrlibrary posted a photo:

zsrlibrary posted a photo: