Is Anyone Suprised?

We saw some usability footage the other day for our new website. We asked some undergraduates to find a book on x topic. A librarian of course would immediately go search the OPAC by keyword or subject. What did one of the undergraduate do? Go search the subject in wikipedia and scroll to the end of the section looking at the references. When the references turned out to be only articles and not books, they just jumped over to Amazon. Not only were they able to find books over there, they could read a review which helped them choose one book. And then and only then, did they go to the OPAC to find the call number.

You Can Do That???

We, we libraries, are just terrible at marketing our services. We had a design workshop for graduate students this week. In the course of drawing a picture of their ideal library space, they also made suggestions for new library *services*. One enthusiastic and articulate student suggested that we offer a new service where you could request a book and it would be delivered to a circulation desk. Great idea. In fact, we HAVE this service. We offer this service. The graduate student has been at the UofR for seven years and has never found the service, despite actively looking for it. Groan. We're rolling out a new interface today for our request forms. Hopefully this will help. We have no where to go but up.

Making Shields - Kid's Day

We offered a new activity for freshman orientation this year -- a session for kid's day (activities for the younger brothers and sisters of freshman). Kids signed up to make a shield in the Robbins Library, a medieval special collection in Rush Rhees Library. Of course it was fantastic thanks to Alan, Barbara, Rosemary, and Nora. Barbara cut shields out of heavy paper. The kids could draw or paste things on the shields. When they were done, Alan took their picture with the shield. The shields were fabulous. They were decorated with ballet shoes, cows, hatchets, and pink pompoms! It was a lot of work for us, but I bet it made a huge impression on those kids.

Freshman Advising

I am doing freshman advising this fall. Six freshman. I have so much to so say about the experience, I hardly know where to start. It has made me remember back to when I was a freshman. I was often afraid, alone, lonely, uncertain. I spoke on the phone to my parents once a week. I communicated with my high school friends entirely by letters. We never even spoke on the phone. What a different experience my freshman year was these first year students. My advisees talk to their parents on their cell phone all the time. I know they had long discussions about what classes to sign up for. I made my choices entirely on my own, for better or for worse. They talk and text and facebook their high school friends. Even when they haven't made any friends at the UR, they are still very much in touch with their old friends. I'm guessing it's easier to be a freshman now than it 30 years ago. But maybe it's harder to make new connections when the old ones are never broken?

Always Connected

I went to convocation on Friday. I frankly sat on the grass and kind of spaced out in the gorgeous weather. But not so, the students all around me. Every single one of them was either texting or listening to their ipod. I had one of those "ah ha" moments. They simply are always connected. I'm still struggle to understand what that's like.

Ice Cream Give Away

Our last event for orientation week was giving away ice cream to the freshman when they come off the buses from their day of volunteering. It was cold. It was drizzling. We gave away 900 pieces and for the first time ever, RAN OUT!!! We wore our new t-shirts - thanks to Marc and student from the Art Library.

Book Sale -- Orientation Week

Good grief. What were we thinking? We had three events on the Tuesday of Orientation week. Helen and Eileen (with many volunteers) had a small book sale in the reference area. We used to have our major book sale before school started. The parking was ideal, but there were no students. Now we deliberately have more frequent, smaller sales while the students are on campus. It's fun.

Parent's Breakfast

This is the third year we've had a parent's breakfast. If I do say so myself, it was the best year yet. I'm not sure exactly what the difference was, but librarians and parents were deep in conversation for the entire hour. The first year was reminiscent of a high school dance - librarians and parents awkwardly standing in separate groups. This year, Susan wondered if she should even interrupt and give her welcome. My initial advisor training left me feeling completely overwhelmed and unprepared for the task. Ha ha! It turns out, I did learn something and was able to answer all kinds of questions from parents about classes, withdrawal, writing requirements, etc. Very satisfying! The librarian in the picture is Stephanie, head of the Art and Music Library. One of her students came up with the original idea for our t-shirt. Marc translated the idea into the actual design. Very sharp.

Presidential Jeopardy

Day one of freshman orientation. Students and their parents have to sit in their cars waiting to move into the dorms. While they're waiting, they have a big bag of information to look through. We always include a handout with a piece of candy taped to it (so ours stands out from all the other paper...) This year the theme for orientation was board games. Our invitation to the parent's breakfast on Tuesday had a candy land theme. On the other side of the handout Lisa made a presidential jeopardy game. They can call the reference desk and enter a contest to win a flash drive. We don't get a lot of calls, but we hope they see the invitation and maybe the game helps pass the time for those trapped in the car.

Book Cart Drill Team

Last week was a shocking one for Cynthia. She learned about the fall out shelter, pornography, and last, but not least, book cart drill teams. There are two camps. Those who think the book cart drill teams are silly (Susan and Stanley). Those who think the book cart drill teams are FABULOUS and go out of their way to watch the competition at ALA (Katie). I wonder which camp Cynthia will fall into?!

The Newbery Project

This is going to be fun. Kathy found a group of people who are reading all the Newbery Award winning books. I am onboard! I've randomly read 14 so far. (I'm not counting books I read as a kid and can't remember anything about like "Johnny Tremain".)

1. The Higher Power of Lucky - Sweet story with a happy ending. My favorite kind.
   
2. Criss Cross - Hmmmmm. Read it twice and appreciated it more the second time.
   
3. The Tale of Despereaux - Started very strong, but petered out...
   
4. Holes - very scary. I had to keep telling myself it was only a book.
   
5. Maniac Magee - My first Spineli book. No wonder kids love him.
   
6. Sarah, Plain and Tall - The words in this book are beautiful.
   
7. The Westing Game - This is a fantastic book. Of course I couldn't figure out the mystery.
   
8. Bridge to Terabithia - Oh boy, I didn't see THAT coming.
   
9. Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH - Loved this book!!! What a surprising plot line.
   
10. From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler - Another great one.
    
11. A Wrinkle in Time - Can you believe I had never read this book before? Fantastic.
    
12. Onion John - Sweet and sad at the same time.
    
13. The Twenty-One Balloons - Liked the premise, but found the book a little boring.
    
14. Caddie Woodlawn - I remembered liking this book as a kid and it held up after all these years.
    

I'm going to take a systematic approach and start with the first winner in 1922 and work my way to the present. Here we go with "The Story of Mankind" by Hendrik Willem van Loon! I wonder how long it will take me to read the remaining 72 books?

Lending Library at the Beach

Oh this was great. I went to Tod's Point Beach for my family reunion. There was a lending library of paper back books by the concession stands. Sweet. I borrowed a book and read it for a few hours. Great idea Perrot Memorial Library.

Freshman Class of 2012

Here is a list of electronics a UR freshman (on facebook) is bringing this fall:

Alarm clock
Laptop, charger
Printer
Desk lamp
MP3 player
headphones
Cell phone
charger
Extension cord(s)
Multi-plug power strip
Digital camera
CD/DVD case
External hard drive
USB flash drive
Calculator
Batteries
Fan

I highlighted the items that didn't even EXIST when I was a freshman. I was very popular on my floor because I owned a popcorn popper - yes - I went to college before there were even *microwaves*!

newlib listserv

I have re-subscribed to the newlib listserv. Some days it makes me want to tear my hair out. The complete lack of direction and advice that seems to exist in many library schools is shocking.

But today there was a message that made me smile and smile. It was from a young woman who thanked everyone on the list for help getting a position. She said,

"I'm so happy to be in an academic library that I hardly know what to do. "

She's right. I have a great job. I am lucky.

We had an "Alternative Coronation" for Susan last week. Alan read a proclamation. We gave her a crown, a velvet robe and a septor. There was harp music, cake and presents from each department. They were fabulous! The real installation was lovely, but nearly as lively. More pictures on flickr.

I love award ceremonies

I love award ceremonies. I love to attend them and I especially love to speak at them. Last night I got to present the Friends of the Library award to Stephanie Frontz, art librarian extraordinaire. Here is my text.

I have a big long list of accomplishments for Stephanie:

Stephanie has been an Art Librarian since 1973;
she currently manages the Art/Music Library ;
for many years she was also in charge of the Multimedia Center in Rush Rhees Library;
she managed the Library at the Memorial Art Gallery for a ten years;
she was a member of the College Teaching, Learning, Technology Roundtable;
she is also a long-standing member of the Friends of the University of Rochester Libraries Executive Committee;
she has been very active in the planning of the annual Book Sale and Holiday Reading;
Stephanie is a member of the Art Libraries Society of North America;
she has written articles and given presentations at national meetings;
she created an annual student art prize on the River Campus;
she is a member of the Gleason Library Art Committee;
and she has served on zillions of library committees over the years

But the list doesn’t really tell you why we chose Stephanie for this award.

Stephanie is passionate – she is passionate about art, about libraries, about librarians, about her students and her faculty.

Stephanie never cuts corners – Everything she does – from arranging flowers for orientation breakfast to teaching a class for graduate students – is done to perfection.

Stephanie sets the bar very high for herself and for everyone around her.

When Stephanie is on a project –everyone wants to be part of it – because they know the end result will be amazing and they will have tons of fun working on it.

Stephanie accomplishes more in a day than the rest of use do in a week. She is the original energizer bunny. And she doesn’t carry around piles of paper or even a big notebook. She carries a tiny, black calendar with her everywhere she goes and jots microscopic notes in it. Stephanie never forgets a detail or drops the ball.

Stephanie represents the very best of what being a reference librarian is about. She knows her subject and her users and her collection and works tirelessly to bring them together. I think that all of us who have worked with Stephanie over the years consider ourselves very, very lucky.

I know I consider myself privileged to have worked with Stephanie and would like to be the first to congratulate her on winning this award.

It Feels Like the "old days"

Trina told me yesterday that circulation in Carlson has increased 46% since 2004 . Wow!

She and Delores observe that "more professors use multiple textbooks and are not expecting their students to buy the books. Instead they are putting them on reserve and using a chapter or two from several books."

Our statistics may also be "affected by the number of unusual items we have on reserve – lamps, locks, headphones, etc. And those all have high circulation. "

Wow. As Trina observed, "it feels like the old days".

Paper helicopters - Carlson Study Break

We tossed paper helicopters from the third floor stairs in Carlson Library at our Study Break Sunday Night. It was fun. And this is our first youtube video - go Kenn!

The Very Public Phone Interview

Where: main staircase in Rush Rhees Library with a constant stream of people going up and down the stairs

What: young woman on her cell phone clearly answering interview questions (job? graduate school?)

Yikes!

The point here is that I would never ever do this. I separate my work (interview) and personal (talking on a cell phone in a public space). Undergraduates don't, or don't to the same degree that I do.

Campus Tour

Just came back from a campus tour. The library was the only academic building we actually entered and the tour guide was pretty accurate.

• The library is the "center of campus"
• The library has "tons and tons of material"
• She (the tour guide) loves studying in the periodical reading room, though it gets crowded. (Really? I wonder when that is?)
• You can eat in the library.
• She knew about the senior thesis exhibits in the Art and Music Library.
• Multi media library is a "mini-blockbuster".
• The pit is very popular in part because you can buy food there and take it to the library.
• Not a single mention of reference, reserve, or even circulation.

Other miscellaneous statements:

• The tunnels are "awesome". (Of course I beg to differ)
• The buses are "really great". Really???
• The University has pledged to buy only local food for the dining halls. (?!)
• One of the mothers asked if the showers were open 24X7. ???!
• Tour leader didn't have a clue as the significance of the dandelion .
• She mispronounced Louvre, as in THE Louvre.....
• We have a tanning salon on campus. Who knew?
• Lots of questions from mothers about what hours the dining halls are open. What was that about?

The 2008 Student Employee of the Year

works at Carlson Library - Phuong (Lucy) Tran. We are sooooo proud! I don't think a student worker from the library has ever won this award. In fact we almost didn't submit the nomination we were so sure one of our students could never win. Here are few quotes from her nomination letter:

"She is a delight to work with and represents perfectly the highest standard of service we strive to provide in Carlson. "

"Lucy not only is an asset to large scale projects, she shines performing everyday tasks with a strong commitment to the library and a recognition that all of the small tasks are necessary for the library to succeed, allowing her to achieve a high level of excellence as a work study student. "

"Lucy approaches all tasks with enthusiasm and excellence. She puts herself into everything she does from the mundane to the complex. "

"Another student commented..., “who is that girl at the desk who always smiles and is so helpful to me?” Again it was Lucy."

We have very mixed emotions about Lucy graduating this May. Of course we're excited for her. She has worked hard and has been accepted into Pharmacy School for the fall. This summer she is taking a long deserved vacation home to Vietnam. But darn it - we're just going to miss her like crazy.

Library Myths

Blue moon? I feel that the misinformation about library services is running rampant this week.

1. You have to pay to get articles through InterLibrary Loan. Ouch!

2. You can't recall books. What?

3. And one patron didn't know how to find articles you "don't need to pay for". Turns out they were searching via the web (not Google) and didn’t know about our databases page.

Happily all were thrilled to find out that we do not charge for ILL, do subscribe to online journals and do allow books to be recalled. Maybe we shouldn't worry so much about getting the word out about the NEW services we offer, but go back and review the basics....

Anyone Else Here Not Sure?

Acceptance letters were sent out last week. I love to read the facebook posts from incoming (potentially) students. My very unscientific observations:


1. Many are having a hard time deciding which school to attend. At least two high school seniors were accepted by 11 schools!!!

Got into 11, grararrrr
I’m really confused
I’m really undecided
It’s so overwhelming
Difficult decision time
I have no idea what I’m going to do
I’m VERY confused
It’s driving me nuts


2. Financial aid is a big factor in their decision.

“U of R has been my first choice but I really didn’t get enough financial aid”
“I guess we’ll see when my financial aid comes…”
“The decision pretty much comes down to financial”


But of course, you can never make a blanket statement about students – sometimes financial aid does not seem to be the deal breaker.

“XX offered me a really nice aid package, but I think I like UR more”

3. A few mentioned academic program, i.e. that UR has programs they want – premed, political science , Bio, BCS

4. Quite a number are concerned about the CITY of Rochester, especially those who currently live in a big city. They worry that “Rochester the city isn’t gonna do it for” them.

5. Who are the current UR students who respond to these posts? RA's maybe?

I Do Not Care Why

I do not care why.

When I look for the online version of Cell in our catalog (journal title), it's entry number 30.

Searching for Scientific American online by title -- number 76.

Philosophy (online) is entry number SIX HUNDRED AND FORTY ONE. (search by journal title)

I don't care about the cataloging rules. I don't care about the serials solutions load. I don't care. All I know is that people choose google and Amazon over the library catalog for good reason -- it's almost impossible to find things in our OPAC.

I gave a talk about how difficult it was to find PRINT serials in the OPAC at ALA in Miami in 1994 - almost fifteen years ago. I feel like I'm in clip from "Ground Hog Day".... The journals are online, but it's still just as hard to find them in the catalog.

Mobile Rush Rhees

Eileen and I are in Gleason Library on our first afternoon of "mobile Rush Rhees". Eileen selected some books from the popular reading collection and we put them on a book truck and we're in business. w00t! We brought a laptop and a scanner but the two wouldn't plug together, so we're using the low tech approach; we're writing down names and titles. So far we've had four people check out books - not bad for our first try. Eileen can go into sales if this librarian thing doesn't pan out.

P.S. We really stole this idea from MIT - a library with many great ideas!

P.P.S. Eastman student, Gregory, suggested the name "mobile Rush Rhees".

Fabulous new signs

Marc made us the greatest signs for our trash campaign in the Gleason Library. They are everything I wanted in a sign. They are edgy. The pictures are gross. The message is not immediately obvious. We're going to leave them up for about two weeks and then take them down.

Wish I'd Had My Camera

Oh rats. I wish I'd had my camera with me on Friday. I would have taken pictures of

1. The young woman lying on the couch in Carlson totally engrossed in reading "The Double Helix"
   
   
2. The young man trying to fit in the last, few all black pieces in the Mona Lisa puzzle
   
   
3. The optics graduate students playing the piano for a concert in the lobby of the BME building.

Darn it.

Collection Development 101

This has been a humbling two weeks. I never was a very good selector and apparently what little I knew, I have completely forgotten. Oh yeah, and of course I've waited until a few weeks before the deadline to figure all of this out. Sigh.

1. It took Alison and me over an hour to figure out how to actually ORDER a book through GOBI.
2. Oh yeah, you need to double check the catalog so you don't order a title we already own. Sigh.
3. Those rascally book series are going to be the death of me. By the time I remembered I had to search the series title, well, I'll probably end up with some dupes unless the people in acquisitions catch my goof ups.

And this is just the easy part, the book selection. By my accounts there are between 4 and 6 places to pull serial information from. That's definitely for another day.

Houston We Have a Scanner

Finally, finally, we can turn this "no" into a "yes". We just got our own scanner. Yeah. I am not making this up. WHILE Stuart was installing the equipment, I had two BME students say to me "this is great, I need to use a scanner this afternoon". Sweet. Thanks Nora for convincing me to finally DO something about this!

We will miss Raphael

Raphael worked for the housekeeping department and was assigned to the first floor of Carlson Library. He has been at the University for 30 years. I don't think any students or faculty knew him. He didn't select books or teach classes or work on the reference desk. Yet, the work he did was vitally important to create an environment that students and faculty find attractive and comfortable. Without that, the rest of it really doesn't matter much. We will miss him. A lot.

No to reserves. No to ebooks

This was interesting. I just had someone desperate to get a copy of "Numeric Recipes in Fortran". Of course all the copies are on reserve. The reserve loan period was absolutely not long enough. A link to an electronic version of the book was useless; he needed to "flip through the pages". Hmmmm. So much for my stereotype that computer scientists find e-books useful.

Visitors

We had visitors yesterday from Cornell. I love to talk to people from other libraries. They were curious as to why we hadn't installed lockers in the new Gleason Library space. Students hadn't asked for them; I guess we just don't have a "locker culture" here. One of the women told me that before she left Ithaca, there was a line snaking around the library (I'm not exactly which one) of students waiting to sign up for lockers! Lockers are given out the first day of the semester on a first come first serve basis. Wow. They definitely DO have a "locker culture" there. It's always useful to remember that what's a big issue for one campus, may not be on another.

Serrandipity at Midwinter

This is the second time that I have accidentally stumbled onto the meetings of the YALSA committee that chooses the Best Books for Young Adults. Wow. It is an amazing process. The committee must read over a hundred books. They discuss and vote on them several times. They also get input from teens who have read the books. I think they met Friday, Saturday, Sunday, AND Monday of Midwinter. I was amazed at how much work they had done, how very seriously they took their work, AND how very open the process was. I probably sat in on the their meetings for several hours just listening and watching. I was wildly impressed and now I can't wait to go read some of the books on the list!

Please Use Elevator

Bat in Stairwell.

Sigh. The first Monday of 2008....

End of the Year Book List

I love end-of-the year lists -- top 10 books, movies, dvds, celebrities, news stories, etc. I love a list. I have been reading a lot of juvenile fiction this year. I initially started so I could give my mother recommendations of books to buy for my niece. But I found that the books were great and so I have continued. Here is my personal top 10 list.

1. The Golden Compass
2. James and the Giant Peach
3. From the Mixed Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler
4. Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH
5. The Westing Game
6. Wide Window - A Series of Unfortunate Events
7. Nancy and Plum
8. Sarah, Plain and Tall
9. The Egypt Game
10. The Last Book in the Universe

First semester in a foreign country?

This is a facebook message from a first year student who came to the UofR from China. I was so clueless at 18. I didn't know how to use a washing machine... I can't imagine myself moving to a foreign country and starting college. I would have floundered and probably failed. But this young woman certainly made it. Amazing.


I feel that my first semester in college perhaps taught me more than all I learned in high school. I came to this new country without even knowing the different names of cheese. Now, I know that there are provolone, swiss, and American. I made lots of great friends and I'm satisfied with all my courses=) See, I survive^_^ Thanks so much for all the kind encouragement and warm help. I'll see you again in the new year, lol Merry Christmas!

Bat Did Not Attack Student

We had a bat in the library last night just before our study break. We called facilities to come remove it - bat poop near food and people and books, doesn't seem like a good match. We were told that facilities wouldn't (couldn't?) come remove the bat because it hadn't attacked a student. Hmmmm. And attaching staff still wouldn't have been grounds for removal? I wonder how that conversation was recorded on the dispatch log...

Innkeeper at the Roach Motel

I just read a great piece by Dorethea Salo about institutional repositories. The title is from her statement, " [The institutional repository} is like a roach motel. Data goes in, but it doesn't come out." It's a very interesting article and I'm very impressed that she has the guts to point out that the emperor is buck naked.

This is my favorite quote, "Simply put, the institutional repository and services associated with it must provide value to faculty on faculty terms before it will see more than scant, grudging use."

Check it out.

New Signs for the Bathrooms

Suzanne just walked by and commented on our new, visible bathroom sign. It has been a huge success. We have had virtually no "where is the bathroom?" questions since we put it up. Yeah! I won't tell you how long we lived with a handmade sign on green cardboard.....

Another great idea from flickr!

I saw a picture on flickr of a fabulous Christmas tree made out of books by Plymouth Libraries. I loved it. Marylou and Alison immediately found some red and green (how lucky!!) volumes that had been withdrawn but not discarded and went to work. I love the final result!

Houston, We Have Self Check Out.

Finally, our self check our machine is ready for business. The security gate is installed and working. AND the Millennium bridge to the Goergen Building is open. Phew. Is it called the Millennium bridge because it took a millennium to finally open???...

Only 12 Days to Exams

The students make me laugh. There are only twelve days left until exams. There seems to be a direct correlation between deadlines and work on our jigsaw puzzles. They have finished more puzzles in the last two weeks than they have all semester. Ah - procrastination!

Friday afternoons in the library

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.

The Library in Gleason Library

The new Gleason Library is a huge success. Students love it. Though because there are no books and no desk, how to insert "library" into the space is an interesting challenge. Judi and the other reference librarians have made a point of meeting with students in the space. So every time they have an appointment, they go to Gleason Library. I think it's a great idea and a way to insert librarians into the space every day.

We're Big on the Little Things

We're big on the little things in the Science Libraries. One of Pat's ideas that has been a resounding success,was to put out bottles of hand sanitizer. Frankly I thought it was kind of nutty, but I learned a long time ago that I'm not very good at predicting what will and won't work. Students love it. Pat even had a faculty member thank her for it last week. Who knew?

It's Important to See and Be Seen

I was talking to some of our circ students last night who were RAVING about the new Gleason Library. The space is pretty much one big open room with floor to ceiling windows at one end. One of the reasons they like it so much (this is after less than one week of use!...) is that "people can see you" and "you can see your friends".

I had never thought of that as an important consideration.

They then proceeded to tell that of course, that was part of the reason that people liked to study at Carlson library -- you can see your friends thought the glass windows as they come up and down the glass staircase. I knew the windows gave the library an open, airy feel. I had never considered that the reason it appealed to students was that they could see their friends through the windows.

It's important to see and be seen.

You found *what* in the stacks?

I forwarded this very funny blog post entitled "amazing things found in the stacks" to my staff. And much to my amazement, it turns out that we too have found some pretty amazing things in OUR stacks over the years.

1. one pair of boxer shorts
2. on vodka bottle (empty)
3. several small cartons of milk (spoiled)

Who knew??

"This is the New Facebook"

After the dedication of the Gleason Library last night, Lorraine stayed around and watched what happened when the space was open to students. She typed up their comments which are just dreamy.


Some initial reactions:

• "Sweet!" (An exclamation by a student as he reached the top of the stairs, followed immediately by a cell phone call to a friend.)
• Students liked the colors, and the art. (Very excited to find out that art will rotate.)
• Some girls tried out every type of furniture in the room, and liked it all. One girl's favorite was the padded stools.
• Many students are enjoying the cup holders and writing tables on the chairs.
• The TV's were of great interest (until someone interrupted the feed).
• Students are moving the furniture already to suit themselves (eg: comfy chairs pulled up to the PC's)
• Students are already using the studio rooms (the ones I spoke to were studying for the GRE's tomorrow)
• An amateur film maker went nuts over the theatre room and declared his intention to "camp out" there.
• Looking in the windows from the outside is already bringing people into the space.
• Some students brought dinner in for themselves and ate at a table by the window.
• 13 laptops and 5 PC workstations being used at 8:25 pm
• Many, many, many questions about "how long this room will be open?" All are thrilled to find out that the space will not close when the IT Center does.
• "Oh my god, this is a whiteboard?!" "This is so awesome!"
• Don's student: "This is where we used to do the pasting? I'm actually excited to study!"
• There are people using the benches in the landing.
• There is already someone asleep on bench couches outside Studio B (which speak to the management of noise in here. There is a ton of activity right now, but there is only a gentle buzz in the room.)

Basically, every area of the room is being used in some way.

Some notes left on the white boards:

• This is awesome! I think I may live here
• I love Gleason. Love. Really love. (<--she's serious)
• All it needs is coffee. Nevermind. (The "nevermind" was added when I told her that there would be coffee on level G)
• I love the colors.
• This is really awesome! The new hotspot on campus
• This is so cool!
• This is the new facebook

I think a man designed this

This is the sink in the women's bathroom of the new Gleason Library. At first I thought "yeah". The gunky pink soap will go directly into the sink rather than on the counter like it does in all the other bathrooms. Then I thought, "wait a minute". Where am I going to put my purse when I'm washing my hands? Or my toothbrush? Or my book (this is a library after all). Hmmmm. No counter, only sink. I have a feeling that a man designed this sink.

A Day to Just be Silly

I dressed up for Halloween as a piece of candy corn. It was handmade and dorky. Students laughed and gave me the thumbs up. One of my class of 2011 friends (I've never met her) saw me in the stacks and we had a little exchange on facebook about it. (How can you miss a woman in a bun dressed as a candy corn?...) The mail guy and the janitor were nearly speechless when they saw me at the reference desk. It was a huge success. I had fun. They had fun. I think we all need more fun.

Just say NO to hand dryers

When it comes to women's bathrooms, I do know more than my boss, who is a man. Interestingly I rarely disagree with him about facilities - because he's usually right and I'm usually wrong. But when it comes to women's bathrooms - I am the expert.

He is excited about the hand dryers he put in the women's bathroom in the new Gleason Library. I know, it's open 24 hours and accumulation of paper trash will be a problem, BUT....

What is wrong with hand dryers?:

1. It takes way longer to dry your hands using a dryer than it does using paper towels, even those cheap, non-absorbent brown towels that we use.


2. If and when your hands are ever do DRY, they are also chapped from the heat.


3. Need to brush your teeth? Need to splash water on your face after a plane ride? How does the hand dryer work with that?? Not. No amount of toilet paper, folded or crumpled, can dry you.

Just say NO to hand dryers in women's bathrooms.

My Greatest Accomplishment Last Year

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.

But no.

Really, my greatest accomplishment (with most of the credit to Isabel) was getting shelves installed on the back of stall doors in the women's bathroom. I do not have to provide one more word of explanation to any women reading this blog. Purse hanging around your neck? Bookbag on the icky bathroom floor? Sound all too familiar?

Why is it an "accomplishment"? Because it took many, many conversations to explain why I needed a shelf in the women's stalls. And once I had convinced someone to order them - we had to show them where to install them. The facilities guy was completely baffled as to what the shelves were for.....

It really is a mars and venus thing.... Next, can we do anything about the super-tight toilet rolls? I am NOT a gerbil.

To see more posts about bathrooms, check out Bathroom Blogfest!

Things You Can Check Out

We check out a lot of things at our circulation desk in addition to books. Some have been suggested by students -- earplugs and headphones. Staff have suggested the others in response to complaints from students -- laptop locks, study lamps, extension cords, and power strips. The lamps were our solution to not great lighting. The extension cords are our interim solution to not enough outlets for laptops. Overall it's been a good way to be responsive to student comments.

Office in the Stacks?

Diane just asked about creating an office in the stacks for herself. Wow. What an amazing idea. Wouldn't that be the ultimate in outreach for faculty and students looking for Math books??? Students always come up to her and ask her for help when she's in the stacks weeding, etc. I wonder if she is actually sitting at a DESK, would they still feel comfortable asking her for help? Hmmmm.

Discouraging

I just had a woman come by the desk asking how she can send a note to library administration. We chatted and it turned out that she had been studying by a man who scared her. Of course, I told her to always let us know immediately, we will always call security immediately, etc. etc. But afterwards I mostly felt terribly discouraged. Her original solution was to send me an email hours or even days afterward the incident? How afraid do women have to be before they feel justified in saying something?

Once You've Been to the City, You Can Never Go Back

We briefly had to put notebooks with old chemistry exams on reserve yesterday. (The chemistry server went down the day before a big test.) The "solution" lasted about 2 hours. The students had to wait for the notebooks. It took too long. They were not happy. Mid afternoon, one the students in the class who had saved an electronic version, simply emailed the file to the entire class. And that was the end of revisiting the era of paper reserves.

It has always been my humble opinion that the same thing would happen if we ever lost access to an electronic journal and had to use the print version. I don't think people would bother at ALL with the print, but would simply wait, for as long as it took, for the electronic version to return.

You can't go back.

Sometimes Wikipedia Rocks

I just had a student come to the desk with a whole page of citations she wanted to find. Sigh. I thought this is going to take forever. It turned out that each citation had a DOI and PMID number - both of which are super easy to resolve. And where did she get such a lovely list of relevant references? WIKIPEDIA of course....

I will NOT give you my social security number

Just got off the phone with a lovely woman in university health services. (I am going to get registered for a respirator so I can clean mold off of books, but that's another story.). Her first question - "what is your social security number?" She was shocked when I refused to give it to her - their system "requires" it. Wait a minute. We still have systems that require social security numbers???? I DO NOT GIVE OUT MY SOCIAL SECURITY NUMBER. Geez.

Exam Tomorrow

Q. How do you know for SURE that there is a major exam tomorrow?

A. There is a big bag of chips on every study table.

Not just food. Not just a regular bag of chips. There has to be an enormous, family-size bag of chips.

Curious. I have never, ever seen students coming into the library with one of these bags. Where do they come from??

Things Change

When we had students take pictures of the things they carried with them everyday - none of them included a laptop. But almost two years have passed and I think things have changed. I am seeing more and more students with laptops in the library, even during the day. Yesterday at 2:30, I did a quick check and there were 14 students with laptops. And yes, all the public computers were in use too....

We're Making Progress

These are the days when I really miss Isabel. She was great at coordinating all these facilities things. We're making progress towards getting two new security gates and a self check machine installed. Every day, one more step forward. Today one of the gates and the self check equipment was delivered and taken up to the third floor. I can't wait until it's all installed and we can finally open the gate to the new BME/Optics Building! I feel like this has been on my "to do" list forever!

Housing Reservations for ALA Midwinter

opened today.

At 10:20, two of the hotels were already gone.

My credit card hung for 15 minutes. Amy's has hung for an hour.

It's not 11:40 and the www.ala.org site seems to be completely down.

It's days like these that make me wonder why I still pay my dues!

Facebook and a reference question

Good grief. I just used facebook to help me answer a chemistry reference question! I remembered that Sue's status yesterday was, " Susan Cardinal is learning about the element astatine".

So when I had a couple of freshman come to the desk and ask for information about astatine, I knew right away to go ask Sue.

AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH. Astatine wasn't even an element when I took freshman chemistry!!!

Finding Journals Really is Loopy

I had yet another conversation with the first year graduate student who has been trying to figure out how to find journal articles all summer. Today we had a conversation about journals starting with "the". I'm not at all sure she believed me when I told her you had to leave out those initial articles... And of course it sounds loopy even to me. Amazon forgives the initial article, what kind of wacky system wouldn't? Sigh. We all know the answer to that question.

Sunday Afternoon at the Reference Desk

What can I conclude from my afternoon at the reference desk?

1. I really, really need better signs for the bathrooms.
2. Students expect the reserve desk and the reference desk to offer the same services. (i.e. laptop locks, markers, reserve books)
3. Why oh why are there problems with the copiers every, single day? If this was a car, I'd demand my money back.

Questions between 1 and 5 p.m.

• Where is the bathroom?
• Can I borrow a pen?
• Do you have a scanner?
• Do you have laptop locks?
• Apparently she can't wait... Can you watch my computer while I run to the bathroom?
• Beep. Beep. (no money on copy card). (I give student the departmental card to use.)
• Copier is out of paper. (No, really just a meaningless error message. Student is amazed I get the copier to work.)
• Where is the bathroom?
• Are there markers for the white boards?
• Do you have the solutions manual for (the genetics textbook)?
• *** no, reference questions ***

Three "no's" to yes

What a day.What a week. At least I can remind myself that we have turned three "no's" into yes's. (Thanks to Don Barlow for talking about this idea at ALA Annual.)

No, we only have *Styrofoam* cups for the coffee.
Yes, we have paper cups for coffee.

No, we don't have a scanner. You have to walk back across campus.
Yes, the scanner is on order and it will be installed soon.

No, you can't return a book at the reference desk.
Yes, we can take that book for you.

Right back where we started from?

We were totally focused on Faculty when I started in academic libraries twenty years ago. Then we all changed course and turned to Graduate Students. Now it seems we're in the era of The Undergraduate Student.

It was clear from interviews we did as part of the Undergraduate Research Project that students think of their professors as "the experts", the experts in everything. They don't even think of librarians as the experts for what database to use, their professors are. We pretty quickly concluded that we're going to have to work with faculty if we want to promote library resources to undergraduates.

We started to review some of the graduate student interviews this week. What a suprise. Not. Again, the graduate students view their professors as the experts. They model their behavior after their professors, they seek their advice, they are the center of their world.

Wouldn't it be ironic that I am going to end my career right back where I started, by focusing primarily on faculty? Only this time, I'm older than a lot of them....

Google Scholar and Email Address

It happened again.
1. I found the full text of an article that we don't subscribe to and that shouldn't be available full text for free but was, on Google Scholar.
2. And once again I let the patron leave without getting their email address. Sigh. Literally two minutes after he left, I had the full text of the article he wanted. RATS.

More Insight from Twitter

I am following a couple of the librarians who are regular speakers at conferences. Interesting to follow their twitter postings. These people (women) work all the time - nights and weekends. Fame definitely has a price.

Sunday afternoon on the desk

Gave a student a new box of kleenex for his table.

Live time - twitter and flickr with friends at RIT.

One of my circ students is knitting. And no, I don't have a fit about that kind of thing any more. Age has mellowed me.

Student is working on the periodic table puzzle.

Group of four students came in together and are working together at a table on something school-related.

Lots of students at the computers - some school work, some not.

Girl sitting on the stairs in the atrium laughing so hard on her cell phone that at first I thought she was sobbing. Phew.

I covered ugly bulletin board on the third floor with children's posters brought back from ALA's of years past. Anything has to be better than nothing.

Reading Susan's "The Academic Library and the Net Gen Student". Wow. She is a very good writer.

No reference questions. This is telling me something.

Questions about Facebook

I talked to a group of humanities faculty about facebook on Friday afternoon. It was very interesting and I came away thinking I probably wasn't qualified to talk on the topic at all! Geez. They asked me a bunch of questions, I couldn't answer.

Do many faculty have profiles on facebook?
I don't think so, but I have never systematically looked.

If I (faculty) get a facebook account, will my students think it's creepy?
I live in two separate spheres on facebook - my student circle of friends and my librarian circle of friends. I rarely comment on my student's activities except to say "happy birthday" and congratulations when they get into graduate school. Faculty have a very different relationship with students than I do. I can see how they would have to be even more careful about those boundaries.

Can I use facebook to publicize a new course?
This one really stumped me. I thought it might be best if a student (major or one who was taking the course) either posted something to *their* page or created a new group. Hmmm. I feel like I'm missing something here.

Interlibrary Loan is an Amazing Service

and concept. I love working with first year, international graduate students. They remind me of the amazing riches an academic library in the United States has to offer. I absolutely just made a chemistry graduate student's day by showing him interlibrary loan. He was thrilled.

Use for Twitter?

Well I'm not sure this qualifies as an important use for Twitter, but it certainly keeps me following it. I used to work at the University the of Houston and I follow a librarian who works there now. Twice in the past two months they have been sent home (or maybe one time they were NOT allowed to go home) because of tropical storms. For some reason these single sentence Twitter postings really transport me back to Houston and the scariest weather I have ever experienced.

The book is out and so is the podcast

Today, the free online version of the book, "Studying Students: The Undergraduate Research Project at the University of Rochester," came out! Yeah.


It's available at:
http://www.acrl.org/ala/acrl/acrlpubs/downloadables/downloads.cfm.

The print version is in route to the distributors and will "hit the streets" next week. $28...

There is also a podcast about the book featuring me, Judi and Ann. http://blogs.ala.org/acrlpodcast.php

Gawk. My voice is very high and I have that horrible Rochester accent. Sigh. I also made a factual error in the first sentence. Rats. David worked at *Xerox* not Kodak...

I placed my first online order

How ridiculous is this?? I THRILLED that I actually placed my first online book order today. (Thanks Sue!) The last time I had collection development responsibilities was in the dark ages - pre Gobi, pre online ordering.

Though while I'm giddy with success, I'm thinking this whole collection development stuff might just tip me right over the edge.

Apparently to get a list of my current (online and print) journal subscriptions and how much I paid for them this year (if we paid at all) and last year I will have to use:

1. Voyager acquisitions
2. Ebsconet
3. Some serials report run once a year that is stored on the network
4. Desk top reporter that is on my work computer

Note to self: find out what the difference is between all these systems and why I need to go to four different places to create one list!

And oh yeah - I guess I better beef up my excel skills if I actually want to be able to manipulate any of this data.

Gawk.

The Last Orientation Activity - Ice Cream Give Away

The Libraries and the Writing Center gave ice cream to freshman as they came off the buses from Wilson Day (a day when they volunteer in the community). The weather was beautiful. Who doesn't like ice cream? But drat - next year we have to get t-shirts! Pictures posted on our flickr site.

Slide Show of Parent's Breakfast

Created with Admarket's flickrSLiDR.

Parent's Breakfast at Freshman Orientation

was a huge success yesterday. We saw over and over again in the undergraduate research project that students went to their *parents* for help with their papers -everything for picking a topic to writing drafts. A light bulb went off for us - we needed to talk to the parents not just the students. Duh.

Pretty much all the subject librarians came and talked with parents over breakfast. We had a very simple theme "every class has a librarian", but really the conversations ranged wildly. We talked to parents about: balancing sports with academics, finding food late at night, file storage space, advisors, taking courses outside of the major, faculty writing of books, and yes (!) parental involvement with school work.

This year was even better than last. We had some orientation staff posted at the doors so the parents didn't get lost between the library entrance and the room where we served breakfast. We also stole (back) an idea from Auburn and did a short, though formal, welcome speech with explanation of what the breakfast was all about. Susan was terrific and it seemed to give some needed definition to the event.

We already have an idea to make next year's breakfast bigger and better - tower tours at sunrise! It's going to be fabulous.

My Favorite Day of the Year

I love freshman move in day. Everyone is so excited and happy and optimistic. It's a day when anything seems possible.

Looking Forward to This Week

I don't usually wake up on Sunday morning *looking forward* to the work week, but this week is different. The freshman are coming! The freshman are coming! Tuesday is move-in day. I can't wait. Wednesday is breakfast with the parents. That was super fun last year, I'm hoping it will be even better this year.

365 Library Days Project

I love the 365 Library Days Project on flickr. Libraryman (aka Michael Porter) invited libraries to post 365 photographs, or one picture a day, of their library to this flickr group. It so much fun to look at the pictures. I thought between tons of reading (blogs, listservs, actual articles) and attending conferences, I was "in the loop". But I always get new ideas when I look at these photos. Maybe there is something about looking at a picture instead of listening to a talk? Or do the pictures illustrate the real, day to day activities of the library that we don't think are worth of writing up in an article to talking about in a presentation? I have seen pictures of really clever signage, screen savers, and programming ideas. I guess the reason I look at them several times a week is because there is so much enthusiasm. How can you look at all those Harry Potter celebrations and not smile? How can you look at all the summer reading programs and not be happy that you're a librarian?

Shall we bet?

I keep a list of bets on my bulletin board. I bet X will happen in 12 months; Susan bets X will happen in 30 days. I'm always the pessimistic one. However, I'm pleased to note that I have an excellent track record and am more often correct!

So Diane and I had a very interesting conversation the other day. She thinks that we'll cancel bibliographic databases in a big way within the next two years.

I wish we would. I think we could. I think we need to. I bet it will take 10 years.

I'll add it to my bet list!

One Hundred Librarians to Lunch

I'm a sucker for these kinds of quotes. This is from the Fashion and Style section of the New York Times in an interview with Brooke Astor.

"For her 100th birthday luncheon, when she was asked whom she wanted as guests, she replied without hesitation: “One hundred librarians.”"

Cool Off @ Carlson

We had our annual social event for library staff this week, "Cool Off @ Carlson". We rented a snow cone machine and made our own snow cones. It was very fun! Pictures are posted on flickr. The blog "checking out and checking in" saw them and expanded on the idea of having a cool off event for patrons. Better idea! We'll have to try that next year.

Dimensional Barriers?

I describe some of our users as crazy.
Kenn says they are "working across dimensional barriers".
Isn't that a much nicer way to describe it?!

Article in the Chronicle

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.

Thank god for fall semester

I often wonder if library vendors or publishers would ever release new products if it wasn't for the relentless calendar of midwinter and annual meetings. I feel the same way about Fall Semester. Suddenly I have kicked into high gear. Stuff HAS to get done, and no fooling around. I must get new pictures hung on the wall. I must get new signage installed. There must be a new display in the case. I must get photos taken for my Read Posters. AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH.

Count down to freshman move in day - 20 days!

August is slow in the library....

I can remember when I first became a librarian, I had a fit about student workers wearing baseball caps at the desk. And now here is one my students knitting at the desk and I don't even blink an eye. I have definitely mellowed and it's probably a good thing!

More Facebook and Flickr

I'm equally obsessed with facebook and flickr.

Yesterday was the first time someone I didn't know commented on my flickr pictures. I had posted pictures of the dorm I stayed in when I went back for my 30th reunion (!!!) at Mount Holyoke. (It was a dump.) Some incoming freshman found my picture and went into a panic about what dorm she should choose next year. I felt kind of bad and tried to steer her to current students on, of course, facebook.

I have struck up a number of conversations with incoming freshman on facebook (thank you Brian Matthews). I have been asked to be their friends, but I'm not kidding myself. I know it's a blanket invitation. In fact one student asked me to be her "top friend", which I'm POSITIVE was a mistake! I alerted the dean of freshman to the Class of 2011 group, which she had never checked out. You certainly get an excellent feel for what they're worried about by reading the posts. I also told one of the IT guys that there seemed to be a lot of confusion about vista. He joined the group, supplied some information and also updated the website. That made me feel good and like I'm not TOTALLY wasting my time here...

Using del.icio.us for a class website

Sue made a web page this morning for a group of summer school students using only del.icio.us tags. (The idea came from Carrie Newsom at at U of Florida.) It's not perfect -- she can't figure out how to change to order of the links. But it was very quick to put together. And now as students send her more links, she can add them.. Kind of a fun experiment.

The Schools They Turned Down

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!

Web Page for Future Students

Quite by accident, I was looking at the Colorado State University Libraries homepage. They have a very cool page for "future students". I especially like the quotes from current students in the box "how we use the library". Very nice page. I'd like to do the same thing.

New Picture

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".

Mission Accomplished

I have to confess -- I set the bar quite low with these classes we do for freshman (actually pre-freshman) that don't have a library assignment. Sigh. But I am declaring Tuesday's class a complete success. One of the students said she wasn't planning to use the library but now that she had seen it, she probably will. That's a home run as far as I'm concerned.

Too Much Information?

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??

Where to start?

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.

LibraryThing and the OPAC

Heard a very cool talk by Tim Spalding, found of LibraryThing at ALA. The Danbury Public library has purchased their tags and added them to their catalog. Wow. How cool is that?

I'm looking at the record for an indian cookbook. The LCSH are Cookery, Indian and Cookery, Asian. Cookery??? Who has ever used the word cookery? Asian? Huh?

While the LibraryThing tags include cooking, indian, indian cooking.

We need help and user added tags might be the answer!

Freshman and Facebook

I read an interesting post by Brian Matthews about reaching freshman through Facebook
http://theubiquitouslibrarian.typepad.com/the_ubiquitous_librarian/2007/07/making-a-good-f.html

So I went and checked out the group of the entering UR freshman class, "University of Rochester Class of 2011". It's interesting to see what they're talking about - vista vs. xp, room assignment, what to bring for a dorm room, freshman writing classes, etc. They are also lots of pictures, including some of the library. I joined so I could answer their questions about the pictures and I added a few pictures of Carlson Library. Within minutes someone had commented on my comments and on my pictures! I don't know if it will lead to much, but the response was immediate.

The "no list"

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

You know you work in a geeky library when

students have taken all the free Chemical Abstracts Service (CAS) time line posters. Wow. Imagine those in a dorm room!