Thursday, July 26, 2007
Links to other Lane bloggers
Just wanted to point out that I've added a links list to all of the other Lane Library bloggers. See to the left and below to quickly check them out.
Task : Del.icio.us
The task at hand is to create a del.icio.us account. Happily, I did that about a year ago - though I often forget to add sites to it. I originally started it as a repository for sites regarding my research on the pop culture references to librarians. I'm completely fascinated by the stereotypes of the people in this profession, but most especially to the image of the vampish, sexy librarian. Just find it totally fascinating. However, given the strange and disturbing sites that often appear while searching for those types of images, I decided it was probably not wise to do that searching at work - even if I did have an academic interest in it!
This post though reminds me of what a useful took del.icio.us is for saving sites though. I think that I'll be sure to use it much more and probably will be adding so much to it that it will be annoying. It'd be fun to add the folks from this project to my networks on there though and take a peek at what it is they are cataloging.
So far, I've added Jewell to my del.icio.us network. So easy because once she added her del.icio.us account to her blog, I just clicked on the "Add" link and she showed right up. Fun! Now I can see what goodies she's got bookmarked. Feel free to add my account to your own network!
This post though reminds me of what a useful took del.icio.us is for saving sites though. I think that I'll be sure to use it much more and probably will be adding so much to it that it will be annoying. It'd be fun to add the folks from this project to my networks on there though and take a peek at what it is they are cataloging.
So far, I've added Jewell to my del.icio.us network. So easy because once she added her del.icio.us account to her blog, I just clicked on the "Add" link and she showed right up. Fun! Now I can see what goodies she's got bookmarked. Feel free to add my account to your own network!
Catching Up
I've been remiss and haven't been on top of posting anything new on here or completing more tasks for this project. What a wierd couple of weeks at the library...while the rest of the faculty are enjoying summers off, we at the library use the time to work on projects. For the past two weeks I've been working to track down all the books that need to be moved from our New Books shelf into the Main Stacks. It's amazing to me how many items just seem to get lost or go missing. This week was even stranger as the air conditioning went out on Friday afternoon and didn't come back on until Tuesday afternoon. That made for pretty sweltering conditions given that it's July in Savannah! Then my computer was held hostage for a day while CIS (Thank You Mike!!!) fixed some problems and did some upgrades. By the time I had it back, a fiber optic cable was accidentally cut somewhere about a mile up the road and we had no access to the network. Needless to say, it was difficult to get much done.
I am vowing to be more productive the next few days though on the blog.
I am vowing to be more productive the next few days though on the blog.
Monday, July 9, 2007
Heck Yeah Librarians are hip!
Yesterday the New York Times confirmed what I already knew....librarians are way cool. In an article (may require subscription to access) focusing on the new crop of librarians (in this case living in New York and Brooklyn) who are hip, creative, and pop culture-savvy, the changing scope of the profession is discussed. In a world that is embracing vast amounts of information available through technology, librarians are as relevant as ever...if we can just get people to see beyond the stereotypes.
As a fellow "modified librarian", I was particularly excited that the article discussed the draw for creative-types and activists who are drawn to the profession because of the strong sense of ethics around providing access to information to patrons. While I wish that I lived in Brooklyn and could join up with the Desk Set one night for drinks after work, I am extremely happy that even here in my smallish city I've been able to build a professional network that includes some other librarians that often receive the remark, "Wow, you don't look like a librarian!"
As a fellow "modified librarian", I was particularly excited that the article discussed the draw for creative-types and activists who are drawn to the profession because of the strong sense of ethics around providing access to information to patrons. While I wish that I lived in Brooklyn and could join up with the Desk Set one night for drinks after work, I am extremely happy that even here in my smallish city I've been able to build a professional network that includes some other librarians that often receive the remark, "Wow, you don't look like a librarian!"
Task : Feeds
I went ahead and set up my news feeds on Google Reader since I've already got a Gmail account and am using Blogger. Should I be worried that I'm using all Google products? In any event, setting up feeds really couldn't be all that much easier. I'm set up to recieve feeds for several news searches that I regularly do (including a Google news search for all news relating to libraries and archives) and also set up for several blogs that I frequent. It is really nice to be able to just see the quick news and blog headlines rather than head to each and every site. I'll have to do some work to narrow my feeds though a bit because on several of my news feeds, I get all aspects of the news including categories that I'm actually not all that interested in or that despite my best intentions I don't read all that thoroughly anyhow.
I had to do some thinking about how we at Lane Library could make use of feeds ourselves. An obvious option is to make our blog available with a feed so that people could just watch for updates. I think that setting up a feed for our new acquisitions could be really great, though we'd definitely need to narrow it to subject areas so that the weekly lists weren't totally overwhelming. I looked online a bit to see if there were other libraries creating feeds and to find out how successful they were. (If you create a feed, is there some sort of counter that allows you to track how many people are accessing it?) Here's a link to a good article about how libraries can use RSS feeds: http://www.llrx.com/features/richsite.htm
I had to do some thinking about how we at Lane Library could make use of feeds ourselves. An obvious option is to make our blog available with a feed so that people could just watch for updates. I think that setting up a feed for our new acquisitions could be really great, though we'd definitely need to narrow it to subject areas so that the weekly lists weren't totally overwhelming. I looked online a bit to see if there were other libraries creating feeds and to find out how successful they were. (If you create a feed, is there some sort of counter that allows you to track how many people are accessing it?) Here's a link to a good article about how libraries can use RSS feeds: http://www.llrx.com/features/richsite.htm
Friday, July 6, 2007
Coveting : Position on a Library Bookcart Drill Team
The other afternoon I was checking in some serials and happened to notice that the last page of the Christian Science Monitor (June 27, 2007) had a full page article on the National Championships of the Librarian Bookcart Drill Teams held at ALA quite recently. I'd never heard of such a thing and was so excited in reading the article that I forced a coworker to pull up some YouTube clips of said event.
Oh Lord! I want to be a part of a Library Drill Team! The hilarity, the creativity, the fun! The grace with which these librarians maneuver their book carts is something to behold.
Task : Facebook
I've created a profile on Facebook and messed around a bit in there. I'd like to think that I'm relatively savvy when it comes to working in these kinds of environments, but I have to admit that it took me quite a while to feel comfortable navigating within it. Just creating and editing my profile took a couple of hours and then I had to figure out how to search for friends, groups and networks. Still I can't for the life of me figure out how to change from the "Armstrong" network to the "Armstrong faculty" network. I've joined a couple of groups - one of Lane Library student workers (glad to know that they've got pride!) and a pseudo-professional group of librarians. I did sign up for a fun application called "Librarian" that supposedly puts my name out there as a local librarian contact and also provides links to online library services. I'll have to investigate this a bit more though because I'm not quite sure of what it's fully capable of and how others would find me. If I can figure it out any further, I'll post more about it.
I'm a huge fan of increasing library presence where the kids are at, but I do wonder if we're really going to be effective in this type of environment. I may be biased given my own experiences on Myspace. I have a current personal profile that I use to keep in touch with a large number of friends and acquaintances that otherwise I might lost track of, but I have set my profile to private because of the large volume of spam that I receive and lewd invitations in my inbox. I absolutely hate when people that I don't really "know" in real life contact me online and wonder if students might feel that faculty librarians are intruding a bit into the social lives if we proactively seek them out on social networks like Facebook. Then again, perhaps this younger generation who has grown up much more comfortable with having their personal lives available online will not see it as unusual. I'd be very curious to hear other people's opinions on this - either other librarians who have experimented with this or students and library users.
I'm a huge fan of increasing library presence where the kids are at, but I do wonder if we're really going to be effective in this type of environment. I may be biased given my own experiences on Myspace. I have a current personal profile that I use to keep in touch with a large number of friends and acquaintances that otherwise I might lost track of, but I have set my profile to private because of the large volume of spam that I receive and lewd invitations in my inbox. I absolutely hate when people that I don't really "know" in real life contact me online and wonder if students might feel that faculty librarians are intruding a bit into the social lives if we proactively seek them out on social networks like Facebook. Then again, perhaps this younger generation who has grown up much more comfortable with having their personal lives available online will not see it as unusual. I'd be very curious to hear other people's opinions on this - either other librarians who have experimented with this or students and library users.
Monday, July 2, 2007
Task : GoodReads
Next up on the task list...joining GoodReads. So I joined up and have been enjoying working my way around the site. It's a pretty fun way to get book suggestions and read reviews by every day readers. As you enlarge your "friends" circle, you can see what books you have in common and their thoughts on what they have been reading. It's also possible to just take a look at what books are most popular/unpopular on the site as a whole. It's a fun site, but to really get engaged takes work as you need to enter quite a bit of information about your own reading habits to really get the most out of it.
I'm already a member of LibraryThing and to be honest, I think that I prefer that site to GoodReads. The biggest drawback to LibraryThing is that to enter more than 200 books, you have to have a paid membership but the fees are relatively low. But in return, I find that the cataloging is more fun - you can pick the standard catalog entry used by Amazon.com for an item or you have the ability to enter your own MARC cataloging (for non-librarians MARC refers to Machine-Readable Cataloging - a library standard). Additionally, it's easier to search for groups that you might be interested in joining and I like their book suggester which generates book recommendation lists based on a title or author.
I'm already a member of LibraryThing and to be honest, I think that I prefer that site to GoodReads. The biggest drawback to LibraryThing is that to enter more than 200 books, you have to have a paid membership but the fees are relatively low. But in return, I find that the cataloging is more fun - you can pick the standard catalog entry used by Amazon.com for an item or you have the ability to enter your own MARC cataloging (for non-librarians MARC refers to Machine-Readable Cataloging - a library standard). Additionally, it's easier to search for groups that you might be interested in joining and I like their book suggester which generates book recommendation lists based on a title or author.
EPA funding restored?
In case you hadn't heard (publicity on this issue was low outside library circles) the EPA had begun the process of restructuring their library system as a result of the Bush administrations 2007 budget which reduced the EPA budget to $500,000 for operational costs. Their plan was to close up to 10 regional libraries as well as the Washington D.C. main library. They had closed 4 libraries before the shut-downs were stopped by an outcry from the library community, Congress and other advocacy groups.
The closings would have severely affected major groups of researchers who rely on the EPA libraries for information, especially within the scientific community. Though the EPA was planning to digitize material to make it available on the web, the pace of digitization would still have create a major access problem as the information would be made available very slowly.
Possible good news on the horizon, however, as the Senate passed an Appropriations Bill last week that would restore funding to the EPA to be used to reopen and continue to keep open at least 5 of the EPA libraries. The bill now has to be passed in the House of Representatives as well, but hopefully with continued support, it will make it through.
Couple of articles worth checking out on the subject:
First Amendment Center
Library Journal
The closings would have severely affected major groups of researchers who rely on the EPA libraries for information, especially within the scientific community. Though the EPA was planning to digitize material to make it available on the web, the pace of digitization would still have create a major access problem as the information would be made available very slowly.
Possible good news on the horizon, however, as the Senate passed an Appropriations Bill last week that would restore funding to the EPA to be used to reopen and continue to keep open at least 5 of the EPA libraries. The bill now has to be passed in the House of Representatives as well, but hopefully with continued support, it will make it through.
Couple of articles worth checking out on the subject:
First Amendment Center
Library Journal
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