LISNews Librarian And Information Science News

When I was a kid it was Dominion Day.

This was about the time of year that we went to Crystal Beach. Crystal Beach is no more, but I still like the Fort Erie area.

I'm doing some research for work, and having trouble finding information. Can anyone point me toward any websites, blogs, or print resources with information about using non-MLS staff to work at a library's chat reference service? It could be anything: statistics, opinions, case studies, etc. It could even be about non-MLS staff providing "regular" (non-digital) reference. Most of the information I've found tends to just be debate about whether support staff should be called "librarians."

I am posting this early although it is a draft script and quite subject to revision prior to airing on the next episode of LISTen.

As this is recorded, ALA Annual 2008 is underway. I will admit upfront that I am not a member of the American Library Association and never have been. I simply cannot afford it while I can afford Christian College Librarians which is headquartered at Harding University in Arkansas. I can manage annual dues of twenty dollars far more easily than what is asked by ALA.

We must avoid the cloister. Librarianship is turning upon itself to be a monastery that keeps to its seemingly pious works while feeling it does good for a world it is increasingly not connected to. I can only hope that we are at a precipice now rather than having already taken a leap off it.

So where do I start? My boss at my day job went AWOL today. What was supposed to be a three hour short shift turned into quite a bit more. When the boss finally reappeared it was noted that the boss would have to go in for open heart surgery on top of the diabetes complications already.

Why was there no episode previously? I have been watching my boss decay physically. It has been impacting work and there has been nothing I could do to fix things. My team has been getting physically ill from things. I know it has been taking a toll on me physically. My co-workers are also at the point that we are going to have to force things to be brought to resolution.

Last week, we really had no news to talk about. While dealing with the on-going emergency at work, I kinda could not get home to record anything. On Sunday I got home late enough that we would not have been able to start recording until the very early hours of Monday morning. Rather than produce something with me sounding whiny yet exhausted, we went with speech synthesis. Such saved equipment set up while also allowing us to be sensitive to users who download right in iTunes or another podcatcher instead of going to the web page. That it was downloaded faster than a normal podcast had us initially disturbed but then quite amused.

Tho I'm having to do it on my own air miles and funding, I will be at ALA next week from Thursday through Monday. I'm staying with a friend who lives about an hour and a half, so no breakfast get togethers! But if you're a Newzter who's also going to ALA, let me know and maybe we can connect. The worst that'll happen is that I'll drag you along to some govdocs events or the gaming pavilion.

In a way going to ALA NOT sponsored by my work is liberating. First, it allowed me to advertise Free Government Information by putting it on my badge instead of my library. Second, I only need go to sessions that actually interest me instead of things that I "Ought to go to" because they fit with my job description or because another section really needs a summary of a session I'm just not into. I'm basically scheduling half-days at ALA

Finally, it gives me the freedom to visit the gaming pavilion, something I just couldn't justify if I was at ALA as an official representative of my special library employer.

Take care and hope to see a few of you next week!

at least, I think it's Colleen. it's sort of a cloud or lake landscape with the twin setting suns of Tatooine... no, wait, it's Colleen.

Did anyone else order Frequently Asked Questions to get the bonus drawing and autographs (it looks like a "G-something" and "B-something-with-a-dot")?

Just wondering if Bill varied what he drew and what the distribution might be and how rare each drawing is and how collectible and which mylar bag should I use and how much will it be worth in five years and does anyone ever read my blog?

Usually I make a bad joke, or several, about an issue and then forget about it. But I found my way back to this issue through Angel Rivera and I have some extra thoughts.

Some bloggers want you to boycott the Associate Press because the AP want to limit fair use. They want to guarantee that they get some financial compensation from our using their property. Whether it's an ad or actual money, they feel that whatever they publish, they should control, completely. And then "fair use" will get a new definition created by them which will be completely one-sided and totally unfair. So for that, the AP sucks. If you agree with that, then click the link and join the boycott.

But I feel it is also we who suck. We right-click and paste content and links without giving proper attribution. If I wrote a formal paper and didn't credit my sources, you'd call me a plagiarist. So why doesn't anyone care when bloggers omit that source credit? If you intend to have your opinions taken seriously, you should be expected to cite your sources.

Does your library blog answers to reference questions? Help me and James Jacobs of Stanford University build a Google Custom Search Engine of library Q&A sites. Help show off the combined expertise of librarians everywhere! For more details, please see http://freegovinfo.info/node/1888 or just add a Library Q&A blog in comments.

Ok. So it seems like I only come back when I want something. I'm back in part because I've signed up to LISNews via Twitter and RSS, so I'm seeing stories again. So hopefully I'll post now and again. This is still the best library staff community after govdoc-l!

Is librarianship a profession that nurtures creativity? Lately I am not so sure. Reaction to the recent do-it-yourself project released about modifying a talking teddy bear to speak your RSS feed of your tweets as well as your friends brings something to mind.

Why just condemn it and move on? This actually present a unique opportunity. For example, purchasing a good Text-to-Speech voice from an outfit like Cepstral would allow you to cannibalize the software for that project to create a running audio stream reading an RSS feed you generate. If your OPAC supports generating RSS feeds of data like new books or newly returned books, you have a unique data set to play with. You could use an audio feed of such to give airport-like announcements of new books on their way in to the library. You could use that as your "hold music". While you might need a programmer on-hand to smooth over the rough edges in the software, this is an easy way to be creative.

One big thing about our profession is that we do not define creativity as the world around us does. That can be both good and bad. The way to handle the omnipresent relevance question is to take stock of two key things. The first is understanding what the minimum acceptable level of service is that your patrons expect. The second is being able to creatively work with what you have rather than what you don't have to either meet or beat those expectations.

Glitz and tech won't always get people in the door. There are people out in the world who don't know what a blog is or why Twitter should matter to them. There are people who cannot live without Twitter every moment of the day. For public libraries in particular, a key mission is to serve all sorts of demographic groups who make up the "public" you serve. In other library types the pressure is not as significant but it remains.

As culture splinters into ever-smaller niches it becomes an issue in serving those niches. Libraries cannot necessarily be all things to all people. Getting to the point of being something to most people is a start from which you have to build off using creative talent held by library staff.

After all, the splintering into niches has yet to cease in the United States...

Cites & Insights 8:7, July 2008, is now available.

The 26-page issue is PDF as always, but most essays can also be downloaded at the Cites & Insights home page or from the links below.

This issue includes:

• Bibs & Blather - Why there isn't a nine-year cumulation of Top Tech Trends--and wondering about "free" and the worth of creative work.
• Trends & Quick Takes - four trends (including ongoing notes on high-def discs) and four quicker takes.
• Perspective: One, Two, Some, Many: Search Results & Meaning - And that's the short title! Notes on the apparent meaningless of large open web search engine result counts.
• Interesting & Peculiar Products - fourteen products and eleven group reviews and editors' choices.
• Retrospective: Pointing with Pride, Part 3 - third in the series of centenary celebrations.
• My Back Pages - Exclusive to the PDF version, as always: eight mini-rants.

so I'm griping about how I never get to use my mp3 player because I don't ever sit around with nothing to do. when I had a walkman 30 years ago, I walked, so I had lots of time to listen.

so I mention this and someone says, "use one earbud and then you can listen and do other stuff at the same time."

what???? so people actually listen to one channel of a stereo recording? this is worse than that Radio Shack AM radio with the single earpiece that your dad used to borrow to listen to the Mets games and got funk all over from his filthy ears. I see people all the time with the one earbud, and they look content, like they enjoy not hearing the bass or not hearing the lead guitar because that sound is coming out of the other earbud that's dangling down below. Unless you're in the Secret Service, stick both earbuds in your coconut, please.

Just wanted to let the world know I live... well, I mean, I have a pulse and brain electrical activity still, so they refuse to make the call.

Corrected url for the magazine with my interview with Mark Shuttleworth: http://www.linuxmagazine.com

Don't know if the interview will ever be on the site, but it is now available at some of the more major Barnes and Noble and Borders stores.

It's the June issue (thought it would be July... ack.)

Rarely is it good to talk about the inner-workings of editorial decision-making. Such ranks up there with the making of sausage and the creation of laws as things best not known. Sometimes it is necessary to do so, though.

This week's episode of LISTen features five separate Public Service Announcements. We received absolutely no compensation for running such. The five discrete ads are all available as free downloads from a federal agency, namely the Federal Communications Commission. While it may sound fairly odd to some and perhaps quite condescending, there is a purpose to such.

The role of the librarian in today's Amazoogle world is to meet information needs. When you start from that philosophical standpoint you have to consider some things. When there is a lack of a clutch in a coming paradigm shift, what responsibility do you have to those you serve? How does such impact serving their information needs?

For the audience that LISTen serves, the whole discussion of the digital television transition in the United States probably seemed meaningless. Such misses the forest for the trees. While we acknowledge that librarians are striving today to be technological elites, the people who are served by librarians more often than not are not such elites at all. The whole Tech for Techies discussion was an attempt to discuss the transition in terms of how to approach patron questions. Rather than tell a patron you don't know, why not take a look at some of the common questions patrons might pose let alone some uncommon ones?

I made a conscious choice to use all five of the ads I used. Those are the US government's best effort to reach out to the public. Have you ever heard such outside LISTen, though? With reports of somewhere around eighty percent of the population not even knowing this is coming, can we take steps to at least prevent catastrophic information seeking sessions that barely help anyone involved?

I will not order anyone to "be creative". That's not the way such works! Considering that ALA is entering into a public education partnership with an electronics retailer to try to get word out to folks, it is not like this is an issue that the profession's organization in the United States is ignoring. I would much rather you heard the government's best effort at outreach and be stirred to action on your own to try to do better. As information professionals who deal with the information-seeking needs of rather diverse populations, this should be an easy one to plan a program on! The ALA is already trying to make it easier for you to get speakers in as it is. If a listener can come up with something creative on their own, the result is probably going to be far better than my sounding like a drill sergeant barking orders.

Part of the infrastructure to our Amazoogle world is changing fundamentally. What is the role of libraries in trying to be relevant to their served populations? I do not argree that being hip and trendy is the way to go. Establishing a firm foundation and reputation as being the source for good information is what you build relevance on top of. In an unorthodox way I tried to show something that would be an easy thing to start with.

This wouldn't require an investment in new servers or software. This would not require necessarily an infrastructure investment. If anything this is something that libraries do well but have gotten away from over time. Being the "People's University" doesn't always require a new social network and sometimes requires merely a meeting room as well as speakers and potentially refreshments.

Whitehall branch of Columbus public has received over half a million in the will of one of its librarians. Also a scholarship for a colleague to attend library school.

http://collectingmythoughts.blogspot.com/2008/06/librarian-leaves-million-to-columbus.html

Captain Kirk wishes he had decided to become a librarian in the TAS episode "Bem". Spock, as always, responds by speaking the truth.

See:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Cv2INuu9eo&feature=related

New technology has made it possible, using tiny cameras, to gather details about people looking at billboard ads, such as their age or gender.

Article here.

Some cable systems are starting to complain that too many of the programs they pay for are being given away on the Web for free.

Story in the NYT:
http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/05/29/the-real-fight-over-fake-news/index.html?ref=techno...

A conversation with a book store clerk who wants full time work in a library.

http://collectingmythoughts.blogspot.com/2008/05/bookstore-clerk-magazine-fathers-day.html

Yea, an infinite amount of monkeys would instantly complete the works of Shakespeare.: "You will need an infinite number of tireless scholars to find / check the works. (and anyone who thinks ‘a computer would do it’ has never used a spell-check)."