Spark of emotion

While reading an interesting post on The Pegasus Librarian that sparked a desire in me to post a comment, I found the even more exciting response from greebie who is the author of The Other Librarian. He doesn't seem to publish often, but wrote a fascinating post on how bloggers can't be good leaders, at least not in their blogging mode. I usually can't get into managerial stuff, yet another reason I'm not a good leader, but this comment and its arguments intrigued me. I look forward to reading what he has to say in the future.

Back to the comment on The Pegasus Librarian, he argues that the techies are left trying to compel their co-workers that their knowledge is important, while their non-techie co-workers are going off in very different directions. And even outside of librarianship, techies can't take their organization to the "new space" alone. This isn't ideal, but he doesn't have an easy solution.

I still have a dream of being a part of blending technology and in-person services seemlessly. I think students have done this with their social lives already to the point where they don't think about the difference. I want to help do that with not just library education, but education and general. It will be a much more thorough and engaging experience.

Opinions, please

I just got an e-mail this morning from someone I have met in person just once or twice. We had e-mailed back and forth a few weeks ago about her starting a blog. It's now up and running, and it's very good. I don't want to mention who because I don't have her permission and I'm hoping she doesn't take this as criticism.

The thing I want opinions on is this. She has a number of years of experience as an academic librarian. But she has taken a few years off to take care of her two very young children. I respect that. I think parenting is the most important job in the world, even if I am not a parent myself. If the profile says she is an academic librarian, should she state she is taking a few years off and not currently working? This is not an obligation, this is an issue of transparency, something that is highly valued in the Web 2.0 world.

I had advised her before she started the blog to write first for herself and to be a part of the library blog community. It's amazing the stuff you learn when you're looking about things to write about, and how writing about them shapes your beliefs about them. Every library blog I read includes stories that come up while the person is at work, and I'm wondering if potential readers will ever get suspicious about why she never talks about work.

This person definitely has interesting things to write about and to contribute to the library community. Should she be honest about not currently being employed because she has more important things to do at the moment? That seems like it would help readers understand her perspective, which is more often from the other side of the reference desk, and something we don't get to hear about much. Am I making this into a much bigger deal than it is?

Taking 2.0 to the Faculty

We read a good, brief article called "Taking 2.0 to the Faculty" for our instructional librarian meeting this morning. I thought it was a great article, and particularly relevant to me since I'm the 2.0 person of the group.

I think every public services librarian should make time for blogs. I don't understand how you can run programs and improve on instruction without reading what other people are doing. I find blogs to be so much more helpful than formally published articles. You miss so much of the practical stuff that doesn't get put into the scholarly literature. It makes me sad for people who don't create the time to browse other librarians' blogs from time to time.

Left Out

Again from LISNews, Walt at Random is making a list of librarian blogs (and NOT library blogs). I want to be included on that list. I fit all of the criteria, except he wants at least one post from 2007 and I started this blog in January 2008. Oh, and I guess I'm not "visible" enough according to my Technorati rating... and I was so proud I was up to a 6.

I'm happy to have this list of library-related blogs, but I feel so left out :(

Tech-Savvy Students?

I had a class yesterday afternoon even though it is summer. They're on their way to London and Prague for two weeks as part of a business May Term course. I was helping them get set up with a class blog on Blogger and a Flickr group to assemble thoughts and pictures on the trip for their families and future students. This is definitely an experiment and I can't wait to see the results.

So I asked the nine students if any of them kept a blog on MySpace or Facebook, or any other program. None of them raised their hand. I had thought a few would have used this feature of social networking. When I got to Flickr, I asked them how many had a Flickr account, and only one of the nine raised their hand. I should have asked how many posted pictures on MySpace or Facebook, I probably would have gotten more hands.

I have been assuming that these students are using all of the major Web 2.0 tools that I have become obsessed with, but I think that's a wrong assumption. I know they're using MySpace and Facebook, I've asked in large groups before and nearly everyone raises their hand. I think next time I have the change, I would like to hear what features they use, and how they use them.

I hope they have fun blogging. This could be a great product when the trip is over.

Britannica & Free Blogger Access

I just read in LIS News that The Encyclopaedia Britannica is offering free access to bloggers. I have access through my library, but they allow you to link to their full text articles on your blog. I guess they're going to comb my site and see if I'm legitimate, I will be very surprised if I don't pass the test, I'm sure it's already annoying how often I post.

If it works out, I could link to all kinds of things and be a good librarian role model instead of linking to Wikipedia.

If anyone else is interested, you can find their application form here.

Sprylibrarian

I love blogging, but there are still things I don't understand. During the whole non-MLS-librarians thing where I gained a bit of notoriety (and probably not the good kind), I had a comment from the Sprylibrarian that was very supportive and intelligent. I wanted to read her blog, but couldn't find it by clicking on her name or through a Google search. I must not have been doing a good job at Google searching, or gave up too quickly (I have been struggling at not spending too much time looking at blogs since I got into them at the beginning of the semester). Anyway, my Google Alert on "Reflections from a Small College Library" returned her blog, which links to mine under her "What I look at" section. I'm not sure which excites me more, that she's put me as a permanent link on her blog or that I finally found hers, esp. since she is also from a small college.

This is a wonderful way to start a new week, esp. the first week of summer for us and a particularly dreary Monday morning when I am stressed out about many huge life changes and minor frustrations with myself and office politics.

I am planning on spending a good part of the morning reading this, esp. since there is a heavy focus on marketing and I think that is the key thing our library could work on. We've got great people, great services, an impressive colletion, good faculty-relations, innovative ideas, a top-notch instruction program, yet struggle to get students involved.

I don't understand how our students aren't overwhelmed by the amount of information available to them. I have all but given up fiction and am reading stuff like Beginning Flash Game Programming for Dummies and Home Buying for Dummies. I'm overwhelmed by trying to learn basic programming as quickly as possible for my professional activities, and gather all necessary information to get married and buy a house this summer. I feel sometimes like my brain will explode. I guess most people don't bother with seeking out information for buying a house and making informed decisions. That probably is why the housing market is currently in so much trouble.

I digress. Thank you Sprylibrarian for linking to me so that I could find you!

Great Read

LISNews linked to a blog called Things White People Like. One of these things is graduate school. With all of this talk about MLS vs. no MLS, I think this is a timely post!

Reference Resource of the Week

I started another blog called Reference Resource of the Week this afternoon to highlight things in our reference collection to the other librarians here. We recently reviewed our reference standing orders and there were many items on that list that I was very unfamiliar with but sound like they could do some great things.

The blog format seems like it will be perfect for this. I can easily update and change this, it allows for comments from my fellow librarians. If anyone else wants to contribute, I can set up access for them, posts will show up by title (a.k.a. resource title) in the archives and will be searchable, plus it comes with an RSS feed which I turned into an e-mail alert since the other librarians here don't do much with RSS.

I started today with Gale Directory Library since we just got access to it today. When I look at print resources, I can leave it at the reference desk for the week. I hope this will make us utilize a broader portion of the reference collection when we help people at the desk, and select a broader range of resources to highlight during instruction sessions.

Small Library Blogs

A few weels ago, I posted a question to the COLLIB electronic listserv looking for other small-library bloggers. Most of the responses pointed me towards the library's blog rather than a librarian's blog. I had been looking for librarians' blogs because I want to know the thought processes and behind-the-scenes stuff, but there are some great program ideas from other schools. I think my favorite so far is the primary party, complete with red and blue food. I'm nont sure if that would be as successful at our school as it appears to be at Rollins College, and I think the PA primaries are during our finals week when the students probably have better things to worry about. Anyway, I digress. Here are the responses I got:

• KML News Blast from Dakota State - 1,500 students
• Arch from Bluffton University - 1,200 students, relatively new
• Preston Library's Blog - 1,300 students, in very early stages (I don't think they have gone public yet)
• McPherson College Miller Library - 1,000 students
• http://Technology from Keene State College - 5,000 students
• McGrath Library from Hilbert College - 1,100 students
• News from the Mudd from Lawrence University - 1,400 students
• The DNL Report and Your Voice Counts 2007 from Fairfield University - 4065 students
• Northland College Library Blog - 3,000 students
• University of St. Thomas's library has two Facebook blogs which appear under Announcements on this page, one on library news, the other on Catholic fiction. They have an FTE of 2,100.
• Here is a page that links to several library blogs in Vermont.

Librarian Blogs:

• Pegasus Librarian - from Carleton (4500 FTE)
• Director's Blog - from Rollins College

Now that I have all of these assembled in one place, I'll start digging through them... though I've been spending way too much time browsing blogs and not enough time getting real work done lately!

Blogs

There is such great information on blogs, as I continue to find out. I feel so far behind when I fish around at what is out there on blogs and library news sites that I haven't been keeping up with.

There is a blog called Library Marketing: Thinking Outside the Book with a post on a museum that had set up a "blog bar" ... it is setting up a number of computer terminals where visitors can give immediate feedback on their thoughts. This is a trend in stores and other venues as well. I'm not sure how we could impliment this in the library that students would think it was worth doing, or for what event we would do this, but it is an interesting idea to keep in mind. Here is some more information on blog bars from TrendCentral.

Creative Reference Promotion

I caught up on my American Libraries Direct and there was a great post on a library who takes famous movie posters (Mary Poppins, Jaws, Wizard of Oz, Sopranos, etc.) and puts the librarians' faces on it, turns it into a postcard to send to students before each semester. They are so funny, but they have noticed a big improvement in reference appointments. You can see the gallery here.



I had a great class last night. It was the business practicum students. They are currently doing an internship, but also meet weekly for various topics. I covered career and interview resources, and briefly touched upon Linkedin and blogs. They were very excited about the blogs, or at least they were clearly paying attention at that point. The professor was thrilled with this idea, and may have future practicum groups post their internship journals as blogs. Then the business Web site could link to them, and the students could use them to prepare for jobs and interviews. So they serve many purposes. Several students said they planned to come to our presentation next week. A communications professor requested 70 handouts to give to her students, and I plan to pass them out to my upper-level class this morning. So maybe we'll get a small turnout after all!

Bad day got better

Today started off very badly. I got a cavity filled and the anastesia took four or five hours to wear off. So by the time I got back from the dentist, I grabbed a bowl of chili from the cafe and tried to walk quickly to a lunch meeting... only to trip on the four steps up to the business department, sending chili flying EVERYWHERE. It was all over the steps, all over my coat (including splatters down the back!), and went straight up my sleeve staining the nice shirt I wore today since I was teaching a business class. I went back to the cafe to get napkins to clean up and three people asked me what happened and if I needed them to call help... they thought the chili everywhere was blood!

This afternoon I had a phone interview with someone from Paratext. We were invited to be the first case study of a baccalaureate institution for the Reference Universe database. I spent a lot of time telling her about iGoogle and the Reference Universe gadget I made for it. She was having a hard time understanding what I meant. So I just sent her my login (after changing my password to something generic) and I think she had fun with it. I really need to start promoting this to faculty, it is such a great tool. I also discovered tonight that I can feed my cyber tiger little cyber steaks. It's so cute.

Blogs of Others

I love catching up on other people's library blogs while sitting at the reference desk (I was just shyly approached by a sociology student who asked if I was busy). Unlike me, some other librarians are excellent writers. I am currently enjoying a blog called Attempting Elegance. Here is a good post on the hopeless, crazy questions librarians deal with.

Blogging for Jobs

I just talked to Janet (the director) who approved a new program idea. The program, which will be in less than 2 weeks will be on using blog technology to create a positive Web image and promote yourself in order to get a job. I'm presenting job finding resources to the Business Practicum next week, and will touch upon this in that class, but hope they'll come back and bring friends the following week.

I will post the handouts and links here once they're done.

Blogging Ideas

My friend in publishing (a.k.a. "the dark side") got me interested in a daily e-newsletter for the publishing industry. There was an interesting article about indie bookstores using blogs as part of their marketing strategy. I looked at the store they mentioned, which can be found here: Books in Northport. There are comments on the entries and her profile has 266 views since last September, so I am thinking she must get a reasonable amount of traffic. I just e-mailed her to ask how she steers her customers to her blog and hope that something in her response (if she responds) can inspire me to find ways to get the students more involved in this blog or the library's blog.

Speaking of Indie Bookstores, I must add a plug for Otto's in the heart of downtown Williamsport. I've been looking for the most recent edition of Sweeney Todd by Oxford Press because it's the first time the original text has been reassembled since its original publication in serial format over 100 years ago. At a mall bookstore in Philly last week, the clerks were annoyed that I was in line for something I couldn't buy there and I left empty-handed. I went to Otto's and three people were busy at different computers until they found what I wanted. I could have ordered it from Amazon, but would have had to pay shipping and it would have taken them longer to deliver it. Nothing beats the personal service at a good indie bookstore, please don't let them go extinct!