LISNews: Librarian News

I have just finished reading (or more like skimming, actually) a book entitled Reading and the Reference Librarian: the importance to library service of staff reading habits. The main argument of the book is that librarians do their job better if they read something on the side, and they don't mean professional literature. They mean things like newspapers, magazines, fiction, etc. By having a well-rounded diet of information, the authors (Juris Dilevko and Lisa Gottlieb) say we will be able to better help patrons and combat the deprofessionalization of librarians.

The first claim makes a lot of sense. In my last position the reference desk was right next to the current periodicals display and we were encouraged to flip through Time, Newsweek, and so on when on the desk. This was enormously helpful when helping students come up with topics, knowing what was the zeitgeist, and figuring out what the heck they were talking about. It helped professors see us as knowledgeable about world events and topics relevant to their courses. And it helped to make the reference desk time even more enjoyable.

As for the deprofessionalization argument, I think their claim could be summed up like so: Reference has become more about answering questions from a variety of sources and less about being well educated. The move toward this "call center" mentality harms the image of the librarian, while the idea of the well-read and well-educated person on the desk can only help us.

This short description of the book isn't really doing it justice. It was an interesting and thought-provoking read, and I think I will revisit it when I have a bit more time to drink it all in...

As mentioned previously, I'm running for ALA Councilor at Large this year. I'm also now running for NMRT Director. I don't really have any groundbreaking new ideas to implement or long-lasting beefs with ALA that I feel the need to air; I just have a tendency to volunteer to do things. I also like ALA and think it's been a great organization for the most part and want to help out and be involved.

However, for the ballot I have to write a "statement of professional concerns." I'm trying to find a good way to make the above sound interesting; to not sound like a fruitcake but still be thought-provoking and someone you might vote for. This is what I have so far:

Now that I have my MLIS and a steady job, I seek to give back to the profession and ALA by becoming more involved. Though I'm relatively new to librarianship, I have much to offer. I have recent and varied experience as a paraprofessional and professional, which allows me to relate well to issues faced by all library staff. I have worked in public, special, and academic libraries of all sizes, and can conceptualize the differences and similarities in working in these environments. I can understand and focus on issues involving libraries and those who work in them, and help bring ALA's attention to these issues. As a recent library school graduate, I bring perspective on what is currently occuring in library education. As a native and current resident of the Pacific Northwest, I offer more representation in ALA for libraries and library workers in the West.

Anyone have any thoughts?

I've really gotten a lot out of conference blogging, so here's a selective wrap-up of a short two-day retreat the Academic and Special Libraries Division and Public Library Division of the Montana Library Association had last weekend. I don't think a lot of folks from Montana are reading this (if you are, show yourselves!) so hopefully the rest of you may find it interesting.

The Rise of the Creative Library--this session, presented by Jim Heckel of Great Falls Public Library, provided an overview of concepts outlined by Richard Florida in his book _The Rise of the Creative Class_ and how they fit in with libraries. The main thesis is that flourishing communities adopt the three T's--technology, talent, and tolerance.

Not Ready For Prime Time Freedom Fighters--an amusing and informative skit-based presentation by a number of folks from various public librarians. Much interesting discussion ensued on what to do when law enforcement comes to visit, how to deal with subpoenas and warrants, and how to handle book challenges.

Dial R for Reference--presented by Brent Roberts of Montana State University-Billings. This was a great interactive refresher on the reference interview. Lots of small group discussion and presentations. I really recommend this concept to any organization looking for a workshop or continuing ed activity--we can all use some brushing up on the reference interview.

There was also a lot of great food and the retreat itself was in a lovely location. I definitely recommend an event like this--very casual and low key but filled with lots of useful info.

There is a student sitting right next to my office door, studying. Every time I leave or come back in I feel like I should apologize for disturbing her.

Anyhow, I'm posting to out myself. I nominated myself as a candidate for ALA Councilor-at-Large and was selected to be on the ballot. I am an intern on the Intellectual Freedom Committee so I have to be at the conference for the same length of time as Council, so I decided, "What the heck. I have opinions and I like to express them!" Now I have to work on *articulating* them so that others will support them and, therefore, me. Watch this space for further updates!

Things have been crazy with my first annual review and the start of the semester but I hope to start blogging (journaling?) again more frequently. It's such a useful tool for developing my thoughts and getting feedback from librarians outside my institution.

Those of you on DigRef may have seen Bernie Sloan's message about AskMeNow, a new SMS (cell phone text messaging) reference service targeted directly at users. It's currently in beta and claims 15,000 users. While in beta it's free but it looks like they may start charging.

It works by having the user call a (for me, non local) phone number on their cell phone and leave a voice message with a question of any sort. It's promoted as an alternative to 411 but they say they'll answer any question to which the answer is available on the internet. They then text message the user's cell phone with the answer, usually within three minutes.

I decided to put it to the test. After signing up, I called them with the question, "How many librarians are there in the United States?" Almost exactly three minutes later, I got a text message that said, "There are 137,000 librarians in the U.S."

It was quick, but was it correct? There was no source cited, which was of course a problem for anyone interested in valid information. I went to the Occupational Outlook Handbook and found that "librarians held 167,000 jobs in 2002" according to BLS. So I went to Google and typed in "number of librarians." The first hit was ALA Fact Sheet #2, which said there were about 137,000 librarians based on their own research.

This was an interesting experiment. I'm curious now how AskMeNow answers questions. Is it just some guy listening to these voice messages, then going to Google and text messaging back info from the first hit? Will anyone besides me use for research-type questions? Is this something our library could adopt, or did the noncompete clause in the license agreement mean that we can't do that?

For those of you interested in running your own little experiments or just learning more, visit www.askmenow.com.

First of all, in honor of the day, yarr, me hearties!

Since my spouse's computer died a few weeks ago, taking with it (we thought) the first chapter of his dissertation along with other writings and such, I feel the need to remind us all to back up our work frequently. Of course, we are already doing that, right?

It turned out that they were able to fix the computer and the dissertation chapter was unscathed, but *then* last week our external hard drive that we share and back stuff up onto died forever, with all my grad school work on it. I have hard copies of most of it so I'm not too upset, but my spouse had all his iTunes music on there which is gone forever...I don't even want to think about how many dollars went down the drain with that.

Lessons learned--back up frequently, back up your backup, and paper is the best format for archiving academic work! Also, you should maybe burn that iTunes music to CD. I hope you all don't have to learn that the way we did. Back up that data!

A few months ago, I was saying something at a meeting about making a tutorial for the online catalog when one of the catalogers interrupted.

"You said *card* catalog!" she declared.

"I did?" I said.

"You said online card catalog. There's no cards involved. Card catalog is an outdated term!"

Hmm. I worked as a cataloger for a couple years before this job and it seems like a lot of what goes into a catalog record is still tied to the card format. The concept of main entry, LC subject headings, serials holdings especially--things like that. When I'm instructing students now on how to use the online catalog, I ask them if they've ever seen a card catalog, and to picture the online interface searching through the drawers. To me, this explains a lot of the funky stuff about searching an online catalog that makes it different from using an article database or search engine. Of course, it's getting to the point where few students have seen card catalogs any more so I may just have to abandon the analogy for instruction.

I'm just curious what the LISNewsterz think. Is there still a connection between the online catalog and the card catalog? Or am I, as the catalogers here tell me, hopelessly out of date with the cutting edge craft of cataloging?

A patron just came up to the desk and asked me, "What time would 10:40 be?"

I have to admit that this question threw me a bit. I would guess that 10:40 is the time that 10:40 would be, generally speaking. So I said, "I'm sorry, I don't understand your question. What do you mean?"

He repeated, "I need to know what time 10:40 is."

After a few rounds of this, he said he was talking about Pacific time. He had an eBay auction he was bidding on, and needed to know what 10:40 Pacific is in our time zone. They're one hour behind us, so it would be 11:40. Then we had a few back-and-forths on that point, and eventually he wandered off.

Sometimes, this job is just kind of surreal.

I think I covered most of the big stuff I did in my first five reports. The other sessions I attended (LITA's top ten tech trends forum, the ACRL President's Program, Obama, Sedaris) have been covered very well elsewhere and I don't have much to add.

The things I most enjoyed about this year's conference: the E-Reference session I blogged about in report #5, seeing old friends, meeting new ones, volunteering at the Scholarship Bash, being in Chicago, getting a sweet hotel deal.

The things that bummed me out: missing the OCLC Blogger Salon (a comedy of errors involving conference buses, a rescheduled alumni event that I didn't know was rescheduled, and an overwhelming desire to take a nap), not seeing as many old friends as I would have liked, not being able to do everything on my schedule.

Thanks to all who have read these reports; I'm glad that I can organize my thoughts and impressions well enough to share some tidbits with you all. I can't recommend conference blogging enough. I feel as if this one will really stick with me.

The program's full title was "E-Reference Services: What Are Our Users Telling Us?" and the news was perhaps not as good as we'd hoped. This was a very useful session, however, probably the most useful one I attended. The presenters highlighted a lot of the frustrations and challenges facing VR services from both the patron and librarian end of things. Key points were the difficulty in evaluating services honestly, problems in funding, and lack of commitment to services. The presenters also shared some great anecdotes and quotes from users.

The first presenter, Sarah Weisman from Morris County (NJ) Public Library, discussed her library's service stats and web analysis. Chat and email reference make up a very small part of their reference questions. She mentioned generally that libraries have become the "provider of last resort, not of first choice" and shared some thoughts on how to better ourselves and our online services through marketing, reduction of costs, and standardization of services.

Chuck McClure of FSU was the next speaker and had a humorous and informative presentation on assessment of VR services. It was interesting to hear that he considers exit surveys a waste of time, since everyone always says they're satisfied no matter how their experience turned out. I was also surprised to find that public libraries perform better than academic with regard to providing service via chat and email reference. Again the idea of funding and sustainable services came up. Chuck cautioned us to think about whether we want to consider VR a core service, and to keep the future in mind (video reference, anyone?).

The concluding speakers, Sarah Morris from Colorado and Laura Kortz from NJ, discussed the top users of VR, teenagers, and the results of a focus group they did with incoming college freshmen. They suggested that, to increase popularity of the service, we needed to work on marketing, make the service more like instant messenging, and allow users to foster an ongoing relationship with specific librarians on the service and rate the librarian that answered their queries.

It was a great session with a realistic view of the problems VR faces, but offering lots of food for thought on how to fix it. I had to leave early to get to another meeting so I unfortunately missed the Q&A. I have pages and pages of notes from this session, so if you want to learn more about a specific part of it just let me know and I can probably flesh it out a bit.

I just thought I'd solve the poster session mystery I brought up a couple of weeks ago to say that I did get my poster reprinted at the correct size. It was a little fuzzy around the edges--apparently I had created it in the wrong size or something. Oh well, live and learn.

For some reason the ALA poster session space seems to always be in a weird corner of the exhibition hall. This year was no different, with us practically standing in a stairwell toward the back of the hall. Not too many people stumbled across us there.

I think about 20-30 people cruised by my poster. They seemed interested in the topic (What do Distance Education Faculty Want From the Library?) and wanted to know the answer (for us to teach their students how to use the library, outside of their own courses). I had about ten people sign up for me to send them more information, and a couple emails after I got home from people who'd missed the session but wanted to know more.

This was my first professional poster session--we'd done a few in library school--and all in all it was a good experience. It was fun to meet my poster neighbors, and I had a good time talking about my research with those who walked past. Some probably heard more than they wanted to know!

If I do a poster session in the future, I'll be sure to:

• Get the poster printed at least a week ahead of time
• Make sure it's designed at the right resolution and that the printer understands what size it should be when it's done
• Maybe mail it to myself at the hotel so I don't have to carry it through the airport (of course then I'd have to worry about it getting lost in the mail)
• Maybe have a co-author so someone else can stand at the poster while I go look at everyone else's work (I snuck away to see Steven Bell and John Shank's excellent poster about blogging to courseware but that was it)

Feel free to take a look at the handout here and let me know what you think. I wanted to get a picture of my poster too but I left my camera at home for this conference. Maybe I'll take a picture of the mini-version and put that up sometime soon....

The official DLS program was a bit of a disappointment to me as a new member of the Distance Learning Section. The topic was "Distance Learning: We Know Where We've Been, but Where are We Going?" I arrived a bit late, so the first speaker was already talking. His theme was that of the greying profession and the upcoming gap in leadership. Like so many young librarians, and as a member of a search committee for a position where we have 120+ applications, I just don't buy into this myth. There are tons of librarians out there eager to work and ready to step into leadership roles. The presenter during this part was one of the authors of the AL article on the ACRL heads' desired leadership traits in new librarians that got everyone so riled up a few months ago.

The second presenter had an interesting look at diversity issues in distance education. Unfortunately she didn't have a lot of statistics or examples to back her up and her presentation showed it. Still, it was good to point out that we need to be aware that distant students are different from the traditional on campus population.

The final speaker askd whether new grads were ready to provide distant library services. She concluded that for the most part they were. Gee thanks!

The DLS also hosted a breakfast and business meeting. This was a much more enjoyable and valuable experience for me as a new member. I got to meet a lot of other distance librarians and came to understand that part of the problem is that everyone at the conference had been in the section for a very long time and many of the librarians in the section seem to be nearing retirement. So I guess they have a bit of a biased view, with so little new blood coming in. Hopefully I and the other new, younger people in attendance helped ease their fears a bit. They are a very welcoming and friendly group of people and I have never felt more at home going into an ALA meeting. So, all my fellow newbies take note--here's an interesting part of the profession that we can get involved in!

At ALA this past weekend, I attended a couple of OCLC sessions.

The first was called "Reference in Context: QuestionPoint & 24/7 Reference, Meeting Users at Point of Need," held Saturday morning. It was basically an hour showcase of the new virtual reference software brought about by the merger of 24/7 and QuestionPoint. This is the software our consortium uses so I figured it was a good time to learn a bit more about it.

I found out that we'll be able to get a bit more info on our patrons if they are willing to provide it. We'll be able to see what library in the consortium they're coming from and what browser they're using. We'll also be able to have more than one chat open at a time. This is probably not likely to happen for a while--I've been staffing the chat site for a few months now and have only had one chat question.

OCLC also explained the method behind 24/7 coverage. Basically your consortium or whatever is its own 'queue' and librarians from other queues staff your site when none of your home librarians are available. In exchange, you are asked to pick up the slack in others' queues when you're on (and also pay $$$ to OCLC). Interesting.

I learned a bit more about prepared scripts for greetings, genealogy questions and the like. This is something we're just starting to use here. The Knowledge Base was also discussed--it's like a wiki for the service where you can create or append pages for frequently asked questions.

I also found out that some libraries apparently use the QP-24/7 software to track face-to-face and phone reference queries. It makes sense, because you can compile stats and increase follow-up, but I'd no idea anyone would do that.

The other OCLC session I attended was the Update Breakfast on Sunday morning. I sat at a QuestionPoint table (there's tables for all the different products/types of services OCLC offers, plus a few 'general' tables) and listened to Jay Jordan tell us what's new at OCLC. After his presentation, I chatted briefly with the fellow at OCLC who manages QP. There were people who wanted to talk to him more than I did, however, so I didn't stick around too long after. I've been trying to attend the OCLC Update Breakfast for a year or two now at various conferences and I think it's definitely worthwhile if you work closely with their products. Plus, free food!

I'm going to try to do a post for each of the big activities I did at ALA. The first thing I did after picking up my badge-holder (why did I have to do this? does anyone know why I couldn't just put the badge they sent me before the conference into an old badge holder and just go?) was attend the Exhibits Opening.

I've never been at the opening before and it's best summed up in two words--mob scene. Librarians going after swag is a scary and awe-inspiring sight. I am not big on the swag since I have enough useless stuff cluttering up my office and house, but I did pick up a cute tote bag or two, some neat pens and pencils, and way more advance copies of books than I really needed. I got the all-important Unshelved badge ribbon. And I scoped out where my poster session was going to be held. They had a lovely spot for the poster sessions--under the staircase in the convention center, far away from most of the exhibits.

I'm not sure I learned much about exciting new products and services or made connections with existing vendors during the opening, but it was exciting to see librarians running around collecting all the free crap they could carry! I came back later when it was calmer for a more sedate walk through and examination of the offerings.

Hey, I managed to snag one of the highly coveted internet terminals by being at the convention center terribly early in the morning. Go me!

So far I've skipped over lots of meetings on my to do list. I always forget about the travel time between meetings when I plan from home.

Let's see--yesterday I attended the Exhibits Opening (just 'cause I happened to be registering at the time), an OCLC session, the EBSCO lunch, the ACRL Distance Learning Section Program, the Harry Potter Party at the Scholastic Booth (guess what, butterbeer is apparently Miller Lite), part of the Opening Session (Mayor Daley is a hoot!) and the Scholarship Bash. This morning I attended the OCLC Update Breakfast. Soon I will be off to the E-Reference meeting and the Ovid lunch. It's all about the free food. I mean, learning. More later!

Holy smokes, I just got my first chat question over QuestionPoint. It was an author looking to sell copies of her book. Well, at least it wasn't geneaology. I sent her some contact info for libraries in the area the book was set. I was so excited I was bouncing in my chair. I'm such a nerd.

In other news, I got my poster for my poster session printed and it came back about 1/4th the size it should have been. Whoops. It is being reprinted now but I may have to have an anxious day tomorrow making something else to take over instead. Guess that's what I get for waiting till the last minute.

Anyhow, if you're at ALA and in the poster session area Monday at 11-12:30, be sure to stop by and see if I have a tiny poster or what. It's like a mini-mystery. (ha! mini mystery! tiny poster!)

All the cool kids are posting their schedules on their blogs, so I guess I will too. Here's where to catch me when (at least until I get tired of it all and decide to spend the rest of my trip in the exhibit hall or the Field Museum). Stars and question marks denote conflicts that I haven't worked out yet. If you want to meet up, post back here or email me!

Saturday, June 25, 2005

9:30-11:00 Guidelines for Distance Learning Library Services Revision Hearings
Palmer House room: Salon XI

**10:30-12:00 Tenure and Continuous Appointment: Is It Worth It?

11:00-12:00 OCLC QuestionPoint & 24/7 Reference, Meeting Users at Point of Need
Embassy Suites - Lakefront room: Salon A-C

11:30-1:00 RefWorks Lunch and Learn
Fairmont room: Regent Room

?12:00-1:00 EBSCO Academic Librarian Database Luncheon
Hyatt Regency McCormick Place, 1st level, Conference Center 10, 11, 12

**11:30-1:00 Beta Phi Mu Member Assembly Mtg. and Lunch
McCormick Place room: N138

1:30-3:30 Distance Learning: We Know Where We’ve Been, But Where Are We Going?
Sheraton Chicago Hotel & Towers room: Sheraton BR V

**3:00-4:00 Ethical and Legal Issues in Reference Discussion Group
Palmer House room: Clark 10

3:30-4:00 NMRT Membership Meeting
Sheraton Chicago Hotel & Towers room: Sheraton BR III

4:00-5:00 Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince Pre-Publication Booth Party
Scholastic Booth #1316

**4:00-5:00 ALA Membership Meeting I
McCormick Place room: Grand BR A

5:00-6:00 Scholarship Bash Volunteer Meeting
Meet by Bash Booth

5:30-7:00 ALA Opening General Session w/Barack Obama
McCormick Place room: North Hall

7:00-8:00 Dinner

8:00-9:30 Volunteer shift at Scholarship Bash
Museum of Science and Industry

Sunday, June 26, 2005

7:00-9:00 OCLC Update Breakfast
Hilton room: Grand Ballroom

8:30-11:00 DLS All-Committees Meeting
Chicago Marriott Downtown room: Chicago D

**9:30-11:00 LITA Distance Learning IG
Hilton room: Conference Room 5I

**10:30-12:00 E-Reference Services: What Are Our Users Telling Us?
Hotel Intercontinental room: Grand BR

11:00-12:00 OCLC QuestionPoint & 24/7 Reference, Meeting Users at Point of Need
Le Meridien Chicago room: Salon III

12:00-1:30 Ovid Luncheon Update Session
Hilton room: Williford B

1:00-3:00 NMRT All Committee Meeting
Chicago Marriott Downtown room: Chicago D

**1:30-3:30 Booklist Readers' Advisory Forum: Chicago Writers
Sheraton Chicago Hotel & Towers room: Chicago BR VII

**1:30-3:30 Tiny Trackers: Protecting Privacy in an RFID World
McCormick Place room: S404

3:00-5:00 ALA PRESIDENT'S PROGRAM: Coming Full Circle: The Library as Place
McCormick Place room: Grand BR B/C

4:00-7:00 UIUC Graduate School of Lib. and Info. Science Alumni Association Annual Mtg
Bob Chinn's Crab House, 315 N. LaSalle S

**5:30- Library Bloggers Meet and Greet
OCLC Blue Suite, Hyatt McCormick

7:30-11:00 NMRT Social
Chicago Marriott Ballroom D/E

Monday, June 27, 2005

8:30-12:00 DLS Disc. Group, Business Meeting, & 15th Anniversary Celebration
National-Louis Univ. Atrium, 122 S. Mich

11:00-12:30 POSTER SESSION!
Table #3, Exhibit hall @ Convention Center

12:30-1:30 Lunch

1:30-3:30 Googling the Better Mousetrap- Cyber Resources on the Front Lines of Reference
Sheraton Chicago Hotel & Towers room: Chicago BR VI/VII

1:30-5:30 Time for a Reality Check: Academic Librarians in a TiVor-lutionary Age
Hilton room: Continental A/B

5:00-6:30 PLA President's Program and Awards Presentation with David Sedaris
McCormick Place room: Grand BR B/C

I'm doing some research into disaster and emergency planning. One of the sample documents I'm looking at is one of those checklists for bomb threats, which I find amusing because I think we'd be lucky if a person don't panic and run out the building if someone calls with a bomb threat, much less dig out a checklist and work through it. Anyhow, the third item on this particular list is to "notify a co-worker via nonverbal gestures that you are taking a threatening call." Just wondering if any LISNewsterz have ideas for these gestures, because most of the ones I'm thinking of would also be nonverbal indicators that the person I'm talking to is clueless or really annoying, like strangling myself or miming an explosion. Maybe I just need to learn some new nonverbal gestures...

If you check out http://www.chicagocrime.org/types/, there's a list of Chicago crime reports by type. Clicking on the type of crime brings up a Google map with locations of instances of that crime on it. Learn which areas to avoid, or possibly to seek out, depending on how crazy you want ALA Annual to get!

Catching up on some reading today and this quote caught my eye. From Meola, Marc. "Chucking the Checklist: A Contextual Approach to Teaching Undergraduates Web-Site Evaluation." Portal: Libraries and the Academy, Vol. 4, No. 3 (2004), pp. 336:

If
a scholarly controversy arises, does anyone ever ask a librarian to step in and resolve it?
If a question about the accuracy of political or economic information occurs, are librarians
ever invited to Sunday morning talk shows to evaluate? In courts of law, when
medical or psychological information is presented, are librarians ever invited to testify
about the accuracy of the information?

Heck yeah, let's get librarians on those talk shows! Oh, wait, there's another sentence in that paragraph:

When push comes to shove and information
needs to be evaluated, it is subject expertise and not librarian expertise that is valued.

Dang, there goes my media pundit/trial consultant dreams...