LISNews Librarian And Information Science News

Todd Gilman Says Recent job postings and hires suggest that many academic libraries are losing interest in hiring humanities Ph.D.'s. As a librarian at Yale University who has watched the job market in recent years, I've noticed a rather disturbing turn of events — one that is gaining steam and undermining the likelihood that M.A.'s and Ph.D.'s in the humanities will be able to choose librarianship as a career.

Many recent job postings for humanities librarians, reference librarians, or those specializing in research education do not list subject expertise as a requirement.

Kathryn Greenhill Wonders Should academic libraries be obsessing so much about teaching the discovery of resources? Should we turn more attention to teaching the evaluation of resources ? Is it encroaching on what academics should be doing as part of their course? Should schools have already taught them this by the time they set foot in our libraries? It’s definitely beyond our traditional brief, but given that we no longer have a monopoly on the best discovery tools, is it time we sold the library as a place that has value because there are smart people who can give you personalised help to evaluate your information needs and the resources you find?

Eric Schnell asks Does the Medici Effect Work for Libraries? "Libraries looking to become more innovative can do so by intentionally creating an environment/organization in the Medici Effect can occur. This can be accomplished very simply by strategic reassignment of staff in key areas as the candidate did."

I don't normally point to LJ (not because I don't read/like it, but because you should already be reading it, and I normally try to point at things you would never read elsewhere.) but you should go read Google Books vs. BISON right now.

"We invest so much effort getting students to use our resources; it is absolutely excruciating to know we are frequently sending them off with nothing, especially when they don't ask for help from librarians."

"The bar has been raised. The maturing Internet and evolving array of Web 2.0 services has turned our customer base into what many have called a “Google Generation.” We can debate that moniker, but, clearly, no one is calling this the “Academic Library Generation.” Our BISON catalog may not be extinct, but it is being hunted down by the competition. As in nature, libraries had best adapt, change quickly, and build on past successes."

Tip O' The Hat to Bernie Sloan for the link.

Here's The webpage for "To The Eaves", By Lisa Forrest a Senior Assistant Librarian for SUNY College at Buffalo and the founding member of the school's Rooftop Poetry Club. (The Rooftop Poetry Club was established in June 2005 to provide a creative venue for writers of the Buffalo State College community.) The publisher has also published links to download MP3s of the poems set to music. To the Eaves is Lisa's first collection of published poetry.

The Kurdish Globe - Erbil,Kurdistan,Iraq - Reports University teachers and students complain about the lack of available books and the old system of searching for sources; meanwhile, they can do more to ensure the library works as it should.

"The books have not been computerized in the libraries and that's why I don't go there to search; it takes too much of my time," said Saman Hussein Omer, a lecturer at Salahaddin University.

FIRST came the Amazon book rankings, and word leaked out that perhaps some vaunted writers spent more time than you would think checking how popular they were, hour by hour. Then newspapers started tracking the most popular articles on their sites and journalists, it was said, spent more time than you would think watching their rankings, hour by hour.

But would you believe that academics could become caught up in such petty, vain competition? Of course, you say. Still, short of hanging out in the stacks at the library and peeking over shoulders, the pursuit of that particular vanity had to wait for the Internet, and the creation of the Social Science Research Network, an increasingly influential site that now offers nearly 150,000 full-text documents for downloading.

Full article in the NYT.

The University of Michigan has begun a project to determine the copyright status of books in it's collection, as described in John Wilkin's blog post.

"At Michigan we're engaged in an activity that I hope will one day seem ordinary and a routine part of library work. Resources from several departments are devoted to determining the copyright status of works typically presumed to be in copyright. For now, we're focusing on US monographic imprints (books, that is) published between 1923 and 1963, but plan to turn our attention to non-US publications in the future. "

Sixteen job applications, five first-round interviews, three second-round interviews, and seven (or so) months after finishing my master's in library science, Maura A. Smale landed a great position at an academic library in New York City. She says it's a pleasure (and a relief) to be writing from the tenure track.

In this Atlantic Monthly (June 2008) article an adjunct english faculty member shares his frustrations in trying to educate students at the "institutions of last resort" where he teaches those who never prepared properly for college education. He speaks of sheparding his students through "the dreaded research paper", and the hopelessness of students who just don't get electronic research. He writes: When I give out this assignment, I usually bring the class to the college library for a lesson on Internet-based research. I ask them about their computer skills, and some say they have none, fessing up to being computer illiterate and saying, timorously, how hopeless they are at that sort of thing. It often turns out, though, that many of them have at least sent and received e-mail and Googled their neighbors, and it doesn’t take me long to demonstrate how to search for journal articles in such databases as Academic Search Premier and JSTOR. Read more at:
http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200806/college