Friday afternoons are very festive in the library this semester. I don't seem to remember that they were always this way. The library is filled with students working in big groups, studying by themselves, writing papers on the computers, scrawling formulas on the white boards, etc. The place just buzzes with good energy. I have always had a theory that the circulation desk sets the tone for the entire library. This is a picture of two of our circ students happily cutting snow flakes together. Case closed.
Basically, every area of the room is being used in some way.
Some notes left on the white boards:
Just say NO to hand dryers in women's bathrooms.
I know I should probably have on my list of accomplishments for last year things like - established a wiki for class, answered reference questions via facebook, revolutionized the way graduate students are tracking new research by demonstrating RSS feeds.
What can I conclude from my afternoon at the reference desk?
Questions between 1 and 5 p.m.
It's finally out - the article about the undergraduate research project is in today's (online) Chronicle of Higher Education. Yeah. He (Scott Carlson) did a nice job of bringing together a project that spanned two years. Our observations seem obvious to me now -I wonder if others will be surprised or if we're behind the curve? We'll see what the response is.
There is a fascinating discussion going on the Class of 2011 facebook group. The question -- What schools did you decline offers to go to UR?
They turned down Cornell, Penn State, Brown, Bowdin, USC, George Washington, U Washington, Scripps, Bucknell, Carnegie Mellon, Gettysburg, Virginia Tech, Skidmore, Duke, UNC, NC State, Ohio State, UMichigan, Tufts, Emory, U Illinois, Colgate, Brandeis, Indiana, Wesleyan, Brown, Rice, Wash U, Amherst, U Minnesota, Northeastern, Northwestern, UCLA, Tulane, Harvard, Stanford, MIT, Dartmouth, U Virginia, American, Georgetown, Oberlin, Lehigh, RIT, Syracuse, Purdue, Penn, Johns Hopkins, etc....
Reasons they chose UR
financial aid (lots mentioned this)
"so much better"
beautiful
seemed friendlier
early decision
UR is a "new ivy"
it's about getting an education
brilliant professors who are actually good at teaching
loved my visit (several mentioned this)
got accepted to the 8 year medical program
Reasons they turned down other schools
too big (more than one mentioned this)
they did turn down some full rides. In fact one student wouldn't consider a school until there was a full tuition package
curriculum not as flexible as UR
knew friends who couldn't switch majors because their GPAs weren't high enough
high suicide rates
professors not actually doing the teaching
big names colleges have a lot of ego
ivy league schools don't allow graduates to do research
pompous
too close to home
I love to cruise facebook!
We finally took a new picture of the reference staff. It takes a lot of shots to get one where everyone has their eyes open and doesn't "look funny".
We were having one of our summer technology show and tells today and Sue came up with an interesting idea. Should we add links to our flickr pictures, our librarything accounts, our facebook pages from our staff pages? We're always looking for ways to break down barriers. Would more personal information help or would it be too much??
We did a class for freshman yesterday. Well, they're not even technically freshman yet; they're on campus for a special three week program. We showed them the library homepage. That was excellent. How do you find the library homepage? What is the url? Can you find it in google? Can you get there from the university homepage? We thought we were showing them the course reserves pages.... But I was sitting in the back of the room watching and listening to them, and I realized they didn't know WHAT a reserve book was. Sigh. Go back a step or two. We had them find a book in the stacks. That was useful. They were awed by the size of the library. We ended by showing them the DVD collection. That caught their attention more than anything else. I'm always of mixed mind about these classes. At best they learn their way around the library and come away knowing that there are people to answer their questions. But at worst, they think the library is really lame and a total waste of time. I'm not sure if we can ever undo that impression.
The best talk I heard at ALA was by Don Barlow, Executive Director of the Westerville Public Library. He and his staff keep a running list of all the occasions during the week when they say "no" to a patron. At their staff meetings they review the list and talk about ways to turn the "no" into a "yes. Oh my gosh. This is such a great idea! I turned two "no's" into "yes" before I even got back to work. And they have a cool homepage and even cooler catalog.
Blog: blog.westervillelibrary.org/director/
Web: www.westervillelibrary.org
I was looking at a presentation about a photo diary study they did at MIT from Computers in Libraries. Really cool project and very well written. One of the observations they made was that students ask questions first of people in their trusted network. Libraries and librarians are not part of that trusted network. One of my colleagues was telling me a story about a friend of her son's. She (the friend) is a grad student at a big research university and needed an article. She emailed her undergraduate friends, one of whom is the son of a library staff member. Her son forwarded the email to his mother, who is my colleague in the library. So of course my staff member answered her reference question. Did the friend ever go to the Big Research University Library. Nope. Did the friend ever go ask anyone at the Big Research University Library? Nope. "I didn't even think of going there". Wow. We are so not part of their circle.
I read about a dozen student blogs. I learn about their lives; I get a good picture of when the semester is crazy and they are feeling swamped. They write about their love lives, which seem to have changed little in the past 30 years...And quite by accident, one of the blogs is written a student who works in the library. It feels a little bit voyeuristic and I'm not entirely comfortable doing it. BUT... I can't stop myself. She wrote the *sweetest* post when she promoted to circulation supervisor -- honestly, it made my day. I guess that's justification enough.
I've helped the same graduate student twice this week find the journal Nature. Of course finding it in the OPAC is a well documented, living nightmare. I'd forgotten that it's even hard to find in the list of electronic journals. I know it's Nature (London) - but she sure didn't! Who would know to look under that title except someone who works in the library? Sigh.
I chose a painting this year for our art prize. It's titled, Lab Rabbits, and was done by Sheila Tripathy '09. She's coming by next week to find a good place to hang it. I love it. But I love all our student art.It's spring and academic librarians are writing annual evaluations. Sigh. I would hate to think how many of these I have written over the years - TOO MANY. At our department meeting we each named the one thing we were most proud of last year. I'm always fascinated by this exercise. Sometimes, I know exactly what people are going to say and other times, it's a total surprise. People's major accomplishments were wide ranging, including:
Four major shifting projects
Two presentations
Two new instruction sessions
Review of and improvement of signage
Hiring and training new students
Extensive reference work that led to acknowledgment in a faculty paper
Working with faculty to purchase new serial titles
1. I had one of our circ students, Sarah, take pictures at our study break.
2. I posted them on flickr for staff. It was much easier than putting them in a power point slide.
3. I posted them with 365 libraries group.
4. Then I posted all the pictures with students to my facebook account as well as to the Carlson Library group.
5. Sarah tagged all the student pictures for me.
6. I got a facebook message from at least one of the students tagged in the picture.
Sweet.
When we interviewed students a year ago, we found that very few of them brought their laptops to the library. It's exam period now, and almost every table of students has at least one laptop. In fact, I walked by a table with four students, and four laptops. They have even started to plug in their laptops at the same table with the library computers. I think I understand what's different - they bring their laptops to the library during *exam* week, because they don't have classes all day. Ah so!
I honestly think students will take anything we put out if it's free.
empty boxes (yes, just empty boxes) - gone
discarded books - gone
superseded maps - gone (they even ASK when we're going to put out more...)
boxes of miscellaneous cables and wires - gone
old posters - gone
O.k. We are now officially a full, service library. We have Kleenex, we hand sanitizer, we have white boards on wheels, we have laptop locks, we have coffee, and now, we have extension cords!
10:30 p.m. the night before exams
Checking Out Laptop Locks
Circulation so far this year for laptop locks. This is a lot for a science library on the "other side" of campus.
LOCK 1: 144
at a small school. (University of Rochester only has about 7,000 undergraduates.) This morning I have been asked for tape, a ruler, a paper clip and a pair of scissors. I have them and I can give them out. They're rarely demanding about their requests; they often are almost apologetic about their requests.
and going to OCLC?? Wow this is huge! I had dinner with him once and asked him how he stayed in touch with users when he clearly had a high level, administrative position. "I'm practical", he said. Ah so! I guess if someone as brilliant as Roy is practical, I too can embrace my own practicality!
are going on at once in the atrium across from me. (I can see them through the glass wall). One young woman is standing. One woman is sitting on the stairs. A third is sitting on the bench. They are all about four steps away from each other having separate conversations. Fascinating.
Barbara was arguing this afternoon that it's important for us to connect (reconnect?) with the faculty because they refer students to the library. I'm not sure I'm too worried about this generation of faculty. Most of them are my age and did their graduate work in a library and have fond memories of the physical space, the books, the journals. It's the next generation of faculty and students that I'm thinking about. Today's graduate students (at least in the sciences) rarely use the physical library. In fact I suspect if we asked them they would say they didn't use the library at all, even though they use library resources in the form of electronic journals, every day. Will they refer their students to the library? Will they be interested in library instruction? Hmmm. Maybe I should have been an acquisitions librarian.
I went to a biology seminar last week. The room was packed. The room was packed with people I had never laid eyes on before. Well, I recognized one faculty who is retired and maybe some faces that I had seen on the web.But otherwise, they were complete strangers. Just in case I needed any reminder that graduate students and faculty (at least in Biology) aren't coming to the library building any longer.... Interesting, they do use library resources. The speaker cited lots of articles and books in his presentation. At some point, they came from a library subscription.
Rats. I guessed wrong about the white boards. I thought there was an insatiable demand for them so we bought two more white boards on wheels. We put them out on Thursday and no one has written on them or moved them since. Rats. When they like the furniture or the space, they start to use it immediately. Publicity is not necessary.
I don't think anyone would disagree that the majority of faculty find depositing documents into DSpace to be just too darn hard. So our library long ago offered to take care of all the work associated with depositing. It turns out that it's pretty hard for us too. Good grief. Technically it's not straight forward. The whole "can I legally put it up" issue is just as confusing for us as it is for faculty. And it turns out that figuring out who the publisher is, what keywords to assign, etc. aren't trivial decisions either. Sigh.
and started over. Sigh. Over the years I've heard dozens of authors describe how they sometimes just have to throw away pages and pages of writing and start over again. Easier said than done. I've been working on a book chapter with some colleagues. It's been painful. The words are awkward. The thoughts don't flow. I knew I should have just chucked the whole thing and started over again. I didn't. I thought it was good enough. I wanted to meet the deadline. I wanted to get it off my desk. Hopefully a little humiliation (deserved) will help me remember this lesson next time.
Sarada's daughter, Erica came and demonstrated the Berkman Island in Second Life last week. Very interesting. The extension students found it very valuable to have a forum to talk to teach other and to their professors. It made the online experience feel more like a "real" class.
I also felt better when Erica admitted that manipulating the avatar was not intuitive nor was finding your way around. I've tried second life a couple of times, but wow, the learning curve is steep.
This made me laugh -- this virtual class was the first time that law school lectures were made available to the public. It turns out making that happen was as big a challenge as setting up the class in Second Life!
I knew that my brother used the public library for books. There are always tons of library books at his house. He was awestruck to discover that the public library also had CD's. Apparently he has been taking out dozens of them and uploading them to his ipod. And not only does he use his "local" library, he has been exploring the holdings of other public libraries in the county. He was astonished to discover that each library owns "different stuff". He was thrilled. It's funny what we, librarians, take for granted.
Of course, it's probably illegal to copy library cds onto his computer and then his ipod....
Did I mention that he's an attorney?
Hmmmmm.
Well there is no denying that I brought it on myself. I forwarded this funny blog post about office pranks to a couple of my colleagues (Alison and Marylou, this means you!). I came into MY office on April 2 to find it filled with boxes labels "National Geographic", "Scientific American", and "Playboy". I fell for it hook, line and sinker! All I could think was -- "Who was dumb enough to accept dozens of boxes of old National Geographics??"-- the nemesis of every science librarian in the world!
April Fools!!!
Well, there is no denying I do look like people's stereotype of a librarian - middle age woman with thick glasses, hair in a bun, AND flat shoes. I seemed the obvious choice to create this facebook group, "Yes I Do Look Like a Librarian".
I helped two undergraduates yesterday afternoon place their first ever, interlibrary loan requests. They were astonished. They were amazed. Someone was actually going to send a copy of the article to THEM via EMAIL?? They couldn't believe it. Who was on the other end sending the article? Did we do the same thing for other people? And suddenly I remember - interlibrary loan is an amazing service.
On the same day, there were many complaints from a very unhappy faculty member who felt that Interlibrary Loan service was unacceptably slow.
Different points of view I guess. Why do I spend so much more of my time looking at the world from the second point of view instead of the first?!
I had an interesting conversation with a friend who worked for many years as an academic librarian and now teaches Information Technology at RIT. She is unique in that she has both the librarian point of view and the faculty point of view. She thinks that librarians should come by and talk to her during her posted office hours. That's when she goes and talks to colleagues. It makes perfect sense to her. On the other hand, one of my librarians, thinks it's a terrible idea and totally violates the faculty - student privilege. Hmmmm. I suspect my first friend probably has a useful insight that we should pay attention to.
I've been reading with fascination Michelle Boule's posts about give a full day preconference at TLA. Not only is she not getting paid for the preconference, they are REQUIRING that she register for the conference in order to give her presentation. I'm impressed that she is throwing a fit and such a public one. Now it turns out that she misunderstood the letter from TLA, but I know from personal experience, that this situation is not out of the realm of possibility. It happened to me last fall at the USAIN meeting. I was being a sport and filling in for a speaker who cancelled at the last minute. I had to drive two hours down to Ithaca. And when I got there, they demanded that I pay the registration fee. I argued briefly, and then just gave up. I won't do that again!
I've decided that we had gone over board with the signage. We had signs about recalling books, extension cords, wireless printing, saving to flash drives, and printing clusters. It was just becoming a big clutter of information that no one paid any attention to. I went out this morning and just picked up every single sign holder on every single table and put it away. We are officially taking a break from signage!
This is a sweet story. Katherine O'Clair, a life sciences librarian at Arizona State, is one of the 2007 Library Journal's "Movers and Shakers". She is a graduate of Nazareth College which is in Rochester. She became a librarian in part because of her positive interactions with Isabel and Kenn, who helped her when she was working on her biology papers and using our collections! How often do we actually know that we've had an impact on someone's life? Not very often!
Living the Life Sciences
http://www.libraryjournal.com/article/CA6423400.html&
When we interviewed faculty as part of our IMLS grant two years ago, we were struck by what a big problem it was for them to keep backups of important texts and files. Now we're interviewing graduate students, and again, they go through all kinds of hoops to backup their data. They back up their files to laptops, lab computers, flash drives, ipods, gmail, and finally print. I was feeling kind of superior until we lost access to our library network drive for 48 hours. Yikes!!! Suddenly sending myself an attachment on gmail didn't seem so silly after all.
Twenty years of helping students find articles in print journals, and it's still just as hard as it always was and is still completely non-intuitive. I just helped a woman find a journal title. She had dutifully looked up the call number in the OPAC. And that's all she had. No author, no title, no year, no page. She understood the problem when I showed her shelves and shelves of bound journals. Who could blame her for being ticked off at having to go back and redo her work? Sigh. No wonder everyone (me included) chooses the online article whenever possible.
Oh my gosh, we're having so much fun playing around with the google personalized homepage. It's probably been available for months, but we just noticed it. And we LOVE the different themes. The tea house theme goes dark at night. The little fox is asleep in the bed at night. When it's raining outside, the tea house is dark. At noon, a picnic table appears. It's too clever!!!
I had the illuminating experience this morning of being a patron. I tried to the use the three hole punch that we've put by the printers. Hmmmm. It turned out to be almost impossible to actually use because we have it secured with a cable and lock. It doesn't seem to make much sense to put out a hole punch if it can't actually be used to punch holes.... I set it free and we'll just take our chances with theft. Somehow I think people are more interested in stealing laptops and ipods than a hole punch.
We're checking out something new at the circulation desk - extension cords! We now have laptop locks, desk lamps, and extension cords. Students are moving tables and chairs all over the place in order to plug in their laptops. We looked into the cost of adding new outlets, but it was prohibitive. Just buying a half dozen extension cords and checking them out seemed to solve the problem without breaking the bank!
