The Scattered Librarian

Does your library do anything in Second Life?

2007-09-14T12:00:00.000-07:00

Then you might want to read this, especially if you work in an academic library and/or offer instruction inside SL...

http://chronicle.com/jobs/news/2007/09/2007091401c/careers.html

ALA Redesigning Home Page (yes, really!)

2007-08-08T07:39:00.000-07:00

Take a look here for a sneak peek at the new ALA website layout, and then head over to this survey to share your opinions. We've been grumping about the un-navigable website for far too long now--let's help them make it better!

and yes, I've posted twice in as many days. feel free to alert the media. :-)

A brag and an Article in Wired...

2007-08-07T08:35:00.000-07:00

First off:

I GOT ACCEPTED TO OLA GOLD!!!!!!!!

Okay, for you non-Okies reading this blog, OLA Gold is a leadership institute put on every 3 years by the Oklahoma Library Association. About 25 young librarians are paired with mentors, attend a leadership conference with a renowned speaker in Librarianship (our institute will be led by the awesome Pat Wagner--check out her website at http://www.pattern.com/), and do follow-up meetings and activities designed to turn us into leaders in the profession. It's a big thing to be selected for this, and I am VERY excited (if you can't tell). You can find out more about OLA Gold at http://www.oklibs.org/olagold/gold.html. Also, I'd like to say thanks to Alan and Laura (my director and assistant director at MPOW) for writing what I'm sure were very nice recommendations for me--I couldn't have done this without them!

Now, to the second, and somewhat less self-absorbed bit of today's post: I ran across this article on Second Life in Wired magazine the other day, and I thought I'd share. In a nutshell: There are a lot fewer users than statistics would indicate, the underlying servers can only handle about 70 users a time in a given "island", and corporate outposts in SL are pretty much expensive virtual ghost towns.

http://www.wired.com/techbiz/media/magazine/15-08/ff_sheep

Implications for libraries? First, I want to be clear that I hopped on second life briefly about a year ago, wasn't all that impressed (didn't seem like there was much to do compared to the old school text-based MU*s that I grew up with), and left. I did take a look around Info Island (the main reason I checked it out in the first place), and while I may have been there on a slow day, it mainly looked like a collection of librarians milling around, looking for patrons. I've kept an eye on stories on SL in the blogosphere and in the media though, because I thought that if someone could create a compelling reason for someone to go to second life, it might become an interesting community. However, it's been a year, and I've yet to hear a story of a reference interview or outreach program in second life that helped people (in either their SL or RL guises) find the information they needed.

Second Life is an important experiment, but I think it's looking more and more like a fad, and a rapidly fading one at that. That said, I'm a skeptic, and the comments thread is open for anyone who has had a good reference experience on SL, or who thinks that SL libraries are having or could have more success than their for-profit counterparts in Second Life. I've hoped for the last 9 months or so that my mind might get changed on this--it just hasn't happened yet.

Hard Decision...

2007-07-27T14:08:00.001-07:00

This summer, as I've struggled to bring new projects to fruition and keep up with my duties, I've reached a sobering conclusion. Up to this point I've been trying to read every blog on library 2.0, write SL on a regular basis, and implement new ideas at MPOW. The conclusion I've reached is that I can pick any 2 of those projects. I can't do all 3. So I've skimmed through my feeds, and cut out everything that is not well-read (over 150 subscriptions) or highly entertaining/critical to my work. that took me down to about 15 LIS-related feeds, as well as some things like LISNews that provide summaries of other blogs. I can skim though those feeds every few days without getting a backlog of a thousand posts, and still pick up most of the information I need. Is it the ideal solution? not really, but it's what I have to do until somebody invents the 30-hour day. Hopefully this will mean that I have more time to write blog posts, articles, and responses to others--that's the goal, and we'll see what happens.

Just to put myself on the record...

2007-06-14T08:48:00.001-07:00

I could write 3 pages on the silliness of Michael Gorman, but others got to it first and better. For the record, I wish he'd stop making librarians look like a bunch of Luddite fools. And no, I'm not going to provide link love for that particularly silly article--if you've been under a rock (or on vacation in new mexico like I was last week), just do a google search for Gorman and Britannica and you'll find the blog post easily enough.

Not a lot to say this week

2007-05-24T14:37:00.000-07:00

A very exciting non-MPOW but LIS related project has been taking off in my spare time over the few weeks, and I hope to be able to share more details with you soon. There have been a lot of involved subprojects, actions, etc. involved, and my GTD skills have definitely been getting a workout keeping all of the balls in the air and making sure things happen as they should in the order that they should. ultimately it comes down to the same-old same-old...capture everything, process for actions, organize, review, and do...I know I couldn't even dream of attempting something like this without having a good system for this many-tentacled organism I'm trying to coax into existence. I'm sorry to be so cryptic about this (for now), and this post is an apology for my silence as much as anything else, but I'd like to leave you with one thought for the week: What ridiculously huge someday/maybe has been sitting in the background for a while, occasionally nagging you to think about taking action? And why don't you? When you realize that the worst thing that can happen is failure... and that with risk management most failures are recoverable...things get a lot easier. :-)

Don't let fear keep you from your goals. See you next week.

Intersession life and stuff

2007-05-15T14:26:00.000-07:00

For my fellow academic librarians...don't you just love that first week after spring finals? It's a great time to slow down, sit back, relax...and promptly collapse under the weight of 15 "summer projects". Here at MPOW we've already got our reserve room cleanup in progress, and then tidying up some item type glitches that were created in our ILS migration--fortunately it only impacts a thousand or so AV items. Also it's inventory time, and we have about a thousand govdoc microfiches that need to be cataloged, and I'm developing a seminar for the clients of our university's business incubator, and we're going to be revamping our web tutorials, and...you get the picture. :-) I've also come to the conclusion that as I find more "nifty projects" to do at work and in my wider life, I need to reevaluate how much time I spend on my ongoing projects. For instance, I'm taking an orientation class to become a CASA--as a former welfare caseworker this is a need very close to my heart and there are never enough of them to go around. Librarians' research skills and helping personalities can make us a good fit for this--if you're looking for a service opportunity, check with your local chapter to see if they need new advocates. (okay, plug over, back to the post :-))

Anyway, as I was saying, I've been thinking a lot about how much time I can commit to some of my professional development projects, notably Scattered Librarian. After some thought, I've decided that I'm going to scale back to one scheduled post a week--knowing of course that I'll probably pop in with brief posts more often as my muse/current events bring up various topics. In a perverse sort of way I think that will have me keeping up with things better. Unfortunately, I've decided to put the RSS digest on temporary(?) hiatus, at least the LIS links. If you're not on LISnews.org's feed, their This Week in Library Blogland does a much more thorough summary of what's out there. I will, however, be posting my 5 favorite time management blog posts each week at the end of said scheduled post, and I'll certainly keep sharing all those wacky reference sites I run into from time to time. If I decide to start pursuing more speaking opportunities or anything like that, I'm sure you'll see the volume here picking up a lot--but I've got quite enough going on for now, and I think I'd be better served spending more time in the comments feeds of your blogs as well as updating mine. We'll see how it goes... :-)

Getting back on the organization wagon...

2007-04-26T09:20:00.000-07:00

If you haven't noticed from both the topics and (ir)regularity of my posts lately, life's been a little nuts this past month, as we've been settling into the new ILS, dealing with the traditional end-of-semester reference and citculation crush at the same time, and--oh yeah--sorting out our requests for next year's budget. Everything that was not mission critical went on the back burner--writing blog posts, keeping up with most RSS feeds, any purchasing and cataloging that could wait a few weeks, and a lot of my GTD routines like reviewing my next actions at the beginning and end of the day, and keeping a log of my completed tasks. I even got to the point where I stopped writing things down for a week or so, keeping them festering in my inbox or worse, trying to remember it all in my brain. In short, I didn't do all the stuff I carp on you guys here to do, with the predictable result of a messy office and a frazzled brain. You all may now point, snicker and generally feel smug. :-)

While my skipping of a few weekly reviews and stacks of stuff festering in my office didn't result in any major disasters, that was more dumb luck and the leftover inertia of my prior good habits than anything else. I've had enough lost paperwork or forgotten deadlines in my time that I know that's the ultimate result of disorganization. I worked a shift last saturday, took a look at my desk and inboxes, and inwardly groaned. The worst of the storm had passed, I had 8 sleepy saturday hours ahead of me to dig out, and I'd run out of emergency items that gave me excuses to ignore the mess. It was time to pay the piper.

So...if you've been a little lax for a few weeks or months on your organization, and find yourself disorganized and flustered, how do you get back on track? It's not nearly as big a nightmare as it may seem--under those piles you still have the bones of a good system. What do you do to dig out?

First, forgive yourself. I'm sure that this did not happen because you spent the last few weeks nibbling bonbons at your desk with your feet up. most likely this is the aftermath of a major project or rush period, and you should look back at what you have accomplished during that time. I've noticed a perfectionist streak in a lot of librarians--especially newer ones. I think it's just part of being a geek and a lover of information. Well, you won't ever be perfect. Every few months I take the GTD mastery test as a self-check of where I am on my organization habits and to get ideas of areas for improvement. I most recently scored a 64, and I write a time management blog! One of the key things I learned in my career is to accept the occasional error. obviously I'd rather have every task in my life under perfect control at all times, but that is not going to happen. So I've put together systems in my life to accomplish as much of that as possible while still having a life and free time, and most importantly I've learned to forgive and shrug off the occasional slip. S#*t happens. Take a deep breath, give yourself a hug, and get down to work. It's not nearly the disaster it seems to be.

Part of the reason the situation seems so overwhelming and disastrous is that you simply don't know where everything is and what tasks need to be done! Well, that's easily mended. Get everything to in. all the scattered papers, books, etc floating around your office need to go to the inbox (or next to it if you fill your inbox) to be processed. open up your email inbox, and any catch-all folders you've set up for files that need to be dealt with. Now, grab a pen and paper, and make a list of EVERY TASK that's floating around in your head--get it all captured and on paper. then add those items to your inbox. Now comes the fun part--process all your stuff. set up next actions, add meetings to calendars, do short tasks--you know the drill. Just by the simple act of putting all that stuff in one place and processing it, you will feel much more in control of your workload. Even if you leave work with a stack of unprocessed items for the next couple of days--you know where it is, you have a general idea of what it is, and you know it'll all get processed shortly.

Now to the part I'm working on now. When you've emptied your inbox, and gotten all your actions done, delegated, or deferred, add one more action to the list to do when you have your next weekly review or other blocked-off planning time: post-disaster review. (okay, "disaster" is a bit extreme, but you get the concept.) Grab a notepad, or whatever you think best on, and answer the following questions.

What caused the initial slip into disorganization? a big project, an unexpected absence, an emergency "from above" that took several days to resolve, or just tackling too many projects at once?
does this sort of thing tend to happen this time every month/semester/whatever?
How long were things "out of control" before you took action?
What inspired you to get it back together?
What was easier/harder than you expected about climbing out of the hole?
How can you change your processes or routines to make a recurrence less likely?
Do you need to think about delegating some of your ongoing tasks to a less-burdened colleague or a talented subordinate?
If you had to do it all over again, what would/could you have done differently to avoid the mess? If there are ideas, incorporate them in your process going forward. if this slip was unavoidable (and they are at times) , see the beginning of this plan, forgive yourself, and move on.

Your effectiveness at Getting Things Done (or Covey, or whatever system you use), has very little to do with how well you can attain/maintain perfection in your system during the normal times. Instead, when times get tough, and the inevitable slips occur, how quickly and easily do you bounce back and regain control? Nobody is or should be perfect--heaven knows that life would be much duller if we were. Strive for excellence, and for resilience when the tough times come. If you can manage that, you'll find that organization--as well as most other things in life--become much easier and more pleasant.

See you next tuesday, with my first new and improved RSS digest. :-)

Public Service announcement

2007-04-18T06:29:00.000-07:00

This is not going to be a pro-gun or anti-gun post. nor is this going to be a rant for or against mandatory counseling or in loco parentis. Smarter people than I are going to be debating those questions for the next few years. As I look over my college days and my subsequent higher ed career, I can think of people who desperately needed help who fell through the cracks, some of whom self-destructed via suicide or other less dramatic means. I also, unfortunately know a talented would-be future teacher in need of a little reassurance who was driven out of a certification program by hyper-paranoid administrators worried that he didn't sufficiently fit the mold. So, what can we as librarians do, and how can we strike a balance between fear of and indifference to our students' needs?

Take a look around the library next time you're at the desk. See that kid? the one with the downcast eyes and closed-off expression? The next time they come to the desk, strike up a conversation, even if it's just about the weather or last night's ball game. Look them in the eyes. Make human contact. take a genuine interest in the subject they're researching, and offer to give them a little extra help, if they seem receptive. It might well be the only friendly gesture they've had all week. No, I'm not saying that you should be all hearts and butterflies with someone who's behaving in an inappropriate or threatening manner--that's when you do what's necessary to keep your colleagues and patrons safe, and call the campus police/counselors if appropriate. Nor am I saying you should try to be an armchair shrink.

From everything I've read, the student at Virginia Tech had some very deep-rooted problems that went far beyond what a friendly gesture would cure--at least by the time April 16 rolled around. But what about 6 months ago? a couple years back? I don't know that it would have made a difference in this case...but I do know that there are a lot of young, confused college students who can be helped with a smile, a helping hand, or a few words of friendly conversation. It's our responsibility as librarians--and as human beings--to be hospitable to these folks and steer them in the direction of help we can't provide. College is a wonderful, terrifying, stressful time for most students. We, as the adults they see regularly, have a responsibility to give them the tools to forge a successful path in life--and not just academically or financially.

tech support request--SOLVED!

2007-04-13T07:33:00.000-07:00

Could anyone who is familiar with setting up the unicorn label designer please send me an email/IM/carrier pigeon? it's doing bizarre things and not letting me set up the dimensions I need for our spine/pocket labels (details on request)

Thanks...and apologies again for the spotty posting schedule the past few weeks, I hope to be back at something resembling my normal routine in another week or so.

Update: After much searching (and headbanging), I was finally able to get the problem sorted out thanks to some posts on this topic at the client care forums. Thanks so much to those who sent me tips and suggestions!

Two landmarks I have to share...(and my 5 bloggy heroes)

2007-04-09T06:58:00.000-07:00

I'm sticking my head up from being buried in Unicorn minutia for the last 2 weeks to make a couple comments.

1. This morning I passed 50 subscribers in bloglines--and based on my daily traffic I seem to have about a hundred regular readers. Thanks for taking the time to read my somewhat OCD babblings!

2. Walt at Random » Blog Archive » Five blogger heroes (sort of)

*blush*

The sentiment is mutual. I know Walt's a regular guy, but it's still kewl to get kudos from a guy whose articles you read in library school...

And on that theme, my 5 Blogging heroes--most of these are obvious based on who I mention in my RSS digests, but if you haven't followed any links to their blogs, you should...

The Well-dressed Librarian As I've mentioned in previous posts--he's witty, makes incisive comments about the state of librarianship, and fashion tips to boot!

Thoughts from a Library Administrator The kind of administrator I wanna be when I grow up.
The Other Librarian Always a unique spin on current issues.
Library Stories this blog focuses on events and issues in my home state, run by Adri Johnson, one of the more illustrious nextgen voices around my parts. Full disclosure: I'm a co-writer on the blog, but I admit that I just shamelessly ride her coattails. :-)
Caveat Lector I understand why Dorthea doesn't allow comments on her blog, but I'd love it if she did, because many of her articles make me think so deeply that I wish I could write a detailed response...

And one last thing--If anyone reading this is familiar with Unicorn workflows, especially circulation reports, could you zap me an IM? I'm still getting my bearings and I ran across an odd problem this morning. it's basic enough that I don't want to bother the Sirsi mailing list with it unless I have to, but all of you already know I'm a doofus. *smirk* I'm on yahoo as scatteredlib (in fact, you can generally find me there during standard work hours). Thanks, and if I can think of anything profound-ish I'll talk to you tomorrow! Thanks again for all your support.

Student workers & how to use them effectively...

2007-04-03T09:10:00.000-07:00

Earlier this week on COLLIB-L, a library director dealing with an administration looking to freeze her student worker budget turned to the group to get some ideas for projects she could add to their workload to justify their existence. in the course of composing my own response and reading others, I was struck by just how much we rely on our student workers, even relative to the other librarians who posted about their student workers' tasks. At least at our institution, it's a lot easier to justify another student worker position than another "real" employee, which means that a lot of the time consuming, easily trainable ongoing tasks have been delegated down to our student workers over the years as the student staff has grown. Below is my response to the mailing list, followed by some thoughts I've had based on how this thread evolved.

Well, here’s what we do with our student workers…I’m the access services guru so I’m mostly thinking of circ-related tasks, though I know there are a few other ongoing student projects I’m forgetting.

1. Circ desk stuff (check in/out, pulling holds, the usual)
2. Shelving, book shifting, general stacks tidying and shelfreading
3. Pre-processing/labeling of books
4. Inventory (I set up the initial reports in the system, they scan the books into the wizard)
5. Catalog clean-up projects (item type fixes, re-barcoding older items, etc.)
6. Periodicals checkin
7. Govdocs checkin
8. Compiling monthly new book lists for the website, searching in the collection for potential items for subject area pathfinders, etc.
9. ILL (pretty much anything that isn’t a faculty request)
10. Front line reference when students are so intimidated they head right for the youngest face at the desk
11. front line tech support when students are so intimidated they head right for the youngest face at the desk :-)
12. keeping the printers/copiers filled with paper/toner
13. more special projects/data entry chores than I can think of right now (ex: I’m going to have 2 helping me this summer with the annual reserve room clean-up)
14. artwork/posters for PR/Marketing stuff (we have several VERY talented art majors on our team)
15. extra pairs of eyes watching the state of our supply room for reorders.
16. Mentoring the newbie student workers as they come in (nothing official, they just naturally take them under their wings for the first few weeks).

Essentially, any ongoing task that doesn’t involve money, MARC records, instruction, or involved reference work is fair game. Don’t underestimate your student workers’ abilities or interests—several of our long-time student workers could probably do most of my job (but don’t tell my director that! :-) )

Whoops--I think I did just tell my director that! (for reasons that elude me, my boss seems to think this blog is worth reading...) Anyway, after posting the laundry list above, I began thinking a bit more about what libraries typically do and do not use student workers for, and the various issues that have to dealt with. For instance, we interview and select our student workers, and are able to pick out outgoing students with good GPAs and solid work ethics. The few inevitable glitches aside, we've generally had very good luck with our student workers, and I'd pit their customer service, professionalism and performance against any other department's student staff on this campus. Apparently some schools have their student workers picked and sent over by financial aid, and have to make do with what they get. I'm sure that impacts the tasks they can and cannot assign their students. Also, turnover is a factor with students--at least at our library workers tend either to leave the library after a semester or stay with us through graduation--we don't have too much middle ground. Our veteran workers (at least two of whom have worked here longer than I have!) are a big reason we can outsource things like ILL to them. In fact one of our long-time workers has been considering going for her MLIS after she graduates! :-)

So, how can you use your student workers' time more effectively? Obviously, every library's circumstances are different, but the biggest thing I can say is not to underestimate your students. When I first became the access services librarian, I attempted to personally handle any and every task related to circulation management, and quickly got overwhelmed. I couldn't do everything, and many of the most time-consuming tasks simply weren't the best use of my time. We also had student workers bored, needing more things to do. Around that time, our director came back from a program for academic library directors that he attended at Harvard, and asked all of us to look at our tasks for things that we could delegate to students, as he had several new projects he needed our help in implementing.

With that comment in mind I took a hard look at the things that ate up the biggest portion of my time, and found several ongoing "maintenance" projects that could be partially or completely delegated. Yes, I had to spend time training the students--but usually no more than an hour or so for the particular task/student, checking their work for the first few weeks, and jumping in for a few minutes here and there when they hit a stumbling block. my schedule opened up almost immediately, and I was able to spend more time on a lot of high-value projects that had been on the back burner.

I could probably write a full-length article and/or presentation on the effective use of student workers (and now that I'm thinking about this issue, I just might!). However, it really comes down to hiring good people, taking the time to train them well (and it doesn't take near as much time as you may think), and giving them opportunities to stretch. All of our student workers have to take their turns with the oh-so-glamorous tasks of shelfreading and inventory, but I think the fact that most of them also have a special project helps them feel like they are an important part of the library, and in turn gives them the motivation to do their best.

So...how does your library use your student employees?

On information overload (slightly ranty—be warned!)

2007-03-27T11:46:00.000-07:00

Brace yourselves, folks, I’m about to say something heretical. (okay, maybe not heretical, but possibly a tad counter-cultural?)

I am too connected. Somewhere in my post-MLIS plan for networking and professional development I found myself on a couple dozen mailing lists, several web forums, almost 100 rss feeds, and a bunch of other stuff I’m not even remembering right now. I’ve felt the burnout encroaching for the last month or so, and took last week off from all my library sites, feeds, lists, etc. just to see how much piled up if I wasn’t there to read it. The rounded numbers:

540 LIS Blog posts
220 Time management blog posts
300 messages from email lists

In other words, over a thousand to-read items, not counting God knows how many forum posts, additions to the L2.0 Ning, blog comments, etc., as well as the 2 dead-tree magazines that were in my box when I came back. One thing I noticed over and over as I tried to browse my backlog was how many posts/emails were about the same 5-10 topics, over and over. Often I would find the exact same post copied into half a dozen different blogs, with a few brief comments tacked on. I realized that much of my professional development time had been devoted to reading the same bloody thing (with slightly different twists) in many different places. I’ll be blunt—there are too many blogs, and not enough original writers, at least for me to be able to do more than skim and hit the next button. After deleting about 80% of the mess unread, I knew I had to find a better way.

When I am keeping up with that many different inputs, I have no time or energy to respond with my own thoughts, or even really read what I’m looking at, beyond the most basic skim. Also, my own writing is going downhill, simply because I have a finite amount of time I can devote to professional development, most of which is sunk into reading 200 emails and blog posts a day about only 10-15 different topics. Simply put, this is not the most effective use of my time if I want to attain the career goals I have in mind. If you’ve been reading me for a while, you know what’s next. Here’s my plan. :-)

1: Cut out half of my RSS feeds. Maybe more. There are about 4-5 time management sites I link to regularly, and most of them link to the minor ones when good stuff is posted. The rest can go. As for the library feeds, I’ve not pruned these aside from unsubbing from dormant blogs. The podcasts I follow are getting shunted over to my iTunes for commute listening. There are about a dozen people who write truly insightful original material on a regular (weekly or more) basis, and their feeds will stay. As for the collected links feeds, I don’t have many of them but they’re higher volume. I’ve already (with deep regret) said goodbye to one particularly voluminous feed in this category—I enjoy it but my week layoff resulted in 110 posts from that feed alone, 3 of which I found interesting enough to click into. I need a higher ROI on my professional development time than that. I think that 3-5 of these types of feeds should cover the vast majority of the good stuff, and give me enough for RSS digest (more on that in a bit).

2: Mailing lists. I plan to cut here, but not as deeply, as I did some editing a few months back. There are a few job search/new librarian lists that can go. I’m also going to take a hard look at lists for ALA sections/roundtables I’m not actually a member of. I have a bunch of lists for our new ILS, but they are low volume and I can’t yet tell what’s I’ll need, so they stay for now. Finally, any list where there is as much flaming/whining/political debate as there is useful conversation is going bye-bye. My work life is a no-drama zone.

3: Forums: Unless I need to search for info on a particular topic, all forums but the library 2.0 Ning are going off my “to read” bundle on Del.icio.us. So far, Ning seems to have an extremely good signal to noise ratio, and I’d rather spend an hour skimming there than try to whip through half a dozen websites in the same amount of time.

4: Scholarly Journals: my high level of blog and mailing list reading is only possible because I do almost zilch to keep up with the scholarly literature, at least since I finished my MLIS. I’m still thinking about this, but I’m considering picking out 2 or three of the best academic library journals to read cover-to cover when they come in. we have access to almost all of darned things either in print or via databases, so I really have no excuse. Perhaps pick out one or two articles a month to review/respond to online? I’m sure most of us don’t read as much of the Literature as we’d like, and that might be a more beneficial use of my blog than writing post #18 about LoC’s newest rule change. And in that vein…

5: Contribute signal, not noise: There are plenty of blogs that provide summaries of the week’s best library posts, most notably LISNews.org’s “This Week in Library Blogland”. Most of them do a better job than I can. Each week I spend a total of 2 hours assembling the RSS digest. I know this service is enjoyed, and IT’S NOT GOING ANYWHERE. However, I’m going to keep it shorter. I currently average between 25-35 links, and I think I can halve that and still have a useful digest. Some of this will come organically via steps 1-3, and the rest will come from being a bit more selective in my linking. Look for the digests to evolve over the next few weeks, and please share your comments and suggestions. I also will try to keep my Tuesday posts under 1000-1200 words.

To wrap up, my goal is and has been to give you the tools you need to improve your professional lives as well as the service you provide your users. To do that, I need to remember one of the first things I learned in library school and not waste the time of my readers. I pledge that if I don’t have anything interesting or original to say on a given topic, I’ll keep my mouth shut, and will refrain from posting for posting’s sake just to maintain a schedule. If I only have a few lines to say about a post, I’ll put it in that blog’s comment thread, NOT here. Will that lower my visibility, or cause me to lose a few readers? Possibly, and I’m fine with that. I am not the best Liblogger out there, and I’m giving up the attempt. Instead, I’m going to focus on fulfilling MY mission, and not worry about the rest.

Spring break/brain break

2007-03-17T07:09:00.000-07:00

Happy saturday! (and my condolences to any of you pulling a weekend shift) This coming week is spring break at MPOW (which we mostly get off work--I LOVE my job), and in the interest of recharging, I'm taking a break from all online LIS-related activities for the week. Have a great week, and don't forget to take time to sharpen your saws!

Administrative note

2007-03-14T13:23:00.000-07:00

Due to spam I've changed the permissions to restrict commenting to folks with a blogger account. I may have to start moderating comments, but that's a weapon of last resort. not surprisingly, the only posts that have gotten spammed are ones with a significant number of trackbacks, which makes me unsure whether that feature is worth it. Suggestions are welcome, and I apologize for any inconvenience these new rules may cause.

Well, Well, Well...(SirsiDynix announces new "Rome" ILS)

2007-03-13T12:05:00.000-07:00

1st: Starting with this entry, I'll be crossposting selected blog posts at my blog in the Ning Library 2.0 social network. In addition, I'll be experiementing with posting there as well, as I try to sort out what will work best in that community. If you aren't already a member, join in the fun, and if you ARE a member, feel free to friend me! :-) (My profile picture is me with the rest of my T'ai Chi Class in front of the Pearl tower in Shanghai--I'm the one in the red hat with the goofy jetlagged grin)

2nd: yes, I'm really going to do that job hunting article. It got trumped by breaking news in ILS-land. This email from the folks at SirsiDynix was waiting in my box when I got into work today...

Dear valued SirsiDynix customer,

Later today, SirsiDynix will make an exciting announcement for both our company and the library market. Before the announcement becomes public knowledge and a press release is issued, I wanted to personally share now what the rest of the world will hear shortly – as well as explain to you what it means for customers of SirsiDynix Unicorn, DRA Classic, and MultiLIS integrated library systems.

SirsiDynix will unveil that we are blending the strengths and best features of Unicorn, Horizon/Corinthian, and other solutions to create a new, versatile technology platform to serve 21^st-century libraries and consortia. Code-named “Rome,” this platform goes beyond the traditional integrated library system to encompass the full range of technology building blocks for managing library operations and resources, while providing meaningful user experiences to your information consumers.

Rome is built on the architecture of the industry-standard Unicorn Library Management System – with its record of stability, quality, and performance – and will include an impressive set of new solutions created as part of Horizon 8.0/Corinthian development. The first release of Rome will be available in the fourth quarter of this year. The target time for the second release is late 2008.

What does this mean to Unicorn, DRA Classic, and MultiLIS customers?

There are several key points you should know:

SirsiDynix will continue to maintain and support Unicorn. (Note SirsiDynix’s policy of actively supporting a given product in its current release and two prior releases.)
Unicorn GL3.2 and Horizon 8.1/Corinthian will not be released. Instead, the new functionality of both will be incorporated into Rome over time.
We will focus our research-and-development efforts on Rome. As a result, Rome will be the platform for all SirsiDynix users in the future.
However, Rome will offer a host of features and benefits developed for Unicorn, and the Unicorn architecture is at the heart of the new platform. When upgrading from Unicorn to Rome, current Unicorn users will find Rome to be very familiar, therefore requiring little or no additional training or other upgrade services.

Here are the upgrade or migration paths for Unicorn, DRA Classic, and MultiLIS customers:

Customers on Unicorn GL3.1 or earlier can upgrade to Rome using the same criteria as in the past.
Customers not already on Unicorn GL3.1 should proceed to this latest Unicorn release, as it will provide for an easy upgrade to the Rome platform. After Unicorn GL3.1, the next major upgrade for Unicorn sites will be Rome.
DRA Classic and MultiLIS sites have the immediate option to migrate to Unicorn GL3.1. Otherwise, they can follow the path to Rome in the coming months. (Note that SirsiDynix has announced DRA Classic’s end of life, with support for this legacy product ending on February 28, 2009. Previously, SirsiDynix announced end of life for MultiLIS, with support ending on June 30, 2007.)

The upcoming press release will offer more information about the major features and benefits of Rome. I cannot stress enough that this new technology platform will provide the “best of both worlds” – the stability you require and the features you need.

As always, if you have questions about your particular case, please contact your SirsiDynix account representative.

Regards,

Talin Bingham

Chief Technology Officer

SirsiDynix

Note: the press release has since been put out on the sirsi website, click here to read.

Can't say I'm surprised, anyone with a brain knew that they were going to merge Unicorn and Horizon, economies of scale being the whole point of the SirsiDynix merger. From an unashamedly selfish standpoint I'm glad "Rome" is being built on the basic Unicorn framework--we're just getting used to this interface, and I was not relishing the idea of having to relearn our ILS in a year. I'm not acquainted with either platform well enough to venture an opinion on whether they picked the "right" horse. I am intrigued to see how (if at all) SirsiDynix responds to the 2.0 paradigm with Rome's features, and while some of the statements in the press release sound intriguing/promising, we haven't even seen screenshots or a features list, and the PR-speak could really mean pretty much anything. For where we are right now as an institution, a proprietary ILS is the best route for us at the moment (I like the recent description I heard of OA as "free as in puppies"), and it gives us the flexibility for the projects and needs that we have right now. Will it still be a good fit in a year? we'll have to wait and see.

RSS Digest: March 8, 2007

2007-03-08T12:09:00.000-08:00

RSS Digest time again! I’m taking the comment silence to mean that you are happy with the mix of things I post here (or are trapped under something heavy and can’t reach the keyboard smirk). Also, you may have noticed I didn’t do a Tuesday post. I spent half the day Tuesday at an instruction session at one of our remote campuses (and was a bit under the weather to boot), and I just didn’t make it that far down my to-do list. I still plan to do the job search article next Tuesday, and will probably follow that up with a networking guide for shy librarian types. Thanks for all your patience and comments!

LIS Stuff

Building a Personal Finance Library: 25 of the Best Books About Money ∞ Get Rich Slowly Most of these books are no-brainers (and are already in your collections, no doubt)--but take a look for your library--and for yourself. :-)

Tame The Web: Libraries and Technology: Ten Tech Trends for Librarians 2007 READ. Title says it all.

The Shifted Librarian: It's Going to Be Okay, IT Librarians Yes, I know I linked to these guys already. They've done more videos. My hubby Kevin (software developer) and I laughed our butts off...

The Shifted Librarian: Keeping Up When You Don't Have the Time For those of you who can't deal with 20+ mailing lists, a half-dozen journals, and 91 RSS feeds...(some days, I think I can't deal with that either, and I'm an info-addict...)

The Chronicle: 3/9/2007: Information Navigation 101 GO. READ. THIS. NOW!!!! I can't tell you how many students I've helped who navigate myspace and facebook like they wrote the things but dan't put together a basic search query--in ebsco OR google.

LISNews.org | Why Google's universal library is an assault on human identity erm...not sure I'd be that (melo)dramatic about it, but food for thought nonetheless.

Library 2.0 Social network You have joined this...right?

Catalogablog: Masterkey Metasearch tool hmm....sails over my head, but sounds like it's got some interesting implcations.

Less Facebook And More Face In Book A-Freaking-Men. And I say that as n social network addicted blogging uber tech geek.

The Distant Librarian: CFP: Internet Librarian 2007 You're going, right? This conference is worth every penny. I'm hoping to make it myself, if the stars align...

» The embattled MLS Is an MLS needed to be a good library manager? An interesting debate, and honestly, I can see both sides. (I've called on my business experience heavily in my LIS career, but my MLS has halped me a lot too...)

Time Management/Lifehacks

The key to staying calm in an argument - Lifehacker Required reading if your work involves dealing with other human beings (AKA all of us)

Make your brain learn faster - Lifehacker mainly common sense, but worth reading...

Download of the Day: Google Desktop 5.0 (Windows) - Lifehacker Productivity tool or bloatware? you be the judge...

10 Tips to Help Keep Your Desk Clean « Ian’s Messy Desk my desk is okay right now...but give it 5 minutes. A guide to keeping the chaos controlled.

GTD Pitfalls - lifehack.org nods--I really try not to be one of those people who blogs incessantly about GTD but doesn't actually DO anything, but it's a fine line...

Productivity & Organizing Myth #7 – A person’s office or home can get decluttered and organized in hours or weekend (or 30 minute t.v. show). - lifehack.org sigh sad but true...

How To Cultivate Purpose - lifehack.org Some good thoughts for planning in those "higher altitudes"

Cool Reference Sites of the week

ResourceShelf » More “Doing Business In” Country Commercial Guides Hit the Web Some interesting resources for those of you who have patrons interested in/studying international business...

ResourceShelf » New Web Site: GovBudget.com You pay taxes, right? then go take a look at how they get spent.

Smithsonian Institution Libraries: Make the Dirt Fly! a man, a plan, a canal: Panama (I always wanted to use a palindrome in a blog post!)

Daylight Saving Time - Saving Time, Saving Energy I still not convinced the world needs DST, but here's an explanation of the history and reasons behind springing forward and falling back...

Tartan Day Don't forget to wear your kilt! warning--this site blasts bagpipes at you, so you may want to mute your computer unless you like that sort of thing. I do (except when it pops out of a website with no warning), but I lived in Scotland for a year…

Have a great weekend, everyone!

RSS Digest: March 1, 2007

2007-03-01T07:44:00.000-08:00

Happy day before Friday! Here’s the neatest cites I ran across this week. One other note--I’d appreciate feedback on these digests—please let me know if I’m posting things you’re interested in, or if they’re the same links you get from 50 other blogs, if you want these to be longer, shorter, more or less on particular topics…you get the gist!

LIS Links

Worcester Telegram & Gazette News There's a stupid person born every minute...*sigh*
Wise crowds with long tails | TechEssence.Info Worth reading.
ResourceShelf » CRS Reports: Information, Please I've been seeing this issue around a lot of places lately, and I must agree--if we're paying for this stuff, and it's not classified, why not? They can even strip out the name of the congressperson who requested it if they're THAT paranoid...
ResourceShelf » Usage statistics and scholarly communications & The Open Archive for Library and Information Science An possibly useful batch of statistics...
Library Talk: The Can't Do Attitude A rant that all too many of us can sympathize with...and a reminder of how lucky I am with MPOW--they may not always "get it"at first, but they recognize it's worth getting!
Library 2.0: An Academic's Perspective: Two Must-Read 2.0 Blogs Good blogs, both, but dang it, I have 91 feeds right now! *whimper*
Creating Passionate Users: How much control should our users have? You know...I've suspected this for a while...we can't just throw new toys out there for our users to learn--we have to make them worth the pain of the learning curve, and explain to users why they're worth it.

Productivity Links

Recalculate your paycheck deductions - Lifehacker While I hate the notion of giving George W. Bush an interest free loan for a year (that's what a refund IS, folks...), I hate surprises on my taxes too. a great way to balance your deductions just right...
The GMail Nerve Center - lifehack.org I know I'm not using gmail as well as I could--here are some tricks to make this great tool work even better.
Organizing Paper and Information: 7 Mistakes that Sabotage Your Productivity - lifehack.org #7 on this hits home for me today--I've got a friend who had a freak hard drive crash last night, and lost a lot of stuff...she should be able to recover some of the things she lost, but that will be her main project for the next few weeks...
Priorities and Posteriorities - lifehack.org How to NOT get things done. A must read for those who want to get things done. (yes, this makes sense...)
Productivity & Organizing Myth #6 – I can find anything in my piles. - lifehack.org Confirming what I've suspected for a long time...those piles on the desk don't just not work for me--they don't work for most everybody. :-)
GTD + Your Emotional Life - lifehack.org A thought-provoking article on consciously managing...your emotions. Click through to the comments—there’s quite a spirited discussion going on…
Clean like a maid! » Curbly | DIY Design Community « Keywords: cleaning, tips Where have you been all my life?
Mash up RSS feeds with xFruits - Lifehacker Haven't gotten around to playing with this, but I've got a few ideas rattling in my head on ways I could consolidate my feeds...
Plan your meals more effectively with Meals Matter - Lifehacker I've tried various ways to plan my weekly menus in advance (I belong to a food co-op and get a bag of meat and veggies once a week, which makes planning both easier and harder). I'll give this a whirl and see what happens...
zen habits: Edit Your Life, Part 1: Commitments I've been trying to do this lately...

Cool reference sites of the week: Mostly Maps

ResourceShelf » Resource of the Week: Motherlode of Iraq Maps With the exception of those readers who have family or friends in Iraq, I'm betting you couldn't find Tikrit on a map. If I'm right, check out this site...
Seterra - Learn Geography. Free Software. After you finish refreshing your Iraq geography knowledge, why not expand your focus? download this puppy and you'll be finding small countries on the map faster than you can say Djibouti!
ResourceShelf » Melissa Data Adds Census Tract Info and Maps Continuing on my trend of map-based reference sites, here’s a neat resource closer to home. It seems to do something a bit different from the similar maps at the Census website, and it's very interesting.
ResourceShelf » Pixsy’s Starhabit Database Some new features on a very nifty video search engine...
Fun & Games « Panorama of the Mountains A couple of brain teasers and one addictive-looking game...I've got enough problem with Kyodai, so I think I'll steer clear of the latter...)

Have a good weekend, everyone! :-)

Time management spotlight: Daily Routines

2007-02-27T19:03:00.000-08:00

One of the most valuable things I have done in my (neverending) quest to get un-scattered has been to create routines for myself for the daily, weekly, and monthly tasks that need to happen for me to stay on top of my various projects. The first time I created a routine of this sort was when I worked in social services, and had to have an organized way of making sure 200 families and all their associated paperwork didn’t fall through any cracks. I found that a standard process for handling every case, as well as all the tasks I needed to handle in a typical day, kept me both accurate and efficient, and made that job as low-stress as it was ever going to be.

As I became converted to the wonders of the routine, I created ones for my non-work life, both before and after going to work. In some ways those early experiments with managing my time made this student ready for the day I was introduced to GTD. They are the key to my ability to manage all of my projects in my 20-odd areas of responsibility. If you don’t have routines automating your key projects, things will slip through the cracks, your most important self-improvement efforts will sputter to a halt, and you generally won’t be making the best use of your time. It’s back to David Allen’s exhortations to get the stuff out of your brain—just putting a repeat button on the action as you do.

How do you build a routine? Well, let’s say you have some things you’d like to take care of on a regular basis after work. You want to make time to pick up the house a little bit every evening so that you aren’t frantically moving piles into bedrooms the night before the in-laws visit. You need to hit the gym, there’s this book you’ve been meaning to finish, you’d like some sort of daily spiritual prayer/meditation practice—basically you want to curl up in bed knowing that you did more with your evening than fight household fires, call in pizza and stare at the TV for 4 hours. Get that stuff out of your head and into an action list—call it @evenings, or whatever you like. Keep it simple though—if you give yourself some 25-item, 3 hour ordeal to slog through every night after work, that’s a recipe for accomplishing nothing more useful than drinking 2 glasses of merlot and tipping the delivery guy. Yes, this is the voice of experience speaking. In fact, save the complex stuff for the weekends—if you accomplish a short, brainless list every day, you’ll have time to get to those things in a leisurely way on saturdays.

Here are my current daily routines to give you some ideas for getting started—also, do a search for "routines" at either Zen Habits, lifehack.com or lifehacker.com —all of those are great resources on the topic, and all have too many articles on the topic to cite individually. For specific ideas on creating routines for your housekeeping, I can’t recommend Flylady highly enough--she tends toward glurge, but the woman knows how to keep a house clean in the most efficient manner possible.

Morning Routine:
45 minutes cardio workout
Shower
Give the bathroom a once-over, including the cat litter
Breakfast
Change into work clothes, makeup, etc.

Commutes: Listen to my Chinese lessons and catch up on my podcasts

After work:
Start dinner
Tidy up two hot spots
Sweep whole house for rogue laundry, dishes, and papers.(Kevin actually does the dishes and laundry, for which I am eternally grateful...)
Today’s activity (could be my weekly cleaning routine, meetings for my non-profit board or other group, weights, date night w/ kevin, weekly baking, personal projects, etc.), then...

RELAX UNTIL:

Pre-bed routine:
Give the kitchen a once-over, including trash if needed
Today’s deep clean Zone Chore
Put up Laundry
Lay out tomorrow’s clothes
Meditation practice (10 minutes)

BED at a sane hour! (for me, no later than 10:00 now that I’m getting up early…)

One last thing—These routines are goals, not scripture. I flop down on the couch, ask Kevin to hit the takeaway place on the way home, and veg out more evenings than I’d like to admit, and I probably only accomplish all this stuff (in the same day) about twice a month. However, I do most of it on most days, which is a lot better than if I didn’t have the routines at all. And I have enough on my plate as it is without berating myself for letting the trash can sit full in the kitchen for a day. I am not Martha Stewart, and I sure as hell ain’t a fitness guru. But I am interested in living a happy, ordered, moderate life, and my routines have been a handy tool in getting me there. I hope a system like this may be useful to you too.

Next Tuesday: Graduation is drawing near for our friends getting their MLIS degrees, and I’m going to talk about job hunting for librarians, complete with a sample project plan and links to some of the best career resources on the web. See you Thursday for RSS Digest!

RSS Digest: February 22, 2007

2007-02-22T08:39:00.000-08:00

Hey All! It's been a busy week here with go-live looming (the switch is in 4 WEEKS!!! AUGH!), so I'm keeping it short. Here’s the best links I found this week in LIS, time managment, and as always, my favorite reference websites…

LIS Links

Chronicle Careers: 2/20/2007: The New Library Professional Other than the fact that this author just called me (and many of you) "Feral"...very much worth a read if you haven't already.

Open Letter to ILS Vendors | TechEssence.Info WORD. Yes, we're about to go live on one of the biggest of 'em all, but I have a supicion this may be the last time we purchase a proprietary ILS, if things keep trending the way they're trending. This one from Roy Tennant’s a must-read.

Information Wants To Be Free » Blog Archive » Lead, follow or get out of the way

After you read Roy's post (and pick yourself up from your swoon)--read Meredith's. I have GOT to learn more about OA--that's all there is to it.

Feel-good Librarian: A friend in need Ok folks, Vibes/Prayers for FGL please...

LibraryThing: Tagging: LibraryThing and Amazon Worth a read, much like most everything posted over at LibraryThing. I have GOT to get that account set up...but when you work in a library, organizing your books seems a bit less...recreational. *shrug*

Tame The Web: Libraries and Technology: Hurrah! A Better Bill out of Illinois: Internet Safety Education Act We spend a lot of time here in LIS-land ranting about ridiculous pieces of proposed legislation. Ergo, I'm posting a link to something sensible! :-)

LibrarianInBlack: Online genealogy classes I had originally tagged this to share as one of the kewl reference sites of the week. Now I'm tagging it as an object lesson in how NOT to handle your public relations.

Caveat Lector » Unbeholden *nods*

What I Learned Today… » Blog Archive » Extension List Dumper Nifty for us Firefox geeks.

LibrarianInBlack: Library Podcasting Resources for Staff some good resources if you're thinking of starting a podcast.

Chronicle Careers: 2/16/2007: Red-Hot Library Porn I don't know that I'd have ended that article on as glum a note about the future of the humble book--but I'm still so thrilled that someone else loves the stunning architectural triumphs many of us are lucky enough to work in...

Library Juice » Urgent message from LoC Professional Guild

*jaw drops*. I'm honestly shocked this hasn't gotten more link love.

Strange Book Title Quiz Can you guess which one's fake? (and no cheating by logging into worldcat!)

Streamline your Research with Web Research - lifehack.org Del.icio.us seems to do it for my needs in this area, but this is an interesting tool for web research, especially if you need to save a website as it appeared at a given moment.

The Kept-Up Academic Librarian: No Wikipedia For These History Students Wikis have their place. Being cited as a scholarly source in a history term paper isn't that place. Kudos Middlebury.

Information Wants To Be Free » Blog Archive » Highlights from Week 1 of Five Weeks to a Social Library I am STILL kicking myself that I didn't get involved in this because I was "too new" and "wouldn't have anything to add". Go, read, comment--and don't listen to your anxieties about speaking up! :-)

Free Range Librarian: My Training Plan... Er... BOPSIASK I already practice my own prof dev plan that looks much like a stripped-down version of this, but this gave me some ideas for life after go-live.

Time management and Productivity Links

Hacking Knowledge: 77 Ways to Learn Faster, Deeper, and Better | OEDb An interesting set of tips for you lifelong learners out there (and shouldn't that be all of us?)

zen habits: How to do a Weekly Review in Under an Hour GTD-ers! having trouble with your weekly review? Read on...

Organized People are Lazy! - lifehack.org I need this shirt. (oh yeah, this is also a good primer on using your time effectively)

Productivity & Organizing Myth #5 – the right planner (tool) is all you need - lifehack.org I'm about to let you in on one of the deep secrets of organization: THE TOOLS DON'T MATTER. I think I am going to do a post on the power of routines and SOPs, but until then...read this great post from Lifehack.

Music Vs Workflow - lifehack.org I'm about 1 more paycheck's "fun money" away from drinking the ipod koolaid. Here's a great strategy for putting together my work playlist.

zen habits: Top 20 Motivation Hacks - An Overview Need some motivation? give these tricks a whirl.

Think Like Leonardo da Vinci >> Dumb Little Man

The Simple Dollar » 15 Things You Can Do Right Now To Help Your Career

Mice, Antelopes, and Your To-Do List - lifehack.org Interesting read on priority setting.

Cool Reference Sites of the week

HEALTHmap | Global disease alert mapping system THIS...IS...COOL!

SDNHM: Shark School Went to the aquarium with Kevin and his mom the other weekend and saw the sharks, so this is fresh in my mind...

Car & Truck Repair Information, Auto Advice, Car Repair Estimates in Gainesville FL: ECONOMECHANIX I LOVE this site! I have a great little mazda that just past 100,000 miles with barely a murmur, and this has given me some tips for thing to check to make sure she sees 200K+. If you have a car, you need to bookmark this. period.

ResourceShelf » New Showcases from the National Library of New Zealand Matapihi Database I have SO got to figure a way to visit Middle Earth...check out these images and DROOL.

British Library's New Home page oooooh, pretty.....

See you Tuesday!

Town & Gown: Notes on our new resource sharing program

2007-02-20T08:21:00.000-08:00

As I've mentioned, I work for a smallish (4,000 FTE) university in a medium-small town of about 17,000. As an academic library, we of course are part of the OCLC network, and interlibrary loans flow in and out of here daily. However, our town's awesome public library, which isn't part of any consortium or group, doesn't have the money for that, though they can and do loan and borrow through the state's ILL network. As a college town (and a surprisingly intellectual one for being in the middle of the bible belt), we have lots of retired professors who stayed on in the area, several authors who moved here for the rural setting (that's still within 45 minutes or so of the big city) and cheap cost of living, and plenty of avid readers.

Many of these folks don't have privileges at our library, don't use us often enough to justify purchasing our "community borrower" card ($20 for lifetime privileges), but still occasionally need something a bit more scholarly than they can easily access through the public library.
On the opposite side of the coin, we have lots of students who commute to school here but who don't live or work in this county (the requirement for a card at the public library), and that want to get a hold of a novel that we don't have in stock. (We do try to buy most of the bestsellers as well as particularly popular genres like Fantasy, but we can't get everything...) Enter our awesome serials librarian, Jan, who worked with the director and head of ILL at the public library to create a resource sharing agreement between the two libraries. In a nutshell here's the process.

1. if a patron at library A is looking for a book that library A doesn't have, they or the librarian can pull up the OPAC for library B and see if Library B has it.

2. If Library B has the item, Library A calls Library B, and the item is checked out in Library A's "name". Library A is responsible for keeping records of which patron has which book in case of problems, and will charge the patron to recoup any overdues/lost book fees that accrue.

3. The patron will be given a receipt at library A with the title of the book, which they present at the main desk of library B to pick up the book. When the patron is done with the book, it can be returned to either library (though we prefer library B, for obvious reasons).

The resource sharing scheme has been going for about 2 months as a "pilot program", and we plan to tinker with the system over the summer. Our two libraries are about 5 minutes apart, so it isn't a major hardship to get to library B to pickup. We've put up posters in both libraries explaining the system, and had a nice writeup in the local paper to coincide with the launch. I don't think either side expected this to be a huge source of business, but we're doing 2-3 transactions a week--and those who have done it like the system, so hopefully word of mouth will grow the program.

I know all of us academic librarians communicate well with each other (at least the ones who follow this blog do!), and I'm sure your director goes to lunch with your public library's director on occasion, maybe they even serve on each others' boards. That said, how strong is your library's relationship with your local public library? Go over and introduce yourself to your counterpart, volunteer, offer to do a bit of training on Library 2.0 "stuff", or even work together on a joint outreach project like our resource sharing scheme. There is a lot of overlap between the users of the public library and academic library, and by working together we can support each other, strengthen our presence(s) in the community, and create plenty of win-win situations.

RSS Digest: February 15, 2007

2007-02-15T12:47:00.000-08:00

It’s that time again! Here’s the most interesting stuff I found this week.

LIS Articles

What I Learned Today… » Blog Archive » What makes a librarian? Read, think, respond. :-)

Outgoing: WorldCat Identities Ok, cool toy. Thanks to Walt Crawford for blogging this...

ResourceShelf » Research Paper: Selection and Management of Open Source Software in Libraries; Survey: Adoption of Open Source Digital Library Software Going by the abstract, looks like an interesting analysis of OA in academic libraries.

Library Stories: Libraries & Librarians in the News: Annoyed Librarian asks the tough question applause I work in a city that is pretty analagous to weatherford, and I wouldn't change a thing. jobseekers, be willing to be a little adventurous in your searching, and you may find some nifty places!

EDUCAUSE REVIEW |If the Academic Library Ceased to exist, would we have to invent it? Yet another article that makes me confident that the rumors of our demise are greatly exaggerated.

Library Stories: Libraries & Librarians in the News: Bartlesville to show Bette I wanna be like Ruth Brown when I grow up. To find out more about Oklahoma's most famous Librarian, click on... :-)

Librarians Without Borders Okay, now this is just cool.

librarian.net » LoC Authority files, yours to keep! Free authority files? is the world coming to an end? I gotta make sure our cataloger knows about this. :-)

Information Wants To Be Free » Blog Archive » Making things happen! Wow! I didn't know Meredith is another social services veteran. This is a great post on how any of us can take a cool idea and make it a reality. That strategy's certainly worked for her...

Free Range Librarian: Your Gummint Nixes Digital Preservation sigh

» Jobless jitters I wouldn't go as far as saying that "NEWLIB-L should be required reading..."--but it's worth taking a look at if you haven't. I disagree with a lot of what's posted there, but I've also been very lucky in my LIS career so far...

Productivity/Time Management Articles

Get Rich Slowly » How to Win Friends and Influence People An oldie but a goodie. I don't reread this annually as JD does, but Dale Carnegie, Steven Covey, and David Allen are responsible for whatever productivity I've created in my right-brained, scattered self.

zen habits: Zen Mind: How to Declutter I'm a minimalist, Kevin is a collector. We're still working on meeting in the middle, but here are some tips on decluttering for your reading enjoyment.

zen habits: Think about your life goals Have you made a list of what you want to be/do when you grow up?

The Chief Happiness Officer Another new addition to my blogroll...check out this guy's insights on finding fulfillment at work.

Making Your LinkedIn Business Network Pay Dividends - lifehack.org Ya know how I was grumping a week or two back about not getting much benefit from LinkedIn? This has some great tips for making this site work better for you--I'm going to try some things it suggests and report back with progress.

Why you shouldn't buy that new gadget - Lifehacker Blasphemy!!! But definitely worth a read when you're lusting over an iPhone...

Top Ten Dalai Lama Tips - lifehack.org I don't have much to add here...how can you add on to the Dalai Lama anyway?

Being an Entrepreneur Sucks! -- Young Go Getter Every so often I ponder hanging out my shingle as an independent business researcher. Then I read something like this, and explaining how to log into the campus VPN for the 28th time that day doesn't seem nearly as bad of a gig.

How to maximize your first two hours of the day - Lifehacker Some good strategies on starting your day off on the right foot without getting bogged down on "urgent" emails and other minutia.

The only sure-fire investment - lifehack.org On You, Inc.

Reference resources of the week (and a few silly sites)

ResourceShelf » UK: New Web Site: World War II Films from the Home Front Ok, I'm an Anglophile and a WWII buff, making this the coolest history site I've run across in a while. Have fun!

How Good Are Zillow's Estimates? - WSJ.com On the real estate phenomenon known as Zillow--if a patron hasn't asked you about this resource, they will.

LISNews.org | The Romance of a Dozen Roses, the Gritty Reality of a Truckload I will never think of a dozen roses in quite the same way again.

Illuminating the Word: The St. John's Bible (A Library of Congress Exhibition) I don't care if you're a hardcore atheist--this thing's a work of art.

How does skywriting and skytyping work? Everyday Mysteries: Fun Science Facts from the Library of Congress This is why I'm here. To share reference resources on the fine art of skywriting.

The Book of Household Management, by Isabella Beeton This week's highly cool archival find. Thank you Librarian's Index to the Internet--I now have a great employee manual to pass on to my next under-housemaid.

NPR : The Partisans of Ali Do you know less than you should about Islam? (and if you're not muslim, you probably know as less than you should about Islam). This great series NPR did this week gives a good primer. I finally understand the difference between Shia and Sunni!

The Man in Seat Sixty-One... I've always wanted to take a REALLY long voyage by boat or train--like an ocean crossing or the Orient express. Until I can finagle a month off work to make that happen, I'll read this site and dream...

LibrarianInBlack: Kitty goodness Title says it all. Cat people, surf away.

Wheel of Food Now this thing is just cool. Tired of snagging a cold sandwich in the library cafe for lunch, but not sure what you want? give this site a "whirl" and see what you come up with...

Stroke Warning Signs - lifehack.org This week's public service link, courtesy of lifehacker.

That’s it until Saturday, when I’m going to do that long-promised progress report on my indexcard GTD implementation. I’m sure you’re all aquiver with anticipation. See you soon!

Early to bed, Early to rise...

2007-02-13T17:18:00.000-08:00

Let me make this clear right off the top. I am NOT a morning person. If I were named the Supreme Dictator of the planet, my first act as world leader would be to make the work day start no earlier than 10:00 AM. I find those natural larks annoying in the extreme when they flutter into the office at 8:00, twittering about the beautiful sunrise while I’m still grunting and stumbling for the tea kettle in the breakroom. That said, my part of the world runs from 8 AM to 5 PM, so I have little choice in the matter. I also have discovered that I simply am not going to consistently do certain activities necessary to meeting my goals if I try to do them after work. 6 PM is not the ideal time for me to head over to the gym in the apartment complex, even if there isn’t a line for the treadmills. In addition, my husband Kevin works a demanding job as a software developer, and while his boss is good about encouraging work-life balance, he works 50+ hour weeks as a general rule and I try to keep my evenings as clear as possible so that we can share the time we both have off.

This left me with a problem. I have several self-improvement projects I’m struggling with, most notably maintaining a daily spiritual practice as well as daily exercise. There simply weren’t enough hours in the evening to cook dinner, go to any meetings of my various activities, keep the house tidy, work on my dead tree and online reading, relax by myself and/or with Kevin, AND do those new practices regularly. I tried multiple variations of evening schedules, and they all left me overstressed and overscheduled. Finally, about 2 weeks ago I realized there was nothing for it but to get up earlier.

Resources on getting up early

In one of those amusing cosmic convergences that crop up in my life from time to time, soon after I resolved to get up earlier, several blogs I follow either published articles on the art of early rising or posted links to them. I’d run into Steve Pavlina’s guide to morning routines some time back. However, within 3 days of that resolution I stumbled across Yahoo! Finance’s article on CEO’s morning routines, Lifehack’s article on the art of rising at 5:00 AM, and my new favorite blog, “Zen Habits” which ran two articles on developing a morning routine and training oneself to get up early enough to complete that routine. Each article had a slightly different twist on the core topic of creating morning routines and getting up early to accomplish them, and all are worth a read. However, they all boil down to 2 basic suggestions: write a list of tasks you want to do every day, and set the alarm clock early enough to accomplish them with ease.

My Plan
The first part I’d done over 6 months before, when I created a 1-part GTD, 2-parts FLYlady morning routine for myself. after a few revisions it had become a great routine, except for the fact that I was still attempting to accomplish 90 minutes of tasks in 60—45 if I hit the snooze button. I knew that if I wanted to exercise, pray, catch the local headlines, tidy up any lurking hot spots in the apartment, AND walk out the door dressed and made-up to perfection by 7:00 AM, something had to give, and NOT the workouts or my time with the Deity.

Step one was to figure out a way to get myself up earlier without depriving my hubby of his sleep—after all, he’s not the one who came up with the mad idea to wake up at 5:00 am to walk across the sub-freezing apartment complex to get on the treadmill! As it happened, I just bought a new pre-paid cell phone after a near-wreck in one of our recent snowstorms brought home the fact that having the means to call a tow truck is not a luxury when you have a 30 mile commute. Said phone offered an alarm function, along with its other bells and whistles. I searched through the various ringtones, found the least objectionable one, and set it at a volume that would wake me but not disturb Kevin. For the next 4 weeks, I would back up my wakeup time by 15 minutes each Monday morning, so I would be waking up by 5:00 am within a month.

Results so far
Last week was week one on this plan. As you can’t do much extra with 15 minutes (at least when you’re still semiconscious), I just enjoyed the luxury of lingering in the shower, cleaning up a few more clutter spots than usual, and generally starting my day in a non-rushed manner. This week I’m getting up at 5:30, and have enough time to do morning prayer, read a little bit, and sip some green tea and journal while watching the local talking heads. Next week I think I’m going to start working out, and I’m trying to decide if I’m going to multitask while on the treadmill via my podcasts or to read stack, or if I’m simply going to pop something fun into the DVD player in the gym. I won’t add anything my final week when I dial back to my final(?) 5:00 AM alarm call but that 15 minutes should allow me to do things at a deliberate pace that will allow me to wake up, be productive, connect with myself and my surroundings and generally start off the day on the right note.

Will she make it? Can this confirmed late riser turn herself into a lark? Well, I doubt I’ll ever stroll into the office on Monday humming show tunes, but if I can transform myself from a hopelessly scattered slob to a time management blogger, perhaps—just perhaps—I can find out why Aristotle and Ben Franklin were so hooked on pre-dawn productivity. I’ll keep you up to date on my progress. :-)

RSS Digest: February 8, 2007

2007-02-08T16:34:00.000-08:00

Thursday again! Here’s the hot links of the week on Librarianship, Productivity, and reference sites…

LIS Links

The Well Dressed Librarian: Way, Which On signage in libraries...

LibVibe: the library news podcast: LibVibe - 5 February 2007 Just thought I'd check to make sure everyone around here listens to LibVibe...right? if not, it's a great way to keep up on LIS-related headlines.

Free Range Librarian: March 8, 2007: Sisters, Sisters! An interesting call for postings by female librarians...

Diary of Saad Eskander, Director of the Iraq National Library and Archive Wow. Remind me not to grumble about not getting a flatscreen monitor with my new office computer.

Pew Internet: Tagging Interesting report from the Pew Internet and American Life project on tagging...

The Well Dressed Librarian: Lie, Statistics never We've come a long way, baby... (well, sorta)

ALA TechSource | Wooden Dominoes An um... interesting (disturbing?) editorial on google's library digitization efforts...

The Shifted Librarian: More than Just DDR for Fines Gaming in libraries...I'm still not completely convinced on their use as an library tool, but the articles Jenny links to make some intriguing arguments.

Top Ten Zero-tech Library 2.0 “no brainers” for Public Libraries « The Other Librarian Yeah, I know I mentioned this one on tuesday. It bears repeating.

Stephen's Lighthouse: Using the 23 Things in Special Libraries Ok, Forwarding this to my boss for a staff development project--staying updated with LIS-land on 15 minutes a day!

LibrarianInBlack: Pew report on online tagging So it's not just geeks like us who are addicted to tagging? Kewl! :-)

Free Range Librarian: Children of Men, Gender, and Library IT I'm not sure I completely agree with this discussion of Coder culture and gender, but it definitely bears reading...

http://acrlblog.org/2007/02/05/academic-libraries-unlikely-to-beat-search-engines-at-their-own-game/ I agree, lots of commenters don’t. why don’t you read for yourself?

Superpatron - Friends of the Library, for the net: selling books online on consignment with Books By Chance (Ann Arbor, MI) I wonder if we could try this next time we're ready to unload a stack of weeded books, instead of sending them to the auction...hmmm...

Gmail Locks Out User For Using Greasemonkey & Reports Of Gmail Contacts Disappearing Timely reminder about all these hosted web services that ulimately, we have chosen to play in THEIR playground, with their rules and their bugs...

Free Range Librarian: Dorothea on DSpace A rant on less than responsive OA software developers. no, we are not saying all OA packages/developers are like this--my hubby is a software developer for pete's sake!--but this is an issue that needs to be discussed.

David Lee King » Blog Archive » Change, Adaptation, and that 33 Reasons Why We’re Important Article From his post: "[librarians'] reason for existence in the new digital society … going where the customers are … and adapting to the the concept of “change is a given.”" Awesome. Read. NOW.

ALA | Developing a long-range and outreach plan for your academic library Just forwarded this one to the boss-developing a strategic plan and a marketing plan has been on the "after go-live" to-do list for some time...

LISNews.org | Good News for LOC Brittle Books I don't get enough time to indulge my deep interest in old/rare book collections, but I'm happy to hear of the Alfred P. Sloan foundation's grant to digitize and preserve LoC's brittle books.

woodyevans.com » EBSCO back talkSome interesting chatter on the recent changes to EBSCO's search interface--complete with responses from the borg's--erm, I mean the database provider's customer service department...

The Chronicle: Daily news: 02/01/2007 -- 01: U. of California Sues the Family of Jacques Derrida Over the Noted Philosopher's Papers An interesting lawsuit over the ultimate resting place of the papers of philosopher Jacques Derrida. I'd make some pithy comments here, but A: I try to be neutral in presenting news links, and B: Deconstruction gives me a headache.

Productivity Links

The GTD Mastery 100 so...how is your score? I'm at 50, which is better than I expected. I'm adding this to my bimonthly 30,000 foot & up review, and just working it has given me ideas for improvements and projects...

CollegeJournal | On the Job Interesting article on decluttering your career--and hits close to home for me. I've been so focused on accomplishing a lot of "stuff" that I haven't stopped to think it it's the right stuff for reaching my career goals. Hmm...

Productivity & Organizing Myth #3 – I don’t have time to prioritize - lifehack.org What she said. And it's amazing how much time I've found once I started "wasting time" in getting organized at the start of the day.

The Prepared Don’t Procrastinate - lifehack.org Are you procrastinating on a project because you haven't planned well enough?

Make phone calls from your browser - lifehack.org Well, this is an interesting development--and just when i've gotten around to fiddling with Skype! sigh

Where’s Your Motivation? - lifehack.org 11 common motivations to get stuff done--which ones move you?

Video: How to make those first impressions count - Lifehacker A great little presentation on how to handle introductions to VIPs (and isn't everyone a VIP?)--those first impressions count!

Nourish your dreams regularly with attention - lifehack.org "It’s one of the ironies of getting caught up in Getting Things Done: a lot of things, including your dreams, end up on your Someday/Maybe list. And that’s more than a shame; it’s a guaranteed way of slowly dying inside."

Productivity & Organizing Myth #2 – Can’t stop influx - lifehack.org Trying to figure out how to stop all that shi--I mean stuff you get in your various inboxes every day? Have no fear, Lifehack has the answer!

Ready Reference links of the week (I’ve totally given up on just picking 1)

Go2Web20.net - The complete Web 2.0 directory Why did it take so long for someone to come up with a directory of web 2.0 services? definitely gonna play with this puppy over the weekend.

super bowl commercials - Ask.com Web Search for those who aren't football fans but who wouldn't mind seeing the commercials...(aside from the $%^* Snickers one I’ve seen 80 gazillion times…)

Learn CPR and choking first-aid - Lifehacker These videos don't substitute for taking one of the many free red cross classes (and you have done that, RIGHT?), but this still seemed like a good public service to share. :-)

Archives Hub: Collections of the Month: Love letters This collection is just cool. Thanks to ResourceShelf for bringing it to our attention. :-)

How do they do that? - lifehack.org You remember those nifty videos of stuff being manufactured that they'd show sometimes on Mr. Rogers’ Neighborhood or other kid shows? Well, here's a whole site-full. Enjoy!

I won’t be posting again until next Tuesday, as the Coolest Mother-in-Law on Earth is coming up for a visit. :-) Next Tuesday is going to be a discussion of the productivity merits of training yourself to get up at an even more ungodly hour than you are already (complete with links to how-to guides!). Future Tuesday essays are going to cover the merits and drawbacks of distance learning, especially as related to DL library services, a review of a book I’ve been reading on networking, and some other topics I’ve got on the back burner. No more multi-part sagas/rants for a little bit though—The Dark Side posts wore me out! As always, Thursdays will remain my opportunity to declutter my Del.icio.us links (and clutter yours). See you soon!

Stolen Library Book Leads to Shooting

2007-02-07T04:50:00.000-08:00

ANDERSON, S.C. (AP) - Police say a security guard at the Anderson County Library fired his gun at a car after the driver triggered a security alarm.

Police say security guard James Turner asked the woman to stop after the alarm went off as she left around 5 o'clock Saturday afternoon.

A police report states Turner chased the woman as she ran to her car and he said the bumper brushed his knee as she pulled away.

Police say the guard then fired into the driver's door. Authorities say the woman kept going and they don't know if she was hurt.

Library director Carl Stone says he's asked Cherokee Security Systems not to send Turner back to the library. Stone says no one should be hurt over a missing library book.

WLTX NEWS Columbia, SC Originally Posted: 1/9/2007 8:15:34 AM Associated Press

*facepalms*

The Dark Side of Library 2.0, Part 3: Old Solutions to New Problems

2007-02-06T11:56:00.000-08:00

Hello fellow librarian types! Again I’m flattered (though not surprised) by the thoughtfulness of the comments on my posts in this series. One of the most insightful responses was by Laura Cohen—her thoughts have helped me immensely in putting together this last part of my series.

Also, before I kick off part three, I want to clarify a few points. I am not Anti-Library 2.0, nor do I think it’s a bad thing. I like to think I’ve helped bring some 2.0 initiatives into existence at my workplace, and we have plans for more. My point had been that it can be easy to ignore the substance of Library 2.0 for the style, and to forget that Library 2.0 is really a more mindful (and more technological, when appropriate) way of doing the things we’ve been doing since Alexandria. As Ryan Deschamps mentioned in his excellent post on zero-tech Library 2.0 projects, this all really comes down to the perennial struggle to narrow the inevitable divide between information seekers and information. And on that note…

The Dark Side of Library 2.0, Part 3: Old Solutions to New Problems

I’m in my (very) late 20s. I am the youngest full-time employee at my library. I am 20 years younger than the next youngest librarian. Most of the full-time staff is in their 50s or older. We have one librarian in her 70s, and our veteran cataloger is almost 80! Both the paraprofessional position that I was initially hired into and the librarian slot I moved into after finishing my MLIS opened up due to retirements—about the only way we’ve had openings here for a while. It’s a little more obvious a generation gap at my library, but are these demographics sounding familiar to you?

When I came on board here, I had ideas, but was timid in sharing them. Here I was, a half-trained kid surrounded by people who had been doing this job all their lives. Our director came into his position the same year I started Kindergarten, for pete’s sake! Besides, I was worried about coming off as the stereotypical “cocky youngster”, throwing out dozens of half-baked ideas and annoying everyone. Plus, based on things I’d been reading and had seen in classes and my internship, there was a pretty bad cultural gap between the boomer librarians and the “nextgens”, a group that I obviously belonged to. And for all the grumping I saw in the blogosphere about those hidebound old boomers who refused to retire and who didn’t “grok” Library 2.0, it seemed like there was plenty of fault on both sides for the cultural gap.

First off, there was (and still is) some resentment on the part of younger librarians that the impending shortage of librarians is, well, still impending. While most people seem to understand the reasons behind this slow transition and are taking advantage of it to glean more knowledge from their seniors, it’s a lot less easy to be sanguine when you’re a job-seeker who can’t find an opening. Also for good or bad, we nextgens are used to instant access to information, a flat leadership structure, job mobility, constant change, and making an impact in our workplaces. All of this can make our senior colleagues a bit, well, wary. And this isn’t just generational, it’s human nature. How might you be tempted to react to some brand new student worker telling you that you were doing things all wrong? In any case, we have a situation as old as time, where the young distrust the old for allegedly being too bound by tradition, and the old distrust the young for allegedly ignoring their hard won wisdom. The end result is a divide running down the middle of our profession (and many others), and a shortage of people willing to do the work to bridge it.

Back to my new employer--there I was, in a position some of us might find familiar. I had lots of ideas, but I was also fully aware of just how ignorant I was about the basics of librarianship. Most of all, I didn’t want to alienate my new coworkers. So…what did I do? Fortunately, I didn’t assume that my new coworkers fit into the stereotype suggested by their birthdates. They also gave their new “young change agent” the benefit of the doubt. My first step was to learn as much as I could about how things were, before I started throwing out ideas about how things could be. I kept my ears and eyes open, my mouth shut (as much as possible), and LISTENED for the first month or so I was on the job. I learned about institutional history, office politics, the go-to people (and don’t go-to people) on campus, as well as the day-to-day tasks of library work that can’t be covered in any MLS program. In a nutshell, I showed everyone the respect they were entitled to, and was genuinely grateful for the information they were generously showering me with. When the time came when I had a few ideas of my own, my colleagues were ready to listen, and as enthusiastic about helping me with my ideas as I had been in assisting them with their projects. What could have become an unmanageable gulf is now an easily bridged stream. I won’t kid you and say there are never disagreements or misunderstandings, but there are remarkably few, and I am honored and humbled at how quickly this tight-knit band of librarians welcomed me into their fold.

Of course, what worked in a small academic library in flyover-land with less than 10 full-time staff might not work in your situation. However, I’ve learned a lot of things from my more experienced coworkers about customer service, reference interviewing, library instruction, and all the nuts and bolts of my job. So what if I handle the online students and am working with my new colleague (a boomer by birthday, but no less 2.0 aware than I am) to launch IM reference and a library blog? We’re doing the same things—and that’s the biggest thing I want to share about library 2.0 in this series of posts.

The core of librarianship, whether 1.0, 2.0, or whatever you want to call it, is connecting an information seeker with the information they seek. You use the best tools for that job, depending on the user’s needs or desires. Some will comment on your blog, build firefox extensions to search your OPAC and reserve books via the website, others will walk in to check out books and read the paper in the coffee bar. Most will fall somewhere in the middle. Our duty is to bridge divides. But how do we do that when we live with such wide chasms of technology, class, and age in our own community? To effectively unite our patrons with what they want, we must unite ourselves. I haven’t posted these articles because I’m a pessimist or a luddite, but because we can and must bridge these own divides in our own house before we can present a united front in the battles that we fight daily against price gouging vendors, frustrating software, an ignorant public, and politicians that challenge our patrons’ most basic rights to read and think independently. We have a lot of severe challenges on our plates, and we have GOT to stop the squabbling, listen to our less trendy fellows and start working together.

Our unique market position is that we are NOT google. We are not some corporation who makes its living on ad clicks and cares about popularity over quality (not dissing google here, just making a point). We provide our patrons with unbiased, apolitical, noncommercial access to information and opportunities to build communities to share that information FOR LITTLE OR NO CHARGE. In a world of commercials and spin, do you realize just how rare a commodity that is? THAT is the mission and message of Library 2.0. We are a haven from the world of spin. We are a refuge from the nonstop commercialization of our information sources. We are a community center in a culture that is being plied into solitude by millions of portable blinking screens. A Library is inherently a non-trendy, nonconformist and revolutionary place. That is our identity, and that is our strength. And if we stay true to those roots, while branching out into new ways to do our jobs, Library 2.0 can and will make libraries better places to be for a long time to come.

Problems with posting comments

2007-02-01T16:08:00.000-08:00

Hey all,

I've heard from some folks that Blogger has been misbehaving and sending comments through sluggishly or not at all. Yet another reason to consider migrating to wordpress...but in the meantime, just keep trying, and I apologize for the inconvenience!

RSS Digest: February 1, 2007

2007-01-31T18:35:00.000-08:00

RSS Digest: February 1, 2007

Happy Groundhog eve! Here’s some of the links that ticked my fancy this week, with my brief thoughts!

Also, thanks to my favorite new toy—erm, tool, google analytics, I know I apparently have readers in my old home-away-from home: Scotland, my dream home-away-from home: China (Ni Hao!), and a prospective home-away-from home addition as soon as I can visit the place and really fall in love with it: New Zealand! Oh yes, and hello to Saudi Arabia, Switzerland, Australia, and Brazil!

LIS Links of Interest (serious)

33 Reasons Librarians are Still Extremely Important - DegreeTutor.com
I don't know about you, but this list of reasons made me feel good--and even better is the conversation this article sparked on digg!

The Well Dressed Librarian: of course its cashmere--Change-o, Presto
What he said. This one went up on my office wall. And when this guy is not dropping insights like this, he's posting witty, hysterical posts that I always look forward to--think Queer Eye for the Librarian. :-)

Information Wants To Be Free » Blog Archive » Odeo, I hardly knew you!
Another classic rant from Meredith--this one on the less pleasant aspects of that web 2.0 concept known as "perpetual beta"...

The Top 100 Alternative Search Engines
Need I say more? stuff you've probably heard of, like Clusty and exalead, and stuff you're NEVER heard of unless you're Gary Price(ujiko.com???). Some silliness, some very BETA sites, but also a few gems for the searcher looking for something new...

The Kept-Up Academic Librarian: Two-Year Program Helps Hispanic Students Earn Degree
At first, I wasn't sure what I thought about the concept of a bilingual degree program, but it's growing on me. regardless, if it gets good enrollment and graduation numbers, expect something like it at your campus before long...

Library 2.0: An Academic's Perspective: The Customer is Always Right, Part 2
Highlighting reason #863 on why you can't trust the web to do your homework...

Tame The Web: Libraries and Technology: London Calls Again! Announcing ILI2007
Ok, I SO want to go to this. No chance the travel fund at work could swing it, but maybe...write a proposal to speak? raid the savings account? throw a bake sale? Gimme some ideas to get there, guys!

ResourceShelf » Research Paper: The rise and rise of citation analysis
Next fall I'm planning on doing a citation analysis project on undergrad papers (anyone interested in co-writing? email me), and it's nifty to see that I'm not the only wierdo into this little nook of info studies.

The Well Dressed Librarian: of course its cashmere: Just-in-case collections
Of course I'm sure NONE of us have shelves fit to burst with dusty books, old conference proceedings, and particularly useful items "borrowed" from the reference area (2 years ago), but if we did...

Thoughts from a Library Administrator: ALA Council and transcripts
A post on the push to have ALA Council transcripts posted online--the saga continues...

Cites & Insights: Crawford at Large
As always, most of the articles in here are worth a read, but the piece on finding balance (p. 16) is definitely noteworthy..

Read Write Connect - ReadWriteConnect
The new ALA wiki. Need I say more? Go read, and contribute something too! :-)

http://acrlblog.org/2007/01/26/truthiness-in-publishing/
Ok, Per Elsevier & friends, Open access to published research is a form of government censorship??? Check the comments for their hasty "correction" (made after this hit the fan thanks to Nature magazine) complete with Dorthea Salo's handy translation...

Resource Description and Access (RDA): Cataloging Rules for the 20th Century
Cataloging as we know it has to change and is changing already. How best to manage the change? read this interesting article from D-lib.

The Distant Librarian: Google Scholar's as good as the library
Whether this title has your hackles rising or your head nodding, take a look. Like Paul, I can't wait for the full article to be published.

ALA TechSource | My Phoner with Pogue
Check out Tom Peters' interesting chat with David Pogue, Technology columnist/blogger for the New York Times...

LIS Links of interest (fun)

blyberg.net » Too funny!
You must watch this....NOW! In fact, this librarian has already posted a sequel. This is getting played at the first staff meeting where I can find an excuse to play it...

Library Stories: Libraries & Librarians in the News: Poster of everything he's ever read...
umm...WOW. Ya know, I used to think I was getting organized, but to even KNOW everything I've read in my life, plus finding cover shots and turning them into a poster? That takes OCD to a new level (and I mean that in a good way...)

The Library Predict-o-matic 3000
Updated and Better than ever! Go get your 2007 prediction today! I got..."In 2007...SirsiDynix will be acquired by Activision and become ActirsiDynix. They will announce a new lending desk robot named Inthimo."

LibrarianInBlack: Teenagers happily checking out books
Another week, another cool library-themed YouTube--and this one patron-generated!

Productivity links of interest

26 Tips to Keep Your Computer Up and Functioning - lifehack.org
Good process for regular computer maintenance. I'm adding a stripped down version of this to my @home routines.

Let's Talk About LinkedIn
I drank the LinkedIn cool-aid about 6 months ago...and I'm not sure I've gotten much out of it. Apparently I'm not the only one.

Young Go Getter -- The business playground for entrepreneurs young at heart
An interesting site and blog--it says it's geared specifically to entrepreneurs, but I think any change-agent type is going to find some things to enjoy here. I'm still exploring this one, but I like what I see.

To boost your potential, try saying “Yes” more often - lifehack.org
I haven't always been glad I've said yes to a particular project or task, but I've always learned something.

Are You Just Getting Warmed Up? - lifehack.org
According to this, it's okay that I need to get a coffee, oatmeal, and say hi to a few coworkers before I'm even ready to think about my first chore of the day...yay! one less source of guilt!

Cool Reference site of the week (today’s special: 4 for 1!)

Constitution Finder
Looking for Austria’s constitution? The Magna Carta? Want to check to make sure Japan is still constitutionally pacifist? Browse away, my friend…

Literature Post :: Classic Books Online
Another site with public domain classic e-books, while there doesn't seem to be much here that isn't elsewhere, it seems to be a more focused collection than other similar sites (i.e. the Gutenberg Project)

Google Book Search: now with maps - Lifehacker
Now you can see maps with locations in Joyce's Dublin...cool toy. :-)

ResourceShelf » Updated Database: RxNav (A Semantic Navigation Tool for Clinical Drugs)
Title's pretty self-explanatory. A good pharmacology resource for your pharmacy, medical, and nursing students.

And that sums it up. See you soon!

The dark side of Library 2.0, part 2: new bridges… new divides?

2007-01-30T08:58:00.000-08:00

First, thanks for all the great insights and responses on the first part of my series! This has been one of my most popular articles to date, and it definitely seems to be echoing a common sentiment. Since we all seem to agree that user needs should be paramount in selecting technologies…I’d like to pose this follow-up question: Is that new toy you want to install on the server going to be a bridge to information to your users…or a hurdle? I warn you, I had a lot more to say on this issue than I expected, so this is a bit long…

The dark side of Library 2.0, part 2: New bridges…New divides?

The Typical College student: “non-traditional” to the core!

While I am very proud of the institution I work for, and think that we produce bachelor-degreed students who can perform at an equal level to either of the “prestigious” state universities…we ain’t Harvard. That’s actually one of the things I love about this school. What we are is a high-quality, low-cost bridge to the middle class for 1st generation college students, adult learners, and an increasing number of students for who English is not their first language. The “non-traditional” university student is now the norm, at least in my corner of academia—and probably in yours too. These are people who are well-acquainted with the concept of working their tails off to achieve their goals. Some of them may have never laid eyes on USB drives or a full-text database before they came to campus, but I’d still take most of them as students over plenty of “gifted students” I’ve known.

What's my point with this nonsequitur into regional college demographics? Just a reminder that not all college students are millenials, and not all millenials are tech-savvy geeks. The technologies that may seem as familiar and intuitive to us as the TV remote are often completely alien to many “non-traditional” college students, who already have a lot of unfamiliar burdens being placed on them. Many of the students I help have never created a chart in excel and need a tutorial to copy and paste a persistent URL from EBSCO. I am not saying these things to demean. Most students have had other priorities in their lives than keeping up with the latest in high tech. I have to remember, and in all honesty occasionally forget, that I have a vastly different relationship to technology than does a typical "non-traditional" college student.

Barriers masquerading as bridges, or “For the want of a VPN login…”

There are days on the reference desk when I sometimes wonder if a poorly implemented bit of technology is worse than no technology as all. Our former route to login to the university’s VPN (we have 3 campuses, and approximately 40% of our courses are offered online) required a download, a 10-step install process, and ONLY WORKED WITH WINDOWS 2000 or XP! Own a Mac? Still putting along on a Windows 98 machine because you can't afford a new system? No Remote Access for you!

Fortunately, we finally got that resolved at the start of this semester to a web-based login when the IT department upgraded the VPN software. The old system wasn't there for so long because we were a backwards library who didn't advocate for our patrons, or because our IT department is an evil nerd cult who sacrifices puppies in the server room! We couldn't afford the technology, and we can barely afford people to run it. I doubt I'm bursting any bubbles here, but the digital divide doesn't just affect the folks on the other side of the staff area door. The net result is that perfectly intelligent, hard-working students transfer to schools with better technology--or worse, think that not being able to decipher our arcane systems means they can't hack it in college.

Poor user education

I’m sure none of us nextgen, 2.0 types have ever seen a less technologically fluent coworker wince or look concerned when we excitedly unveiled the newest cool widget we wanted to add to the website. But if on some off chance you have…can you imagine the look on one of these “nontraditional” students’ faces when they login to the website to see they have to learn all over again how to get to a $#%! journal article? At least you’ve provided advance warning about the redesign or new service... and a faq or instructions…in plain english...and that isn’t only in some ram-hogging video or flash format that will crash those Windows 98 machines…right?

I have no objections to those whiz-bang interactive tutorials that are all the rage—in fact I’d love to get IT to let me put some on our website! That said, at least provide an alternative link to plain HTML! I don't care what high-flying technobabble is on your business card—if you work in a library, you’re an educator. As I said in part one, our job is to connect our patrons to information in the most efficient manner possible, and to make our offerings as attractive as we can to potential new patrons. And there are many times when too much technology, or technology poorly implemented, can get in the way of that goal.

So, what do you do if you are stuck with the flaky web server, or a 3-page login process that appears to have been poorly translated from Urdu? How do you deal with the nursing students cropping up with questions about writing excel formulas like clockwork in the 10th week of every semester? You do your job. You educate. You educate again. You educate once more. Even when you think you will go mad if you have to say "click control-C to copy…" one more time, you take a deep breath and do it. Rewrite that login process. Take someone from IT to lunch so they think of you as someone other than "that whining tech librarian". Educate your patrons, your coworkers, your superiors, your board, your donors, your tax base…educate them all until they understand the value of library technology, understand how to use it, and/or understand that you will not shut up until you get the resources you need to fulfill your mission.

Guess what—we’re all in the “privileged classes”…

When I was laid off from my high-flying management trainee gig at the local over-hyped, soon-to-be-doomed telecom company in 2002, I went to work for the welfare office, because it offered a safe, steady (if small) paycheck and no office politics. Unexpectedly, I learned more of importance in my first 6 months there than I had in my three years in telecom, and that experience serves me at least as well as any alleged business savvy I picked up in the corporate world.

I didn't grow up rich by any stretch of the imagination, but I was in a solid middle class family in a solid middle class suburb in 1980s America, surrounded by people who encouraged education and were living testaments to the prosperity it could offer the hard worker. It took a caseload of 200 families of urban and rural poor for me to understand how darned lucky I'd been to have decent schools, and parents with the time and education and knowledge to teach me how to make it in the real world. What I had taken for granted was the very thing that gave me the knowledge and ability to succeed. All these divides I've talked about today really boil down to one divide—class. A rant about the socio-economic state of affairs in the US is beside the point, and outside the scope of this blog. But let me leave this post with one thought. One of my grandmothers was the daughter of a sharecropper in Georgia. My grandfather was born a half-Cherokee hillbilly in North Carolina. My father is a software developer. My mom is a project manager. My brother is an engineer. I'm a Librarian. And my family's history over the past three generations looks like plenty of others reading this, I suspect. How did my family get from the Waltons to the Joneses in half a century?

EDUCATION. Education fostered, in no small part, by librarians. I'm not saying that we all have to run off to take jobs in Appalachia. However, I am saying that my time serving the underserved showed me that the class divide is still alive and well in America, and it is the divide from which the others spring. We are charged to fight ignorance, because it's within ignorance that paranoia and censorship and prejudice can and do take root. So, back to the point I had before this rant, does that spiffy new youtube video help your library fight against ignorance? If it entices kids to come into the library who otherwise wouldn't have thought of it as "their kind of place", then it most certainly does. But make sure those pretty new widgets you're slapping up on the website are bridges—not barriers.

Next week, Part 3: Old solutions to New challenges, or "When I was your age, I lugged card catalog drawers 5 miles to my desk, uphill, both ways, in the snow, and I was grateful for the job!"

GTD Post Delay--and notes on a diverse readership!

2007-01-27T18:10:00.001-08:00

1st,
the post scheduled today will be taking place tomorrow, as I want to provide pictures of my moleskine notebook and my hipster PDA travel deck...but I forgot my camera at home. (I'm in the office today) .

2nd,
With the blogger upgrade I can now see any trackbacks to my posts, and I also have started tracking my traffic via google analytics. I have now been read and/or linked to in Germany, Japan, and Portugal! not too bad for a smallish LIS blog...

Anyway, I'd like to say hallo, Ohayou (apologies hawk, my browser didn't like it when I tried to paste in the hiragana), and Olá respectively, based on your current time zones! :-)

RSS Digest #1 : Cons, Connectivity, and Cataloging...

2007-01-25T08:16:00.000-08:00

Anybody else have this problem? you're skimming through your bloglines, and see a interesting post or link. You think, "ooh! I want to blog that!" So you tag it for future reference and move along to the next feed. Before you know it you've posted on a few articles, but mostly you have a backlog of tagged posts, your viewer is a mess, and you know that by the time you catch up nobody will even remember the original post, and a half-dozen other bloggers will have posted far better responses to it already. So you clear your saved posts and swear to "keep up better", skim through the new posts, see an interesting item, tag it...

You get where I'm going, right?

I've gotten to the realization that I do not have enough hours in the day to write profound commentaries on every issue of the day AND have a life. Trying to accomplish that leads to writer's block, which is counter-productive to my goal of keeping this blog updated on a regular basis. Long story short (WAY too late :-) ), I'm going to stop trying to do it all. Thursdays from now on are my "roundup" days, where I post links to all the nifty posts or resources I've run into in the past week, with a few lines of commentary.* I hope you find this new digest useful!

RSS digest for 1/17-25/2006

Library Posts and articles:

LibraryLaw Blog: When good librarians and bad policies collide…
An excellent example of how NOT to write your community room policy--at least if you don't want to get sued...

My Top-ten Library 2.0 “No-brainers” for Public Libraries « The Other Librarian
Some other folks have blogged on this already, but I think it deserves a second mention. For those of you suffering "information overload" regarding tools, projects, implementations, and all the other stuff that gets babbled about in our wacky corner of the web, this is an EXCELLENT primer on picking the best tools and implementing them in your library.

Eliminating Series Authority Records and Series Title Control: Improving Efficiency or Creating Waste? Or, 12 Reasons Why the Library of Congress Should Reconsider Its SARs Decision AND More on What is Going on at the Library of Congress
Brought to my attention by David Bigwood over at Catalogablog, these are two well-thought our papers on the LC series cataloging issue, as well as the broader changes going on in DC, both in-depth yet in coherent language for non-catalogers. I don't care if you couldn't tell MARC from the michelin man, these changes affect everyone in US librarianship (and beyond). READ.

Information Wants To Be Free » Does distance learning have to be like this?
Both the post that inspired this and Meredith's response are great discussions on the state of distance learning. As a MLIS graduate who attended a satellite campus (who took almost half her classes online), and in my current role as a DL librarian, I've got some strong opinions on the state of distance ed myself, and I'm glad to see the benefits and drawbacks being discussed by so many folks in more depth than "OMG izn't tech kewl!1!!!". This post is a must for all academic librarians--if you campus doesn't have distance learners yet, you WILL. I can guarantee it.

ResourceShelf » Law Professor Predicts Wikipedia’s Demise
Eric Goldman's--shall we say-- pessimistic analysis of Wikipedia in December 5's Information Week is an interesting summary is a great summary of the threats facing the elephant in our reference sections. I'm not sure Wikipedia's future is as grim as Goldman suggests, but finding a way to deal with spammers (as well as companies attempting to buy favorable edits) is a critical issue facing the folks at Wikimedia.

Library 2.0: An Academic's Perspective: ALA Midwinter Meeting: I'm Not There
I'm not the only one who can't afford midwinter--phew! I'll be honest here, the requirements to attend conference for many of the various leadership roles within roundtables and committees is why I haven't yet gotten as involved in ALA as I'd like to be. Laura has quite a lot to say about our organizations' conferences, and delivers familiar criticisms and suggestions in a potent way.

a long-overdue update on the special library 2.0 survey
What a concept! Amanda Etches-Johnson has put together a survey to find out what 2.0 tools are actually being used by special libraries. Click on to see her results and analysis.

Productivity posts and articles:

7 Ways to Track Internet’s Trends and Popular News - lifehack.org
I don't subscribe to every feed in the LIS and Time management worlds, but some days it feels like it... Here are some tips to help you sort the wheat from the chaff. I've recently unsubbed from digg and slashdot as they contributed to my overload rather than helping it. (I might feel differently if I was in IT or software development) However, some of the other tips and tools look handy.

Kewl Reference website of the week
Every week (or at least every week I find something nifty), I'm going to post the most interesting or useful reference resource I run across. Today's is...

Encyclopedia of Death and Dying
Title says it all, really....there are some truly fascinating and useful articles here on things like the black plague and advance directives , but I still wouldn't suggest surfing over while you've got insomnia...

and that's it! see you soon...

* on a semi-related note, does anyone more Del.icio.us-savvy than I know a way I could auto post a list of bookmarks marked with a particular tag? I see how to do daily posts of everything I tag, but I doubt people here are terribly interested in research for my nonprofit board or my ongoing attempts to learn Mandarin :-)

Half-pint would NOT be amused...

2007-01-24T07:13:00.000-08:00

Modernizing the Little House Books
Um...last I checked, wasn't the old-fashioned vibe part of what make the books so cool? Ok, they're JUST changing the illustrations, but still...

GRR...

The Dark Side of Library 2.0, Part 1: "It's the Patron, Stupid!"

2007-01-23T07:25:00.000-08:00

This has been rattling around in my brain for some time (in some ways since Internet Librarian), but I've had trouble bringing myself to write it. I'm not a big name, and because of that it'll be easier to shout me down or ignore me. Also, I'm afraid that this will make me come off as a luddite, which is decidedly not my intent. Finally, I know that people who I respect very much will probably disagree with some or all of what I have to say, and may even take it as a personal attack (which is not my point at ALL). Anyway, today is part 1 of a planned three-part series discussing the challenges I see with Library 2.0, and how we can manage the risk of changing so profoundly that we alienate the very people we are charged to represent. I'll be running this on tuesdays for the next three weeks, to give people time to read, think, and respond. I'm looking forward to your thoughts.

Part 1. Does our technology function in the service of our mission, or vice versa?

Let me say this first--I love technology, I'm a geek, I delicious and flickr and wiki and blog with the best of them. I hope that I'll be able to post a link to our library's first blog and chat reference service in the non-too-distant future, and we're pondering replacing our resource guides and pathfinders with a wiki. Libraries are in the midst of a paradigm shift that will change libraries forever, and probably for the better.

However, my mission is NOT to set up a blog, or a wiki, or to build a 3-story virtual library in second life complete with avatars for the entire staff. My mission, and your mission (if you're a librarian reading this) is to provide accurate information resources to all comers in the most efficient and friendly manner possible, and to encourage more community members to take advantage of your services. If spending an hour a day fiddling with your library's MySpace profile is improving your ability to succeed in your mission, then hey, I'm on board! However...before you start building that wiki, ask yourself a simple question--"Is this the most effective way I can use our finite resources to serve patrons?"

How are things at the front desk? Is reference going well, or could they use a bit of training, especially if you're pondering throwing yet ANOTHER new tool at them? Is all of your current technology running smoothly, and is your IT staff prepped and ready to support more tools and keep them humming after the launch hoopla dies down? Can you afford the time and money these new luxury tools (and I'm sorry, many of these tools are luxuries--more on that in part 2) will take, without shorting your patrons when it comes to your existing services? And assuming that you can afford the time and money to improve your technology offerings, and you have a clear understanding of how this new tool will be used to support your mission--you've got one last hurdle to clear. Do your patrons even want this? And if so, will they use this? You did ask your community what they wanted and would use in that new participatory OPAC before you sunk several grand into a new server and taking that software development course...right?

At the end of the day, it all goes back to Ranganathan. If a tool makes it easier to attain one or more of those 5 laws, it's worth pursuing if you have the resources, even if others scoff at its applications in librarianship. (I didn't see the point of wikis as a library tool 2 years ago, I'm now a big fan, and I admit that I may well be proved similarly wrong about Second Life.) All of the truly great services that have come out of library 2.0 have originated from a patron's need. Different libraries have different resources, different communities, and different needs. Add the tools that will make your patrons happy, when it's practical to do so. Don't worry about what babbling bibliopundits might have to say about the tools you choose, the speed of your implementation, or choice of software. You are not here to impress them--you're here to serve your patrons.

Thursday: My thoughts on ALA 2.0, the struggles of Distance Learning librarianship, and a follow-up on the great LoC Series Cataloging debate...

Saturday: My indexcard GTD implementation: thoughts after a month.

Next Tuesday: The Dark Side of Library 2.0, part 2: New bridges, new divides...

Snow Days and GTD...

2007-01-17T09:33:00.000-08:00

Phew! Just got back into work today after a major (for Oklahoma) ice storm shut down the state for the last 4 days. Classes don't resume until tomorrow at the earliest (and I've a sneaking suspicion that they may just wait until Monday), so I'm spending the day finishing up a few task I left off on friday afternoon when they closed campus, and taking care of a few housekeeping chores as well. However, my time off and return today taught me some good things about GTD, as well as my strengths and weaknesses in implementing it...

1. We were prepared for the storm. When I saw the forecast on thursday morning, I had a good idea in my head of what we had and what we needed, and my @errands list helped too in putting together our list of provisions. A quick run to the store over lunch on thursday (a good 6 hours before the mobs hit, according to my friends in retail) got us the few odds and ends we needed to weather the storm in comfort.

2. I had things to do (mostly). My to-reads and personal projects were all noted in my system, and I spent the weekend catching up on blogs, doing some weeding in my bloglines, and working on some personal projects as well as a little housecleaning. That said, by Tuesday morning I'd pretty much run out of stuff to do, and I was not unhappy to get to go in today, even though it was for a shortened day.

3. Coming back to work was a snap. Seriously, the hardest thing about this morning was crawling out of bed and into the 15-degree weather. While my desk was a bit messier than I would have liked when I got here (when we got the call to go home, I pretty much dropped the project I was working on and ran for the car before the roads could ice up), it was literally a matter of 5 minutes to get the clutter corralled into the inbox and start processing. If anything, the unexpected sabbatical and utter lack of students has made me more productive than usual today--I've accomplished more in the not-quite-2 hours I've been here than i do some whole mornings!

Moral of the story--Organization is handy, not only in managing the day-to-day grind, but also to make sure you're prepared when the odd stuff comes. We're on our second major winter storm of the season, here in a state where it's wierd if we even get one snowfall that sticks to the ground per year. I'll be back either tomorrow or tuesday with that promised post on Library 2.0 and the digital divide--until then, stay warm! :-)

VistSi? DyniTa? (Musings on the SirsiDynix-Vista acquisition)

2007-01-09T13:35:00.000-08:00

Well, SirsiDynix has been acquired--and not by another ILS. I have to put my two bits in on this... but first:

Disclaimer 1: We go live on Sirsi Unicorn in 2 months. Please spare me any screaming about how proprietary OPACs are evil--firstly I agree (to a point) and secondly it was this or sticking with DRA Classic for a few more years. Not all of us have software developers on staff, alas...

Disclaimer 2: As always, I'm not speaking for my institution in any way shape or form. I'm just as a whiny distance learning librarian/geek/corporate refugee who is intrigued by this development.

OK, for those who've been under a rock (or busy polishing off the last of the holiday egg nog), go read Sirsi's Press release, The LJ article on the acquisition, Dan Scott's two bits, andJessamyn's thoughts on the merger.

Ok, back? good. In my experience, private equity firms buy comapnies for one (or more) of a few reasons.

1: the company is currently being poorly run and thus underperforming (and thus cheap). The investing firm plans to bring in some turn-around mercenaries to fix the most blatant problems

2: The company is basically sound, but in a cash crunch due to a market slump beyond it's control. The investing firm buys the company, holds it until market conditions improve, before selling it off whole or in pieces at a tidy profit.

3: The company is in good shape both in terms of its business plan and cash flow, but happens to be a market leader in an undervalued or "boring" sector. The investing firm, believing due to research that this sector is due for a bump in business and/or existing customers could be gouged with higher prices, buys the company, waits for the boom, before either
A: Selling it off whole or in pieces at a tidy profit, or
B: If the market shift looks permanent, making the company a permanent part
of its collection of gravy train acquisitions.*

So which scenario does this acquisition fit into?

1. Obviously, since I'm not an employee of SirsiDynix, I've no clue as to how well it is or isn't run. I also can't see their balance sheets, as they're privately held. However, based on the training we've attended and the conference calls we've had with our project manager, they seem to have the customer service end down pretty well. If there are institutional problems, they haven't impacted out go-live process in any way. In addition, there's Vista's CEO's statement that they "are tremendously excited about working with SirsiDynix because it is clearly the market leader, with a suite of mission-critical software solutions." This suggests Vista is not a bottom-feeder.

2. Anyone who's been in LIS-land over the past few years knows the overall ILS market is decidedly NOT in a slump--hiring and such seem to be growing at a healthy pace based on the HR notices I see floating around, and while open-source is gaining ground, I suspect that institutional resistance, lack of coding know-how among LIS-types, the still-evolving nature of many of the open-source packages and general inertia will mean we won't see a big shift to open source for a few years. (a pity, but that's another post). Keep in mind that most libraries who are ILS buyers are governmental entities of some sort who will rightly or wrongly see proprietary solutions as less "risky" than open source. Government budgets (at leas in my neck of the woods) are growing again after a few years of belt-tightening during the recession, so libraries (like mine) with legacy systems are siezing the moment to upgrade or migrate. So the ILSes don't have a problem with fleeing customers (yet).

3. I think that this is the most likely rationale, based in large part on the Vista CEO's comments quoted above. SirsiDynix is the 800-pound gorilla in a small, stable and captive market. In one fell swoop, Sirsi's profits become their profits, probably with little or no tinkering needed on Vista's part. Sirsi gains the stability of being a subsidiary or a bigger conglomerate, their stakeholders get a very nice check, and it's all good. The only question is whether or not vista will sell or hold long-term, and for that we need to look at Vista's website.

SirsiDynix looks very much like the other companies listed in their holdings, about half of which have notes mentioning recent sales by Vista to other firms. In addition, we have the company's "investment philosophy", which states in part, that they "[select] well positioned companies with attractive market dynamics, aligning the interests of management with those of shareholders, and reducing unnecessary distractions." In plain english, that means, "We find basically good companies, turn them into great companies, and make a tidy profit when we sell them.". They do not bill themselves or describe themselves as a holding company, but rather as investors. That right there says that they are looking for a money-making opportunity, not a new subsidiary.

So what happens? I think that Vista will probably hold on to SirsiDynix for at least 3 years, but probably no longer than 5--enough time to make substantive changes. I think item one on the to-do list will be phasing out either Unicorn or Horizon. I don't have deep enough industry knowledge to know whether Dan's 75% odds of Horizon being the survivor is accurate--as a soon-to-be Unicorn customer I hope not, but we have an un-blemished record to date of purchasing ILSes which disappear within 5-10 years, so... *shrug* In any case, I've certainly got some good questions for our next conference call. What are your thoughts? I'd love to hear if you think I'm talking out my butt here.

Thursday: a long-planned post/rant on Library 2.0 and the digital divide. See you then!

*3B works best if you're Warren Buffett, otherwise it's kinda iffy.

I don't have anything to add here...

2007-01-07T13:29:00.000-08:00

This is SO '80s... :-)

Now posted: ALL MY CHINA PICS!!!!

2007-01-06T09:42:00.000-08:00

I know I don't normally post personal stuff on this blog, but enough people expressed interest in the photos from my recent trip to Beijing, Hangzhou, and Shanghai, China (September 2006) with my T'ai Chi class that I thought I'd make an exception. Thanks to an upgrade to Flickr Premium, I can now show all 583 pictures I took on my china trip--as well as some bonus shots of my apartment and a great picture of Tawnya, Queen of the Universe (aka my cat). If you'd like to see my vacation slides in their unexpurgated glory, click
right here.

I'm slowly going through and adding descriptions, but it'll take me a few weeks to do them all. If you have a question on one of them, leave a comment here or under the picture in question, and I'll get back to you!

Thanks,
Sarah

My Plans for 2007

2007-01-04T07:27:00.000-08:00

Hey everyone! I hope you had a lovely winter holiday and are ready for the start of the new semester! While I don't have any work resolutions per se, I thought I'd share my planned projects and goals for this year for my sundry areas of responsibility. Feel free to chime in too with your goals!

Access Services: In addition to all the typical "head of circ" tasks such as billing and inventory, My goal is to get ready for the Sirsi migration (go-live is in 2 1/2 months!!! it seemed like we just signed the contract!), specifically to redesign our workflows as appropriate, and to brainstorm a list of reports I'll want to create/run once we get the test load later this month and I can really play with the thing.

Distance learning: The constant thorn in my side known as our horrible VPN setup process has FINALLY been fixed! Huzzah to the IT department! (we don't thank those guys often enough...) With that annoyance off the plate, I hope to focus on building a really good distance learning website, complete with tutorials and helpful links geared to our remote learners, and maybe, just maybe, I can get IT to let us have a blog... :-)

Cataloging: In addition to helping our main cataloger keep up with the floods created by our new status as a government depository, I'm going to work with her to put together a new improved workflow that will take into account the changes Unicorn will bring, and which will also let us offload some more steps to student workers.

Reserve room: The reserve room program in unicorn versus our current ILS is so different that we've been advised to just delete our reserve records in the go-live and start fresh in march. It will be nice to have that area tidied up once and for all, but I expect we'll be spending most of the summer putting humpty dumpty back together again. Again though, this is an area where we'll be able to have our part-timers handle most of the grunt work. (Thank heaven for my wonderful student workers!!!)

Archives: I'm embarrassed to say that this area inevitably winds up at the bottom of the barrel because of it's low priority. I'm going to continue setting out displays every semester, as it has led to an increased interest in our special collections. One of the most popular areas of the archives is our semi-complete collection of school yearbooks, which stretch through our time as a Military academy, junior college (under two different names), and university (also under 2 different names). I have a stack of about 20 yearbooks, most with differing titles and from differing predecessor institutions, which I would like to get cataloged--and obviously, copy cataloging ain't an option here. I had planned to tackle those this week, but between an unexpected extra day off for Gerald Ford (all state offices were closed) and the aforementioned cataloging backlog, it's looking like it won't happen until may intersession (spring break is go-live on unicorn!).

Purchasing: I've made some changes to my workflow that will save me some time...I hope. the closest thing I have to a goal here is to keep looking for more efficient ways to handle this time suck.

Marketing: After the well-received cell phone poster I created a few months back (Still gotta get that up on flickr...), I got tasked to create a similar poster for our new resource sharing program we've started with the local public library. I also have to get information together for our spring semester book reviews and other events, and get that to the school's PR lady to put together the press releases.

Instruction: Spring semester nears, and my goal is to provide instruction services for every one of our orientation classes at our two remote campuses. I pulled this off last semester, so we'll see if I can get a streak going!

Professional development: And I've saved the best for last--my goals for this year is to get with a old grad school friend to start work on a research project we've been contemplating for over a year, and to update this blog every tuesday and thursday. I can't keep up with some of you guys who post dozens of articles a week, but I definitely want to make this blog something that is worth reading, and a part of the larger biblioblogging conversation. I also REALLY hope that I can figure a way to get to Internet Librarian again...we'll see what happens!

I hope you have a happy and productive 2007, and I want to thank all of you who read me regularly. It's an honor to be part of your reading list, and I hope that I provide good information on Distance Ed Librarianship, time management, and on all the other vagaries of our crazy profession.

Next Tuesday: My thoughts on the Sirsi/Dynix acquisition by Vista...

5 Things you didn't know about Sarah

2006-12-28T17:27:00.000-08:00

Well, Nicole's tag has me taking a brief hiatus from my hiatus...here goes. I...

1. was an exchange student in Scotland during my Sophomore year of college. As a girl away from home for the first time (I lived in the dorms all through college, but said college was only about 30 minutes from my hometown) I learned more from this year than any other time in college, little of it to do with what I did in the classroom. I love the climate, the people, the everything, and I'd love to figure out a way to retire there. During my 1-month-ish backpacking through Europe during the winter break, I also...

2. Attended Christmas Eve Mass at the Vatican. While I was a good methodist girl (okay, a lapsed methodist girl) at the time, one of my travel buddies was a catholic, so this was a must see. However, she hadn't known she needed to get tickets from her bishop in advance to get seats, so it was looking like we'd be watching outside on the Jumbotron until some nuns came up, overheard us, and gave us their spare tickets as a christmas present. We tried to give them a donation for their order, but they merely said "Merry Christmas" nicely but forcefully, and disappeared into the crowd. So it came to pass that we had some of the best seats in the house for my first (and most memorable) Catholic Mass. They give those nuns GOOD seats. :-)

3. Hail from the same hometown as Toby Keith--Moore, Oklahoma. Let's just say this isn't exactly a point of personal pride for me and move on to...

4. I nearly became a lawyer. After I lost my telecom marketing gig in 2002, I was working a "pay-the-bills" type of job in social services while I tried to figure out what I wanted to be when i grew up. I took the LSAT and even did fairly well on it, but I just couldn't see that I'd make enough being the type of lawyer I was interested in being to justify law school-sized loans. So I went back to the drawing board. I looked at the master's programs available at local universities, saw the MLIS program, and, well...I suspect you can guess the rest. :-)

5. I'm a HUGE Alton Brown/Good Eats Fan.(aka "Briner")I'm something of a foodie to begin with, and his knack for making complex recipes seem simple have gotten me to regularly make such dishes as Cheesecake, Risotto, Nigiri Sushi (I'm still getting the knack of Rolls), and even my own bread.

So, that's 5 more things you probably didn't know about me! Have a happy rest of 2006, and I'll be back next week with resolutions/predictions in the worlds of LIS and Time Management.

Photos of my final Indexcard Dock & Hiatus

2006-12-21T08:19:00.000-08:00

First, head over to my Flickr photo set to take a look at my final(?) implementation of my new 3*5-based GTD system, complete with notes. Input is welcome.

Second--Barring some major news that I can't resist talking about, this is most likely my last post until the New Year. Have a happy winter solstice-related holiday of your choice, drive safely, and remember to put your loved ones first in your next actions lists. See you in 2007! :-)

A day in the life of a Distance Learning Librarian, Part 2

2006-12-19T08:44:00.000-08:00

(divided into two posts in order not to choke your bloglines)

Good heavens, I didn't realize I was this productive in a typical day! Three cheers for David Allen! and on to my afternoon...

1:00 Back at my desk (I always leave my office for lunch, even though I usually brown-bag it, for mental health reasons), I blast through my "to-read" folder in outlook (where all of my mailing lists are automatically sent), and then take a quick skim through my LIS-related feeds in bloglines, flagging anything I want to read more closely and/or respond to when I get home that evening.

1:30 (you people write a LOT!)--next up in the deck is a new office supply order. Yes, I DID just receive some supplies that morning--I ALWAYS get requests for things 15 minutes after I put the requisition in the approval queue--it's a law of physics. :-) Band-aids for the first aid kit, some new pens, and index cards get entered into the quote form on the vendor site, which spits out my prices and shipping charge, which I then use to generate a requisition in the purchasing system.

2:00 The afternoon mail came while I was generating the supply request, and with it my purchase order for some more overdue notice forms. I check it against my notes and the screen print of the requisition to make sure everything looks right, and fax the PO to the vendor.

2:15--the next hour or so I take a few login questions via email and phone (random question to the universe: if you're having problems logging into the databases during FINALS, what does that say about your study habits?) while cranking out my holiday cards for my friends at the library, teachers I've done instruction for, and miscellaneous other folks on campus who make my life run smoother. I try to jot a note in most of them, which takes longer but (I hope) makes it a bit more personal. I get everything in the outgoing mail right before the last pickup--life's little victories :-)

3:30--i have a next action to find a good book on networking in the collection, so I fire up the opac and then run upstairs to the main stacks, returning with Diane Darling's "The Networking survival guide" (which I've since started, really like, and will post more about soon!). I check the book out to myself at the circ desk and stick it in my to-read basket.

3:45--The reserve class I took this morning reminded me that we will have to recreate our reserve records from scratch in the new ILS after the migration in march. Trying not to think of the time I spent cleaning out dead records during the last intersession and getting the reserve room in shape, I sit down with my meeting notes and training manual to bang out a draft workflow for the migration project. The best solution is probably to add things to the reserve room as needed for the last 6 weeks of the semester post-migration, and then add in what's left during the may intersession. I suspect we'll have enough on our plates getting used to the new system without trying to re-record 3,000 or so reserve items at the same time. I write up a quick process for on-the-fly reserve additions, note that we need to train the student workers to let our full-time library assistants handle those to ensure quality control, and bang out the outlines of the main migration project plan. I file the plan in my tickler to revisit during go-live, when we'll have a tech onsite to answer questions and make sure our servers don't explode the first time we boot up.

4:15--I probably spent almost 2 hours of my day on purchasing-related activities, and while that's a little on the high side, it isn't atypical either. Until hell freezes over and the library gets an administrative assistant, I'm probably going to be the purchasing person, and I really don't want to spend this much of my time fiddling with office supplies while I watch more interesting things (like a paper I'd like to write with a friend of mine who's a DL librarian in Michigan)go stale in my someday/maybe file. I write my current workflow down in excruciating detail, circle things that could be condensed or deleted, star stuff that could be offloaded to a student worker (like that 20 minutes I spent this morning unloading boxes), and then clip the notes to my reminder card in next friday's tickler slot for my biweekly email to the boss.

4:50--The home stretch! I take a few minutes to skim my to-read folder again, check that I have no inbox items that need screening, and tidy up my desk. My last next action for the day is to grab my binder for the non-profit board I'm on (meeting tonight), and I plop it directly on top of my purse before taking one last look around my desk for rogue cards, file everything where it needs to go, add one errand I brainstormed earlier in the day to my travelling card caddy, and shut down at 5 on the dot. Can't stay late today--got that meeting. (The boss likes us not to stay much after our shift anyway unless neccessary--he's pretty good about making sure we don't burn out :-) )

So...that's it! I must say, typing all that out makes me feel like less of a slacker. How does it compare to YOUR work?

A day in the life of a Distance Learning Librarian

2006-12-19T07:35:00.000-08:00

Inspired by Meredith's post on a typical day in her life, I decided to share a "typical day" from last week as well, to highlight how every library is different, but that there are similar issues that all DLLs have to deal with. One note: I really wear three hats at work (this is what happens with 5 F/T librarians and 3 lib. assistants): Distance Learning, Access services, and purchasing. I also handle most front-line IT issues that the front desk staff can't sort out, and even catalog a cart or two of books on occasion when tech services is backed up. Here's my log from last tuesday, which was during our finals week but was still a pretty normal day, all told:

Morning:

8:00 arrive at the office, turn on computer, eat granola bar, pull my next action cards and today's tickler cards out of my dock, dial into voice mail and grab inbound mail from my inbox in the breakroom while Outlook starts up.

8:05: My morning routine: I do this every morning to keep my desk/brain from exploding--I'm a bit of a foodie so I sort of liken this to a chef getting her mise en place together before the rush starts. It takes about 15 minutes, but it probably saves me an hour of chasing my tail later in the day.

1. Everything work related from my purse, mailbox in the breakroom, notes/books left on my desk by the night shift, voicemails, etc. goes into my inbox.

2. Everything in my physical and virtual inboxes then gets DONE RIGHT THEN (if it'll take less than 2-3 minutes) and trashed/filed as appropriate, or gets added to my card deck as a next action. The inspiring book/printout/email is then either trashed if no longer needed, or filed either on my next action shelf (if a book) or physical/outlook N-A folder. The upshot, I have empty inboxes--if only for 5 minutes. *sigh*

3. I grab some blank cards and do a quick "mindsweep", basically being quiet for a minute and checking if there are any pending tasks in my brain that I haven't captured. Any actions, key thoughts, ideas, or whatever gets jotted down (one item per card), and filed (if not a next action) or added to my next action stack for the day.

4. I check the reference schedule for the day on the shared calendar and set alarms in outlook for the shift(s) I'm on the desk. None today--Woo hoo! Then I look more closely at my own calendar and realize that's because I have a training class for our impending migration to Sirsi Unicorn--starting in 45 minutes!

5. I start my daily log, which is just a card where I jot down the actions I complete through the day--it gives me a good archive of what I accomplished in a day without having to keep a zillion index cards (I easily rip through one to two dozen in a "typical" day...). I send an email to my boss every other friday to let him know the status on all my pending projects, and this makes it easier to recreate the last two weeks of my work life.

6. Last but not least, I take a minute to lay out all my next action cards and sort them by priority-- basically "Do today (in the order i want to get to them)", "try to finish in the next week", and "do whenever". This trumps a to-do list for me because when a new action pops up, all I have to do is jot it onto a card, and shuffle it into the appropriate place on the stack.

8:20--see, I told you that only takes 15 minutes! (it actually took me about twice as long to type as it does to do) Done with my morning routine card that gets added to the log, and the card is filed back in the next action slot in my dock for tomorrow. First up is the list of inactive student accounts due to be purged from the system--I take a glance through to make sure there aren't any mis-entered community borrowers or other accounts that need to be kept, and respond back to our IT Librarian, the awesome Carolyn, that the list looks fine.

8:30--Yesterday after I left our most recent supply order came in, and I unpack the boxes and detail a student to help me move everything to the supply closet. There were a few calendars and other special orders from specific staff members, and those go in their inboxes. I note that we didn't get one of the toners we ordered, so I make a quick call to the vendor, who verifies that the last toner is on order and should be here next week. I make up a quick card to follow up if the toner hasn't arrived in 10 days, file it in the tickler section of my deck for next friday, and add another confirmed kill to the log.

8:45--I got an invoice for a nw UPS for one of the lab computers in the mail this morning, and quickly get my boss's sign-off to close the PO, make copies for the files, and send the invoice and associated paperwork to Accounts Payable. Add Accounts Payable to my christmas card list, which I have working on the side of my desk as I think of people.

8:55--Yipe! time for training! I quickly print out the login information, remind my classmates for this course, and go get us logged into webex to learn about the thrilling world of reserve room management. (did I mention that I'm in charge of reserves too?)

10:15--We were the only people taking today's class, so we covered ground fast and finished our two hour course in a little over one. That left me time to respond to a few panicked emails from distance students regarding database access, run out to the desk to help another student sort out the graph function in excel spreadsheet for her finals project, and then came back to my desk to put a few plays on reserve for the drama class.

11:00--I get another phone call from a distance student, this time with a reference question for her take-home final in business. I walk a tightrope of not giving her the answer straight out (which she's obviously fishing for), and refer her to the statistical abstract for one question and LexisNexis for another.

11:15--Next up is my twice-weekly tickler to do a post to Scattered Librarian. I had slapped a post-it on the card to remind me that I wanted to do a follow-up post on my new card-based organization system. I still liked that story idea, knocked out a quick draft in word, added a few links, and posted the finished article right before a well-earned...

LUNCH

Part two of A Typical Day coming soon...

On Networking

2006-12-14T09:21:00.000-08:00

First things first, A confession: Networking makes me uncomfortable.

There, I admitted it. I am always a little nervous the first time I walk into a room of colleagues for the first time, plastering on my fake smile and looking frantically for the 2 or 3 faces I know. But I get out there and do it anyway, even though I don't always feel confident in the process. Fortunately Librarians are pretty much a universally friendly and welcoming bunch, and I can usually insert myself into a conversation without too much fuss.

However, I suspect I could be doing a better job than I am currently in building and maintaining connections, and I know from my previous life in corporate america how important a solid business network can be. Fortunately, today I ran into this great post on businesspundit that discusses how introverts like me (and like most librarians, i suspect) can successfully build business connections.

The points I found most helpful were "At first you have to kiss a lot of frogs", and "don't network just for the sake of networking". While I seem to be somewhat more extroverted than some of my colleagues, I still consider myself an introvert in the Nyers-Briggs sense of the word (I'd much rather be curled up in my chair with a good book than schmoozing at a party, unless I'm in a really good mood). And I used to get disappointed when I didn't "magically" develop an awesome network after one event. You meet a lot of people on the road to building a network, some click with you and some don't. there's nothing wrong with this. Also, you don't need to try to meet someone just to add a tick mark on your "meet 5 new people at X event" to-do list. Focus on people you've heard of, or have read online, or who generally sound interesting, and strike up a conversation with an insightful question or some other thing that will make them interested in you. The cool thing about our field is that this stuff comes naturally to very few of us, which means you're rarely going to run into primadonnas.

After being in this field a little while, I have what might be considered the core of a good network, though it could use some growing yet. But I'm to the point where I have to focus on nurturing those links, especially with out of state contacts I may only see once or twice a year, plus a few comments in their blog. I just sent off a ton of holiday cards, and am thinking about burthday cards as well. However, I also had the good sense to jot down a few interests of many of the people whose cards I've collected over the past two years, mainly as a crib in conversation starting for my feeble mind.

But I now have the beginnings of an interesting little database of my connections' interests, which I might be able to put to good use. For instance when I see an interesting story on Jazz music or whatever, I could tag that in Del.icio.us, and then send the link on to my contacts who expressed an interest in Jazz. I'm still sorting out how exactly I want to do this, but I think that It could be a good way to cultivate quality contacts, as opposed to just racking up a list of 500 names in outlook, most of whom wouldn't be able to recognize me if their lives depended on it. I'm still trying to sort this out, and I'd be very interested in the networking tactics others have tried. Suggestions?

Latest on the indexcard migration and a Cool Link

2006-12-12T07:10:00.000-08:00

Well, as I mentioned last week, I've adopted a index card organization system that is something of a hybrid between the HipsterPDA and Hawk Sugano's incredibly detailed card dock database. I'm now almost two weeks into the thing, and I LOVE it. My system consists of two main parts:

1: my master dock at work, an old card catalog drawer I found in the storage room. I picked up some sturdy plastic dividers at walgreens, which I use for the following sections:
Next actions
Waiting On
Weekly recurring tasks
This month (both recurring tasks that haven't happened yet for the month--supply inventory and such--as well as one-off tasks that need to occur on or after a specific date)
Next month
Completed Log cards (instead of saving all my completed task cards as Sugano does in his implementation, I jot down completed actions on a card I keep on my desk, which i file at the end of the day)
Reference cards (I use this for meeting summaries, insights I want to capture, project plans, and other stuff. This section is still evolving somewhat.)
Archive: I plan to keep log and reference cards back at least 3-6 months, possibly longer if I have the room for them.

My project master list and someday-maybes still sit on my hard drive, which seems to work okay as I get tickled to review those in my weekly review process. My calendar has stayed in outlook, as I couldn't think of a good reason to change it. non-work appointments also go into the work calendar.

2: The second major part of my system is my little index card case which serves as my repository for @home actions and data. This deck is mostly recurring tasks related to housework/errands/etc. which I created as my own improvization off the highly cool (if somewhat touchy-feely) Flylady home organization plan, but it's also home to errands lists, one-off home tasks, and my @home log cards (which I use to track daily expenses, calories, and assorted other home stats). This deck is divided into sections for log cards (which are shifted over to the master deck every few days), reference cards, daily tasks, weekly tasks, and monthly tasks.

Tasks port between work and home much more easily, my log cards give me a quick history of my accomplishments for my biweekly update email to my boss (something I'm going to do a post on soon, possibly thursday?), and I can tell with a quick flip through my card box where I am on all my pending tasks. I was going to post some pictures here and to flickr of my implementation, but I keep forgetting the camera at home.

*gets hit with the obvious club*

*adds tickler to tonight's next actions in the travel card case*

I'll should be able to provide some visual aids next week. Please forgive my horrid handwriting. :-) But all in all, things are going smoothly, the system seems to have solve the problem of things falling in the cracks between work and home, and it's all good.

Now, that cool link: Lifehacker had a post today about a delightful GTD-themed desktop wallpaper... now I just have to tidy up all my desktop icons so I can see it! *blush*

Yes, I'm a Nerd.

Yes, I'm okay with this. :-)

I LOVE this job...

2006-12-10T12:27:00.000-08:00

Well, I got to cut out of work a little early on Thursday to attend a holiday party put on by the local LIS and KM networking group. At first, the event consisted mostly of the standard schmoozing around the chocolate fondue fountain, and swapping war stories with the current MLIS students. Then after mingling and nibbling, we met several young men who had got doused with pepper spray earlier in the afternoon, we got to see a demo by the K-9 team, and watched the kids of one of the other attendees race McGruff the Crime Dog robots around the hallways.

You see, the holiday party was held at the local police academy, as it was hosted by one of the coolest (and most well-armed) librarians I have the privilege to know--Officer Tom Rink, Librarian for the Tulsa Police Department. Unfortunately I was a doofus and left my camera at the house that morning, but I believe some piccies of the event will be going up at the website in the next few days (which I will link to, don't worry!). In addition to good food and good friends, I learned a lot about the travails of running a VERY special collection with a minimum of resources, got a tour of police facilities that most "civilians" never get to see, learned some interesting factoids about our police department (ours is one of a relative minority that requires all officers to have a bachelor's degree, and about a third of the department has a graduate degree), and generally learned a lot about the folks who keep my city safe.

And, I ask you, would I have gotten to go to a shindig that cool if i still I worked in telecom? :-)

Now THIS is organization.

2006-11-28T16:46:00.000-08:00

First, some context. Over the last few weeks (really since Internet Librarian), I have been fighting of a serious case of smartphone lust. I've been seeing all these ads for the Motorola Q, and it's the first pda phone that I could actually see myself carrying without looking like a overcaffeinated executive with an inferiority complex. However, I'm a cheapskate, and something tells me putting in a purchase order at work would get me laughed at...

That said, since I've stopped carrying around my franklin planner and gone to outlook tasks at work, my non-work productivity has taken a nosedive. So if i don't want to shell out 80 bucks a month for connection fees, and I also don't want to get stuck carrying around that unwieldy brick of a planner everywhere... In a nutshell, I need a simple system that can capture everything, work, home, and errands, on the fly. I've tried having a work system and a non-work system--stuff just gets garbled or lost, and it feels like I'm duplicating my efforts. Remote access to my work Outlook (or any other web-based task manager) only works up to a point--I'm not jacked up to a computer 24/7 nor do I really want to be, gadget lust aside. That leaves index cards.

I've played with this concept, mainly with the DIY planner templates for the hipster PDA--the templates were a pain to use (more because of my crappy handwriting than any inherent problems) and were quickly abandoned. Also, at the time I first played with them, I was in the middle of the last insane months of my MLIS, and didn't have much time to fiddle with new systems since my current one was sufficient to keep up with my school and work projects. But as I've been taking a fresh 40,000 foot look at my priorities and goals in the wake of recent events and the enforced sabbatical they caused, I realize that no matter how productive I get at work, that's just half the battle.

So, did I throw the index card baby out with the bathwater? well, I found out about this guy's index system via 43 folders, and I spent the next hour reading about his system in stunned amazement. A system for easily distinguishing card types that didn't depend on colored cards (or on butterfingers here not dropping my deck)? A system that helped capture random musings, quotes, etc. as well as the standard "GTD Stuff"? A flipping CARD CATALOG DRAWER for a card archive??? Okay, I'm the first to say that this guy is far more organized than I ever hope (or want) to be, but I think that he has something here... Even if you think he's nuts after the first few pages, read the whole thing through. If nothing else, it's inspiring, and I'm very close to migrating back to an analog system that will look something like this.

There are some kinks I'm going to need to sort out, essentially to do with monitoring my recurring home-based tasks like housekeeping and such. I also don't know that I need to track some of the things he does with the same level of detail. But a stripped down version of this with an elegant solution for recurrent tasks could be what the doctor ordered. I plan to put together a final plan for my system (which I'll post here, with photos if I'm feeling really OCD) in the next week or two, and implement the transition during our winter intersession. In the meantime, let me know what you think, and happy organizing! :-)

The rest of my IL2006 notes

2006-11-20T11:59:00.000-08:00

Hi all! If you are interested in the rest of my impressions from IL2006, you can find a detailed summary at the Library Stories blog, http://librarystories.blogspot.com/. Thanks for your patience! :-)

Apologies for my recent silence/time management musings

2006-11-16T18:46:00.000-08:00

Hey all,

First i want to apologize for the blog being pretty much dead since IL2006. Obviously upon getting back to work I had to focus on getting caught up there, and also on various other personal projects that had fallen by the wayside (most notably my responsibilities as Secretary of the Board of Directors for a startup nonprofit I've become involved with). And just as I was getting caught up and ready to share the gazillion nifty posts I had tagged in my bloglines...my father-in-law's health (not good for some time) took a turn for the worst and I spent a week in OKC with my Husband effectively offline while we stayed at the hospital and then helped his mom make the arrangements. (no, we did not take my laptop because the thing is huge, and something felt really weird about trying to stay logged in from the ICU waiting room, wifi or no). This week is actually the first one I've actually worked 40 full hours since before Internet Librarian, and my next action list shows it. Basically I've been in triage mode all week, and like it or not, my blog has been near the bottom of the priority list.

In a odd way, this has been a good experience (the being behind part, not the death in the family part), because I have a tendency to overcommit myself and work myself to exhaustion in my sundry work, personal, and other commitments. I'm driven enough that I CAN pick pretty much any project that tickles my fancy and push it through to success, even if it means being stretched. But being forcibly removed from my shiny monitors and to-do lists helped me come back with a better understanding of what is truly a priority at work and personally, and I find myself re-evaluating many of my projects now that I'm back. Do I have to be a top Liblogger(whatever that means)? Do I really NEED over 150 feeds in my bloglines? Can't I train one of our sharp student workers to handle some more of my repetitive tasks, even though they might not do it "my way"? And, just because i have enough slack in my schedule that I could take on another project...should I?

Well, that's stuff to ponder, and I will talk more about the approaches I've used to dig out of the pile and figure out my important projects going further. And tomorrow if I have time, I'll discuss an interesting article about the online information literacy skills of college students--let's just say we all may be assuming a bit more savvy than they really have.

IL2006 : Web 2.0, Library 2.0, and More

2006-10-23T12:41:00.001-07:00

Paul Miller, Technology Evangelist, Talis

(can i say before I start that Paul's voice is even cuter in person than on the podcast? took me right back to my study abroad days in Dundee--but I digress)

There were about a dozen bloggers in the room here, most of whom with much bigger readerships than I, and they were all very friendly and gracious. Thanks from the 2.0 newbie. :-) Then the presentation started, and Paul proceeded to shift my paradigms--something that has been happening about every other session so far.

The highlight reel:

Library 2.0=Fundamental shift in how libraries approach users--we must integrate INTO WHERE THE USERS ARE.
--Open the Library
--push the library everywhere
--engage with actual AND POTENTIAL users--The system's broken, not the user
--Disaggregate the ILS (this from an ILS vendor!)...and bring systems together
--Shared innovation

Attempts to harness the innovation: the "mashing up the library contest"

What makes Library 2.0 possible?
--Falling cost of storage
--" " of computing power
--growing connectivity
--"camera 2.0"
--commoditization & virtual servers

the 3 Os
--open source,
--open data,
--open APIs (I gotta learn how to do API programming--we need some gadgets for the new website )

The essence of 2.0 is an "architecture of participation", encouraging users to participate in the cataloging process (who just saw their catalogers have a panic attack if they ever heard that Idea?)

"The library is coming down from it's high horse just a bit."

Does your vendor have an open environment/architecture? are they engaging in conversations?

How to create a platform for participation:
--Open SOurce ILS
--Shared Innovation (Talis Keystone)--bolting open-source monules on top of the traditional ILS, enabling connections to the univ. portal,the institution's finance software, etc--2.0 by evolution, not revolution
--OPEN DATA (THIS ROCKED MY WORLD!!!!)--we may wind up with open source software that sends us to proprietary, locked-down data...

THE CURRENT DATA STORAGE MODEL (AKA OCLC, though he didn;t say that flat-out) IS FLAWED!!!!
--WHY DO WE PAY TO CONTRIBUTE OUR OWN DATA?
--Limited data mobility (as my institution is trying to set up a resource sharing scheme with our non-OCLC public library, I know this issue intimately)
--If we don't address the data portability/freedom issues, we're just "putting lipstick on a silo"
--CONTRIBUTION CAN AND SHOULD BE FREE--we can make it mobile and accessible, while policing data integrity (we can rebuild OCLC in open source--we have the technology. we can make it better, stronger, more open...*thwacks self back into sense*)

The coming of the OPEN SYSTEMS--check out the silkworm directory at Talis, and Bigfoot data stores

What open data enables:
--greasemonkey scripts that let you automatically look up amazon or librarything items in the opac
--grouping web service--search multiple library opacs IN ONE SEARCH WINDOW, or build an api widget for that search...
--Aquabrowser for the library portal
--Cenote--mashes multiple opacs and amazon data

Conclusions:
Liberate the data
Get the data to the user, not vice versa
Open Thinking
Shared Innovation

~~~~~~~~~
My thoughts--WOW. I'm still trying to sort this out in my head, but I think some of these technologies could have some profound implications for my rural-ish, 3-campus university. so what to introduce, how to do it, and how to get buy-in...Watch this space. :-)

IL2006 Pre-Conference: Searcher's Academy

2006-10-22T18:21:00.000-07:00

Short summary: WOW. :-)

Longer description: Greg, Mary-Ellen, Chris, and Gary seriously rocked my world with more new search engines, websites, gadgets, widgets and general internet toys than I could shake a stick at. I will be vetting some of the sites we saw later on and comment with some of my faves, so this can be more useful than just the same list of links you could get from each of their websites. (that's me, trying to provide original content!) All of them were so fervent about the opportunities (and perils) that 2.0 offers searchers, and I found out some nifty tools for searching what I had previously thought unsearchable (like speech-to text technology that lets you search inside podcasts and videos!).

Mary-ellen's presentation on searching 2.0 content was probably the most useful to me today, but Gary's left me extremely inspired about finding out more about the technology behind search engines, and about all the new toys the "big 4" are developing. Search technology seems like it's nearing a tipping point on several fronts, and it behooves us to pay attention to the trends and make sure we're part of the paradigm shift.

I also have to admit that I gained a new level of respect for ask.com (and not just because of gary's presentation--he was very neutral...). Still not sure I buy the marketing campaign that it's the "librarian's search engine", or whatever they're saying, but I am going to have to give it a whirl again. That's about it for now, and I'll probably post again tomorrow during breaks from blogger's row in the exhibit center...

IL2006: Leavin' on a jet plane...

2006-10-21T09:44:00.000-07:00

Bags are packed, and I'm leaving for the airport in about an hour. After a lot of waffling back and forth I decided not to take my laptop--It's not particularly light, I don't see myself bringing it to the sessions, and it's a pain to have to deal with @ airport security. That said, there will be plenty of places I can login both at the convention center and @ the hotel, so I'll be typing up my notes at least once or twice daily. I still have a few free lunches, so let me know if you want to get together! See ya in Monterey...

On Vendors

2006-10-16T12:45:00.000-07:00

A while back, I spent a lazy friday afternoon noodling around on various training vendors’ websites at the request of my boss, looking for some web design courses for myself and a coworker to update our java and flash skills for an impending website redesign. I checked a few sites and bookmarked a link or two. By that next week another project had come up to a boil, and the web redesign that had sparked the search for cheap web-based training had been postponed anyway, so I shifted the whole thing to my someday/maybe queue and moved on.

Three weeks (and a 10-day vacation in China) later, I get a call from a perky sales rep from some company called, oh… let’s say “Train-O-Rama Enterprises.” The weird thing is, she knows my name and number, and the portions of the website I surfed. (and no, I did NOT fill out a contact me form). All I can figure is she tracked me through the library website as I was shopping from my work domain. Anyway, the point is she’s trying to hard-sell me on a product that I barely remember looking at.

I try to shrug her off for over five minutes, but she is simply not getting the hint. She’s already left 3 messages on my machine, so I know she’s not going to go away on her own. And honestly, I was too bloody jetlagged for it to occur to me to show the same level of courtesy to her that she was showing to me and simply hang up on her. I sigh resignedly, agree to have a web demo of their “brilliant” Java training curriculum, she schedules me for a time when the trainer can call me (WHY can’t I walk through this myself with a 24-hour trial login, I wonder, if they’re going through their traffic stats with a fine-toothed comb in order to make cold calls?) Over the ensuing 2 weeks between that conversation and the demo, I get one phone call and two reminder emails.

The punch line: The demo was scheduled for 1:00 today, my time. As I type this it is now 1:48. No call. No email. No trainer. And…no sale (not that there was much risk of that anyway). They’ve had their 15 minutes grace and then some. And if a vendor can’t figure out what time it is in the central time zone to make a pre-scheduled SALES CALL, should we really assume they’ll be any more competent with our invoices? So, now I’m going to just go get a mocha from the coffee bar, and then sit back and crank through some paperwork—and let the phone roll to voicemail. :-)

Too cool for words...

2006-09-25T15:26:00.000-07:00

Wonder if I could talk my director into doing something like this... :-)

I don't even know what to say about this...

2006-09-24T12:47:00.000-07:00

Who would LOVE to know how many responses they actually GET for this ad?

*Job Title:* Chief Librarian
*Organization:* Torres Advanced Enterprise Solutions
*Location:* Guantanamo Bay, Cuba,
*Description:* Are you interested in putting your library science education
and experience to work in one of today's most challenging, interesting and
rewarding environments? Torres Advanced Enterprise Solutions is recruiting
for a Chief Librarian to manage the Detainee Library, under the direction of
the Joint Task Force-Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

In managing the Detainee Library, the Chief Librarian is responsible for
providing, maintaining and developing library services and operations using
reading, recreational games and puzzles, music, or electronic media. The
Chief Librarian is responsible for selecting and maintaining a range of
reading and recreational materials to reflect the needs of the patrons in
terms of languages and appropriate/approved topics.

The Chief Librarian will supervise a staff of three (one Assistant Librarian
and two Linguist/Library Assistants). The Chief Librarian will also work
closely with other contractor and government staff.

To be successful in this job, the Chief Librarian will need to be creative,
adaptable, ambitious and resourceful. The ideal candidate will possess a
degree in library studies or a closely related field and relevant
experience. We will consider extensive experience in library operations and
management, in lieu of a degree. This job requires proficiency in English.
Applicants must be eligible for a US government secret clearance. If you're
interested in talking in more detail, please e-mail your resume to
hr@torresco.com.

*Application Information:*Torres Advanced Enterprise Solutions offers a
highly competitive salary and benefit package. Additionally, this job
qualifies you for federal tax breaks. Torres Advanced Enterprise Solutions
is a certified Minority Owned Business and a Service Disabled Veteran Owned
Business. Torres Advanced Enterprise Solutions is an equal opportunity
employer.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Also, I'm sorry I've been so quiet, I've been out of the country on vacation and then digging out from under 10 days of backed-up email. I'm planning to post something "real" in the next few days--probably on either GTD or a new business idea I have...

IL2006--Update

2006-08-31T14:20:00.000-07:00

I just got my roomie for "The Con" (as my DH would say), so the last budgetary worry is dealt with. Also, I'll do at least one real post tomorrow--there have been several interesting articles floating around, not least of which is Forbes' inexplicable publishing of an article that seems to bave been penned in 1954. Stay tuned!

IL2006--The Scattered ConBlogger!

2006-08-28T08:21:00.000-07:00

Attention everyone! (or at least the 3 people bored enough to read this thing)

I'm happy to announce that I will be attending Internet Librarian 2006, and I plan to blog my experiences, which will be my first time at this conference (or any non-local library conference for that matter!). If you can't tell I'm already looking forward to meeting all of the great people who will be at this, and please drop me a line if you would like to get together for lunch/dinner or just grab a soda during a break. Also, I'm on the lookout for a roommate to share the hotel cost ($185/night * 4 nights=OUCH!). You can reach me offblog at oklibrarian@gmail.com. Thanks, and I'm looking forward to meeting you there!

A little late to the party (library 2.0 idea generator)

2006-08-21T18:38:00.000-07:00

In case you haven't seen this one yet...

Library 2.0 Idea Generator

I did about a dozen, but nothing was gonna top this one...

plagiarize RSS feeds just to confuse Michael Gorman

Ok, you can return to your real lives. Once @Work and @RL calm slightly, I promise a real post. :-)

Couldn't resist... (OCLC in the Onion)

2006-08-14T16:25:00.000-07:00

Had to share this one, assuming it isn't in 18 gazillion places already...

Dewey Decimal System Helpless To Categorize New Jim Belushi Book

And to save the time of other OCD-ers like me who just have to follow up on an amusing parody piece in worldcat...

LC: HQ1090; Dewey: 306.70973

Back to your regularly scheduled program...

Something Wiki this way comes--Wikimania 2006

2006-08-04T10:45:00.000-07:00

Ok. After my diatribe on the vagaries of cataloging, I'm gonna keep this one short. (yes, really. ) Wikipedia. love it or hate it, if you're a librarian, it's a part of your life or will be soon. First, I do think Wikis as a general reference tool are suspect at best, for all the reasons everyone knows already. That said, I think that in certain specific areas they can be helpful--If you cidn't get a chance to attend, go take a look at Meredith Farkas' awesome SirsiDynix webinar on Wikis in the library for an excellent synopsis on how Wikis can be used for the forces of good (information, that is).

I came a little late to the wikipedia party (I wanna say i used it for the first time in 2004), and never really got involved in the editing side. This week, as I've been perusing my blogs, I've run into quite a few articles on wikipedia and wikis in general that I thought worth sharing, and hopefully will spark a conversation about the role of wikis in the library, how we can educate our patrond about using wikis (and about online information literacy in general), and if there are ways we can create or support new efforts such as Digital Universe that try to strike a balance between accuracy and participation.

More Links:
Fact (Vanity Fair): long and highly interesting article about the history of Wikipedia

Meredith Farkas' presentations on Wikis (as well as blogs and other 2.0 technology)

The Infamous Nature article comparing Wikipedia and Britannica's accuracy rates

And last but not least, Wikimania 2006, the event that inspired the story that inspired this post.

The Future (?) of Cataloging

2006-08-02T06:17:00.000-07:00

First, if you've been under a rock the last few months, here's a fairly good layperson's summary of the current state of the LoC cataloging kerfluffle. As a fan of both 2.0 innovations like tagging/folksonomies, as well as a regular user of good old fashioned subject searching, I've got opinions on this mess as a user, as well as an erstwhile copy cataloger.

(Disclaimer: I'm a self-taught cataloger who probably couldn't create an original MARC record from scratch if my life depended on it).

As I've watched this debate rage on the OCLC-cat list, as well as in the literature, I've come to several not-quite-compatible conclusions about both the series cataloging thing and the LCSH issue.

1. Cataloging has to be simplified if it's going to survive, even if it means drastic changes to the current system.

OK, it's time to admit some basic facts. First, the library catalog is no longer the best game in town when it comes to search technology. Most OPAC's keyword search features (and let's be honest, that's what gets used), are, frankly, CRAP. There is no reason for this other than an oligopoly going unchallenged by libraries when they provide us substandard ILS software, but that's another rant for another day. Second, why in the world should it take me, a newbie to cataloging but an MLS librarian nontheless, a whole day and much wailing and gnashing of teeth to figure out how to manipulate government document MARC records into a format that won't give our ILS indigestion and will allow the labels to print right? This is one area where I agree with LOC's report. Copy catalogers waste far too much time fiddling around with original MARC records, when with some simplifications and standardizing, we could increase our ability to do batch processing, offload more of the tedious cataloging chores to non-professionals, and spend more time doing original cataloging, learning about the process, and having a serious discussion over how much of this crap we really DO need in a MARC record. (When's the last time you searched for a book by it's size, anyway?) And this leads me onward to point 2.

2. Losing the series cataloging doesn't bug me too much.
Again, I'm not exactly the queen of AACR2 here. That said, why should I care about this? I've been listening to the hand-wringing on various cataloging forums, and I'm still fuzzy on the whole "changing series cataloging will bring the downfall of western civilization" thing. Yes, they won't be creating new authority records for series. But...they'll still be creating bib records, right? That will indicate if something is a series...right? Okay, we'll lose the ability to validate against an authority record, but I just don't see that as a big deal, or that whatever benefit is gained from series authorities is greater than the effort involved in creating them in the first place. Maybe there's something I'm just not understanding here, though given how much ink and bandwidth I've seen spilled on this issue, the more credence my confusion (and the confusion of others) lends to point #1. If a LIBRARIAN doesn't get what the problem is here...we have bigger issues.

3. I would miss LCSH, but...

4. I'm not sure anyone else (including scholars) would miss it.

I like subject searching. It's simple, elegant, and highly effective if the cataloger did their job well (which amazingly they typically do. Kudos to LoC and our other main generators of metadata.). However, LCSH has certain eccentricities that can make it a challenge to non-librarian types, which all boil down to what a user may think would be a subject heading may NOT be what LoC picked. more than once I've typed a "reasonable" subject term for a field where I know we have items, come up with nothing, and had to either go to the LoC website or drag "Big Red" out of the reference section to figure out what I should have searched for. That's fine with me, that's why I get paid the big bucks. But students won't put up with that, nor will most faculty. Quite often a faculty member will want to type in a extremely specific technical term, which isn't an LCSH. And if the word doesn't happen to be in some other searchable MARC field, they're not going to find that particular work through ANY marc record search. And LCSH, by definition, is just too inflexible to keep up with every possible term in every subject area. However, this presents us with a bit of a conundrum, because...

5. LCSH (or some sort of controlled vocabulary) is still the best topic metadata option out there with current technology.

Unless Ebsco and Google assimilate the planet, scan in every print document ever created, and make them all full-text searchable (in which case we're toast anyway unless we can figure out how to compete on quality), we have to have some system of controlled vocabulary. There's no way around it. It's clumsy and inelegant, but there you have it. Until 100% full-text searching is practical on our entire collections, we're stuck. But do we have to be stuck with LCSH, or could we come up with a better method of subject-based access? Is there some way we could find a middle ground between the overly rigid LCSH we have now and an anarchic tagging free-for-all?

See, this is where I think tagging, folksonomies, and wiki technology (IN MODERATION) could come in. I also think there could be a future with RSS empowering us to automate updating of existing records in our systems, and not just with adding and replacing subject terms. In addition to all the big names in library 2.0, our friends in Knowledge Management have also been doing a lot of work in this area. While I don't think there's a killer app to replace LCSH quite yet, I think it's just a matter of time, and I think it will evolve out of the web 2.0 paradigm. Stay tuned.Now, one last thought, that doesn't really relate to the LOC proclamations so much as the debate surrounding them...

6. The elimination of series authority work and questioning of LCSH's future is not a conspiracy theory designed by haliburton and Dr. Evil to kill library cataloging.
As the child of a federal employee, I can assure you that when it comes to these sort of teacup tempests, one should never ascribe to malevolence what can be blamed on stupidity. Example 1: the shining beacon of well-designed interfaces and elegant search engine that is the GPOAccess website. I'm sorry, but we've got enough real problems as it stands with our government's current policies, and we sound like idiots when we ascribe everything wrong in this world from half-baked LOC reports to injured puppies to the malevolence of the current administration. I assure you, our leaders wouldn't know the LCSH if Laura Bush hit them over the head with it. (hmmm...) If whatever changes come do kill off the modern library (which they won't), then it was our own fault for being so inflexible that we couldn't even figure out another way to handle subject searching.

So. What do you think? Do I have a point here?

On Job hunting in Academic Librarianship

2006-07-27T18:40:00.000-07:00

I know, i know, I said I was going to keep the linkbacking to a minimum--but I keep running into such interesting stuff lately! The article below from the chronicle is a great synopsis of the angst of the Academic Library Job search. I was fortunate in that my first (and only) job offer came about 10 days after my interview, and my soon-to-be director actually apologized about the delay! granted, that was for a paraprofessional slot at a small university, but From what I've heard since then, I was darned lucky. (especially since I heard about my promotion about 24 hours after I interviewed for that! ) Anyway, it sounds like my experience is not exactly typical. So, What have your library job searches been like?

http://chronicle.com/jobs/news/2006/07/2006072701c/careers.html

Oy...

2006-07-26T16:55:00.000-07:00

Staff attacked by Patron at Norman Public Library, Norman OK

I grew up just up the road from there, and checked out many a book there... Norman's a college town, AND is the former home of a mental hospital that closed sometime in the mid-80s (I think), so they have more mentally ill folks there than you might expect. Hopefully NPL will be getting more security soon. But in any case, lemme just say A: how much I respect public Librarians, and B: I don't think I could do what they do...

*sigh*

GTD: @home collection device...

2006-07-21T14:07:00.000-07:00

Ok. I'm in a fairly good place with my Outlook-based implementation of my Getting Things Done system at work--it's been running smoothly for about 2 months with only minor tweaks here and there. We'll see how she goes with the start of a new semester and all the new projects tht will entail, but right now I have a clean desk and an empty brain. (no snickering!!!) That said, I get home, and it's all random lists and clutter and piles of things here and there. I've tried to use one or more of the moleskine-style systems for an @not work collection/next action device, but it seems like it gathers dust in the bottom of my purse as often as not. My husband probably has to remind me half a dozen times to buy cat food, sweet, patient guy that he is!

I go through spates of "good behavior" every few months, and I love the calm vibe that comes from all my next actions being collected and addressed. (The clean coffee table is lovely too!) But when non-work life gets the least bit hectic...my home systems are the first things to go out the window. I've pondered trying to merge my work and home collection devices and NA lists, but I'm not coming up with much short of getting a PDA. And I'm hesitant about spending a couple of hundred bucks on an energy gobbling toy that may be moldering away in a junk drawer 6 months later. I've got some ideas on this, but I'm curious if anyone has any thoughts.

Shamelessly glomming onto meredith's awesome post

2006-07-20T08:56:00.000-07:00

First, read this great post from one of my favorite LIS bloggers about the neccessary skills for 21st century librarians. I thought I'd post a slight revision of my initial response over here, given how many people have put replies on that thread, and I also wanted to add a few more thoughts I've had after hearing the conversation and mulling over her thoughts last night.

LIS as a whole is not doing a good job of articulating the added value the human touch brings to the “information economy”, and more importantly why the world at large needs MLS librarians as a free (aside from taxes) civic resource.

While I was also unimpressed by the level of IT skills taught in most of my classes, That didn’t bug me as much. I’m a Librarian for pete’s sake–if I need to upgrade my skills, I can find a tutorial, sign up for a class, or *gasp* read a book.

I think the more serious threat to our profession is the poor job we’ve been doing in the last decade or so about getting our message out. And I suspect this lack of performance is due to this unacknowledged, free-floating anxiety about our future that seems to have infected much of the profession. Well, to solve the problem, we have to A: admit we’re scared instead of indulging in bravado and denial in the manner of a certain immediate past ALA president, B: figure out what we’re scared of, and C: take steps to solve the problem.

So, why are we scared? Is it perhaps because deep down librarians aren’t quite sure themselves what value they add? or are shy about self-promotion? or because they think if they curl up in a ball and hide in the stacks nobody will notice that their foot traffic and hard copy circulation is drying up? The paradigm is shifting, but it does NOT have to shift away from us. We can become the common surfer’s conduit to the invisible web, and to pay information resources. We can shift away from merely providing access to adding value to the information we provide. We can take up the desperate need to educate users in ways to navigate this ocean of information and disinformation we’re all drowning in.

Libraries and librarians are changing. this is the way of the world. because of a combination of cultural stereotypes surrounding our profession, the personality of the typical librarian, the library’s role as preserver of tradition, history, and culture, and the obvious value of the services we provide, we’ve been insulated from many of the evolutions and revolutions that disturb most professions every few years. But guess what? that’s over. It’s time to play with the big boys. We’ve been given an important job, the duty to ensure the continuing existence of our clumsy, anachronistic, slightly silly and desperately important profession in an information economy where things are thrown into flux every five minutes. It’s a tall order. And if you don’t have the courage, creativity, and flexibility that it will take to fulfill our duty…then get out of our way.

After thinking about these issues overnight, I'm not quite as dismissive about the need for better IT training in MLIS programs. Aside from some database searching tactics, I didn't learn much about technology in my program that I didn't know already. Most of my IT knowledge I either arrived with from my tech stint, or I picked up OTJ. For all intents I'm a self-taught cataloger, and frankly would barely know what MARC was had I not gone out and studied on my own. And as far as learning web design or how an ILS system "thinks"? not a word, except in a very top-level knowledge management elective that didn't teach much more than what was needed to put together an RFP (an important skill, but not quite what's needed here.) What i was trying to say in my initial post, and what I still think, is that we don't need to turn the MLS into a software development or database administration program. That said, why can't we make sure that every MLIS graduate understands how the basics of how a typical ILS works, how to design a solid website with HTML, CSS, and (maybe?) java, and how to manipulate metadata, whether or not they ever plan to be in technical services.

I also think I exaggerated, or at least overgeneralized, the stagnation in circulation and foot traffic. What is true at a medium-ish academic library here in the heartland can't really be extrapolated to a public library in a big city. public libraries are seeing an increase in traffic and circulation, though I would be interested to know whether or not circ is growing as fast as foot traffic.

However, with those caveats, i stand by my initial post. We can have all the tech savvy in the world, but if we are not adding value by what we do and how we do it, and (at least) as importantly, putting forth a compelling message about the value we add to the communities we serve, it's time to fold our tents and go home, because we don't deserve to win the battle for eyeballs against wikigoogazon, et al.

This is not a profession for naysayers, pessimists,luddites, bureaucrats, or wallflowers. We as 21st century librarians have been handed a big job. If you don't have the tools you need, don't just petition the schools to start teaching them, go get off your butt and take a class yourself. (or if you already have the skill, offer your services to your alma mater as an adjunct!) If you're nervous about speaking, join toastmasters. If you don't write well, do what is neccessary to improve. Go to the local community picnics or meetings and peet people, even if you're not manning the library's booth. These are all basic steps ambitious future leaders take in the non-library world. If we are to get the respect we deserve, self-improvement and service are the ways we get there.

Next post: something Wiki this way comes: web 2.0 in the library

GTD Weekly review & The Pollyanna effect

2006-06-02T17:02:00.000-07:00

When I do my weekly review at work, right after I skim my someday/maybe list, and before I do a few minutes of mindsweeping, I always read a random chapter of “Ready for Everything” for a bit of insight/uplift. For those who don’t own this one, each chapter is a page or two summarizing one of the key concepts in the GTD system, or just a general personal growth or life management platitude. This week the flying fickle finger of fate landed on chapter 45: “Surprises, expected, are no Surprise”. This line really grabbed me:

“Maintaining a consistent intention of uplifting thoughts toward positive outcomes is not for the faint of heart. You must be willing to confront the whole gamut of historical and future potential realities, accept them for what they are (and are not), and keep moving toward what you want, That truly defuses the demons.” (Allen 2003,134-5)

Now, a confession. My name is Sarah, and I am an optimist. (“Hi, Sarah”.) Some might say, even…a Pollyanna. I think that’s supposed to be an insult, or at least a gentle barb. I mean, I’m a gen-x geek librarian who’s a proud registered democrat! I’m supposed to be all crusty and bitter and ironic! And once upon a time, in high school and my first year of college, I was all crusty and bitter and ironic. Don’t believe me? Ask the poor folks who had to live with me before I went to college! I was older at 19 that I am now at 29. I was a panicker and a worrier and a pessimist. Now I’m typically laid back enough to make Bobby McFerrin irritated. What changed me?

I wasted most of my teenage years being angry and bitter and depressed over childhood events that I felt had destroyed my innocence. I’ll spare you the lifetime original movie stuff, but let’s just say I had a rougher road than many, but also a lighter road than many. One day I was bemoaning my fate, of how miserable my life was and that it never would improve, and IT HIT ME.

By obsessing so much about being a lonely, panicky, depressed underachiever, I was actually becoming that which I most dreaded.

So, I took a shaky breath. OK. What if the worst happens? And for the first time I stopped wallowing in my situation and LOOKED at my life objectively. What if I remained lonely and panic-ridden and fat? Instead of running from the abyss, I LOOKED into it. I looked as long and hard and as dispassionately as I could at my innermost fears. And in that moment I saw that there were things in that Abyss that, if they came to pass, I could handle. That gave me confidence that if other things happened, I could and would deal with them when the time came.

And then the final epiphany—by wasting my life WORRYING about some potential distaster, rather than
A: preparing for it as best as possible followed by
B: Living the most meaningful and fulfilling life possible in the meantime,
I wasn’t solving anything.

In addition, I was choosing to have a crappy, lonely life in the process. After that epiphany I spent most of my 20s taking baby-steps to deal with each of those fears or flaws, with as many setbacks as successes along the way. But the overall trend has been upward toward increased health, empowerment, and success. The day you truly realize that your thoughts create your reality is the day you start becoming an optimist. The power of positive thinking ain’t just a platitude.

Becoming a Pollyanna has been one of the hardest things I’ve done. It’s easy to trust when the world has never betrayed you. The real test of character comes when the hard times hit. So now I’m gonna ask for a show of hands. How many of you have READ Pollyanna—or seen the movie? That girl did not have it easy. We’re talking about an orphaned daughter of missionaries who spent her early years in poverty in the wilds of who-knows-where before being shipped off to an aunt she’d never seen before, who frankly didn’t give a rats’s ass about her for the first hour and a half of the film. And yet, she drove the whole town 15 kinds of crazy with that glad game and even turned the fire and brimstone minister into a victorian-era hippie. But she hadn’t really been tested. The REAL test came when she fell out of that tree and broke her back. What does she do? Well, she goes into a depression. The same as any sentient human. However, with a combo of the town’s operation cheer-up and the own girl’s determination to get her life back (a puppy and a smile from the former town curmudgeon wouldn’t turn ANYONE’s mood around unless they wanted it to be turned around), little Hayley Mills was all smiles before the credits rolled, even though she still had no idea if she’d ever walk again.

So, while I promise not to play the “glad game” with my friends in anything other than a sarcastic tone of voice, I am an optimist. And I am damned proud of it. It’s easy to let life make you hard and bitter. The real challenge is to fight through that crap, and to keep going for the goals in life you want to attain (to tie this back in with GTD). Optimism is to keep doing your next action, keep looking for the next steps to get to your goals, to roll with the punches and stay focused on the end goal even when things are crashing around your ears. That’s a skill that has served me better in my personal and professional life than any system or theory I’ve ever tried.

So, how has optimism helped you in your path to a life well-lived? Or am I just being a Pollyanna here? :-)

Greetings and my vision for this blog

2006-05-24T17:18:00.000-07:00

Hi! I'm Sarah, and welcome to The Scattered Librarian! I'm Access Services & Distance Learning Librarian at a small academic library in Oklahoma. I have created this blog to discuss two different but intertwined aspects of my professional life.

First, I plan to share my thoughts on the state of Librarianship today, with special attention to Distance Learning Librarianship, Library management, the future(?)of cataloging, The good, bad, and ugly of current ILS systems (isn't "ILS Systems" a redundancy?), career development, management issues, and the miscellaneous professional musings of a youngish "next-gen" Librarian who is still fairly new to the field.

Second, I plan to use this space to chronicle my experiences implementing the Getting Things Done (aka GTD)at home and at work. I probably don't look "scattered" to most casual visitors to my life, but this is out of force of will rather than any innate tendency to organization, as my mother can testify after seeing my room for 18 years. :-) I have to have a detailed, rigorous system to keep the physical and mental clutter away, and I care enough about attaining my goals in life to take up the struggle. I hope to share tips, struggles, and triumphs in my ongoing project of "unscattering", in the hopes they might be helpful to other GTDers as they implement their systems.

I know most people in the blogosphere have more feeds in their bloglines than they now how to handle, many of them consisting of little more than postbacks to other blogs. Unless I have thoughts about a post that are too detailed for that blog's replies section, and/or I find something in a relatively new or obscure blog, I promise this blog will offer you more than linkbacks. Soon I will be adding links to my favorite librarianship and productivity websites in the sidebar. I'll also be posting again soon with both a summary of my professional life to date and a outline of my current GTD implementation. My plan is to post weekly, alternating between my two topics, but I may well post more or less frequently as my schedule and current events dictate. Thanks for reading, I hope you like what you see, and I'm off to create next actions for my next updates! :-)

Thanks and Welcome,
Sarah