The Librarian's Commute

Final Post Here

2013-01-03T17:25:00.000-05:00

I was a new librarian when I started this blog. I may still be relatively young, but I don't feel so green anymore, and lately I find I have less to say. I'm hoping this is a sign of maturity and not complacency.

Looking back, I wonder if some of my attempts to be honest rather served to put my ignorance on public display -- some of my early posts make me cringe. I used this space to mull over ideas and problems, and this was messier and ultimately perhaps less useful than if I had presented successes and accomplishments.

Having said that, it seems like a good idea to leave this up for a year or so even though I will no longer be posting. Maybe it will assist other librarians who are entering the profession; maybe it will be a useful example of the form. For now it will also stay on my resumé, which reflects the idea that having a blog is an asset rather than a liability.

For the duration of the time I that I posted here, I was a community college librarian. Was I unique in regularly and publicly narrating the community college librarian experience? At the current time, I'm aware of only one other community college librarian writing in a similar way. I wish there were more! I was initially attracted to working in community colleges due to the combination of academia and social activism, and subsequently I have found many additional things to admire, but the inherent provincialism is worth occasionally leaving behind.

What's next? I do naturally enjoy writing, and I have a couple of projects in mind. Related to the previous paragraph, I would like to work with other community college librarians on a writing project. And if I can find a way, I'd like to contribute to meaningful scholarship

Library Friends

2012-12-21T17:13:00.000-05:00

The idea of establishing a Friends of the Library group for the college has been tossed around several times lately. At first I was wary, suspicious that it could be used to cut the library's budget, but now I'm beginning to see a place for it. Previously I associated Friends groups with public rather than academic libraries, but nearby Rowan University has apparently had one since 1996. And at other academic institutions it is common for alumni to establish book funds, which are essentially the same thing by a different name. In the past our own efforts have resulted in a Dedicate-a-Book program, but it is not actively promoted right now.

I think a Friends group, or something similar to it, could be worth trying for a number of reasons:

(1) Despite the everyday frustrations common to working in a bureaucracy, many people are very engaged in the college community, and they genuinely want to see it do good things and do them well. I'd rather not approach people and try to persuade them to care about the library if they do not, but when they come to the library of their own accord it would be nice to have an established avenue for how they could help us.

(2) Fiscally, times are tight, and much of our budget goes to electronic materials. I think our patrons (a group which includes scholars, instructors, students, and the general public) still like to see printed books. They like the idea of books, and they like to think that libraries have books. They like books even if in practice they use electronic resources more often. So while our library devotes a lot of time and resources to electronic access, as long as the printed book represents academia, the library has an obligation to support a physical collection. Maybe the primary purpose of a Friends group could be to support that physical collection.

(3) When people want to give things to the library, they rarely think of electronic materials. Accurate or no, electronic materials are still considered ephemeral, while the library as a place is not. Heck, even I find the idea of donating electronic materials unappealing, and I'm firmly convinced of how important they are.

I think the next steps toward making this happen involve working with departments outside of the library, and this is where the real work begins.

The Culture of Higher Ed

2012-12-15T17:35:00.000-05:00

It is representative of higher education in general that the college where I work was originally a seminary. (The seminary was built on farm land, and prior to that it was forest.) I think about this a lot, not only because a few of the academic buildings show vestiges of their original purpose, but because some traditions of the church appear in academic life. Many perceive, half-seriously, that a vow of poverty is taken when selecting work in higher education instead of business. Academic culture is much more community-minded than other occupations. It also promises to elevate its disciples if they are willing.

I do not question whether institutions of higher education are, overall, a good thing for society, but there is something blindly aristocratic in an insistence that a culture should continue even when income does not meet expenditures -- a situation I fear many institutions currently face. This makes the existence of academic libraries, with printed materials now a luxury, more impressive than ever. Libraries, which were able to form as an unplanned side effect of a free publishing market, now contain larger assemblages of physical books than many of our students have ever seen before and might ever see again.

I mention all of this partly because of recent news stories about how higher education is in flux. Free courses are available online; plenty of entrepreneurs publicly call a traditional college degree unnecessary; the ever-rising cost of college, and the resulting debt-load for many students, is either out of reach or seriously criticized by many middle-class citizens. Not to be fatalistic, but in this climate it is not unreasonable to suggest that the college where I now work might go the way of the seminary before it, and that the campus will be converted to something else in the coming decades. Who knows what -- a medical village? Testing and certification grounds? -- but presumably there would be a corresponding shift in the culture.

Is it fitting that the best thing I can think to do is continue to come to work each day?

Barriers to Student Success

2012-12-08T20:06:00.000-05:00

It is near the end of the semester, and the obstacles facing students are suddenly more noticeable. As they sprint to the finish, students are rushing around and packing things in, with no time to waste. Anything that is not a requirement, it seems, can be dispensed with. They have to do what to get a library card, in order to access the library resources? You can't get this online because of copyright? How many clicks does it take to connect to the database? The assigned reading is how many pages, and it will take how many hours?

In our department, meanwhile, it seems we have repeated discussions about specialization and the amount of time needed to learn to do a task efficiently. Occasionally librarians are pulled into helping at the circulation desk, for instance, and those transactions then end up taking twice as long due to unfamiliarity with the system and procedures. Students figuring out the expectations of a college during their first years (or semester) in higher education are similar to librarians negotiating unfamiliar tasks, and these can be painfully inefficient and frustrating experiences until mastered.

Some of the barriers that students encounter are unavoidable; some are due to poor time management or organization; some are a result of indifference. But I keep returning to the thought that if there is something we can do at the library to remove a barrier, we should. This may sound simple and obvious, but it belies the amount of energy and willpower it can sometimes take. Here are a few that come to mind as examples: *Off-campus authentication: Currently this involves the integrated library system and the local public library consortium, and to improve it would involve the college's public safety department, some new code from IT, and a new process for library staff. *Cooperation among services that are located in the same building: The library as a space occupies an entire building, but as a department it only occupies the first floor. Students often approach library staff with problems we have little control over.

Librarians, along with others working in academia but particularly in community colleges, have an obligation to identify and remove barriers in order to foster student success.

Library Guides and Course Management Systems

2012-11-28T17:59:00.000-05:00

During the past several years we have used Springshare's LibGuides extensively, to support instruction and to bring attention to various collections, services, and events at the library. (We do not currently have LibGuides CMS, formerly CampusGuides.) Recently we've begun to worry that the guides compete with the college's online course management system. The library has no wish to manage online courses, but we are starting to encounter faculty who understand LibGuides differently from librarians.

For librarians, LibGuides are a straightforward yet personalized way to highlight relevant parts of the library's collections and services. In my own experience, I have had the most success when I build a LibGuide for a particular assignment -- an assignment that has specific objectives but also some flexibility in terms of requiring students to perform some independent research. At other libraries, I notice that LibGuides are successfully used to replace paper pathfinders or hand-outs; the web-based LibGuides are far more malleable than either of those. There are usage statistics to see if anyone hits the content, and the guides support interactive features such as chat and forms.

Meanwhile, at least where I work, faculty who teach in person are looking for stable online space to easily organize their course materials and make them available to their classes. 'Course materials' can include hand-outs, syllabi, supplementary readings, and information about assignments. So while it's great when the library creates a LibGuide for a particular assignment, a LibGuide doesn't cover an entire semester, and even from my librarian perspective it seems weird that only a portion of a course would be supported this way. I mean, it makes the library look good, but it puts the rest of the college in a somewhat awkward position.

Then there are those faculty who teach online and/or have adopted the college's course management system to host their course content. From within the course management system, the LibGuides can get a little lost lost, as they just appear as a link.

The library has a functional relationship with those who administer distance education. As I write all of this down, it seems like the next logical step is a conversation with them.

Is This Also Called Burnout?

2012-11-21T17:01:00.000-05:00

Lately I've been worrying that I'm becoming stupider.

When I assist students at the reference desk, I'm often familiar with the assignment they are working on, and so I forget to listen to them fully. I recognize this as a type of arrogance or lack of humility that can develop when desensitized to students who are at the very beginning of their academic work; I've also observed instances of it in interactions between faculty members and students.

Then there are the times I catch myself being curmudgeonly about technology -- even here, on a weblog. I complain about the experience of reading online while expecting someone to read my own online posts. I can appreciate the grand tradition of technology-based dystopias, but it seems foolish to imagine having any influence on the sea change in information consumption.

Projects that would have once seemed simple now seem dishearteningly difficult and complicated. I can't tell if I was naive in the past, or if I am too easily defeated now. Along similar lines, I find I have less to say; I am surprised and outraged by less. Was I over-reacting in the past, or have I become complacent? I am also becoming weary of fighting for libraries. To me, the benefit of libraries and librarians is maddeningly obvious, and so why am I constantly in the position of reminding even those people in my own institution?

Upon re-read, it sounds like I'm ready for a holiday! Happy Thanksgiving!

The Comfort of Libraries and Print

2012-11-10T17:25:00.000-05:00

Even I -- a librarian intimately familiar with the trend toward majority electronic library collections -- as a patron have caught myself counting on the warehouse function of libraries. I frequently depend on the fact that my libraries will have a printed copy of something that I particularly want to read.

In a way, libraries fit right into the access instead of ownership model that many people take for granted with film and music services. It's just that the access point for books was established hundreds of years ago and is commonly supported with public money. With this in mind, how can anyone say libraries are obsolete? Is it because the market for books is beginning to include e-books in addition to print? Thanks to vendors such as OverDrive, ebrary, and Wiley, libraries are in that game too. I have trouble swallowing the idea that the availability of e-books means the end of printed books.

Many people who work intimately with printed media find themselves in a love-hate relationship, in terms of occasionally feeling overwhelmed by sheer quantity. There are days when having every last bit accessible online, instead of having to deal with the physicality of it all, sounds very attractive. However, as much as I am dependent on technology for my basic productivity, I'm disappointed when there's a book I want to read closely and I only have access to it as an e-book. What's unclear is whether there are enough people like me for printed versions of books to continue to exist.
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Added 11/12/12: Omitted here is mention of electronic reading devices -- when I'm disappointed with only having access to an e-book, I'm referring to browser-based academic e-books.

Library Infrastructure

2012-10-31T17:54:00.000-04:00

[Once again, circumstances created a delay in my posting here. Hurricane Sandy provides a pretty good excuse, however: We're waiting for electricity (and thus water) to return at home, and PSE&G promises that will be by Monday, November 5. Thankfully, the college is fully functional and re-opened after two days.]

Libraries as places, as most people know them, came to exist as a consequence of physical media. Now that media is turning digital, what should happen to this physical infrastructure we have built? We are not yet completely free of the need for places to put materials and supplies, but no longer in the quantities previously required. We also still need areas for librarians and library staff involved in assisting patrons and supporting our online collections, but offices take up far less space than shelving.

During this past semester, I've seen our library used as:
-Exhibition space
-Special event/discussion space
-Student work space
-Reception/celebration space

Apart from student work space, all of these uses are new. Yet each seems appropriate, and I hope they call attention to the potential for the library building to be used in novel ways. If librarians and patrons want to maintain symbolic ownership of their library spaces, these are the types of applications we need to celebrate.

The Impact of EDS on LibGuides

2012-10-13T18:01:00.000-04:00

As I mentioned earlier this week, I've been doing a lot of library instruction sessions recently. Over the past few years I've relied heavily on LibGuides for these one-shot sessions. The habit was to make a guide ahead of time, show students how to get to it during the class, and demonstrate library services and collections through the guide.

Then this past summer we adopted EBSCO's single discovery tool, EDS. I don't know if this is happening in other instruction sessions besides mine, but EDS is having an unintended consequence: Instead of immediately directing students to the LibGuide, I show them how to get to their LibGuide, tell them it's there for their subsequent reference, but then I go back to the main library web site and work from there. That big search box is too compelling to pass by, and it's too simple to ignore in favor of a LibGuide. Actually the entire library web page makes more sense when I can start with EDS, demonstrate how it works and what's there, and then segue into more specialized search tools and resources. We've been adding an EDS widget to the LibGuides, but somehow it seems a little silly.

Admittedly, this unintended consequence might be due to the nature of the classes I've been teaching. On Monday and Tuesday of the upcoming week, I'll be working with several Business classes that in the past have relied heavily on the LibGuides, and we'll see how they go. But one of the strengths of EDS is that you can throw almost any topic at it and guarantee results. Subsequently it's a great conversation starter and tool for demonstration.

Still Here

2012-10-08T18:20:00.000-04:00

It's been a little quieter than usual here, due to a busy library instruction season combined with one cold virus after another for the whole family. But I'll be posting again soon in the weeks to come!

Readers' Advisory at the CC

2012-09-24T18:05:00.000-04:00

My work at the two-year college has never involved much readers' advisory, and last week I started pondering the reasons for this. Here's what I came up with:

First, ever since I started my current job, my understanding has been that I should focus on communicating techniques of doing research and how to successfully use the library. We should be assisting students as they learn to work independently, but we should actively be avoiding doing their research and reading for them.

Second, academic fields are broad, and it would be impossible for one person to know about all relevant sources. Besides the director, there are four full-time librarians on the campus where I work, and even if all four were inclined to be subject specialists it would be difficult to cover all subjects comprehensively. We do have a liaison program, but my area is Arts, Humanities, and Social Sciences, which is very broad.

Lastly and most painfully, however, I should acknowledge my own ignorance, an awareness of which has been compounded by the following examples:
(1) Faced with two translations of a minor historical work, I did not know how to determine which to recommend purchasing for the collection. (Aside from requesting both of them on interlibrary loan and comparing the myself -- not an unwelcome answer, but different from most of the librarian shortcuts I'm aware of.)
(2) Viewing the many scholarly books written about a particular person in history, I struggled to determine which were the most interesting and readable, which the best-researched, and which focused on a particular aspect of the person. (And no, there were no current bibliographies or even literature reviews that I could find.)
(3) Where should I have turned for extensive histories of particular books or periodicals -- The Romance of the Rose or The Paris Review, for instance? I could find no single source for informed commentary.

Before readers here fault my library school education, I should say that I am aware of encyclopedias, and bibliographies, and periodicals whose sole aim is to review books and serials. Maybe I really need to do more of the very thing librarians are forever stereotyped as doing all day: Reading. Academic librarians do have some obligation to educate ourselves about the basic sources and standard texts in the fields that our institutions cover. But to know them all is a behemoth, downright quixotic task. It could take a lifetime to become competent enough to speak about the sources in one field, and even the authority gained from a lifetime would be subject to obsolescence. With so much else going on in modern librarianship, is this foolish to even attempt?

Textbooks and a Core Collection

2012-09-11T17:30:00.000-04:00

The longer I work at a library that supports a two-year college, the more I come to think that textbooks might be the most valuable thing we can supply to serve our student population.

So much of our collection is unused and unappreciated; so many students never use the library during their time at the college. A collection of active textbooks solves both of those challenges, neatly, in addition to addressing the idea of having a core collection in each academic area. Even if the overall collection is not strong in every academic area, at least we could have the core texts that are being actively used in classes.

But this is radical, no? To spend what would amount to thousands of dollars on resources that often become obsolete within a year, and in the best (history, English) cases might last for 10? On the other hand, didn't we used to do that with a print reference collection?

I would fight harder for this, but textbooks seems to be moving online anyway. Meanwhile, the textbooks we do have on reserve are flying on and off the shelves.

Plans and Wishes for Fall 2012

2012-08-28T17:10:00.000-04:00

The Fall semester begins next week, so I thought I'd share a few things that are going on here.

First, we're going to try and assess our instruction efforts this semester. We've never done this before, and after considering various options, we're going with a bare bones half-sheet of paper containing four or five questions for students to answer. We thought about using SurveyMonkey, but ultimately I think this will be simpler and we'll get better participation. It's a start, at least. Next semester we may tackle the tricky business of peer evaluation.

Over the summer, we deactivated our twitter account and created a coherent plan for our Facebook presence. There was no unique content coming from the twitter account recently, and I noticed we were predominantly being followed by people and entities that had very little to do with our college population. I still think twitter has great potential as a communication tool, but it just wasn't doing much for our library. I'm glad we tried it; we can always try it again differently in the future. Meanwhile we have a schedule for who will be adding content to our Facebook page, and we wrote up some guidelines.

A few weeks ago we debuted a new website. I use the word 'we,' but the credit really goes to one particular librarian who did most of the work. It's making me revisit my thinking about how to best provide services. I'm not trying to be a jerk when I say we serve a population of students who do not always know what they want. They might think they know what they want, but often that's because they don't know what we have. The challenge for the library web site is to teach them what's out there in a relatively intuitive, unmediated way.

Simultaneous to the new web site, we're debuting a discovery service, from EBSCO. (It's labeled EasySearch on the web site, and it's also commonly abbreviated as EDS.) I think it will particularly help the students we don't see in person -- those who don't look for personal assistance and who don't get specialized library instruction. One thing I'm worried about is that some of our collections decisions might be influenced by whether or not a resource will integrate well with EDS. I have mixed feelings about this, because I want our collections to be used, and I think EDS will increase our usage numbers, but I hate to turn down good content just because a parent company somewhere decided not to play nicely with EBSCO.

Earlier this summer when the instant messaging program we were using (meebo) disappeared, we signed up for Springshare's chat service. It was so straightforward, and the transition was so seamless, that it would barely be worth mentioning -- except that, as with other Springshare products, it continues to improve. Most recently I noticed that there are cool new sound effects. Next I hope to see a button that lets you modify your status without disconnecting, so that when I momentarily leave my computer to assist a patron, a chat patron isn't left wondering why I'm not responding.

On an individual level, I'm trying to move forward on several projects that involve working with people who are in adjunct or part-time positions. It brings to mind the difference between long-term and short-term thinking. Hiring people for the short term encourages short-term thinking, which would inherently seem like a bad thing. On the other hand, what if in certain situations the library could actually benefit from a little less long-term thinking? It is now possible to form electronic collections that could quickly change according to need. One year we could get an entire back run of a journal online if a particular adjunct faculty member wanted to use it in his/her class. The next year when she's no longer working here, we could get rid of it in favor of something else. Point-of-need collections, created using à la carte and patron-driven acquisitions processes, might actually be a very practical direction for a community college library that is more subject to external (short-term) economic forces than a research library. Actually, the idea of being able to easily and cost-effectively modify an entire collection is pretty exciting. Community colleges have a far shorter institutional histories than universities, and maybe their libraries have never truly needed to collect for the long term in the first place.

There's plenty more going on, but I think that's enough for right now!

August Break

2012-08-08T17:18:00.000-04:00

Around this time every year I take a week or two off from blogging. There is a lot of planning going on in the library as we head toward the Fall semester, so I'll be back later this month to talk about what we're up to. In the meantime, here are some of the titles on my reading list:

Zeitoun by Dave Eggers - Eggers has a new one out; I'm catching up.

Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell - This was mentioned here, and apparently it's being made into a movie.

Being Digital by Nicholas Negroponte - Referred to in this post. Again I'm playing catch-up.

Innovator's Dilemma by Clayton Christenson - The New Yorker had a profile of the author recently, & I haven't read this but have been meaning to for a long time.

American Visions : The Epic History of Art in America by Robert Hughes - Hughes passed away earlier this week, and I'm embarrassed to admit I haven't read any of his work. I'm not sure this 600-page tome is the best place to start, but we'll see.

Reading Devices / Selling Devices

2012-07-31T17:53:00.000-04:00

Despite my unpatriotic attitude about reading devices, during the past few weeks I have been experimenting with different tablets, as a staff development project. I have been exploring and comparing an iPad, a Kindle Fire, a Nook Tablet, and a no-name tablet running an older version of android.

First I needed to find a wireless signal. The wireless signal in the library building does not saturate everywhere, so I found myself not entirely mobile, restricted to certain areas. In my office, for example, I got no connection at all, but a colleague's office was a veritable hotspot. Luckily the service desk was also a hotspot, because I soon realized that everything moved quicker if I could use a personal computer (in particular the keyboard) simultaneously with the tablets.

Next there was making sure all of the batteries were charged, and then I needed to create new accounts on them (in preference to using my own personal profiles). So I created a Google account (for the Android apps), an Apple ID, an Amazon account, and a Barnes and Noble account. In order to test our library products, I needed SciVerse and ebrary accounts.

Each tablet has its own interface and quirks, so then I needed to learn the basics of each one. This is not as difficult as learning four new computers, but it's along those lines.

And now I'm getting comfortable with them. The biggest surprise so far has been realizing how inescapably commercial they all are. By commercial, I mean they are as much selling devices as reading devices. The iPad is tied to Apple and iTunes; the Kindle Fire is tied to Amazon; the Nook Tablet to Barnes and Noble. To engage in activities outside of those respective bubbles is like pushing against gravity. We found a work-around for iTunes, but I currently cannot download free e-books from Amazon to the Kindle Fire because I refuse to enter a credit card, and One-Click, which the Kindle Fire uses, requires one.

It's true that I'm using these devices as a librarian and not a normal customer, but I'm surprised a normal customer would be so ... gullible? Is that the right word? Technology news stories depict a future where there are no internet browsers, only apps, and I can confirm that extended use of the browsers on any of these devices is not a great user experience. Some apps are free, but others are not. And frequently the free apps have a commercial or promotional orientation.

I'm thinking this is just another step on a continuum: First we had the wild west of the internet, which was great for the public but not great for business, and now we have these devices as a response -- great for business but not great for the public. Will a compromise come next?

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update 8/2/12: I just got an email from Amazon promoting streaming videos for the iPad, and I also learned that with a microSD card I can install Android on the Nook Tablet. So I should have included a paragraph about collusion here as well.

On-Site Support for Online Students

2012-07-23T17:41:00.000-04:00

During summers at the college, we see an interesting array of students at the library. Some are at home for the break and are taking a course or two. Others are working on projects unrelated to this particular college but need somewhere quiet and cool. Lots of people are taking online courses and need a reliable internet connection, computer and/or printer.

I'm always amused to find myself helping someone who is taking an online course. Frequently I'm not even assisting with a technology problem -- I'm helping with a library question about journals or databases. I think this type of support is left out of calculations that tally up the costs and cost-savings of online classes. Yes, online classes are asynchronous and don't require a physical classroom. But I think they end up requiring more in-person assistance than is initially obvious, and it's important to make this point as education moves online.

This is an easy thing to theorize about, but I wonder if anyone is investigating it. It would mean studying students who are taking online courses to discover their preferences and needs. Actually, this may be just the type of interdisciplinary research topic that our new discovery service ("EasySearch" on our library home page) is ideally suited for. My first few searches brought up hundreds of thousands of results, so this may take some time, but I'll post here if I find anything noteworthy.

Weeding the Print Periodicals

2012-07-12T17:25:00.000-04:00

Again this week, I've been pondering a post from Wayne Bivens-Tatum's Academic Librarian blog. This time it's about weeding printed serials, which is a different beast at a research library like Princeton University than at a community college library. Yet somehow we find ourselves engaged in the same task: Looking at the print periodicals with an eye on the space they are inhabiting. Mr. Bivens-Tatum thoughtfully worries about his impact on the work of scholars who use the periodicals for their professional research. I'm still trying to figure out whom I need to be worrying about impacting. The bulk of our printed periodicals are sadly underused, and we have already canceled print subscriptions when online subscriptions are viable alternatives. This means that the bulk of our print periodicals are not merely historical relics, but they are also duplicated electronically. Even if online subscriptions mean relying on inherently unstable commercial vendors, the periodicals in our collection that have moved from print to online are unlikely to slip away unnoticed -- they were the big-name, established journals in the first place.

In a way, because the community college is not a research institution and because the library's mission does not include supporting faculty research, the decision to get rid of most of our printed periodicals should be laughably easy. So why do I feel a twinge? I think it's because at a community college, although we are serving primarily first and second year college students, it seems like a worthy aspiration to be more like PUL than less. Mr. Bivens-Tatum is agonizing about moving materials merely off-site; we are considering discarding them completely. This is how the gulf between the types of academic libraries widens.

Making an Efficient Process Out of Something That Is Not

2012-07-03T16:49:00.000-04:00

One of the great things about community colleges is that they give people a second chance. Community colleges offer opportunities for people who did not succeed previously -- for whatever reason. This is a valuable, important, and rightfully celebrated service. But when translated into an operation, it is not terribly efficient when it comes to enrollment, retention, and graduation. Efficiency would mean using past performance as an indicator of motivation and likelihood of future achievement, and then investing resources into those students, to help them continue to be successful.

So in order to be true to a major institutional goal, community colleges cannot always be efficient. Community colleges must -- must! -- treat all comers as if they exhibit an equal level of potential. Community colleges must be blind to past screw-ups. They must not stop helping students when they fail. Unfortunately, this can seem frustratingly sloppy from an administrative perspective. Community colleges provide a service that is noble but inefficient, and the inefficiency is intrinsic. While certain details can be tweaked and improved, they should not be altered radically at their core, at the risk of abandoning the underlying mission.

Ultimately a library collection is also inefficient. Over the years, a library collects resources that unfortunately go unused, despite the best judgements of highly-degreed professionals. Sometimes the library purchases something and nobody looks at it immediately, but after time it becomes highly sought-after. Or not. There are techniques that can limit how often this happens, such as patron-driven acquisitions, but even a collection based exclusively on stated curriculum goals might not see 100% usage. We are stuck with some intrinsic inefficiency, and from an administrative perspective this should not be regarded as something wrong with the library. (Unless we're going to characterize all inefficient processes as problems. Which is irrational, right?)

A community college library is certainly no research library, nor am I advocating becoming a book museum, but part of our mission is still to maintain materials relevant to our patrons.We can teach information literacy until we turn blue, but what are we recommending if the library doesn't have what students need?

Reading Devices as Rolexes for Readers

2012-06-24T09:52:00.000-04:00

Passing through several airports over the last few weeks, I noticed more e-readers than I had ever seen before. I'm not sure if this is because e-readers are particularly useful when traveling, or if they are becoming more common, but they seemed to be everywhere I turned.

I still don't have one myself, and I can't think of a reason that would prompt me to buy one. As I think about the reading I'd like to do this summer, I don't see how having an e-reader would improve the experience. For example, I'd like to tackle Moby Dick for the first time, but I think if I had an e-reader I would get sucked into other, more seductive reading. I'd like to catch up on some back issues of The New Yorker and The Atlantic, but I can't see how a tablet would make that any faster, and the paper versions aren't that much of a hassle to carry. It would be nice not to have to lug so many children's books around, but I don't want to replace those with a device at this stage. Maybe if I was going on a week's vacation and wanted to take 15 beach novels, a tablet would help. Maybe if I wanted to call attention to what a big reader I was, I could embrace an e-reader. But for lack of these reasons, I think I can hold off.

And I can't help but wonder, are these devices going to succeed commercially for reasons related as much to social class than functionality?

Library, the Word

2012-06-13T16:45:00.000-04:00

I stepped outside of libraryland this past weekend, on a trip out of state. It's always interesting to hear the reactions of strangers when you tell them you're a librarian. This time I got a sympathetic "Oh, I have an iPad now, so I guess we won't need libraries much longer," which made me grind my teeth a little, and it got me thinking about the average perspective of what the word library means. Of course libraries have power users, and libraries also have patrons who look for librarian assistance with absolutely everything in their lives, but what about the average person? Does the average person truly think that thanks to Apple, there is now no need for a library?

Since before I became a librarian, libraries have been in transition, yet the word endures. (To put this in perspective, the library in my high school was called a media center.) In some ways this is to our advantage, in that we don't have to introduce people to what a library is or do a hard sell to convince them to use it. Or do we? Because in a way, people have a very definite idea of what a library is, even if that library they imagine doesn't really exist anymore. We're still using the term, even if it's inaccurate. What to do?

The obvious recourse is to delete the word library from the vocabulary -- fine, iTunes, it's all yours! -- and call ourselves something else. It's time for a clean break: There are too many associations and assumptions held by the average person about what a library is and what it is not. But then we are faced with the question that has stumped better minds than mine: What replaces the word library? For all of the library traditions that blind us to new possibilities and directions, there are also some that are worth keeping as we move forward. A commitment to service is one, and so is a focus on users' needs. A methodical approach to collecting and grooming relevant content is another. So, what single word is descriptive and short and doesn't imply stacks of musty scrolls? Suggestions are welcome.

Summer Projects: Wishlist and Actual

2012-06-04T17:30:00.000-04:00

The college recently switched to its summertime four-day work week. This means that the library is now closed Fridays through Sundays until August, and that the Monday through Thursday work days are extended. Summer academic semesters are in session, but the campus is a lot quieter than usual. As I adjust to the schedule change, I remember that suddenly there is time for reflection and planning during these longer days.

And as I get older, I am becoming more appreciative of planning. Not to be unpatriotic, but I am getting weary of the short-term thinking that accompanies experimentation and innovation. And if librarianship is going to exist for the long term, and not be supplanted by the Internets, it is a good idea to invest in long-term strategy. Each library is unique, and this will echo much of what is in the professional literature, but here are areas that that seem important to the future of academic librarianship from where I'm sitting:

Information technology. No kidding, right? I'm referring to the ways technology is adopted institutionally, rather than the fads that come and go. This means that collaboration with those who work on the systems is crucial.
Distance learning. (I am still trying to figure out why instructional designers didn't think it was important to fully integrate our online resources and services into the online classroom.)
The publishing ecosystem. Most companies that distribute online resources seem to be ignoring the library model in favor of one-on-one relationships with customers. This is not just bad for libraries, but ultimately bad for customers who are prevented from sharing.

In an attempt to match the above, here's what I'm putting on my to-do list in the near term:

Codecademy seems like a good way to spend some hours in my office; so does testing our EDS, which is scheduled to be live for the fall semester. Also, I *still* need to learn more about our ILS.
There is a WebStudy conference at the end of June. Even if I can't go, I'll be paying attention.
It's really time to educate myself about what the Barnes and Noble Nook, Apple iPad, Amazon Kindle, Sony Reader, etc. can and can't do for staff and patrons, particularly on campus.
(I would like to include Open Access here, but I can't figure out what I should be doing personally, and there are already plenty of other librarians involved, so I'll leave it to them for the time being.)

I have a feeling summer will pass too quickly!

Commencement 2012

2012-05-23T18:27:00.000-04:00

This past Saturday was the third time in four years that I participated in the college's main graduation ceremony. The weather cooperated, and the whole campus sparkled. Librarians marched side by side with faculty and other administrators. I did not particularly enjoy these ceremonies when I was a student, I think because I took graduation for granted, but I have come to genuinely appreciate the annual rite of passage while working at the college. It's a positive event, in the sense that there are so many sad stories at the community college, and this is a celebration of achievement. I like to see the students who made it through and seem likely to go on to good things.

I remember when one student in particular, who graduated this year and has plans to transfer to a university, began classes here two years ago. Before the semester even started, he came to the library and wanted to know everything about it. Subsequently he was in the library studying in the mornings before I arrived at work, and I usually saw him throughout the day in the building. I've heard from faculty about his many academic successes. I'm also aware that he comes from a needy background, and that English is not his first language. But I would vouch that any financial aid he receives will pay off, which is reassuring in light of the increasing attention that student loan debt is generating. (The federal government has so far been willing to absorb much of the uncertainty, but there are cracks in the foundation.)

Another thing I noticed, watching the students walk across the stage, was that I recognized those on either end of the spectrum -- the really good students, and the ones who needed a lot of help. There were a great many in the middle whom I'm sure I've never seen in the library. Now I'm wondering whether that's really OK. Is it a reflection of the library's success, that our services -- which are meant to support independent work -- function the way they are supposed to? Or is it a reflection of apathy toward the library and an indication that they never used it? My lack of recognition is the same for either condition.

Lastly, and this might sound strange, but at other times in the year it's not always apparent that we're all working together as part of a big team. Commencement is a welcome reminder.

The Ideal Book

2012-05-17T17:30:00.000-04:00

There exists a current of thought upholding the idea that the best book is still one that is printed on paper (see the back page of the Book Review a few weeks ago for an example). When I forget that I work in a library and have immediate, easy access to most of the printed books I want, I tend to agree. It's during my forays away from the library that I realize why some of the features of e-books are so attractive. And while I'm not ready to abandon printed books entirely, I can see how a hybrid model might be ideal.

The concept of a book is largely irrelevant to networked devices, and one big reason that book-related words (page, library) are making the transition to the online world is because books are easy to use. (This is in addition to the reason that books have so far been a common frame of reference.) Taken a step further, e-books exist because printed books are so easy to use.

A hybrid book has the potential to be best of both worlds, in that it could exist both as a physical object and an online object. Most media are being forced to choose between one or the other type of existence, but I think books are fundamentally different and may not have to make that reckoning. Yes, the internet makes it unnecessary to print something out in order to interact with it. But at times, a printed version of a book -- not reliant on a power source or a network connection -- is the most desirable thing to have, no matter how smart your phone is. (Or maybe I'm crazy. After all, I'm still buying CDs because I can digitize them and also have a nicely packaged version to put on my shelf. When I purchase digital music, I'm irritated that I don't get the object. Unless I make the effort of burning it to a blank CD. Which I don't, and which wouldn't be the same anyway.)

So, is anyone selling a printed book with an access key that provides a digital copy for the consumer's preferred reading platform? Are textbooks doing this? Would the book-buying public be willing to pay slightly more to have both formats? I think a similar feature is available on certain Blu-Ray DVDs, but from my cursory reading this effort is meant to prod consumers toward the digital version rather than to support use of the disc.

The Collection as Legacy

2012-05-08T17:47:00.000-04:00

I am a heavy user of our college library, and during the past several years I have been trying to give back to it, with the hope of benefiting others in the same ways that I have benefited.

This has been on my mind because apparently I am not the only person with that impulse: Many of the printed books in our collection were donated by members of the college community. (Information about donors is not broadcasted anywhere, but it is visible in the catalog records and frequently on book plates.)

With limited funds, and with attempts to ensure that there is an outcome for every dollar spent, using college money to buy printed books -- which admittedly do have the potential to go unused and take up real estate -- can perhaps seem lavish. To outward appearances, databases, e-books, and other online resources give more bang for the buck. Yet it is the books that are more enduring, and if someone were to contribute to the college library I think they would be less interested in giving a year's access to an electronic journal.

This may be returning to an earlier model in the history of libraries, but I wonder if civic pride could be harnessed to contribute to the collection. In collaboration with the college, the library could reach out to student alumni and faculty retirees, and/or establish a friends group. We do already have viable channels for accepting donations of money or items, but they are not widely known about.

What would it take to get this started? For one, I like this idea from the Smithsonian Libraries of having a public wishlist on Amazon. That way, potential donors could be aware of exactly which books we would like to purchase, approximately how much they cost, and what immediate impact their contribution would have.

Financial accounting rules are numerous and complicated for the college, but I doubt they would be insurmountable. The main objection I can anticipate is that the college needs money for lots of things, not just for the library. But a printed book is a modestly-priced item, relative to a new building, and it is something simple that people concerned with higher education might really connect with. I can at least try, right?

The Need for Speed

2012-04-28T17:30:00.000-04:00

It's the time in the semester when everyone is starting to look a little frazzled. We're seeing a lot of last-ditch efforts in the library. Several students I worked with in the classroom earlier this year are back, having seemingly forgotten everything I covered. They've exhausted the open web and now need the library sources that their professors are for some reason requiring. Any library sources will do, as long as they are available RIGHT NOW. The clock is ticking, and the librarians are either Everything or Nothing.

At no other time is our array of services put through such a stark pass/fail test -- suddenly the flaws in the printer system are magnified, the online resources ever more vital. There is no time for a leisurely stroll through the stacks, or a prolonged search in the databases, or talk of a process with a feedback loop; bring up any of those things and we fall in the Nothing category.

For those of us who spend a lot of time meditating on how best to do research, this is a painful period. Likewise for those of us who obsess about trying to provide useful, careful service, and try to teach information skills at every opportunity instead of just giving away answers. The stress of deadlines is made apparent through short tempers.

But in a few short weeks it will be graduation, and there will be smiles all around again. Hang in there, everyone!