End of an era?

About a year ago, the continuing education committee decided to clean this blog up and make it active again, especially so that it could be useful during conference. Daniel Cornwall, in particular, has done an amazing job of providing regular, thoughtful and informative posts. The blog is almost perfect except for two things: Daniel is doing almost all of the work, and according to our statistics, very few people are actually reading it.

Since everyone is busy and we hate to spend time on things that aren't being used, we've decided to stop maintaining this blog at this time. It will still be up. Anyone who has signed up for an account to post is welcome to do so, and I'm happy to sign up any AkLA folk who would like to post. If it becomes active, great! If not, then I'm still pleased with the role it has played and what we have learned from doing it. Thank you to everyone who has been involved with creating and maintaining the blog!

Questions? Concerns? Comments? Need another project now that we're not doing this one? Please contact Freya Anderson at libkitty (at) yahoo (dot) com.

Kodiak - Wish you were here!

My flight got in on time on Thursday. I met a few friends on the flight who rented a car once we landed. They invited me to tag along and we drove about 30 miles out of town to a place called Fossil Beach. We stopped many times along the way to take photographs of breathtaking scenary, bison and even a few pigs. I hope to get these uploaded to Flickr within a few days of returning to Juneau. It was a blindingly sunny day, which was a real treat for us Juneauites. I've been told by locals that sun in Kodiak is about as common as sun in Juneau, so I feel especially blessed to be here.

After we got done sightseeing, we went to the opening reception which featured the Kodiak Island Drummers. They were high energy and demonstrated great precision. The leader asserted that their group was one of the most multi-faith, multi-ethnic and multi-age drumming groups currrently in existance, and he apppears to be right. A good time was had by all and AkLA President Mary Jo Joiner and several other librarians showed off their considerable dance skills and stamina.

It was a great opening day. Wish you were here. While it won't be the same as being here, check out the conference wiki for notes on some of the sessions written by Freya Anderson and other AkLA members. And if you are here in Kodiak with me, please use the "comments" button on the wiki session pages to give your impressions of the sessions you went to.

Nearly There!

I have once again found a working free wifi connection. This time it's at the Ted Stevens International Airport in Anchorage.

When I last wrote, I was stuck in Juneau with about 10 other librarians trying to get to the 2009 Alaska Library Association annual conference in Kodiak. After two cancelled flights, the third time was the charm. We got into Anchorage. It was too late for me to conduct my databases class at the Talking Book Center, but I was happy. So were my fellow librarians.

I am on the 10am flight to Kodiak and expect to arrive in 11:20am. The flight is operated by ERA Aviation. Over many years I've been trained to arrive two hours before every flight. Not just because that's the normal expectation for domestic flights, but because my CPAP machine gets special screening EVERY TIME I FLY.

I had forgotten that as an air taxi service, ERA Aviation is not subject to the same security checkpoints as Alaska Airlines. I was both estatic and slighly disappointed to find this out. Slightly disappointed because I now have two hours at the gate. But estatic because I'm freed from the hassle of the cattle line and the humilation of being assumed a security risk until my medical equipment is proved otherwise.

I'm staying at the Comfort Inn in Kodiak. If you're an attendee reading this blog, feel free to stop me and say hi.

My next entry will be from Kodiak when I actually have something Conference related to say. I just wanted to let folks know that the Southeast contingent is on its way!

Waitiing in Juneau

This is my first blog entry for AkLA 2009. I'm writing it from the Juneau Travelodge. Our morning flight was weathered out. I'm currently waiting with friends for the 12:30 flight. I was scheduled to teach a databases class in Anchorage at 1pm. I cancelled it. Hopefully I and the other Juneau people will get out today and I'll have some actual Kodiak posts for you.

That's Alaska travel for you. I see it as an adventure. How about you?

How Can Libraries Help People Begin Research with Library Resources?

This is the second of several posts summarizing the more interesting or relevant sessions I attended at the Electronic Resources & Libraries conference.

In “The Problem of Where to Start,” Mike Buschman of Proquest discussed problems people encounter in the use of library e-resources and several approaches that libraries can use to help. These findings and recommendations were based on the results of research of academic researchers’ information-seeking behavior, which included, in part, studies described in the Ithaka Report.

Mike summarized the problem this way: researchers don’t know what library resources are available, have a hard time choosing which ones to use, and just don’t know where to start. As a result, they usually don’t begin their research with library resources. At the same time, they still trust libraries and think that the content they offer is more credible than general Web resources. To preserve their role in the research process, Mike indicated that libraries need to provide training in information literacy, market their resources, place access points in context, and use a “unified discovery” service.

Now came what ended up being the primary focus of the session – a description of Summon, a unified discovery tool under development at Serials Solutions. Unlike federated search products, which send user queries out to different databases, Summon indexes library resources from Summon partners (like EBSCO, OCLC and Elsevier) and subscribing libraries (our OPACs for example). A user initiating a search from a library website through Summon can search the index, review relevant results, and access resources in the library’s knowledge base through a single interface. Because one index is searched, some of the problems typically encountered with federated search (such as speed) should be improved.

But Summon may not tackle all problems users face. One of the session attendees, for example, pointed out that the different indexed resources will use different subject taxonomies. And at this point, I think I recall Mike saying that Summon’s index doesn’t include terms found in the entire article text. The response of session attendees was very positive, but a little guarded.

Mike indicated that Summon should become commercially available this summer. People asked about cost. Mike replied that economies of scale should make Summon affordable. I hope so, for libraries of many shapes and sizes.

Here are links to a recent articles on Summon in Library Journal and Information Today. The latter article indicates that the primary target market for Summon is academic libraries and that Summon does not “know enough yet about other libraries.”

--Katie Fearer

From Elect. Resources Conference: Sharing the Cost of E-resources

Greetings from the Electronic Resources and Libraries Conference in sunny Los Angeles. As I mentioned to folks at AkLA-J’s recent meeting, I’m planning to post brief summaries of several of the sessions that I found to be most interesting or helpful. I’ll do this over the next week or so.

Annis Lee Adams and Lori Ann Saeki of the University of Hawaii at Manoa presented a session that might be particularly relevant to AK libraries, titled “Sharing the Buck: How Diverse Libraries Came Together to Share Costs and Gain E-resources. “ I apologize to them if I mischaracterize any of what they said.

Annis and Lori described two consortiums. The larger of the two, the Hawaii Library Consortium, http://www.hlc.hawaii.edu/, is composed of the state-run public library system, 14 academic libraries, many public school libraries, and a number of private school and special libraries. Its sole purpose is to purchase a general suite of EBSCO databases (like those in the Digital Pipeline). A Board of Directors governs the group. Members share costs and vote on matters based on their FTEs (my notes are sketchy here – there may have been other factors too). The public library system serves as billing agent. Aside from the general suite of EBSCO databases, the differences between the member libraries make it difficult for them to participate in other purchases.

The smaller Medical Libraries Consortium of Hawaii is a less formal group that formed to purchase medical e-resources. As the largest member, the University of Hawaii Health Sciences Library negotiates and signs license agreements, but does circulate them for comment and approval first. Not all members participate in all purchases, but the consortium won’t pursue a joint purchase unless the amount the participants will need to pay will be less than the cost to purchase the resource independently. Subscription prices are allocated based on factors such as FTE and bed count. I was surprised to learn that all but one vendor has agreed to invoice each institution separately. Each participant deals with its own access issues and in most cases captures its own statistics. The a la carte approach to specific purchase decisions has been critical to the consortium’s success.

I’ve been wondering how the Medical Libraries’ Consortium’s approach might translate to Alaska (for any subject area, not just health sciences) or whether some AK libraries might already be doing something similar now.

Singles are people too!

In some churches, there's a joke regarding children who come for their children, that you have about 12 years to get them hooked. In the past, libraries were places for the elite, and children were not served at all. Now, though, I think that the same joke could be used in some public libraries. We bring them in with story hours and craft projects, and hope they'll stay when their tastes move from chapter books to novels and how-to manuals.

Library Hotline (from Dec. 8, 2008, but we won't talk about how behind I am on my reading) highlighted a new campaign of the Chicago Public Library, geared towards single people aged 25-35 with no children:

Centered around the phrase, "Not What You Think," followed by the tag line, "It's Free. It's Easy," the campaign seeks to remind this group how much has changed at the library.

Are you reaching young(ish), single adults in your community? What are you doing that works? Any simple ideas of how to include this group?