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On the third floor of the Museum of Modern Art in Midtown Manhattan rests a tribute to Esquire’s glory years — a collection of 92 covers from the 1960s and early 1970s that have become, in the museum’s words, “essential to the iconography of American culture.” That illustrious history hangs over the magazine’s effort to celebrate its 75th year. Its attempt to add to the annals of museum-worthy covers includes a nod to the digital age: an electronic cover, using admittedly rudimentary technology, that will flash “the 21st Century Begins Now,” when it appears on newsstands in September. Read full story of how e-ink will be used on the cover of Esquire at the New York Times.

Business is booming in Canada's libraries from Canada.com "People say libraries are dying because of the Internet," said Beth Barlow, chief librarian at Surrey Public Library. "But we're finding a lot of growth in people who get library cards, and a continual growth in the circulation of our materials."

PegasusNews via Latina Lista brings us a story about one librarian in Dallas providing educational opportunities relative to Tejano music. Carolina Martinez is working on a community information to share what Tejano music has contributed to not only Texas but also the music industry.

The Daily Yomiuri - Osaka,Japan - Has a report on and his private library dedicated to manga in Shinjuku Ward, Tokyo. "I initially wanted to become a mangaka," said Naiki, who was deeply impressed with The Lost World, a work by manga giant Osamu Tezuka, when he was a fifth-grade primary school student. "As I realized it would not be easy to [become a mangaka] and I came to own a lot of manga that I couldn't discard later, I decided to open the library."

George Rippey Stewart (May 31, 1895 – August 22, 1980) was an American toponymist, a novelist, and a professor of English at the University of California, Berkeley. Born in Sewickley, Pennsylvania, Stewart was educated at Princeton University, the University of California, and Columbia University. He is best known for his only science fiction novel Earth Abides (1949), a post-apocalyptic novel, for which he won the first International Fantasy Award in 1951. It was dramatized on radio's Escape and inspired Stephen King's The Stand, as King has stated. Full Wikipedia entry on George R. Stewart here. Information about Earth Abides: Wikipedia entry on Earth Abides. Lost Book Archives: Earth Abides

A new national study on errors in student writing asks whether the top mistakes noted in previous studies have changed much in the digital era. OMG! Turns out students aren’t making significantly more errors, rising from 2.11 mistakes per 100 words in a 1917 study to 2.45 in this 2006 data. The big shift, though, is in what and how much students are writing. Compared to a similar study of first year writing conducted in 1986, papers are 2.5 times longer than they were twenty years ago. And the researched paper has edged out the personal narrative as the most common writing assignment. In 1986, over half of writing assignments were personal; now the most common assignments are researched argument or report, an argument with few or no sources, and close reading and analysis. The biggest single category is research-based, which accounts for 33% of the 877 writing samples used in the study. Together, the two shifts are we have identified suggest that student writers today are tackling the kind of issues that require inquiry and investigation as well as reflection and that students are writing more than ever before. This change leads to another kind of mistake. A large number of errors were in the use of sources, particularly in their documentation. Such struggles seem to us a natural and necessary part of the practice that students must do to become familiar with, much less master, any one documentation style: after all, entering the conversation in a field, showing that you know the issues and have something to contribute to them, choosing among a huge range of possible sources, and using them to document the work related to any particular topic are not easy skills to develop, especially for novice writers. Bottom line: We’re much more likely to have first year students who are asked to write from sources than twenty years ago, which in turn may suggest a greater commitment on the part of their instructors to information literacy, even if they’re teaching this kind of writing as a service to more advanced courses. Non-hyper link: Andrea A. Lunsford and Karen J. Lunsford, “‘Mistakes are a Part of Life’: A National Comparative Study.” College Composition and Communication 59.4 (June 2008): 781-806.

Stephanie asks a good question in her post. What the heck do faculty want from us librarians? Another good question is what do the faculty think of their students. Two Chronicle essays this week reveal quite different answers to that question, and what I find interesting is that these opinions come from two very different faculty members, one a fully tenured professor and the other an adjunct. But both seem to be asking themselves why they are working in academia. The tenured professor of history is sick of his students and writes: My main problem, which becomes less tolerable with every passing year, is the students. My best are mediocre. The worst are semiliterate. Grading a stack of exams or papers is a painful experience. Having already gained tenure and full professor status the dilemma here is what to do next. That’s why he points out that one of his favorite songs is The Clash tune “Should I Stay Or Should I Go”. The author readily admits that many struggling academic historians would give anything to be in his place, but that doesn’t make him feel any better about his situation. The adjunct has a completely different problem - and a different outlook: Here, then, is what I have learned about being an adjunct faculty member. The classroom experience is wonderful. Students are still interested in learning, and some are truly remarkable people. My interaction with them has been everything I had hoped for and more. What makes academia so frustrating for the adjunct isn’t the students. It’s her dean and full-time faculty colleagues. They hardly know she’s alive and certainly do nothing to make her a welcome member of the department or make her adjunct role any easier in terms of administrative matters. I’m not exactly sure what to conclude from these two very different perspectives on interacting with students but it does make me think about Stephanie’s question, and what it is that faculty think of librarians, what they want from us and how we can best be of help to them. Back in my days as a higher education administration graduate student I recall my professor who described the faculty in terms of “their unique dualism”. He referred to the faculty having dual loyalties to their institution and to their discipline, and that for many faculty the loyalty to the discipline was far stronger. Perhaps the other way to perceive that dualism is in the relationship with others, such as students and librarians. On one hand the students are at the core of the institution and should be the primary concern of faculty, but over time some faculty, such as our history professor, can come to have great disdain for their students. That must no doubt cause immense internal conflict. So I wonder if faculty have a dualistic view of us academic librarians. Do they perceive us as incredibly helpful, intellectually beneficial colleagues or are we seen as contemptible, made-obsolete-by-the-Internet support staff who simply suck up resources that could otherwise be spent on the faculty? I guess we won’t know the answer until a faculty member assumes a pseudonym and does a Chronicle tell-all about their relationship with librarians. But to answer Stephanie’s question, let’s assume it’s the former rather than the latter and concentrate our efforts on doing all that we can to make the work of faculty easier for them so that they can spend more time on their students and research and less time navigating the labyrinth of information resources we’ve created. It may also be helpful to segment the faculty. They don’t all think or see their work in the same way as illustrated by our two Chronicle essays, so why treat them all the same way. Perhaps the safest approach is to assume all faculty have a WIIFM perspective and operate on the assumption that everything we do should make clear to our faculty what’s in it for them. Let’s hope that the next time Stephanie scours the faculty blogoverse for signs of “here’s what I want from my librarian” she finds some better information for us - or any signs that they think about us at all.

It’s official: I am now the librarian for psychology at the University of Connecticut, in addition to my responsibilities of working with folks in communication sciences. I’ve recently met with the chair of the department, who wanted to know what I “might be able to do to help psychology.” I know generally what he’s asking, so I have made copies of emails to the communication department touting my services, last year’s presentation to communication graduate students, and printouts of UConn’s web pages for psychology (databases … recent books & faculty publications). But the question got me thinking: what do faculty and academic deans want from academic librarians? I spend a lot of time thinking about what undergraduate and graduate students want - and can handle - from the library, but this question shifted my focus to faculty and department chairs. I turned to my trusty Google Custom Search Engine, which searches over 30 faculty blogs and searched the word “librarian.” I found very few results; a blog commenter who said his parents were both librarians, and a couple of entries from Janet D. Stemwedel over at Adventures in Ethics and Science … because she’s linking to my e-buddy John Dupuis’ blog Confessions of a Science Librarian. A search on the word “library” returned more results, but they still weren’t relevant. PhDinHistory blogger Sterling Fluharty wrote an intriguing post about a year ago called Why History PhD Students Should Learn to Think Like Reference Librarians; although this is interesting, it’s more about making students independent of librarians rather than talking about what services they’d like to see from librarians. There was one post that, while it doesn’t answer the question, does nicely promote the library to new undergraduates: “[C]ollege libraries normally have professional librarians. These are people who are experts at finding information for you. Ask them if you need something. They can often find what you want even if that particular library doesn’t stock it.” Yay! Thanks to Astroprof for that nice shout out at “How to be an effective college student.” Still, there’s very little from the horse’s mouth (as it were) about what faculty want from librarians. I think what they want includes: Effective, efficient, and non-intrusive instruction for their students (graduate and undergraduate) on how to make good use of library resources. They don’t want students to use Google, but they also don’t want to give us much classroom time. Easy access to identifying and getting full-text of relevant, important articles in their field. Perhaps also how to find out who’s cited them (or their colleagues, if they are on a tenure or promotion committee) - but they don’t want this finding to take too much time. The ability to manage citations efficiently and effectively, and from multiple locations, for their own articles and for those they are co-authoring. But they don’t want to spend too much time on this. Once we’ve identified these tasks, how can we best a) tell faculty that these are our simple goals and b) teach them these tasks in a manner they will understand? Lisa Hinchliffe blogs in The Librarians are Everywhere: “the best opportunities to connect with faculty come from seeing them at meetings, events, presentations” where informal conversations can take place. I’ve written about holding academic office hours, which is good for informally meeting both students and faculty. But back to my chair’s question: what can the librarian do to help the department? I’m stumped for a “sound bite” sized answer. I guess it really boils down to telling them what I’ve said in this post, using language that faculty understand (which is pretty much the same as library language that undergraduates understand…), and then being where they are, talking to them informally, sending out short emails which point them to this or that nifty, time-saving resource. Librarian blog readers, what can you do to help your department?

The Chron (subscription required, dang it!) reports briefly on research published in Science that, in spite of access to full text archives online, researchers are citing less, and including a smaller range of sources because they follow links from one paper to another. Of course, they’ve always done this - but perhaps are now more likely to cite those that are available in online archives and ignore those that are not. The reporter, Lila Guterman, had the good sense to check in with Carol Tenopir, who has been studying research behavior for years and finds these results quite the opposite of what her studies have shown. My personal interest isn’t so much in scholar’s behavior as in that of undergraduates, because that’s the population I teach. And my own very limited research (conducting a handful of in-depth interviews in the early 1990s, repeating the study in the early 2000s) suggested that the problems students have doing research have nothing to do with changes in technology and everything to do with gaining enough knowledge to frame a good question within a matter of weeks, reading and writing in an unfamiliar form of discourse, and embracing their role as knowledge producers, not information reporters. Post-Internet students’ responses to my questions were totally consistent my findings in 1992, even though the pool of potential resources at our small library had turned into an ocean. Finding a focus, selecting and understanding sources, and developing their own voice remained their biggest challenge. Using the library and/or Internet to access materials was a doddle in comparison. (This picture, by the by, was generated with Wordl.) I’ve been mulling the enormous amount of information available to the average undergraduate since reading a piece of research in the Harvard Business Review. (Hold on - this is Steven B. territory, no? What’s an anarchist like me doing in a journal like that? Siva pointed it out.) Harvard Business School professor Anita Elberse challenges Chris Anderson’s Long Tail theory - that the digital world will not only enable discovery of niche products, but will change what we choose. Elberse says it’s the opposite - the digital environment actually amplifies the dominance of blockbusters. She also says that crowds, in their wisdom, gravitate toward blockbusters because they find them more satisfying than less-well-known items, and manufacturers and retailers should therefore put their money on known winners, not on promoting a longer tail. Naturally, there has been much debate about her methodology and conclusions, but it’s all very thought-provoking. Naturally, my thoughts turn to undergraduates struggling to find what they need in an information-rich environment. Perhaps their experience with Wikipedia has been that it’s easy and it works better than more obscure alternatives. They have less trouble finding and deciphering the meaning of Wikipedia articles than they do making choices among thousands of scholarly articles and then having to figure out what an article means when it’s written for experts, which they are not. The blockbuster works. Except they don’t learn how to do the hard stuff or interpretation and building new meaning, which is why we torture them in the first place. But what scaffolding helps them succeed at the hard stuff? And how, amidst the enormously long tail of information that students could use, do they find good sources - the kinds that can be used to build an original and compelling understanding of whatever it is they’re researching? We pay a lot of attention to exposing students to the abundance; not so much with the much harder job of making good choices. Wherever you fall on the Elberse / Anderson debate, we’re making a false assumption when we say more is always better. Amy Fry, Julie Gilbert and I just published an article in portal (a self-archived copy is here) that had some surprising findings about the long tail in aggregated interdisciplinary databases: looking at use of one of the market leaders at 14 largely undergraduate institutions, 4% of titles accounted for half of downloads, and these were largely popular titles; articles in 40% of full text journals were not downloaded even once at all 14 institutions. We also found that, in aggregate, the number of articles downloaded fell from 2005 to 2006 by 10%, even though the database itself was growing. Curiously, a survey of librarians show they think these growing databases are about the right size and that more full text would be an improvement. Is more always a better investment? Really? In the case of undergraduates - it’s complicated. They don’t think more is a problem with Google results. But that’s because they don’t have to sort through them; they look at the first page or two. Google’s ranking algorithms are far more sophisticated than those used in our databases. If they find what they’re looking for in the first two pages of a Google search, but do not in a library database, they get frustrated. (I know, they may be wrong - and they shouldn’t be lazy, etc. etc., but it works for them. And the databases don’t.) Given undergraduates’ understandable difficulty in making sophisticated choices about sources in fields that they know little about, faculty sometimes try two unhelpful approaches. One is banning all Internet sources. Another is giving up on self-exploration altogether and relying entirely on assigned reading; that way the sophisticate - the teacher - eliminates the problem of making unsophisticated choices altogether. This, of course, means students don’t get practice doing something they will need to do in future. They may have to find out whether that claim a presidential candidate is making about immigration has merit or not, even if they don’t have a degree in immigration studies. They may have to decide whether the treatment their doctor is recommending for their cancer warrants a second opinion. They may want to make a good case before their city council that the coal-fired power plant down the block is a health risk or that the effectiveness of the reading program being used in their fourth-grader’s class is not only confusing the heck out of their child, but isn’t supported by research. They may want to be able to think for themselves. At least, we hope they will. And for that, they need to be able to make sophisticated choices about things they don’t already know. Relying on blockbusters - Wikipedia or Google or USA Today or the book / movie / person everyone is talking about - won’t cut it. But neither will simply assuming they’ll find it in the long tail. We need to think hard about not just increasing our resources and our training on how to use them, but helping faculty help students develop the ability to get to the good stuff. And not just to complete that paper, but to complete themselves as free and thoughtful human beings.

It’s rare that I’ll write about one of my personal projects - maybe a casual link here and there - but today I want to share with you the link to a recent project that I’m particularly proud to bring to your attention. This past spring semester I engaged in a unique experience. For the first time in my career I served as the guest editor of a journal issue. A good friend and colleague, Lisa Finder, a librarian at Hunter College and current co-editor of Urban Library Journal, invited me to serve as the guest editor of the spring 2008 issue. When she said I could choose any theme I liked that sealed the deal. After some careful thought I decided to assemble a collection of articles that would showcase the creative abilities of librarians. We call this issue “The Creative Library“. Lauren Yannotta, also a librarian at Hunter College, is ULI’s other co-editor. If you are new to Urban Library Journal you should know: Urban Library Journal is an open access, refereed journal of research and discussion dealing with all aspects of urban libraries and librarianship, welcomes articles dealing with academic, research, public, school, and special libraries in an urban setting. The editors and I were amazed at the number of quality manuscripts we received in response to our call for papers. Choosing those to include was quite difficult. I think you will find the articles in this issue offer great examples of creative librarians at their best. For an overview of what’s included take a look at my introduction to the issue. Here’s a snippet from that overview: That’s why this special issue about creativity in libraries is just right for the times. First, it’s important to celebrate the many creative minds working in this profession. Libraries have traditionally worked with restrained resource pools. To have come so far with so many successes is owing to the high levels of creative thinking in our libraries. Second, as we find ourselves in times of rapid change our most valuable asset is our ability to master the art of adaptation. If one program fails, if users seem to be going elsewhere for their information, if user expectations shift unexpectedly, then library workers must use their creativity to quickly adapt. By understanding our user communities, we can create new programs that leverage our skill sets to deliver new services and new ideas that will continue to make the library a community destination, both physical and virtual. We have compiled here a set of dynamic articles that demonstrate that there is no lack of creativity in the world of librarianship. But you probably already knew that. Anyone who has worked in this field for any length of time knows there are many creative people attracted to the field of librarianship. Yet we rarely use our journal literature to promote the many acts of creativity happening at our libraries. This special issue of Urban Library Journal changes that. Did I say that this is a free, open access journal. So it’s free. What are you waiting for?

Anonymous. Computers, Networks & Communications. Atlanta: May 26, 2008. p. 335Available Formats: Abstract, Full text

Anonymous. Computer Technology Journal. Atlanta: May 26, 2008. p. 226Available Formats: Abstract, Full text

Anonymous. Information Technology Newsweekly. Atlanta: May 26, 2008. p. 154Available Formats: Abstract, Full text

Anonymous. Information Technology Business. Atlanta: May 26, 2008. p. 156Available Formats: Abstract

More documents may be available. Follow the link to view all documents in ProQuest for your search.

The NCSLA Web 2.0 Roundtable held July 24 at the National Humanities Center at Research Triangle Park offered an informative round of musical tables. Seven roundtables covered blogs & wikis, Facebook & LinkedIn, RSS & News Feeds, Podcasting, Library Thing, SLA’s Course on 23 Things, and Del.icio.us & Flickr. Some 50-plus attendees got [...]

an example of an old scrapbook On Wednesday, July 16, Vicki Johnson and I attended a Solinet workshop on the care of scrapbooks. The workshop was presented by Jessica Leming of Solinet Preservation Services. This workshop covered a seldom addressed topic-the deterioration of older scrapbook collections. These scrapbooks take a variety of shapes and [...]

Phoebe Kao holds one of the books she made July 11-12, 2008. On July 11-12, Phoebe Kao, a librarian from Tianjin International School in Tianjin, China (about 2 hours by train from Beijing) visited Craig Fansler and ZSR Preservation for two days of book repair training. Phoebe found out about Craig and the possibility of book [...]

One session I attended had possible practical application for us and is summarized immediately below. Following that are summaries of my committee work, which formed the main focus of the Anaheim conference for me. “Institutional Repositories: New Roles for Acquisitions” This was a panel discussion on Monday, June 30, 1:30 pm - 3:30 pm, with three [...]

At ALA, I attended several sessions on cataloging and the future of the catalog. The liveliest session was a debate titled “There’s No Catalog Like No Catalog: The Ultimate Debate on the Future of the Library Catalog.” Below are some of the questions Roy Tennant, Senior Program Officer for OCLC Programs and Research, posed to [...]

zsrlibrary posted a photo: 4th Floor Wilson Wing

zsrlibrary posted a photo: Library patrons can find comfortable seating while they read current newspapers and periodicals in this repurposed room on the 4th floor of the Wilson Wing.

zsrlibrary posted a photo: View of the newly repurposed Allen Mandelbaum Reading Room.

zsrlibrary posted a photo: The method the installers use to pick up and place the glass panels that will be a focal point of the mezzanine railings

zsrlibrary posted a photo: Workers in the Starbucks side install glass panels in the mezzanine