A Summer of Books

My Artists’ Books course started this week and it rocks! For some reason the fact that we SLIS graduate students can take a few classes outside of the department is not highly advertised. Apparently one just has to prove the relevance of the class to the library science degree and I think it has to be a 300 or 400 level course. I highly recommend taking advantage of this opportunity to balance traditional library coursework (like metadata, databases, and cataloging) with something that stirs the other side of your brain. With only two courses left to complete, the chance to switch gears and make books is a big breath of fresh air for me.

On another note, I’ve accepted a Web 2.0 Content Producer position, which I’ll begin full-time in August. I’m thrilled to be exploring the potentials of 2.0 technologies in relation to education and young adult and children’s literature. I’m so excited to venture further into the world of YA and children’s books– mmm, they’re like candy! If anyone has recommendations in this genre, please post a comment or send me an email.

I just revisited the movie Rain Man and loved the following quote by Raymond Babbitt (Dustin Hoffman) to Charlie Babbitt (Tom Cruise) upon leaving the mental institution:

Of course, I don’t have my books. Of course, there’s no bookshelves. I’m definitely out of books. I’m gonna be book-less.

Between the making and the reading, this is definitely going to be a book-filled summer!

Definitely.

From Treetops

Do books or quotes or songs ever find you in just the right moment?

I love when the universe sends tidbits of gentle advice my way like leaves drifting down from treetops to land at my feet.

Today, this:

Have patience with everything unresolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves as if they were locked rooms or books written in a foreign language. Don’t search for answers, which could not be given to you now, because you would not be able to live them. And the point is, to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps then, someday far in the future, you gradually, without even noticing it, will live your way into the answer. - R. M. Rilke

Sometimes I Get All Virginia Woolf

I have a secret.

Being a librarian is not my primary dream. I know that it really is an aspiration for some, and it’s a noble one. For me, becoming a librarian is a means to support what I really love to do, which is to:

watch solder melt into the perfect seam,
shape supple copper and bronze,
sand sterling silver to a satin finish,
sculpt my ideas in the medium that taught me patience.

I am most content when my hands are rough. I am a tool person. I am anxious most of the time, but never when I am sanding, riveting, annealing, chasing, forging, soldering, raising, sinking, buffing, casting, piercing, oxidizing, drawing, or polishing.

Librarianship is my plan to pursue my true calling, my honest passion. This profession will hopefully help to put food on this artist’s table. Or at least, that was my plan…

I’ve realized lately that the 40-hour/week job I commit to absolutely cannot be devoid of creativity. It is not enough for me to create in my spare time, I have to have the opportunity to engage my artistic side at work. I need to be able to write or design or plan or build.

I have a whole lot to contribute to the library world, and I dearly want the opportunity to do so. I think libraries need artists and all types of people with other kinds of passions and talents. Skills translate, abilities transfer. A demonstrated passion for something is a valuable, marketable trait.

But forty hours of repetitive library work and I will put rocks in my pockets and wade into a river.

Conference Update

The professional development conference I’ve been working on (with the help of great board members) is a little over a month away. The speakers are lined up, we have an agenda and a menu, and the brochures have been printed and mailed out. I’m excited that we’re offering a student rate for library school people. I’m hoping for a great turnout and a stellar day of programming. At this point it’s kind of up to the forces that be and library directors.

I realize that with slim budgets, there isn’t always money for support staff to take part in professional development opportunities. Some of my association’s members have informed me that they use personal days or vacation time to attend our conference (which is very, very undeniably related to their work– it may be an enjoyable day, but it isn’t quite on par with vacation).

So, if you are a library director, if you know a library director, or you plan to be a library director, I am asking you to remember that support staff also benefit greatly from professional development opportunities. They benefit in the same ways that professional staff do. They gain new knowledge about technology, are exposed to new approaches to customer service, and get updated on new library trends, etc. Also, there’s the chance to get re-energized about library work and to network with other library workers. Everything gained at a conference is going to translate back to job performance/satisfaction in some little or big way, and it doesn’t really matter how the person is classified. There might not be money to reimburse support staff for professional development costs, but you can offer your support, encouragement, and an awareness of these opportunities (be they conferences, webinars, podcasts, free classes, etc.).

I think it is really important to reward the staff members who seek out opportunities to improve their skills and knowledge and strive to develop what they can offer in the workplace. So if you are a library director and some of your support staff tell you they want to attend a conference, encourage them to do so (and then ask them about it!).  I think it is important to encourage staff members to learn and try new things and to share with them opportunities to do so. (I like when my boss has given me the chance to learn new software, for example. I get reinvested in my work and gain skills that help me do my job better and improve my resume/library repertoire).

Support library support staff, this is their profession too.

The Hoop-Jumping Librarians

The snow melting outside is the most delicious sound, more delicious and satiating than the sounds of even the most decadent breakfast being cooked. For me, the undoing of winter is a kind of emotional and spiritual nourishment. I begin these pre-spring days with a new awareness. I realize just how hunched my shoulders have been against the cold and I work to consciously relax those long-tensed muscles. It occurs to me that I’ve had to adapt to walking on ice, literally. Ice permits no sauntering, no strolling, and no skipping at all. Just to walk on a bare sidewalk without fear of falling is a new luxury.

This long snowy winter has led me into a physical survival mode and an energy-conserving approach to each day. Hibernation doesn’t do wonders for my mental acuity, nor for blog inspiration. As the snow turns back to water, though, I can feel my thoughts getting a bit sharper.

Today I’m thinking about library school and this two-year degree I’m about to complete. I’m thinking about getting a job and feeling anxiety, not only my own anxiety, but also the anxiety of my classmates and last year’s MLS graduates who are still looking for jobs. In every conversation I’ve had recently about beginning the job search I’ve been told, “I don’t envy you one bit,” or, “I’m sure glad I’m not out there right now.” I have also realized that to increase my chances of getting a job, I must expand my notion of the types of jobs I’ll apply for.

We came to library school to a degree that would help us get better jobs, right? Now we’re about to attain the degree and it feels like there is more of a guarantee of being jobless than being gainfully employed. And, I’ve worked hard in library school. It’s not that the classes themselves are hard; it’s cramming into two years all the things you’re not getting in the classes that’s hard. To compensate for the in-class theory-time, we must put in equal hours outside of library school getting relevant, real-world work experience.

(Will someone please decide if the MLS is a professional or an academic degree? LIS students suffer in the midst of this debate.)

After all our busy days and late nights and weekends of homework and group projects and practicum hours and balancing school with full-time jobs and families, we now have to worry that we won’t be employable? We now have to consider part-time jobs, jobs with no benefits, jobs in small faraway towns, and jobs we don’t really want or are overqualified for?

Who flooded the market with LIS graduates? Who spread the rumor about a graying profession? Why did I believe them? Can I just blame the economy?

Why do we need to fight so hard to prove we need a degree to do what we do? I think it’s just one of many hoops to jump through, perhaps an investment, but not a guarantee. It’s an expensive hoop and a time-consuming one too. It’s surely not the last one we’ll approach. Kudos to the hoop-jumping librarians.

The good news? Spring is on its way, and it’s a much more optimistic and hopeful season than winter. Even in a wintry and frigid job market, we future librarians keep on persevering and continue to hope for the chance to do work that we enjoy. We’re demonstrating a loyalty to the profession based on the work it entails, and not solely the promise of a steady paycheck. It’s a nice thought, actually.

Technology Hill

This week I checked out Hillary Rodham Clinton’s website to unearth her technology-related plans for the United States. On her Innovation Agenda page,

I found the following:

• #2 “Ensure that e-science initiatives are adequately funded. E-science has transformative potential, and we must accelerate the pace of discovery and investment to ensure that America leads the emerging field. E-science is research that links Internet-based tools, global collaboration, supercomputers, high-speed networks, and software for simulation and visualization. The potential of e-science is great. For example, researchers could one day model climate change by constructing scale simulations of the Earth’s systems. The NSF commits approximately 3% of its budget, or $200 million annually, to the support of e-science through its Office of Cyberinfrastructure.”
• #4 “Direct the federal agencies to award prizes in order to accomplish specific innovation goals. The federal agencies should regularly use prizes to encourage innovation when there is a clearly defined goal and when there are multiple technological paths for achieving that goal. Prizes can attract non-traditional participants and stimulate the development of useful but under-funded technology. Hillary Clinton proposes to make prizes a part of the budgets at the research agencies.”
• #7 “Support initiatives to establish leadership in broadband. Under the Bush administration, the country that invented the Internet has slipped to 25th in the global rankings for broadband deployment. In order to accelerate the deployment of sophisticated networks, Hillary Clinton proposes that the federal government provide tax incentives to encourage broadband deployment in underserved areas. She also proposes financial support for state and local broadband initiatives. Various municipal broadband initiatives are underway around the country to accelerate the deployment of high speed networks. The initiatives are useful for education, commerce, technology development, and the efficient provision of municipal services.”
• #2 “Boost support for multidisciplinary research in areas such as the intersection of bio, info, and nanotechnologies. This is an area of potentially unique competitive advantage for the United States. Few countries have the depth and breadth of our excellence across different scientific and technological fields.”

These excerpts from Hill’s 9-point “Innovation Agenda” are her answers to keeping up with the technological Joneses, namely China. So, she proposes funding for e-science initiatives, prizes from federal agencies for achieving innovation goals, increased broadband deployment, and increased support for “bio, info, and nanotechnologies.”

I’m admittedly writing from a biased viewpoint and I acknowledge that my interpretation of Hillary’s technology-related plans probably doesn’t come from a completely neutral place… To me, these plans sound really hollow. I’m just not convinced by the smattering of tech. jargon (cyberinfrastructure, e-science, nanotechnologies). These are just words. These don’t sound like concrete or tangible plans to me, nor do they come across as innovative ideas. Unless you consider giving prizes an innovative idea.

And what kinds of prizes?? Cash money? Scratch and sniff stickers? Trips to Hawaii? A Bill Clinton bobblehead?

Hill does do a nice job of placing huge 2.0 icons for Facebook, Flickr, etc. on her website. Especially interesting, yet not at all surprising, is the inclusion of Eons, “the online community for boomers.” I give her credit for trying to keep up with the Joneses; the boomer generation of Joneses and their tech. savvy offspring.

As a member of the latter, I’m sorry Hill, you’re just not quite there yet.

Obama 2.0

I like him, and I have for some time. In this election, I’ve decided to read as much as I can about the candidates’ actual plans and ideas for our country. In my next few blog posts I’ll be taking a look at the main presidential candidates’ (both Democratic and Republican) plans with an eye out for how each one does or does not propose to integrate technology.

I think it is long overdue that the leaders of our country recognize that technology can offer new ways to achieve and promote democracy. They are certainly utilizing email, YouTube, FaceBook, the Web, etc. to campaign for our votes, so we know they and their staff are aware and somewhat proficient with these technologies. But how about using these same technologies, really using and exploring them to their full extent, to empower us by promoting communication, increasing government transparency, and collecting public opinion?

Here’s what I found in Barack Obama’s Blueprint for Change:

• Sunlight Before Signing: Too often bills are rushed through Congress and to the president before the public has the opportunity to review them. As president, Obama will not sign any non-emergency bill without giving the American public an opportunity to review and comment on the White House website for five days. (Sec1:4)
• Google for Government: Americans have the right to know how their tax dollars are spent, but that information has been hidden from public view for too long. That’s why Barack Obama and Senator Tom Coburn (R-OK) passed a law to create a Google-like search engine to allow regular people to track federal grants, contracts, earmarks, and loans online. The Chicago Sun-Times wrote, “It would enable the public to see where federal money goes and how it is spent. It’s a brilliant idea.” (Sec1:5)
• Deploy Next-Generation Broadband: Obama believes we can get broadband to every community in America through a combination of reform of the Universal Service Fund, better use of the nation’s wireless spectrum, promotion of next-generation facilities, technologies and applications, and new tax and loan
  incentives. (Sec1:13)
• Engaging the American People on Foreign Policy: Obama will bring foreign policy decisions directly to the people by requiring his national security officials to have periodic national broadband town hall meetings to discuss foreign policy. He will personally deliver occasional fireside chats via webcast. (Sec1:55)
• Create a Public “Contracts and Influence” Database: As president, Obama will create a “contracts and influence” database that will disclose how much federal contractors spend on lobbying, and what contracts they are getting and how well they complete them. (Sec1:4)

Fireside chats via webcast, databases, Next-Generation broadband, White House website commenting– all of this appeals greatly to my little librarian heart. The Clintons are up next.

“Sam”

Today at work I met a man who traveled to Germany shortly after WWII to help Jewish refugees in displaced persons camps. At the age of 26 he met “Ike” Eisenhower, who appointed him area director of the International Refugee Organization. This man, I’ll call him Sam, was an incredible person and genius manager/administrator. He helped to set up boxing rings, ritual baths, theater productions, and beer concessions within the DP camps. He decided that the wounded refugees and veterans should run the beer concession stands and receive the profits. He rescued children from abandoned and bombed buildings, children he discovered under piles of rags who were too weak and scared to venture out when the war ended. When paperwork prevented a refugee’s emigration he ripped it up and produced new documents, ignoring legalities for the sake of well-deserved liberty and the absolute right to start anew after losing so much.

Sam showed me photographs he had taken during his time working in the DP camps and spoke to me about them. One picture showed a group of refugees. Almost every person in the photo stood next to an ornate baby carriage. Imagine a cluster of fluffy white sheep, except instead of sheep, picture baby carriages. A flock of prams. Sam explained the resilience of the refugees and the significance of the photo; the symbols of human hope, survival, and rebirth.

By the way, a scanner and a PC introduced me to Sam, his story, his courage, and his legacy. Scanning is redundant work, cataloging can be tedious, and metadata does not thrill me.

But, there is MAGIC in my work. There is reverence, serendipity, inspiration, and connection to be found in the creation of digital collections. For me, there is a spirituality in the task of preserving bits of history. It is, unquestionably, a small act of human kindness.

Yeah, being is librarian is pretty damn cool.

Quoted!

Being quoted on someone’s blog (the entry from 1.16.08), especially someone whom I admire and think is really smart, certainly makes my day and serves to bolster my LIS-related optimism.

Clearly, from reading some popular library blogs there is a lot of annoyance in the field, as well as abundant negativity and sarcasm galore. So much so that sometimes I’m afraid to write about the improvements and innovations that I hope for for fear that these jaded, sharply witty, and annoyed librarians are lurking and ready to burst my bubble.

Honestly, I stopped reading those blogs. Well, the ones that just whine and vent and don’t actually do anything constructive about the problems they perceive. I quite believe in constructive complaining.

I think a little complaining is healthy, justified, necessary, and sometimes vital to shake things up and promote change. We’ve got to pick the right avenues, however, and we need to make sure we’re speaking into the right ears with the right amount of volume.

Yes, I think current OPACs are abysmal and somewhat embarrassing, but I can also tell you how what I hope they will become. I can articulate a vision, and that’s the beginning of making better OPACs a reality. It’s the way to solutions.

And the exciting thing? People are listening! Maybe not as many as we’d like, but there are certainly some and I guarantee they are not pessimists. They’re listening because they believe that solutions and innovations are within reach, and because they haven’t shrugged their shoulders and given up.

I feel lucky to be a part of a field that I can contribute to and shape. In my opinion the opportunities are all around if you’re just willing to see them.

Conference Planning

It’s been awhile! I’m glad you’re back faithful BNL reader! I’m certainly going to miss semester breaks when I enter the full-time professional library realm. The time to veg out has been fantastic– especially the opportunity to read for pleasure and watch movies.

I haven’t been completely slacking though. Now that it’s 2008, I am officially the Chair of the WLA-Support Staff Section. Being a relatively shy person (though no one ever believes me about it) this leadership role is one that I know I will grow from. My main task is to plan our group’s annual one-day professional development conference. I have the help of our board, but the main duties and details fall to me.

It’s already keeping me up at night. Approximately 80-100 library support staff from across the state will attend. They’ll hail from all types of libraries and library positions.

Event planning is challenging! Here are a few of the things I’ve learned so far regarding planning a library conference:

• Survey your membership and ask them what kinds of programming will be most valuable to them. Ask if they would like to present on their area of expertise. I used SurveyMonkey (free and easy!).
• Start brainstorming about and contacting potential speakers early. It takes time to hear back and people’s schedules fill up quickly.
• When selecting a location, make sure it has access for people with disabilities and be sure the bathrooms are close to where the conference rooms are located.
• When planning a lunch menu, always include a vegetarian option and label everything.
• Market your conference with emails and mailings. Let your membership know why this event will be an enriching, educational, and rejuvenating experience.
• Keep it fun. Make sure to balance heavy topics or tech. intensive sessions with lighter sessions such as book/author talks, using humor in the workplace, etc.
• Delegate and enlist the help of others. Even if you don’t have a board to help with conference tasks, you might find that a friend, a coworker, a partner, or even group members will be willing to help with specific tasks (like staffing the registration table).

That’s what I’ve got so far. I’m new to this, so if you have advice or suggestions, or thoughts on things you like and don’t like about library conferences please feel free to leave a comment!

Seems Like Old Times

The holidays make me so nostalgic. They’re these little bookmarks in time that make it easier to look back to the year before, to remember where you were, and to see how far you’ve come. For me, at Christmas and New Year’s, reflection and a bit of melancholic nostalgia are inevitable.

This is the first year without my grandparents. Now that they’re gone a door has closed on the type of Christmas I’ve know since I was a little girl. Yes, it’s been changing gradually over time; Santa became a myth, I aged, they aged, and family members dispersed across the country. Now that they are both gone, though, it really can’t ever be the same.

I guess that’s why tradition is so important, and maybe it’s why some of us get so invested in the details. We’re attempting to craft a holiday that matches our memories. Nostalgia is a strong and driving force that leads us to emulate what we miss and create anew what we missed out on.

Holidays are an opportunity to invoke the past. They also give us the chance to improve upon it.

This year I’m in Christmas flux. It has occurred to me that I am moving swiftly toward being the bearer of holiday traditions for my (future) children as my mother and grandmother were for me. By choice, I spent today alone, reflecting on all the change that has occurred in my life this year, really letting it sink in. I started on a project of sorting through my very disorganized box of photos, and decided which to keep and which to throw out. Toughest to decide on were photos from past relationships. Should I keep a picture of the person I dated junior year of high school? The lover I traveled to Paris with? The partner who was also my best friend? If I don’t want these photos now, might I in the future?

How can someone mean so much, and later become such a small detail in the larger history and timeline of my life?

I can’t help but think of the gorgeous scene in Annie Hall, when the illustrious Diane Keaton sings “Seems Like Old Times.” This scene, and the song lyrics especially, pretty well sum up the way the holidays make me feel. My heart gets fooled a bit when things seem like old times but aren’t. In fact, I’m not quite sure it will ever fully understand that some of the people I have loved are truly gone.

Tradition and nostalgia are about holding on– to grandparents, parents, lost loves, childhood, and old times.

Human Obstacles

I keep wondering why I’ve been feeling so claustrophobic during my walks to class lately. I realized today it’s because of the snow! We Midwesterners are being compressed by it, and we’re wearing big winter coats, so there’s even less of a personal space bubble. I get a little testy when people get closer than however many inches of personal space I culturally require.

On the theme of people getting in the way, I had a little showdown this week with an uber-cranky, very unpleasant woman. It was all in the name of finishing my Captivate implementation project. I needed to get to the one computer in our computer lab that has the 30-day trial installed on it (so I could finish creating a maintenance manual for my tutorials). Between the busyness of final exams week and a mass amount of lab reservations, there was only one three-hour opportunity for me to get to Captivate and grab some screenshots for my manual.

I double-checked the lab schedule online (available) and took my standard 45- minute bus ride to campus. When I finally sat down to start my work, a class wandered into the lab. The instructor brashly ordered everyone to leave and they compliantly did so. Except for a certain brave (or very stressed/desperate) new librarian who dug in her heels.

There was just no clear reason that I should have had to forgo my work. I explained my circumstances but to no avail. The instructor said she didn’t want me to listen in on her class, so I offered to listen to music on my headphones. I could tell she wasn’t upset about me being in the room, she was, however, furious that I hadn’t cowed to her authority. Then she had a little tantrum– in front of her class. I think her authority left the building at that point.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m a huge respecter of authority. I just find it terribly difficult to respect some so entitled and obstinate and silly and unwilling to make reasonable exceptions in specific or dire situations. After all, as I learned later, someone had made an exception for her to use our (library school) computer lab without advance reservation.

Moral of the story:

Often times, it isn’t an aspect of technology that creates a barrier, it’s people (and their accompanying attitudes). Sometimes it’s negativity, sometimes it’s stubbornness, and sometimes it’s fear of the unknown. And, it might not always be someone else’s attitude that’s creating a roadblock, it could be your own.

Think about it. I am.

P.S. It’s the last night of Dorothea’s amazing class. Thank you, Dorothea, for being the antithesis of a human obstacle, which I guess makes you a human portal. Bet I’m the first to call you that. Yes, it sounds weird I know, it’s just my own way of saying you’re an outstanding teacher and I’ve loved every minute of your class.

Ode to my fellow brave new librarians

As we near the end of the semester, an instructor has posed the following question:

Have you noticed any any differences in the way that you think about, react to, or use technology?

Yes, I have noticed differences.  First of all, my feelings toward technology have been realized and deepened.  I am unquestionably in love, and I am so glad that my lifetime overlaps with computers and the internet.  Human beings do a lot of things that make me feel not so proud to be one, and lots of other things that bring me back to being totally in awe of what our upright, big-brained, tool-making selves can create.

I feel reverent when I consider what computer technology allows us to do.  I can write and send instant love letters, spell-check, pay my bills, catalog a book, look for a job, find my best friend from 2nd grade, order a pizza, publish my thoughts, socialize and connect, explore and learn, give gifts, write code, teach others in an online class, find recipes, unearth my family genealogy, read world news, get directions, listen to music, preserve the words of Holocaust survivors and WWII soldiers…

Awesome, extraordinary, incredible stuff!  But, here’s what has really changed in me–

I used to revere the technologies themselves; I viewed them as existing independently, almost magically.  Now, I realize that the humans beings behind the technology are whom I celebrate and admire.  I understand that within human culture/nature is a tendency toward technological innovation and tool-making that I am not separate from.  By nature, technology, in the computer and internet sense, invites participation and co-creation.  If I want to I can be a part of this.  Technology is not out of my, or anyone’s, league.

Some might argue that as our lives become more virtual, and web-based we are losing out on human contact and interaction, becoming culturally isolated or backward.  I think that human loneliness, the need to socialize, and the desire to communicate came first.  The internet and e-mail and blogs and MySpace and Flickr and online classes and instant messaging and YouTube, etc. are just some of our more brilliant and creative answers to make this big old world feel a bit smaller, more manageable, and less lonely.

I have to say that as frustrating as library school can be and as ready as I feel to graduate, I am impressed on a daily basis by the innovation, brilliance, creativity, and tech. savviness of my classmates, my colleagues.  You’re teaching workshops about copyright.  You’re collecting books for inmates.  You’re eating locally and keeping a blog of your experience.  You’re answering reference questions.  You’re writing strict XHTML.  You’re installing open-source software, creating podcasts and screencasts, and running around in SecondLife.  You’re cataloging books.  You’re applying and interviewing for jobs.  You’re doing storytimes for kids who really need it.  You’re preserving and digitizing history.  You’re doing all kinds of neat stuff not related to the library world, like becoming parents, composing music, cooking extravagant meals, running marathons, volunteering your time, and making art.  (And, of course, you’re doing even cooler stuff that I don’t even know about yet.)

Such brave new librarians you are, so inspiring.  You’re the fabric of the technological culture, this 2.o epoch, that gets me out of bed in the morning.

Captivating

Last Monday I created my first from-scratch Captivate screencast tutorial. I wrote out my learning objectives and kept the tutorial brief. From reading the research, these tutorials are most effective when they are short and sweet. I had a great time making this tutorial, which demonstrates some features of my workplace’s new website.

There were a few minor roadblocks or hassles. The first was realizing that our library computer lab does not have Captivate software (nor does any other campus lab). I was able to have the lab technician install a thirty-day trial to get me through my proposed final projects. Secondly, I was recording the audio (my voice) in a roomful of people. People who were writing papers. I could sense the annoyance as I repeated the same sentence over and over into my little microphone until I got an adequate recording. It’s evident in the tutorial that I’m speaking a little self-consciously and in some parts you can hear the background noise of the computer lab. For the future, some privacy and space to record audio is absolutely necessary.

As I mentioned in an earlier post I had planned to share this tutorial with my boss. That I did, and it was indeed well received. I’ve been asked to create more of these tutorials for my institution, and I look forward to the opportunity. Still no clear possibility of a job, but at least I’ll be spending my LTE hours honing a skill and being creative.

However, I did get an e-mail today from the director of my workplace and he described my tutorial as “pretty cool” and thanked me for creating a prototype. How great and rare it is when a class projects garners recognition in real life?!

(Thanks, Dorothea, for assigning us only relevant and useful classwork!)

Tell your grandma to be vigilant!

What are some security precautions you know are important, but that drive you crazy?

There are two main ones. The first is password maintenance. I know I should:

• not use the same password for everything
• change my passwords monthly
• never tell anyone my passwords
• use upper and lowercase characters, non-letter characters, non-dictionary words, more than eight characters, etc.
• memorize them instead of writing them down anywhere

I’m getting better at taking these precautions because it is important to me that no one can get into my personal information, but I am annoyed that I have to do so. I just feel like there is so little room in my head as it is that I would much prefer to use it for new concepts, ideas, artwork inspiration, and memories instead of long, silly strings of letters, numbers, and characters.

As a side note, I have created a meditation for when I can’t fall asleep (or it might be some OCD flaring up) where I recite all the numbers I have memorized– from phone numbers to addresses to passwords to e-mail addresses. I can tell you the space for new passwords feels rather limited.

The second cyber-security precaution is much more difficult for me, and that is to constantly operate from a place of distrust. Don’t trust that e-mails are from who they say they are, don’t trust links you click on to not infect your computer with a virus, don’t trust anyone who asks for your password, don’t trust that your personal information on your personal computer is secure, don’t trust that your work information on your work computer isn’t being looked at… The list goes on and on.

In life, I naturally operate from a place of trust, and if I’m wrong in a certain instance I adapt accordingly and I (hopefully) get more savvy. Being trusting in cyberspace, however, will get you taken advantage of in one way or another. It might be an annoying or destructive virus or it might be someone who gets your bank account number with a clever phishing scheme. It might be identity theft or it might be a well-tailored marketing scheme tailored expressly from information you provide on Facebook or MySpace.

Basically, if you operate from a place of trust when cruising through cyberspace you might as well put an apple in your mouth and some parsley in your hair because you’re prey, and you’re placing yourself on a pretty little serving platter.

And, yes, these precautions are annoying! They take time and mental real estate, but they can really prevent a lot of harm in the long run.

So, keep them in mind, and tell your grandma who shops online for holiday gifts, tell your little sister who posts her address on Facebook, tell your friend in college who gets e-mailed a moneymaking scheme that is too good to be true, tell everyone with online banking and an e-mail account, and so on.

Web 2.0 Apps.:Whose foot does the shoe fit?

How do I take what I know and use it to prove that I’m essential, or at least valuable, to my place of employment?  A place where budget cuts have current employees snarling if an LTE like me gets too close to their office chair.  My “limited term” is turning in to two years and I want that to count for something– loyalty, dedicated service perhaps, but not just less-expensive labor.  As I approach the end of library school I hope, I wish, I pray, I dream at night of securing an unlimited term, RL, big-person job.

I want some security, yes, but I also actually want to be a contributor, a leader, and perhaps even a changemaker at an organization that I’ve become very invested in.

So, I know what I want.  I’ve even written out my ideal job description (and mentioned it to my boss in a gutsy moment).  Now I’m thinking a lot about the new applications that I’m getting experience with in library school.  I’m thinking about how these apps. could further the mission of my place of employment.  I’m looking for holes in customer service and outreach that applications like Moodle or CamStudio/Captivate or podcasting or VuFind, etc. could fill.

There are holes.  And being a lower-rung employee might actually place me in a better vantage point to see them.  For example, we (my workplace) has a vast genealogical collection.  Groups of 40+ researchers come from far and wide with hopes of finding a lengthy obit. or a birth record for a missing link in their family tree.  Genealogy research is complicated in and of itself and is, in my experience, complicated further by the collections (and associated non-patron-friendly organizational schemes) patrons are asked to use.

To me, this situation calls out for a few simple screencasting tutorials.  Software like Captivate or the OS CamStudio could provide faraway genealogists with some research basics and some visuals of the collections.  When I worked Saturdays with the large research groups, who often drove in from Iowa, Michigan, or Illinois for the day, they of course wanted to make the most of their limited time.  I was often asked if there was any way they could have prepared in advance.

An online tutorial would do a few things:

• Begin to orient potential researchers with the collections
• Help remove a bit of research anxiety by providing visuals and tips
• Allow distant researchers to maximize their limited research time
• Improve customer service*
• Advertise our impressive, unique, incomparable collections

I think this kind of brainstorming and shoe-fitting is what my Web 2.0 generation of library school colleagues will need to do to succeed; to prove ourselves useful and valuable.  We have to show how our skills are beneficial to potential employers/organizations and we must be able to articulate how new apps. would further an organization’s or library’s mission.

I’m going to make these tutorials and gift them to my boss.  I know improving service and outreach to patrons ranks highly on his list of professional values and goals, and so I have a good feeling that his response will be an enthusiastic one.  I hope it shows my investment in the organization, my ability to innovate and launch new projects, my dedication to furthering the mission of the place, and so on.  If it also shows how desperately I want a real job there, I think that’s ok as well.

*Saturdays are the most popular days for genealogy groups to come but are also the most understaffed days, i.e. untrained/under-trained student workers instead of librarians or expert support staff.

VuFind for Historical Society Archives

In previous posts about VuFind I considered it being put to use in place of the library catalogs of academic libraries. I have been giving thought to how VuFind might apply to other types of libraries and collections.

For example, how useful is VuFind as a tool when applied to non-book items and artifacts? Digital collections?

I spend a lot of my time at work using the State Historical Society’s archival collections. I just finished reading and selecting soldiers’ WWII correspondence for a digitization project. Now I’m working on a project to digitize audio of interviews with Holocaust survivors. I wonder how VuFind would represent such collections in both original and digital formats.

Is there a way to use VuFind so digital and physical collections could be simultaneously searched and accessed (or at least give the appearance of doing so)? Could it be used as a sort of bridge?

More thoughts to come on this topic…

Comments and input are welcomed as always.

Musing of the week: Searching and search interfaces

What websites do you regularly search and what search-specific features do you use?

I’m going to interpret “sites” to include databases. I am also going to frame my answers in terms of the students I teach. I do most of my searching and teaching in MadCat (my university’s OPAC), Academic Search, and Proquest. I also use Google often, and Amazon on occasion. Another search interface I use frequently is that of the iTunes Music Store.

I have assisted with 17 information literacy/bibliographic instruction sessions in the last month and so I feel I have acquired some valuable knowledge on how students/patrons are conducting searches and how they relate to search interfaces. The features I teach students to use, as called for by the script, include:

• Sorting results by newest first
• Truncation (we spend way to much time explaining that our OPAC uses the question mark, while most databases use the asterisk)
• Boolean operators
• Guided Search (multiple search boxes separated by boolean operators)

What I’ve noticed is how much time is spent teaching students to work with the little anomalies of our OPAC, and how little time is reserved for teaching students to evaluate articles and sources for content and relevancy. Students are also left with little time to practice searching for their own topics, so there is hardly room for students to feel that the search process relates to them and to their needs. Here are the things that students expect our university OPAC to be able to do (and that it isn’t capable of):

• Interpret natural language
• Correct their spelling mistakes
• Skip initial articles like “a” and “the”
• Flag items that are useful (they must learn citation management software)
• Search for alternate endings and plurals of search terms (without using a truncation symbol)
• Suggest search terms
• Search for multiple words as a phrase (without having to enclose words in parentheses)

Oh, how I long for my university to implement an application like VuFind!
How much do you think you know about advanced search features on those sites?

I think as a library school student and an apprentice info. lit. teacher I have a heightened awareness of advanced search features. It doesn’t mean I use them often. I tend to think that if a search interface is effective (for example, it features faceted metadata searching) then the need for an advanced search diminishes. We don’t even cover advanced features in our library course for freshmen, and I’m glad we don’t because I think it would be a waste of their time until catalog interfaces improve. It’s really a backwards notion of expecting users to adapt to the catalog instead of adapting the catalog to users.

What could those sites do to improve?

Well, the first thing MadCat could do is get some good design aesthetics and typography going! White space, bold print, and varied type sizes would vastly improve our OPAC. Searching would be immediately more intuitive and eyestrain would be reduced.

The next step would be the implementation of a search interface like VuFind, which really brings the current OPAC structure, features, and display up to modern visual and technical standards.

New look, new name

My old blog title was fun, but it wasn’t library-themed enough for me. I had a dream that my new title should be “Brave New Librarian” and I woke up still liking the idea. It really fits the way I advocate approaching new library technologies with fearlessness and pluck. Also, I think this means that I am finally beginning to embrace and envision myself as a librarian; like dreaming in a language is a sign that you’re really absorbing it.

VuFind vs. MadCat: A Brief Visual Comparison

I’ve been thinking a lot about VuFind’s claim that it opens up the catalog and enables users to browse. For this post I will compare the visual results of a search for “Hamlet” using VuFind and MadCat (my university’s online catalog).

A basic, words anywhere search for “Hamlet” in MadCat brings us to a results screen that looks like this:

In contrast, a basic, words anywhere search in VuFind looks like this: *Note the images of items, the option to “Add to Favorites”, the ability to narrow your search by Format, Author, Topic, etc., and the live item status.

Now to compare item records… a MadCat record looks like this:

In contrast, a VuFind record looks like this: *Note the image of item, tagging option, and patron review feature. The VuFind record also shows similar items.

1. With a quick glance at the images I’ve provided, which appeals to you on a purely aesthetic level?
2. Which has features that you or your patrons might find useful?
3. And which, from this brief visual comparison, does a better job at “opening up” the online catalog so users can browse its contents?