I like the motto of the University of Vermont libraries: Ask. Discover. Create. Beautifully and succinctly stated, flowing like an arrow through the research, knowledge process.
UVM even initiated an outreach campaign with students as models to promote the first part. (The youngsters in the last photo look a little disinterested, though. ;) ) Engaging students in library promotion, creating allies, suggests great potential.
The "discover" part I like too, suggests an open process, including serendipity. "Inventing is finding," I read somewhere. But we don't stop there, do we?
How do the libraries foster creation for their users. A clue may be in the Center for Digital Initiatives. An email link is provided for someone in the community to suggest a new collection. Elsewhere, the librarians state: "It is the UVM Libraries' goal that students, faculty, staff, scholars, and community members participate as users and creators of digital resources in an open, collaborative environment. The CDI works with users to integrate digital collections in their research, teaching, and learning strategies." The image archives they host are beautiful. I would be interested to learn how such collections have been used in courses and study, with what outcomes.
Nice work, UVM!
Saturday, June 4, 2011
Friday, June 3, 2011
Creativity in Instruction
Thoughts on the ACRL/NELIG program which I attended this morning, courtesy of one of my staff members who gave me her place since she was unable to go. Comments from other attendees can be read in the Twitter stream. Slides from the presentations will eventually be available on the website.
The theme was creativity and the keynote by Randy Hensley involved (well first he sang "I Remember You,") puzzles and group problem solving, working with images, senses and visualization. For example, we were asked, in teams, to describe a problem we might encounter teaching a library skills class to students (some of us went with the situation of not having enough computers for everyone to use.) Then we were asked to report, what does the problem sound, smell, taste and feel like to the touch. With the puzzles and these sensory stretches, Randy was engaging us at looking at what we do in novel ways. One way he framed it was to bring the concept of "brain lateralization" to the discussion, asking us to consider how education starts us off with a more right-brained focus (emphasis on play,) and then moves, almost exclusively, to a left-brained focus (organizational and analytical,) with the result that when people try to do creative work, they haven't been educated or are out of practice. So applying senses, images, memories can generate stories in our minds which are useful to apply to problem solving.
Randy went on to introduce concepts from Daniel Pink's work (haven't read him,) who emphasizes that we are entering a kind of post-information age, "conceptual age," where the emphasis will be on collaborative work, creation and empathy. Abilities will matter more than skills which will be regularly in flux for creative work we can only begin to imagine. While I welcome this new world view, skeptically I think of the work of Matthew Fraser and his Throwing Sheep in the Boardroom which examines, for example, how companies are or are not adopting social media and a more open information sharing culture at their peril. Matthew and I had a discussion about this a couple years ago and I asked him, among other things, about the flattening out of the corporate hierarchy that was talked about in the 90s, the horizontal organization. Didn't happen, he told me, because people who have power do what they will to hold onto it. Will a similar scenario prevail in the business and culture we know now and will see in the future? Further more, if everybody's an entrepreneur or artist or creator, must we all buy from each other to survive? Or barter?
I think I see where Randy was headed as he left us with his models of learning and his emphasis on creating empathy with the students we want to engage and bring to our libraries (or bring the library to them but in whatever instance, have them see the library and its personnel as offering solutions.) "Go to the place of empathy, " he said, and I've heard similar speech, the idea being rather than the library telling its user community what they offer and why they should want it, give them an image or a problem to solve, let them find the intrinsic meaning.
I saw an example of this in the next session I attended led by Andy Burkhardt and Sarah Cohen, who demonstrated an interesting exercise using polling software, asking a multiple choice question, for example ("what source do you use to get infomation?), having the students respond via text message, and then displaying the results on the screen. If the majority of the audience answers Google, it can become a discussion about that or the differences between search engines, the use of various social media sites, authority of sources. This was novel since usually students are not encouraged to use cell phones in learning environments; evidently some colleges are moving to ban them.
The subsequent session featured the use of images to gather students' attention in information literacy sessions. Alison Armstrong, working with Egyptian students, gave them icons from newspapers they would know and then instructed them to find articles on a topic. She stressed the importance of being brief in an explanation of what they were going to do before the class. Her co-presenter, Laurie Kutner, unveiled a graph showing comparative internet access in different regions of the world, also showing potential as a jumping off point for discussion, especially as one audience member pointed out, one can emphasize difficulties researching information about a country that has less technology infrastructure. The discussion concluded with audience members talking about rethinking of standards for information literacy, such as those implemented by ACRL, along the lines of abilities rather than skills. Alison alluded to a newly-adopted framework released by SCONUL, more cyclical, as one attendee commented.
A great day and thank you to the speakers and everyone involved with NELIG who made it possible.
The theme was creativity and the keynote by Randy Hensley involved (well first he sang "I Remember You,") puzzles and group problem solving, working with images, senses and visualization. For example, we were asked, in teams, to describe a problem we might encounter teaching a library skills class to students (some of us went with the situation of not having enough computers for everyone to use.) Then we were asked to report, what does the problem sound, smell, taste and feel like to the touch. With the puzzles and these sensory stretches, Randy was engaging us at looking at what we do in novel ways. One way he framed it was to bring the concept of "brain lateralization" to the discussion, asking us to consider how education starts us off with a more right-brained focus (emphasis on play,) and then moves, almost exclusively, to a left-brained focus (organizational and analytical,) with the result that when people try to do creative work, they haven't been educated or are out of practice. So applying senses, images, memories can generate stories in our minds which are useful to apply to problem solving.
Randy went on to introduce concepts from Daniel Pink's work (haven't read him,) who emphasizes that we are entering a kind of post-information age, "conceptual age," where the emphasis will be on collaborative work, creation and empathy. Abilities will matter more than skills which will be regularly in flux for creative work we can only begin to imagine. While I welcome this new world view, skeptically I think of the work of Matthew Fraser and his Throwing Sheep in the Boardroom which examines, for example, how companies are or are not adopting social media and a more open information sharing culture at their peril. Matthew and I had a discussion about this a couple years ago and I asked him, among other things, about the flattening out of the corporate hierarchy that was talked about in the 90s, the horizontal organization. Didn't happen, he told me, because people who have power do what they will to hold onto it. Will a similar scenario prevail in the business and culture we know now and will see in the future? Further more, if everybody's an entrepreneur or artist or creator, must we all buy from each other to survive? Or barter?
I think I see where Randy was headed as he left us with his models of learning and his emphasis on creating empathy with the students we want to engage and bring to our libraries (or bring the library to them but in whatever instance, have them see the library and its personnel as offering solutions.) "Go to the place of empathy, " he said, and I've heard similar speech, the idea being rather than the library telling its user community what they offer and why they should want it, give them an image or a problem to solve, let them find the intrinsic meaning.
I saw an example of this in the next session I attended led by Andy Burkhardt and Sarah Cohen, who demonstrated an interesting exercise using polling software, asking a multiple choice question, for example ("what source do you use to get infomation?), having the students respond via text message, and then displaying the results on the screen. If the majority of the audience answers Google, it can become a discussion about that or the differences between search engines, the use of various social media sites, authority of sources. This was novel since usually students are not encouraged to use cell phones in learning environments; evidently some colleges are moving to ban them.
The subsequent session featured the use of images to gather students' attention in information literacy sessions. Alison Armstrong, working with Egyptian students, gave them icons from newspapers they would know and then instructed them to find articles on a topic. She stressed the importance of being brief in an explanation of what they were going to do before the class. Her co-presenter, Laurie Kutner, unveiled a graph showing comparative internet access in different regions of the world, also showing potential as a jumping off point for discussion, especially as one audience member pointed out, one can emphasize difficulties researching information about a country that has less technology infrastructure. The discussion concluded with audience members talking about rethinking of standards for information literacy, such as those implemented by ACRL, along the lines of abilities rather than skills. Alison alluded to a newly-adopted framework released by SCONUL, more cyclical, as one attendee commented.
A great day and thank you to the speakers and everyone involved with NELIG who made it possible.
Thursday, June 2, 2011
Two worlds
I am starting a new position managing two college libraries on campuses twenty minutes apart from one another. One is in a residential neighborhood in a sizable industrial city, surrounded by other colleges and similar institutions. The other is about twenty minutes away in a rural community, up a hill, in something of a town square. Interestingly, the future may point toward the latter, even though it is an old building with no air-conditioning and certainly not ADA-compliant. Yet maybe the expansion is headed that way or did I misread the press releases. I'm thinking a lot about library buildings and a larger conversation about technology. The libraries are equipped with computers, certainly not new and not numerous and the staff tell me when they are occupied the students walk away. So I'm thinking of spaces where faculty can teach a class, where librarians can give instruction, where students can collaborate on creative work. It may not be like many other colleges, I'm told, as many students come to school without their own computers. Maybe they have smartphones and we should be looking at mobile services.
My heart feels a little heavy. In my previous position, my predecessor left me detailed notes, and I followed some of her suggestions (like creating current awareness alerts for the scientists,) while disregarding some others. Nevertheless, she was very thorough. My predecessor for where I am now, nothing, no trace, an empty office, only a few tabs on folders to indicate what went on before. Old policies that I have yet to read that may not have been followed and that will need to be looked at anew. When I say old I mean a few years and everything's changed, libraries' use of metrics, constituents' use of the library, social media, smart phones, ebooks, data, the question of what a library and librarians are for.
I know this. I've inherited a superb staff who know as much as if not more about libraries than I do. They don't want to make lattes, they want to deliver solutions and do meaningful work with students and faculty and others in their communities. I want to help them make it possible. I want it so badly, for all of us, not only for our sake, but for the best in each of us, why we do this work, to serve and connect with people and connect people with information and other people and tools that will help them achieve their objectives.
The collections are out of date. Thinking of the post from yesterday that mentioned PDA (Patron Driven Acquisition, and not public display of affection or personal digital assistant,) the libraries evidently have been doing that, but not anticipating needs. I believe the librarians are ready, and at the same time we need a broad knowledge of the teaching activities at the college and where things are headed to plan collections. What's in the stacks is so out of date it makes one want to level the whole thing and start over. There will be time, but not much.
I think of the missed opportunities in my past. Don't F it up, I say to myself. I will make mistakes but I don't to make ones I've already made and create misery by not making decisions. I've learned many things the hard way in my career. What's the worst that can happen? I go home.
Tomorrow I'm headed to a meeting at another institution to which I've never been to hear about trends in library instruction. It's been a long time. At other campuses of this institution I heard about instruction tools and techniques but that was years ago, before libguides, before networked databases really, and yet librarians will still trying to get the attention of students and faculty. Mostly it will be fun to be at a meeting with a role, and new colleagues and a smile. I'm having fun and the days are flying by.
My heart feels a little heavy. In my previous position, my predecessor left me detailed notes, and I followed some of her suggestions (like creating current awareness alerts for the scientists,) while disregarding some others. Nevertheless, she was very thorough. My predecessor for where I am now, nothing, no trace, an empty office, only a few tabs on folders to indicate what went on before. Old policies that I have yet to read that may not have been followed and that will need to be looked at anew. When I say old I mean a few years and everything's changed, libraries' use of metrics, constituents' use of the library, social media, smart phones, ebooks, data, the question of what a library and librarians are for.
I know this. I've inherited a superb staff who know as much as if not more about libraries than I do. They don't want to make lattes, they want to deliver solutions and do meaningful work with students and faculty and others in their communities. I want to help them make it possible. I want it so badly, for all of us, not only for our sake, but for the best in each of us, why we do this work, to serve and connect with people and connect people with information and other people and tools that will help them achieve their objectives.
The collections are out of date. Thinking of the post from yesterday that mentioned PDA (Patron Driven Acquisition, and not public display of affection or personal digital assistant,) the libraries evidently have been doing that, but not anticipating needs. I believe the librarians are ready, and at the same time we need a broad knowledge of the teaching activities at the college and where things are headed to plan collections. What's in the stacks is so out of date it makes one want to level the whole thing and start over. There will be time, but not much.
I think of the missed opportunities in my past. Don't F it up, I say to myself. I will make mistakes but I don't to make ones I've already made and create misery by not making decisions. I've learned many things the hard way in my career. What's the worst that can happen? I go home.
Tomorrow I'm headed to a meeting at another institution to which I've never been to hear about trends in library instruction. It's been a long time. At other campuses of this institution I heard about instruction tools and techniques but that was years ago, before libguides, before networked databases really, and yet librarians will still trying to get the attention of students and faculty. Mostly it will be fun to be at a meeting with a role, and new colleagues and a smile. I'm having fun and the days are flying by.
Wednesday, June 1, 2011
Give the people what they want?
It's a conundrum for libraries. What is our role, as collectors, as curators, as stewards of information?
At the municipal libraries I've worked in, folks want Steig Larsson and there aren't enough copies to go around even in a well-funded, cooperative network. And what's wrong with wanting to read Steig Larsson? I can't say I have, although I enjoyed the Dragon Tattoo movie when I watched it with my niece and her partner last fall. It's a riveting story. So it may not be the zenith of literary accomplishment.
When I was a callow youth I worked in a bookstore in my home town, one which was owned by a national chain. Of course the bestsellers of the day were prominently displayed, Judith Krantz's I'll Take Manhattan, the latest Danielle Steele, Robert Schuller's Be-Happy Attitudes, you get the idea. The assistant manager, Jose, was fond of creating towering book displays which were referred to as "dumps." But he would also get ideas from more literary bookstores near the colleges and universities in the cities, order them from the vendor, and they sold, he said. Jose was giving customers choices of which they might not have been aware. The same thinking is well described in a recent library blog post. Or, looking at it another way, patrons may not necessarily know what they need but a need exists and it's up to us to identify it, as this story illustrates.
I think of asking a researcher before I took on my previous position what he wanted from the library. "I don't know, Garrett," he answered with a sigh, and we were talking about table-of-contents journal alerting services, which he said overwhelmed his email box and consequently went unread. (At the same time, as many journals went to e-only format or print subscriptions were discontinued, their needed, and still needs, to be a way to alert researchers of new material.) I spent much subsequent time learning about this gentleman's research, trying to learn what keywords would pull out of database searches the articles he would want to read. Much trial and error. He gave me the word "clusters," talking about a concept in physics and chemistry, large aggregations of molecular material, specifically for him metal clusters in the gas phase, observed in a mass spectrometer or with similar instrumentation. But "clusters" pulled up computer clusters and galaxies. The researcher laughed at me when I showed him the first search results, but I kept refining it and incorporating not only disparate literature databases but contents from the journals themselves, filtering, searching and researching, and keeping an eye on what the researcher's group was up to with regard to publishing and presenting results and new developments. Even after all that, I don't have a magic formula, but the regular communication between us was positive for the library. Some of my colleagues will object, probably, to paraphrase William James, wanting to do a wholesale rather than a retail basis, for efficiency's sake. To my view, the information landscape is overwhelming and any kind of assistance we can provide these dealing with it will only increase our value.
Then today I was pointed to a posting on Patron-Driven Acquisition (PDA,) the thinking being that academic libraries with limited funds should not attempt to purchase widely or exhaustively in a subject but respond to purchase requests from their constituents. This is what I did in my previous position, with some purchases for reference volumes and other materials of general interest at my discretion. And I think librarians using model can maintain some middle ground and some level of participation. Browse publisher's catalogs and also reviews in journals such as Nature, Scientific American, Physics Today, Science, Science News, American Scientist, and others. Browse library catalogs of similar institutions and consider if your constituents need a particular title onsite or through the network. Know the activities of your institution, the current courses and assignments, the experiments going on in the laboratories and keep an eye out for publications in whatever format that will support these endeavors. Dana Roth similarly suggests many of these ideas in his presentation on the future of science librarianship from last year's SLA meeting.
All of this is a roundabout way to say, yes, we can respond to patron wants while thinking creatively about delivering materials, services, environments, communities, opportunities, collections yet unasked for. It's not an either/or. It's a yes and.
At the municipal libraries I've worked in, folks want Steig Larsson and there aren't enough copies to go around even in a well-funded, cooperative network. And what's wrong with wanting to read Steig Larsson? I can't say I have, although I enjoyed the Dragon Tattoo movie when I watched it with my niece and her partner last fall. It's a riveting story. So it may not be the zenith of literary accomplishment.
When I was a callow youth I worked in a bookstore in my home town, one which was owned by a national chain. Of course the bestsellers of the day were prominently displayed, Judith Krantz's I'll Take Manhattan, the latest Danielle Steele, Robert Schuller's Be-Happy Attitudes, you get the idea. The assistant manager, Jose, was fond of creating towering book displays which were referred to as "dumps." But he would also get ideas from more literary bookstores near the colleges and universities in the cities, order them from the vendor, and they sold, he said. Jose was giving customers choices of which they might not have been aware. The same thinking is well described in a recent library blog post. Or, looking at it another way, patrons may not necessarily know what they need but a need exists and it's up to us to identify it, as this story illustrates.
I think of asking a researcher before I took on my previous position what he wanted from the library. "I don't know, Garrett," he answered with a sigh, and we were talking about table-of-contents journal alerting services, which he said overwhelmed his email box and consequently went unread. (At the same time, as many journals went to e-only format or print subscriptions were discontinued, their needed, and still needs, to be a way to alert researchers of new material.) I spent much subsequent time learning about this gentleman's research, trying to learn what keywords would pull out of database searches the articles he would want to read. Much trial and error. He gave me the word "clusters," talking about a concept in physics and chemistry, large aggregations of molecular material, specifically for him metal clusters in the gas phase, observed in a mass spectrometer or with similar instrumentation. But "clusters" pulled up computer clusters and galaxies. The researcher laughed at me when I showed him the first search results, but I kept refining it and incorporating not only disparate literature databases but contents from the journals themselves, filtering, searching and researching, and keeping an eye on what the researcher's group was up to with regard to publishing and presenting results and new developments. Even after all that, I don't have a magic formula, but the regular communication between us was positive for the library. Some of my colleagues will object, probably, to paraphrase William James, wanting to do a wholesale rather than a retail basis, for efficiency's sake. To my view, the information landscape is overwhelming and any kind of assistance we can provide these dealing with it will only increase our value.
Then today I was pointed to a posting on Patron-Driven Acquisition (PDA,) the thinking being that academic libraries with limited funds should not attempt to purchase widely or exhaustively in a subject but respond to purchase requests from their constituents. This is what I did in my previous position, with some purchases for reference volumes and other materials of general interest at my discretion. And I think librarians using model can maintain some middle ground and some level of participation. Browse publisher's catalogs and also reviews in journals such as Nature, Scientific American, Physics Today, Science, Science News, American Scientist, and others. Browse library catalogs of similar institutions and consider if your constituents need a particular title onsite or through the network. Know the activities of your institution, the current courses and assignments, the experiments going on in the laboratories and keep an eye out for publications in whatever format that will support these endeavors. Dana Roth similarly suggests many of these ideas in his presentation on the future of science librarianship from last year's SLA meeting.
All of this is a roundabout way to say, yes, we can respond to patron wants while thinking creatively about delivering materials, services, environments, communities, opportunities, collections yet unasked for. It's not an either/or. It's a yes and.
Tuesday, May 31, 2011
Silence
Libraries are associated with quiet. Even as recent as the last decade there was a library blog called Shush! (Can no longer find the site, although a Google search reveals the footprint.) Quiet is good. Silence is good. The modern library, however, is not quiet. People working together at computers, talking on cell phones, sharing media, perhaps a coexistence of quiet and activity, stillness and movement.
Personally I don't bat an eye (although sometimes I am a little jumpy) when someone's cell phone rings. It's a fact of life today, common as dirt. I swore I'd never be someone whose phone went off at an inappropriate time but that has happened.
Library users may want spaces where people can converse and engage and also spaces of quiet - when they want them. How to create space for both? The Librarian in Black pointed me to an interesting sign that might help library users modulate their sound contributions.
Personally I don't bat an eye (although sometimes I am a little jumpy) when someone's cell phone rings. It's a fact of life today, common as dirt. I swore I'd never be someone whose phone went off at an inappropriate time but that has happened.
Library users may want spaces where people can converse and engage and also spaces of quiet - when they want them. How to create space for both? The Librarian in Black pointed me to an interesting sign that might help library users modulate their sound contributions.
Monday, May 30, 2011
"Call It Anything"
I've accepted a job as director of libraries at a college that offers two and four year programs and enrolls some fifteen hundred students each year. It's a forward thinking institution in a lovely residential setting, and the people I've met seem friendly, dedicated and not taking themselves too seriously, which is instructive for me. Why am I going there? Why am I doing this?
I love service and I love meeting people and connecting them with other people and resources that will help them meet their goals. I'm fascinated by literature, knowledge and internet. I love libraries, even as the idea of what a library is and what it can become changes, whether or not it is called a library.
Demanding my attention from the start include the following:
How to make students feel welcome in the library. A faculty member used the expression "library phobia" in a conversation we had. Many students are the first in their family to attend college. They may not have positive experiences with libraries or use one as their first resource (or at any time) to solve a problem. (I may not have been comfortable using libraries until after several years of working in them plus graduate school.) What do students want? WIFI? Places to congregate for group study, and then quiet study places when they need them? I think of several transformational library settings shared with me by people I've met: a community college library that is now a community hub, featuring spaces for people to get together, work together, learning resources, technology resources, and cultural events; a university library that has successfully devoted its space to integrate technology more successfully within the library setting; and another university library that has devoted space to technologically-enhanced classrooms, quiet study spaces and collaborative work. So what's possible and what's necessary for my new setting, questions that I can only answer with a better understanding of how work functions now.
Asking myself why I come to work and asking my colleagues what they like about their jobs, what they would change, what are their aspirations, what would success mean, listening more than I talk, being there, not necessarily having answers but having curiosity about this question and then taking steps to give staff members the resources to do their jobs and achieve their goals. I'm fortunate to work with a lovely group of people, dedicated, professional, curious, friendly, couldn't say enough positive words about each one I've met.
What does the library own, subscribe to, provide access to and why? What do we need that we do not have? What could we get elsewhere or get by without? What are the programs and the students we will support? How much should we commit to eBooks and ejournals and databases? What about promoting unique collections in college departments, archival and historical materials, is there an opportunity for digitization, networking and sharing? What about facilitating sharing of learning materials online for those who want to do so?
What are the best ways to approach faculty and other personnel? What's worked, what's appropriate, what can I offer. Current awareness tools and social bookmarking as ways to alleviate information overload? Outreach to facilitate teaching and preparing library services to anticipate particular assignments? One thing the faculty and staff I met with reinforced for me is, often when teaching library resources, students don't retain the knowledge of the tools unless there's an immediate use for it. Perhaps using specific course assignment situations as learning opportunities to demonstrate useful library resources has potential. On the other hand, students just may want the information quickly and be done with it. Create learning modules that can be accessed online? Instructional videos as have been used in other settings?
Then there's the question of the online catalog. What can that be, what should it be? How can the catalog become more "social," integrated with other library, learning and online resources without sowing confusion? What do library users want? What features are available from vendors, or is a consortial catalog a possibility or even a solution?
I'm asked what is the future of libraries and a response is "Libraries have many different futures." The belief that all information that anyone could want is available online does not yet conform with present reality. Darnton and others offer reasons for this, at the same time addressing why libraries need to consider providing patrons with ereaders and ebooks in a variety of settings. I don't see libraries becoming obsolete but library personnel need to act. I mean, know the institutional context, know our customers, align our goals and objectives with theirs, seek out creative solutions that may not be associated with a "library." This paper offers several examples tried in corporate settings that could be applied in a variety of library and information enterprises. Maybe it will be called a library or something else. I think of when Miles Davis's group was recorded at the Isle of Wight festival and Miles was asked the name of the tune. "Call It Anything," was evidently his response. So let's call it anything but let our focus be service freely given and the removal of information obstacles.
(I don't know, this may seem presumptuous, premature, pie in the sky, mushy, unspecific thinking; at any rate, these are some of my directions as I make this new beginning, drawing on experience and not knowing at the same time.)
I love service and I love meeting people and connecting them with other people and resources that will help them meet their goals. I'm fascinated by literature, knowledge and internet. I love libraries, even as the idea of what a library is and what it can become changes, whether or not it is called a library.
Demanding my attention from the start include the following:
How to make students feel welcome in the library. A faculty member used the expression "library phobia" in a conversation we had. Many students are the first in their family to attend college. They may not have positive experiences with libraries or use one as their first resource (or at any time) to solve a problem. (I may not have been comfortable using libraries until after several years of working in them plus graduate school.) What do students want? WIFI? Places to congregate for group study, and then quiet study places when they need them? I think of several transformational library settings shared with me by people I've met: a community college library that is now a community hub, featuring spaces for people to get together, work together, learning resources, technology resources, and cultural events; a university library that has successfully devoted its space to integrate technology more successfully within the library setting; and another university library that has devoted space to technologically-enhanced classrooms, quiet study spaces and collaborative work. So what's possible and what's necessary for my new setting, questions that I can only answer with a better understanding of how work functions now.
Asking myself why I come to work and asking my colleagues what they like about their jobs, what they would change, what are their aspirations, what would success mean, listening more than I talk, being there, not necessarily having answers but having curiosity about this question and then taking steps to give staff members the resources to do their jobs and achieve their goals. I'm fortunate to work with a lovely group of people, dedicated, professional, curious, friendly, couldn't say enough positive words about each one I've met.
What does the library own, subscribe to, provide access to and why? What do we need that we do not have? What could we get elsewhere or get by without? What are the programs and the students we will support? How much should we commit to eBooks and ejournals and databases? What about promoting unique collections in college departments, archival and historical materials, is there an opportunity for digitization, networking and sharing? What about facilitating sharing of learning materials online for those who want to do so?
What are the best ways to approach faculty and other personnel? What's worked, what's appropriate, what can I offer. Current awareness tools and social bookmarking as ways to alleviate information overload? Outreach to facilitate teaching and preparing library services to anticipate particular assignments? One thing the faculty and staff I met with reinforced for me is, often when teaching library resources, students don't retain the knowledge of the tools unless there's an immediate use for it. Perhaps using specific course assignment situations as learning opportunities to demonstrate useful library resources has potential. On the other hand, students just may want the information quickly and be done with it. Create learning modules that can be accessed online? Instructional videos as have been used in other settings?
Then there's the question of the online catalog. What can that be, what should it be? How can the catalog become more "social," integrated with other library, learning and online resources without sowing confusion? What do library users want? What features are available from vendors, or is a consortial catalog a possibility or even a solution?
I'm asked what is the future of libraries and a response is "Libraries have many different futures." The belief that all information that anyone could want is available online does not yet conform with present reality. Darnton and others offer reasons for this, at the same time addressing why libraries need to consider providing patrons with ereaders and ebooks in a variety of settings. I don't see libraries becoming obsolete but library personnel need to act. I mean, know the institutional context, know our customers, align our goals and objectives with theirs, seek out creative solutions that may not be associated with a "library." This paper offers several examples tried in corporate settings that could be applied in a variety of library and information enterprises. Maybe it will be called a library or something else. I think of when Miles Davis's group was recorded at the Isle of Wight festival and Miles was asked the name of the tune. "Call It Anything," was evidently his response. So let's call it anything but let our focus be service freely given and the removal of information obstacles.
(I don't know, this may seem presumptuous, premature, pie in the sky, mushy, unspecific thinking; at any rate, these are some of my directions as I make this new beginning, drawing on experience and not knowing at the same time.)
Thursday, April 21, 2011
The library of memory
It was the kind of library you would find in the center of any town, I suppose. I want to say the facade was stucco but maybe it was just dull grey cement. There were the hands of a clock on the front above the doors, and there were ashtrays in the foyer, just like in the children's book Mike's House. And the children's room was inviting, and had books such as The Sneetches, and Who's a Pest, and the Sign on Rosie's Door, especially the latter. As I grew older, the library was renovated and it was harder to find things. There was supposed to be more space and light and probably there was but I preferred the way things were before. At one point I discovered the 796 section or thereabouts for books on baseball. But I could never find the Glory of Their Times, for which there was a catalog card, but was never on the shelf. I may have asked about it at one point and received a postcard in the mail saying it was out of print. I knew nothing about interlibrary loan, no one had told me. One time I held onto a record album several weeks after its due date, but the library staff caught up with me, sending me a photocopy of my library card and the checkout card as evidence of my sin. It would not be the first time I would fall foul of a library establishment, and one might remark the irony that I would go on to pay copious library fines despite being a librarian, but maybe it's just kind of boring.
Struggling to find information for a school paper, an article maybe, using the Reader's Guide to Periodical Literature. We had to request the back issues of the magazines from someone at a desk. She handed the request form back to me, saying " Now what the hell does that say?" My handwriting was and continues to be a source of merriment for those around me, even though I know it is good manners to write clearly. In my youth and adolescence, I didn't care. And there were books that took too long to read or were too much trouble to find. Only years later (maybe ten, fifteen,) when I was on the front lines in library service, trying to help customers decipher the arcane listings in the online catalog or the index books, did it start to make sense. When I applied for my first library job I had no idea what I was getting into, and the director was telling me that everything was headed in the direction of technology. Even he probably had scant concept of networked information or even such a thing as an ebook, though it's not out of the question, since Vannevar Bush had written As We May Think in 1945 and hypertext had been invented sometime during the 1960s and ARPAnet was nothing new, but I had never heard of any of it and had only used a word processor under duress to finish my senior exercise in college, a sorry excuse for a paper that featured - you guessed it - little in the way of research.
I got off topic. My default as a teenager was to go to the library and grab a book and lie prone in the stacks. I looked at Jazz Is by Nat Hentoff again and again but I don't know if I finished it, and looked at other books that mentioned John Coltrane and Ornette Coleman. Poetry books were a curiosity, especially the ones in French or in translation, but I don't remember which specifically, maybe I just liked glancing at them. Drama too. There were comfortable chairs, but mostly I sprawled in the stacks.
My father is a mathematician. My mother is a reference librarian. Ironically, I combined the two and became a science librarian. "You really landed yourself, didn't you," someone remarked to me once. I've seen changes but not as many as some. I'm a consumer of technology rather than a developer or an innovator. Not long ago I went back to the library of my youth. It had changed dramatically. Fine paneling. Many computers. Wide open spaces for people to gather. And on the second floor, books, where there weren't offices, books, which had once occupied the lower level, books, in dignified rows, waiting to be discovered. Some that I might have read or touched back in the day were probably long gone, succeeded by fresher material. Maybe there is a connection. Maybe nothing is lost, and maybe it is all about loss. I don't know. I wasn't much of a reader actually then, struggled to finish a book then and that's true today. Do a lot of reading online and more scanning, and a good thing about a book makes me stop and disconnect, and a library gives me pause by its solidity, by its having withstood time and change, though I live in a part of the country where municipal libraries are still relatively well supported, and even not that much if I look at the budgets (~ 1%.)
Struggling to find information for a school paper, an article maybe, using the Reader's Guide to Periodical Literature. We had to request the back issues of the magazines from someone at a desk. She handed the request form back to me, saying " Now what the hell does that say?" My handwriting was and continues to be a source of merriment for those around me, even though I know it is good manners to write clearly. In my youth and adolescence, I didn't care. And there were books that took too long to read or were too much trouble to find. Only years later (maybe ten, fifteen,) when I was on the front lines in library service, trying to help customers decipher the arcane listings in the online catalog or the index books, did it start to make sense. When I applied for my first library job I had no idea what I was getting into, and the director was telling me that everything was headed in the direction of technology. Even he probably had scant concept of networked information or even such a thing as an ebook, though it's not out of the question, since Vannevar Bush had written As We May Think in 1945 and hypertext had been invented sometime during the 1960s and ARPAnet was nothing new, but I had never heard of any of it and had only used a word processor under duress to finish my senior exercise in college, a sorry excuse for a paper that featured - you guessed it - little in the way of research.
I got off topic. My default as a teenager was to go to the library and grab a book and lie prone in the stacks. I looked at Jazz Is by Nat Hentoff again and again but I don't know if I finished it, and looked at other books that mentioned John Coltrane and Ornette Coleman. Poetry books were a curiosity, especially the ones in French or in translation, but I don't remember which specifically, maybe I just liked glancing at them. Drama too. There were comfortable chairs, but mostly I sprawled in the stacks.
My father is a mathematician. My mother is a reference librarian. Ironically, I combined the two and became a science librarian. "You really landed yourself, didn't you," someone remarked to me once. I've seen changes but not as many as some. I'm a consumer of technology rather than a developer or an innovator. Not long ago I went back to the library of my youth. It had changed dramatically. Fine paneling. Many computers. Wide open spaces for people to gather. And on the second floor, books, where there weren't offices, books, which had once occupied the lower level, books, in dignified rows, waiting to be discovered. Some that I might have read or touched back in the day were probably long gone, succeeded by fresher material. Maybe there is a connection. Maybe nothing is lost, and maybe it is all about loss. I don't know. I wasn't much of a reader actually then, struggled to finish a book then and that's true today. Do a lot of reading online and more scanning, and a good thing about a book makes me stop and disconnect, and a library gives me pause by its solidity, by its having withstood time and change, though I live in a part of the country where municipal libraries are still relatively well supported, and even not that much if I look at the budgets (~ 1%.)
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