Alaska Library Association

5th Annual LiBerry Music Festival in Ester!

2010-08-19T11:07:00.004-08:00

The John Trigg Ester Library is holding its fifth annual music festival and pie contest on Saturday, August 21, in the village of Ester, near Fairbanks. Music starts at 2 pm and performances continue on into the wee hours of the morning. The Ester library has been raising funds for construction of a new library for the past six years; groundbreaking begins this year.

For more information, contact Monique Musick or Bob Huebert, organizers and library board members.

Latest issue of Newspoke

2010-08-19T10:54:00.007-08:00

The latest issue of Newspoke is now available. You can get the PDF here. The July-September 2010 issue (v. 23 n. 3) includes these stories:

• A Legacy to Kenai's First Lady of Reading, Emily DeForest
• Letter from the President
• "A Native Lad": Turning Words into Pictures
• Library Advocacy Day
• Catalogers' Corner
• AkLA Chapter News
• Scholarship Awards for American Indians and Alaska Natives
• When Does A Library Cease to Be A Library?
• Newspoke Guidelines
• AkLA Officers/Calendar

Why information professionals should join social networks

2010-03-28T13:48:00.002-08:00

It is easy to demonize the kinds of relationships found in online social networks. Like shooting fish in a barrel-easy. There’s the acquaintance-stalker, the voyeur-friend, the I’ll-follow-you-if-you-follow-me status-seeker, and many others ranging from the hilarious to the pathetic to the criminal. Lisanova mocks one of them with pinpoint accuracy in this 2-minute video.

But we are indulging in mental laziness and conduct unbecoming to an information professional when we reject online social networks on this basis. They can be incredibly useful and subtle information streams. Over the last two years they have shifted from being just a social venue to being both sources of and filters for the oceans of information available to us.

The foundation of their usefulness lies in the fact that they are composed of millions of the best information sources/filters known to science: people. For example, in Twitter I follow a librarian in Calgary because he posts good tweets about ILL; in fact he went to the ILLiad conference recently and posted from each session. I found him serendipitously through the network of another person I found serendipitously, etc. “Serendipity” here really means that we have an intuitive grasp of people and networks of people that helps us simplify the selection process.

The challenge for us and our customers is shaping our personal interaction with the millions of people and entities that participate in social networking so we get what we need and don’t get overwhelmed in the process. Fortunately, the evolution of technology and its accompanying business models are working in our favor.

My wife and I elected not to bring a TV into our house when we got married, not because we objected to the concept of images projected on a screen, but for two interlocking reasons: because the content produced by that business model/technology was soul-destroyingly awful; and because we knew that personal and social dynamics would lead us to watch that content if we put that technology in our living room.

But 25 years later, when a new technology came along with a new business model, I started “watching TV.” The new technology was the DVD; the new business model was packaging and selling complete TV series sans advertising. That new approach was itself fostered by other business-technology phenomena, like the ubiquity of DVD drives and the way cable technology and its business model (occasionally) produces great content.

The technology evolved and allowed me to refine my information stream, in this case my entertainment. This is what is happening micro-incrementally and at a much more rapid pace in social networks today. The evolution of social networks is so blindingly rapid, in fact, that it is not useful in an article like this to make prescriptions like “Your library should be on Facebook” or “You should teach your users to manage their RSS feeds in the cloud with Google Reader.”

The best way to know what to teach our customers is to become adept at navigating those information streams ourselves, and the best way to do that is to actively craft our own personal product. Before we decide whether our library should be on Facebook, we need to know how Facebook fits into our own information strategy.

Without going into the details in this post, I can say that crafting my own information strategy has been a messy process over the years, and it is time-consuming. Sometimes I spend 8 hours a week shaping, consuming, and re-shaping my information flow. Sometimes I just cruise and consume.

But this is, after all, my profession. We can no more ignore social networks today because they have a reputation of being “flaky” than we could ignore MARC records 30 years ago because they had a reputation of being “complicated.” As professionals, we have a responsibility to figure it out and pass it along to our customers.

Another fundraiser

2009-10-15T10:15:00.004-08:00

Trey Simmons plans to host a Red Dress Party for the John Trigg Ester Library sometime in February. This is an event where all attendees must wear a red dress or dress-like garment (toga, kilt, smoking jacket, bathrobe). "Red" can be anything from pink to burgundy. There's music and food, and you pay money to get in. Apparently these fundraisers are quite successful in Logan, Utah (where the original Red Dress Party was held) and Portland, Oregon, where each year the organizers choose a different charity to donate money to, and the parties have grown to the size where they raise tens of thousands of dollars.

It sounds like a lot of fun!

Fundraisers and fundraising ideas

2009-08-20T12:20:00.005-08:00

Library fundraisers can bring in a wide variety of people from the community and can be a lot of fun, too. The community of Ester uses music, food, sports, and various contests to engage people. The John Trigg Ester Library has three fundraisers a year: the Book Bash & Lallapalooza (an auction with entertainment and a lasagne feed), the Li-Berry Music Festival and Pie Throwdown (a music festival and pie-baking contest), and Readers on the Run (a 5-kilometer footrace with costume contest and stops to create magnetic poetry for the poetry contest).

The Li-Berry Music Festival this year will be September 13, from 3-9:30 pm (or later) at the Golden Eagle Saloon and Hartung Hall, in the village of Ester. Pies are due at the Eagle between 12 and 3 and must include wild Alaska berries, but can be savory or sweet. (See our contest rules for more information or e-mail the JTEL librarians.)

For our 2010 spring fundraiser, the Lallapalooza, we are going to have for the first time a Library Decathlon: ten sporting events playing on stereotypes and actual duties of librarians. So far the list includes tests of skill such as a Ruler Thwack, a Shushing event, a Book Stack Carry and Alphabetize Relay Race, a Book Cart Costume & Choreography Contest (on the order of the drill team event in Chicago), and a Book Thief Tackle event. Teams from around the state will be invited, and librarians in particular are encouraged to participate, although the general public can try their library skills also.

So tell us—what sorts of fun things do you do for fundraisers?

End of an era?

2009-03-25T12:46:00.003-08:00

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!

2009-03-15T05:51:00.002-08:00

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!

2009-03-13T08:08:00.002-08:00

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

2009-03-12T11:06:00.002-08:00

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?

2009-02-18T14:03:00.003-09:00

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

2009-02-12T12:11:00.002-09:00

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!

2009-02-09T14:20:00.000-09:00

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?

LC Provides Public Domain Lincoln Photos

2009-02-06T14:18:00.002-09:00

[Abraham Lincoln, U.S. President. Seated portrait, holding glasses and newspaper, Aug. 9, 1863] (LOC)
Originally uploaded by The Library of Congress

This image is one of 22 photographs and other portraits that the Library of Congress has posted to their Flickr Commons photo stream. These photos can be used any way you like. For links to more photos and notice of an upcoming Lincoln exhibit please visit the Library of Congress blog at http://www.loc.gov/blog/?p=431.

Your Local Library! (On Video)

2009-01-18T15:43:00.001-09:00

Somewhat interesting video tour of a public library with service highlights. I really like the concept, but I think the transitions were too long. Some narration would have been welcome. But overall, a creative effort that highlights a lot of resources patrons might not realize their library had.

Has your library posted a video tour somewhere? Send us your links!

Uncle Sam's Crystal Ball - On Target!

2009-01-09T09:24:00.002-09:00

While preparing for a talk on Alaska Statehood Resources, I came across the item:

Rogers, G. W., & Cooley, R. A. (1963). Alaska's population and economy; Regional growth, development, and future outlook. College: University of Alaska.

On page 203, the authors present a chart of population projections done by various forecasters. According to the chart, the US Census Bureau predicted in 1960 that in the year 2000, Alaska would have a population between 600,000 and 700,000.

The actual 2000 population, as reported by the US Census via American Factfinder? 626,932 people. That's more than good enough for government work. It's an especially interesting figure to me since it did not take Alaska's oil boom of the 1960s and 1970s into account.

What can you do on your library's website?

2009-01-05T06:04:00.003-09:00

In a post titled Doing Stuff at the Library’s Website, library blogger David Lee King asks:

Here’s something to ponder, next time you’re looking for something to ponder. What can you actually DO at your website? Can you do most of the the real “stuff” that your library offers as activities?

He then lists the types of things that you can do if you walk into your physical library:

check out a book
read a book or magazine
take notes and do research
put a public PC on reserve for later
pester the reference librarian with questions
check stuff out when I’m done
attend a training session or a fun program

Without making judgments about whether patrons should be able to do all of the above, I thought it would be fun if us Alaskan librarians shared what is possible to do on our websites. So, please consider copying and pasting the list above into a comment and let us know each of the things a patron can do on your website. For each thing that can be done, list where.

I'll get the ball rolling with an unofficial assessment of what you can do at the Alaska State Library's website at http://library.state.ak.us:

check out a book - Only if it is an audio book. Cardholders can do that at http://listenalaska.lib.overdrive.com/.
read a book or magazine - They can read magazines by visiting our journal finder tool at http://atoz.ebsco.com/home.asp?Id=K09408 and either browse the title lists or type in the name of a specific magazine or journal. They can read SOME (state-published) books by visiting our State Publications shipping lists at http://www.library.state.ak.us/asp/shippinglists/shippinglists.html or by searching our catalog for e-books (mostly older Netlibrary titles).
take notes and do research - Patrons can't take notes on our website, but they can do research - either by visiting our databases page at http://library.state.ak.us/index/index.html OR by going to our new division page at http://lam.alaska.gov and using the search box which pulls up content from web pages at the State Archives and State Museum as well as the State Library. Type in "governor egan" without quotes for an example.
put a public PC on reserve for later - our patrons can't do this in person.
pester the reference librarian with questions - We wouldn't call it pestering, but they can get an Ask-A-Librarian e-mail form by visiting http://library.state.ak.us/forms/askalibrarian.cfm.
check stuff out when I’m done - Only audio books as noted above.
attend a training session or a fun program - Not yet, but we're working on it. More in the next few months.

That's what you can do by visiting the web site of the State Library. What can you do on yours? If there's something you can do that's not listed above, let us know.

Government Gives Advice on Keeping Resolutions

2008-12-31T09:18:00.003-09:00

Have you or your patrons made promises to yourself for 2009? If you've got the will, but don't know the way, the federal information portal, usa.gov has some tips for you if you've resolved to:

Do you know of good resources (print or online) to help people keep their New Year's Resolutions? Leave a comment of a non-commercial nature.

If you want to learn more about federal government information, contact on of Alaska's Federal Depository Libraries. See list at http://www.akla.org/documents/index.html#dir.

Here's hoping you all have a healthy and happy 2009.

Rise of the women gamers

2008-12-27T11:30:00.002-09:00

A December 23, 2008 BBC News Technology item:

The virtual battle of the sexes
By Tamsin Osborne
BBC News
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/7796482.stm

is the latest in a number of articles I've seen lately that document that video games aren't just for the Elf Lord in his bachelor pad.

According to Ms. Osborne,

But this stereotype has been challenged by a study investigating gender differences among gamers.
It found that the most hard-core players are female, that gamers are healthier than average, and that game playing is an increasingly social activity.
Despite gaming being seen as a male activity, female players now make up about 40% of the gaming population.

One possible problem with this study is that it only looked at one online game - EverQuest II. But this finding is in keeping with my own experience. Many of the folks I know who play World of Warcraft, EverQuest and who participate in Second Life are female.

Does this statistic translate in your library gaming events, if you have them? Let us know your experience in a comment.

New Stuff in Ketchikan

2008-12-23T09:23:00.002-09:00

The Rainbird Librarian in Ketchikan recently sat down and figured out what a typical week's worth of new library items looked like and came up with:

24 new nonfiction books

19 audiobooks

18 documentary & nonfiction films

15 feature films

12 new novels

11 music CDs

1 graphic novel (and a partridge in a pear tree....)

What does a week's worth of new items look like in your library?

Internet Archive Holiday Card

2008-12-22T06:11:00.002-09:00

If you are not already familiar with the vast storehouse that is the Internet Archive, check out their 2008 Holiday Card. The card highlights the 2008 achievements of the Archive including:

One million searchable, downloadable books go
150 billion web pages go
250,000 audio recordings go
135,000 videos go
796 new collections
23 million Book Records on the new OpenLibrary.org site
Scan-on-Demand partnership with Boston Public Library
182 employees in 18 facilities in 5 countries scanning 1,000 books a day
145 libraries contributing to the Open Content Alliance go
140,000 images and videos on the new partnership with NASA NASAimages.org

Here's hoping that the current economic times don't prevent them from having an even more successful 2009.

National Resource Directory For Wounded Service Members And Vets

2008-12-19T09:05:00.002-09:00

The Washington State Library Update for December 10, 2008 reported:

The Department of Defense has now launched the National Resource Directory (NRD). The NRD is an online partnership for wounded, ill and injured service members, veterans, their families, families of the fallen and those who support them. The NRD provides information on, and access to, medical and non-medical services and resources across the country which will help them reach their personal and professional goals as they successfully transition from recovery to community living. This new website is available at www.nationalresourcedirectory.org/.

This sounds like a great service for people who've given a lot to their country.

temporary delay

2008-11-05T10:59:00.003-09:00

My posts on Internet Librarian have been temporarily delayed because I was called out of town on a family emergency. Rest assured, though, that they have not been forgotten, and I'll continue with them when I return to Juneau (and to my notes!).

Keynote: Communities and Communication in a Social and Mobile World

2008-10-27T19:07:00.004-08:00

I really enjoyed this keynote by author Howard Rheingold, who wrote Smart Mobs. The themes were of trust and communication over time. Rheingold noted that when he had written other books, he researched them, wrote them, and then put the topic away, but this topic has stuck with him. His presentation was lively, interesting and relevant, with visuals reminiscent of Flat Stanley or Where's Waldo. I've stuck pretty closely with my notes from his presentation:

Cell phones are changing the way the world looks at time, children, and each other. In Finland, the word for cell phone is the diminutive of “hand.” In Tokyo, people were walking around looking at their cell phones instead of around themselves or at each other. Rheingold heard the saying, “kids flock like birds” and noticed a softening of time, where we don't meet at a pre-specified time as much, but rather plan to meet in the afternoon and work out the details of when and where later, on the phone. Protests, meetings, etc., have all been arranged by cell phone (for example: "everyone show up at this time in this place wearing black"), lowering the threshold for cooperation. Oh My News (Korea) tipped the election on election day via social networking, and there are many more examples of this type of thing from all over the world: high school kids in Chile, Basques in Madrid, violent radicals in Denmark, Nigeria, Australia, and more.

This isn't new. Way back when, hunter-gatherers needed protein every day. They gathered together in extended family groups and managed to drive all large mammals in North America to extinction more quickly. These were big, so hunters could provide for more than themselves and their families. Communication was key for hunting and sharing.

Later, big civilizations grew in the river deltas. Writing began from record-keeping: accountants started it all! Reading and writing was limited to the elite until the printing press. New forms of collective action emerged from new forms of communication. Science becomes collective intelligence instead of personal genius. Luther wasn’t the first priest to protest, just the first to protest after printed broadsides. There were similar advances in politics with the founding of this country. There were huge advances in banking and commerce because people could transmit currency with paper – keys are trust and worldwide communication system. This sharing allowed people to build on each other’s discoveries. Looking forward, we are on another cusp with toward near universal use of small communication/computer devices.

Markets are changing. Open source is growing out of self-interest. Opening proprietary source software, letting people use it, has been key to development, growth, and financial rewards. For example, Lilly created a market for solutions, like eBay. Amazon, Google and others have opened up their programming interfaces and ads to let others make a little money and them make a lot of money. Getting people working on problems across firms and fields has been huge and successful. Prisoner’s dilemma stopped trading with unknowns, but eBay helped increase trust with seller information and power sellers. The internet is allowing us to communicate and share, which is allowing development that never could have happened otherwise, for example: Wikipedia, ThinkCycle (cooperative design for developing world), Swarm Supercomputing Collectives (SETI @ home, Folding @ home, and more), Amazon Mechanical Turk (crowd-sourcing), Cocreation of culture (p2p and many to many) blogs, YouTube, and more. Success comes to those who provide powerful platforms that enable individuals. This is leveraged self-interest. It looks like altruism but enables their self-interest to help others.

We are in a multimedia world, with technology as mind amplifiers, used by people who never used to use computers. From small subcultures to large portions of population, people are, well, participating in participatory media…blogs, wikis, rss, mashups, podcasts, file sharing, tagging, and more. We have broader, faster, cheaper, social communication. We need to take risks with experimentation! Most learning is happening when the teacher isn’t looking, on evening and weekends, in the back of the class. Learning is self-guided, but needs more guidance from others, especially in how to apply skills. Librarians can help. There is a social media classroom available: http://socialmediaclassroom.com, a combination blog, wiki, forums, chat, social bookmarking, how-to and more, which we can use to help people figure out what’s appropriate for their use, and the appropriate rhetoric to use there. This is currently available as a free Drupal download, but will soon be available in a hosted IT-Free version for educators, including libraries.

This is not all just fun. Social media can be used to make the world work better (when Rheingold couldn't get Comcast to respond to an emergency repair request, he got quick help by contacting Comcastcares on Twitter, and wikis and blogs have been effectively used to coordinate worldwide emergency response, as in http://cooperationcommons.com). However, in this rapidly changing world, we need to keep up with the literacies, not the technologies. In searching: how do you get an answer, but also, how do you know the answers are true? This is key for librarians. We can help with the information literacy piece!

Internet Librarian

2008-10-26T15:46:00.004-08:00

Inspired by Daniel Cornwall blogging the Reference Renaissance conference, I'll be posting here about the sessions I attended at the recent Internet Librarian conference in Monterey, CA. You can find my posts on this topic (and other people's) by searching on the tag IL2008.

As you might expect from a conference with internet in the title, electronic sharing of conference content was popular. In several sessions, we found Twitter or Flickr postings from just minutes previously, and the conference Twitter tag (#il2008) showed up on search home page popular tag listings each day. So many people were typing away on their laptops, that a couple of speakers mentioned that they knew when they had said something good because the room immediately sounded like rain with all the tapping at keyboards. Maybe that's why I felt right at home (rain being very familiar to this Juneauite).

Two years ago, I went to this conference. Then, while there was much to learn on many topics, I found the biggest trend to be the increasing place of wikis to help communication and collaboration as content management systems, home pages, intranets and shared manuals and more. Since then, I've gotten the reputation at my library of being "all wikis all the time", which I find to be only a slight exageration. This time, the big trend seemed to be Twitter, and while I've been familiar with the tool for years, for the first time I finally saw how it could be valuable for my work. I'll mention details as I discuss it in my session overviews, but I think that this could be an important tool to watch over the coming year.

I'll try to post at least a few times a week until I've covered the conference, so watch this spot! For other people's take on the conference, check out the list of conference blogs on the conference wiki.

WorldCat Lists - The Video

2008-10-15T16:05:00.001-08:00

Build lists of books and videos for your library, your school, for the world or just you. This video shows you how to do this easily with Open WorldCat.

Congratulations to Ketchikan!

2008-10-13T16:46:00.002-08:00

Congratulations to the staff of the Ketchikan Public Library on their recent annual book sale. According to their blog report, they "raised over $5,200 in sales, $170 in memberships and more than $100 in donations for the New Library Building Fund."

And they got "previously owned" books into the hands of new readers. Great work!

Seeing clearly?

2008-10-09T08:25:00.002-08:00

Google's Gmail has a new service, just rolled out Monday: Google Goggles. It basically serves as an optional filter for those times when our internal filters aren't quite as strong. This nifty service aims to help prevent users from emailing when they're not thinking clearly, by requiring completion of some simple math problems in order to send an email at night on the weekends (or whenever you specify). I've seen the sorrow that can result from emails sent unthoughtfully, even if the person was not actually incapacitated by too much alcohol or too little sleep. Sometimes, just an extra step to make us think about what we're doing can be really helpful.

Of course, sometimes it's just annoying 99% of the time, so we end up turning it off right before the one time it would be helpful.

True in 1905. Still True Today

2008-10-06T16:50:00.002-08:00

In prepping for some staff training last month, I came across a clear explanation of the need for controlled vocabulary when doing comprehensive literature searches. This comes from volume 1 (1900-1904) of the Readers' Guide to Periodical Literature and I believe it is as relevant today as it was when it was first published over a century ago:

...this index has been made first of all a subject index. Articles are indexed under the subject headings which most nearly describe the actual topics treated, regardless of the headings suggested by the frequently misleading titles. This method has the advantage, not only of making accessible all the material on a particular subject, but also of bringing this material in one place, for even tho the title may adequately divulge the subject matter of an article, all titles do not call a thing by the same name. The war of the revolution may appear in one title as the revolutionary war, in another as the war for independence, in another as the American revolution. But articles on the revolution will not be scattered under these different names. They will be found under United States--History--Revolution, in whatever form the name of the war appears in the titles of the articles or whether or not it appears at all.

That is the power of controlled vocabulary. This is the power of librarian-added value. And while cataloging everything everywhere isn't an option, we should not lightly throw controlled vocabulary aside. What do you think? Leave us a comment.

Alaska Native Medical Center Library Blog

2008-09-29T06:18:00.002-08:00

The Alaska Native Medical Center Library has maintained a blog at http://anmclibrary.blogspot.com/ for more than a year, but it has just come to our attention. I'm glad it did because it has highlights of practitioner and patient focused medical resources that should be of interest to many in the Alaska library community. It also provides links to other medical-information focused blogs.

Recent posts have included:

Check it out. If you have thoughts on this blog or know of other Alaska library blogs, please leave a comment. If you blog for a library in Alaska, there are two ways to let us know about your blog:

Write Daniel Cornwall at dan.cornwall@alaska.gov
Mention "Alaska State Library" somewhere in a blog posting and our Google Alert will pick up your blog post, allowing us to add you to the AkLA Alaskan Library blogroll.

9/21/08 - Ester: 3rd Annual Li-Berry Music Festival & Berry Pie Throwdown!

2008-09-18T06:14:00.000-08:00

Thanks to the Ester Public Library for letting us know about this fun sounding event this weekend:

3rd Annual Li-Berry Music Festival & Berry Pie Throwdown!

Date: Sunday, September 21, 2008
Time: 1:00-6:00 pm
Location: The Blue Loon, 2999 Parks Highway
Cost: $10 at the door

Come celebrate berry season, books, and music at the third annual Li-Berry Music Festival, and join us for some foot-stomping music and a pie-baking contest. This lively event will feature Acousta-Moose, ArlyJylz, Steve Brown & the Bailers, and Fiddlehead Red, and raises money to heat the John Trigg Ester Library. Pie-bakers wishing to enter the contest must bring their entries to the event no later than 2:30 pm. Pies must include berries; $2 entry fee. Fabulous prizes! Pie slices will be shared with the audience (if the judges leave any!) for donations. Contact Deirdre Helfferich at 479-3368 or library@esterrepublic.com, or go to www.esterlibrary.com for more information.

AcOusta-MoOse
The acoustic version of the popular band GaNgly MoOse, Acousta-Moose includes Eric Graves on guitar and George Gianokopoulos on bass, along with Gangly members Kliff Hopson, John Knechtel, and Dave Parks.
http://www.ganglymoose.com

Arly-Jylz
This duo plays regularly at the Silver Spur and other clubs around Fairbanks. Loren Arly Kuhl (Vocals, Guitar, Six String Banjo, Bass, Harmonica) and Stephen Jylz Kircher (Guitar, Fiddle, Bass, Keyboards, Drums, Mandolin, Vocals) have been playing together for around six years, and play country, southern rock, and Americana.
http://www.myspace.com/arlyjylz

Steve Brown & the Bailers
This trio plays "a fine blend of Fairbanks folk." Steve Brown and the Bailers have been working up a good set of timeless originals and old favorites for your acoustical listening enjoyment. Give a listen to Steve Brown’s lyrics, Robin Feinman’s vocals, and Todd Denick’s thumpin’ bass.
http://www.stevenjbrown.com

Far North Fiddlehead Red
Formerly known as Red Square, Fiddlehead Red is an acoustic / folk / newgrass band. Members include Andrew Parkerson-Gray (Guitars, Banjo, Vocals), Shiloh Parkerson-Gray (Vocals, Flute), Rachel DeTemple (Fiddle, Recorder, Vocals, Stomp), and Mandy Booth (Bass, Vocals).
http://www.fiddleheadred.com/

Pie Contest

This oh-so-delicious part of the Li-Berry Music Festival celebrates the annual berry bounty to be found in the Alaskan Interior. Test your pie-making skills to the sound of great music!

Rules:
1. Pies must include berries, and be home-made (no store-bought!) Berries may be those traditionally thought of as berries or any by the strict botanical definition. Savory or sweet pies accepted.
2. $2 entry fee per pie. Multiple pie submissions by the same cook are perfectly fine.
3. Judges may be bribeable, but no guarantees. Cash bribes will be donated to the library (but you earn brownie points for those!).
4. Bring pies to the Blue Loon between 1 and 2:30 and register your entry. Judging begins at 2:30 sharp.
5. Award categories will be determined by the judges at the time of the contest. Winners will be announced at the music festival, and fabulous prizes (of course) awarded.
6. Leftover slices will be offered up to the audience for donation.

John Trigg Ester Library

PO Box 468 • Ester, AK 99725

library@esterrepublic.com

www.esterlibrary.org

This even makes me wish Juneau was on the road system. I'd drive up! If you're within driving distance, consider this Sunday treat.

Concern about "books" brand since 1969

2008-09-15T05:50:00.000-08:00

As we all know from OCLC research, people associate libraries with books. Our "brand" is books. This is a source of frustration to many who know that libraries are so much more. But this frustration isn't new. While researching a completely unrelated topic at the Alaska State Archives, I came across a February 12, 1969 letter to State Librarian Dick Engen from Mrs. Jane Williams at the University of Alaska. Mrs Williams was aghast that a recent study of libraries in Alaska failed to touch on A/V materials:

Even tho Phylis Dalton said she would not be able to include much on film libraries in the PAS report I am surprised, chagrined, and down-right angry that nothing - absolutely nothing, was done in this area. Perhaps it was all an afterthought. The whole idea of the new type of Resource Center! Bah! It does not come through in this PAS Report at all. Are we so lock-stepped that we cannot even recognize the approximately two million dollar investment in this state in resource materials -- OTHER THAN BOOKS?

Mrs Williams then discusses current and future technologies including video by satellite and the "Electronic Video Tape Recorder." She then takes the report writers to task for not mentioning:

All the necessary items for a magnificent book library system in Alaska. It did not bear home or suggest enough of a radical innovation toward the trend for "Information Centers", let us not be bashful or reticent to use the word "film" and any other media at every chance we have. Otherwise we drive only deeper that "books" alone is, what we mean.

The letter closes by linking use of new media to creating interest in books, proving that Mrs. Williams was not anti-book, just against being book only. Thirty-nine years later, we seem to be in a similar spot.

Governor Palin's Entrance Interview On-Line

2008-09-10T13:26:00.001-08:00

Robyn Russell of the University of Alaska, Fairbanks reports that the UAF Oral History Program has put up Governor Palin's entrance interview on-line. This is the oral history interview she did with Paul McCarthy several months after taking office. The URL is: http://uaf-h2007-04.uaf.edu/. People can listen to the MP3 file and/or read the written summary.

Questions about this resource should be directed to the UAF Oral History Program at Oral History Program; Alaska & Polar Regions Dept.; Rasmuson Library; University of Alaska Fairbanks; Fairbanks, AK 99775. Phone: (907) 474-5355. Fax: (907) 474-6365. E-mail: ffwss@uaf.edu.

New Annotated Polar Bibliography

2008-09-08T09:31:00.000-08:00

Thanks to the Polar Libraries Colloquy blog for highlighting this new, 126 page annotated bibliography:

An Annotated Bibliography of Material Related to the Polar and
Arctic Regions in the Special Collections of the Trent University Library (by Janice Millard)
http://www.trentu.ca/admin/library/documents/polarbibliography2007.pdf [513k]

The bibliography is arranged in Library of Congress classification order. Each entry comes with a one or two paragraph annotation like the entry below:

Hubbard, Mina Benson. A woman’s way through unknown Labrador:
an account of the exploration of the Nascaupee and George Rivers.
New York: Doublebday, Page & Co., 1909.
FC 2193.4 .H82 1908b SpC

• Mrs. Hubbard, the widow of Leonidas Hubbard Jr., included much
from her late husband’s diary as well a George Elson’s accounts
in this book. Leonidas Hubbard set out with two companions
(one of whom was Elson) in July 1903 on a canoe trip to explore
and map eastern Labrador. Unfortunately he died in October
1903, while in the interior of Labrador.

• In 1905 his widow undertook the Second Hubbard Expedition to
Labrador and successfully completed the work her husband had
set out to do. Given the times, it was an amazing undertaking
for a woman. Includes a map and photos.

Congratulations to Ms. Millard for creating what promises to be a helpful and well used resource for people interested in the polar regions. My only regret is that links to Open WorldCat were not included so that people outside the university could better locate copies of these materials closer to home or facilitate interlibrary loan requests.

Betting on Newspapers

2008-09-01T11:53:00.000-08:00

People reading my postings on this blog know that I don't buy much of the "People aren't reading / Print is Dead / Books and Newspapers will soon die" talk that we hear in and out of the library field.

One person who shares my views on newspapers is communicator Shel Holtz. In a blog entry titled,The future of newspapers (and the $100 I’m going to take from Jose Leal), Shel explains why he is betting a $100 there will still be paper newspapers in 10 years. In part he says:

Print, however, still has strengths. While many newspapers will perish before the industry figures out how to turn things around by playing to those strengths, print journalism will adapt. Print newspapers in 10 years won’t much resemble a newspaper today. My guess is that their focus will be hyperlocal. How good is the web for finding out about the dry clearners opening up down the street or the outcome of the town hall meeting? It doesn’t pay for Joe’s Tavern to advertise on the web when Joe’s customer base is limited to people who live within a two-mile radius. It does pay to advertise in a newspaper that lands on everybody’s front door, that people pick up before they board the train for the city.

Shel's post also has a number of statistics showing the continued strength of print media. Take a look and share it with your friends and especially people who still believe print is a dinosaur. See if they will put their money where there mouth is. And if I'm still blogging here in 2018, we'll revisit this post.

The Right Tool for the Right Job

2008-08-25T06:00:00.000-08:00

In a post called Homer Simpson is the patron saint of innovation, Australian communications blogger Lee Hopkins makes the important point that communication tools tend to live alongside one another. This means that while experimentation isn't a bad thing, we should use the tools that we are most comfortable with.

Or as Lee puts it much better than I:

Just as there’s no point trying to get a non-communicative CEO to start blogging, there’s no point trying to use a tool and channel that uses skills not ordinarily part of your personal repertoire.

Naturally, there is nothing wrong with stretching, growing, developing, and adopting new skills. But be honest with yourself — if you don’t have the time and the self-esteem to vidblog (bearing in mind that video blogging can take ages to get right, far longer than text blogging or audio podcasting) then don’t commit yourself to it and your audience to expect it.

Something to think about. What are you comfortable with and how you using that to connect with your patrons?

Tips for finding historic photos of the Tlingit and Haida

2008-08-21T11:00:00.002-08:00

If you're looking for historic photos of the Tlingit or Haida, the archivist at the Sealaska Heritage Institute Special Collections has some tips for you. In addition to these tips, he made this welcome announcement:

"In the next few months we aim to launch an online searchable catalog that will allow people to search our collection holdings."

This is exciting news and I'm sure librarians across Alaska will be eagerly awaiting the arrival of this new finding aid.

Reference Renaissance: Most PowerPoints available

2008-08-19T11:57:00.002-08:00

The Reference Renaissance conference that I blogged about earlier this month has posted the presentation slides and handouts from the presenters who provided them. You can find a session list with linked materials at http://www.bcr.org/referencerenaissance/schedule_details.html. A special thanks to Justine Shaffner for letting me know it's been done!

As I have time available, I will go back through the blog posts here and create links to session materials.

Do you agree with WebJunction on education needs?

2008-08-19T06:00:00.000-08:00

Recently the OCLC-powered, non-profit library education community site WebJunction published a survey about perceived training needs. The survey garnered about 2,000 responses worldwide. Among other things, librarians and other library workers were asked the open ended question “What skill or knowledge would you like to add to your expertise to help you in your work?” Some of the replies included:

Keeping up with new technology
Keeping up with library trends, including Library 2.0
Web design and development
Basic computer skills
Computer programming
Networking, esp, wireless
Time management (including email management)
Cataloging
Office applications, especially Excel
Open source applications
Computer troubleshooting
“Web 2.0″, social tools
Personnel management
Customer service/ dealing with difficult patrons
Spanish Language (learning it)
Grants (finding, writing) and other fundraising skills
Marketing (especially marketing/outreach materials)
Budgeting & financial planning

How does the above match up to your own experience? Since no one likes to admit deficits, I'll get the ball rolling.

My number one need is communications, especially in the context of marketing. I've learned some things over the decade-plus out of library school, but I'm still not master of the elevator speech that will instantly communicate my library's value to my funders and people I meet at parties.

I can also use instruction in budgeting and grants. Thanks to my institution, I feel like I'm getting some good feel for budgeting.

Finally one of my major needs isn't on WebJunction's list at all. It could be because it's not something that can be taught in a classroom. And that is a deep knowledge of my library's collection and electronic resources. I have worked for my current library for nearly ten years and I am still running across material that is new to me. Hopefully this says more about the richness of the State Library's collection than it does about my curiosity.

So that's me, what about you? I don't mean to do an actual survey because there are other venues for that, but I would like to start a conversation about what your important needs are and how you see yourself meeting them.

Reference Renaissance: Final Thoughts

2008-08-18T06:34:00.001-08:00

CORRECTION:

In my previous post, I said:

Note: By August 20, 2008, all of the presentation slides and handouts for Reference Renaissance will posted to the conference site at http://www.bcr.org/referencerenaissance/index.html.

Justine Shaffner, one of the conference organizers, kindly sent this correction:

Hi Daniel! Re all the Reference Renaissance materials being posted by 8/20 - actually, we'll only have posted all of the materials that were sent to us...

Thanks Justine! Sorry about my misunderstanding and for the late correction.

Read on for my last impressions of the conference.

--------------------------

Over the past several days, I've written about my experience in attending sessions at the BCR sponsored Reference Renaissance conference. But since any conference is more than sessions, I have some general comments about this excellent conference that I heartily recommend to anyone involved in providing reference services.

Local Arrangements Committee

Based on my experience, at the heart of any great conference is a hardworking group of people privately pulling their hair out but publicly doing everything they can to do make things go smoothly for speakers and attendees alike. I don't know about hair-pulling, but the RR local arrangements folks were just wonderful. They answered every question promptly with a smile and also posted all the restaurant and tourist information one could wish for. When tech went bad, a room monitor was on scene to fix the problem or get quick help. They even arranged a baseball game for some of the out-of-towners. I passed, but the folks who went had a good time. Thank you Kris Johnson and the rest of local arrangements. You made us feel very welcome!

Networking

It was both fun and productive to meet other reference librarians. Some for the first time, like an Alaskan colleague that I just happened to sit next to on the outbound Seattle-Denver flight, or meeting old documents colleagues. It was helpful and comforting to find that some of things we've started doing have been adopted elsewhere. I also finally got to meet up some of the fine and ~~eccentric~~ creative people who make up the Library Society of the World.

Venue

I know you shouldn't pick a conference by its venue, but BCR picked one of the best locations that I've ever been to. (Bear in mind I don't get out much.) A number of conferences I've been to have been at hotels in business parks or other areas where there is a dearth of restaurants, other amenities or public transportation.

The hotel we stayed at was within easy walking distance of nearly a dozen restaurants. It was also within a few blocks of a light rail station where one could easily get to downtown Denver with its extensive 16th shopping mall with restaurants of all cuisines. I did not play tourist, but Denver has a lot to offer. As a result of this trip, I'd actually consider Denver for a personal vacation destination.

Conclusion

Reference Renaissance was a productive, idea-generating conference that helped to build the confidence of all librarians who believe in a world made better by easy access to accurate information. Plus it had its fun moments. Speaking solely for myself, this is a conference you want to go to if you have funding.

Reference Renaissance: Beyond the Hash(mark)

2008-08-17T06:28:00.000-08:00

The last session I attended at Reference Renaissance had a definite take-home idea for me. Ironically an idea I knew I was taking home since the first morning of the conference, but more about that later.

The presentation was titled, "Beyond the Hash(mark): Tally Sheets are so 2005 with these presenters from Kansas State University (KState):

Danielle Theiss-White
Laura Bonella
Jason Coleman
Erin Fritch

In addition to the subject matter, this presentation gave me a striking lesson in modern communication culture that stunned me. Attendees were given a choice between asking questions by raising their hand OR by texting a message from their cell phone. This seemed like a needless gimmick to me, BUT five questions were received in this fashion. I don't own a cell phone, but I had borrowed my wife's cell phone for the conference. She doesn't have a texting plan, but even if she did, I feel like I would have spent a half hour composing the text message. Clearly a significant number of people don't share my discomfort. Is this a sign we should be offering SMS ref service at the library? So people can text us from the stacks? Just thinking out loud.

Sorry to be distracted by the shiny new toy of in-room texting, but it seemed worth mentioning.

The meat of the presentation was a "debate" between Danielle, representing
KState with its electronic stat tool for reference, and Jason, representing GraphiteU, an entity eerily similar to KState except for using paper tally sheets.

Danielle sung the praises of the Libstats data gathering tool. Libstats is free and open source and can be found at http://code.google.com/p/libstats/. KState uses it to track reference questions. Types of information gathered are the question and answer itself, location, patron type, question type, time spent, question format (i.e. phone, IM, e-mail, etc) and librarian initials. There are several built-in reports and data can also be exported to any spreadsheet program for further analysis. Multiple librarians can access the program at one time. It looks pretty decent, although code page says that the person who maintains the program is switching jobs and is looking for a new developer to take over. And the user community as represented by the Libstats user group at http://groups.google.com/group/libstats only has 34 members. But it still looked pretty nifty and certainly a cheap way to develop a knowledge base.

Jason sung the praises of the paper tally sheet. He was entertaining but not particularly convincing. Except for noting that his method kept working during internet breakdowns and power outages.

One thing that both "debaters" emphasized is that you should understand WHY you are collecting statistics. Many of us have to keep track for state and/or federal reports, but the right kind of data can help you determine desk staffing and training needs. This is where tracking question content and time of day can be handy. And this is undoubtedly easier in electronic format. If you are creating a knowledge base with questions, it is very important to strip out identifying information as you may get court/national security orders to release material from your tracking database.

It was a fun and informative session. Enough so that I recommend seeing KState librarians whereever they present. They are a fun-loving group who communicate knowledge well.

At the top of this post I mentioned that I had marked electronic reference tracking from the first morning. That's because I stopped by the table of Altarama and asked them to give me a breakfast demo of their DeskStats product. I was impressed and it seemed reasonably priced. It definitely has better reporting than LibStats and I liked the way it could customize sub types of reference questions. It also seems to have the capability of letting other sections of our division have their own specialized question tracking forms. If so, it would free up time of our publications specialist who currently spends a good amount of time compiling spreadsheets of question counts. I also think it will lead to more accurate reporting and allow us to better track our educational opportunities.

The one possible drawback to DeskStats is that I didn't see a way to enter Q&A data like I did for LibStats. So it couldn't double as a knowledgebase. But we blog selected reference questions of interest at our "Since You Asked" blog at http://askasl.blogspot.com/ and as that blog develops, it will become a knowledgebase of sorts.

I've arranged for the vendor to call me and arrange a demonstration DeskStats for my staff and other interested parties. We'll see how things go from there. But I'd really like to get out of the tally sheet/excel grind.

So there you have it, the last of six sessions plus a keynote and an exciting plenary session. There are other sessions I wished I could have gone to also, but one can be in a single place at one time. Wouldn't risk a Hermione style time-turner for them. But I might buy the proceedings, depending on their price and how much I get out of the free powerpoint slides.

======================

Note: By August 20, 2008, all of the presentation slides and handouts for Reference Renaissance will posted to the conference site at http://www.bcr.org/referencerenaissance/index.html. Later in the year, Neal-Schuman will be publishing conference proceedings. I’m looking forward to those, since I (or anyone else) could only attend 1/6 of the offered sessions, plus the Keynote and the Plenary Session.

Also, as I write up sessions, I very much welcome comments and corrections. Just as I was physically unable to attend all 36 sessions, so too I might not have picked up on everything in the sessions I did attend or I might have accidentally misinterpreted something. Or maybe you’ve got a different take on the session you’d like to share.

Reference Renaissance: Theory Meets Practice

2008-08-16T06:43:00.001-08:00

Theory Meets Practice: Educators and Administrators Talk was the sleeper hit of Reference Renaissance, at least for me. I mean this in the sense that on paper it sounded like the least interesting session. If *anything* had been playing against it, I would have gone to the other program. But it was the plenary session of the conference, so it had no competition. It was also directly after lunch on Tuesday. I gave serious thought to bagging this session and going for the three hour lunch. But because I believe I always owe my funding agency full attendance at every conference they send me to, I went.

This was absolutely the right decision because it was fascinating, energizing and thought provoking, complete with screaming audience and panel members. I was worried that I couldn't do this session justice from my notes, but thankfully, David Lenkes has posted an audio file of the entire session at http://quartz.syr.edu/rdlankes/pod/2008/RefRen.mp3. If you've got an hour or so, listening to this program would be a great use of your time. To encourage you to take the time to listen, I'll dispense with my usual play by play of the session and focus on my reactions to it.

The presenters on this panel were:

R. David Lankes, Ph.D., Syracuse University
Jamie LaRue, Douglas County Libraries
Marie L. Radford, Ph.D. Rutgers University
Carla J. Stoffle, University of Arizona

The panel chair asked each participant to answer three questions in their opening remarks:

1) What is the most critical skill in reference librarianship?

2) How are you improving reference service or library education at your institution?

3) Do you have any predications for the future of reference.

To hear how the panel responded, listen to the audio file referenced above. What follows are my impressions and reactions.

One thing that seemed to come from all the presenters is that reference needs to be more about evaluating and summarizing resources and not just giving patrons a stack of articles. More is not always better in today's sea of information. While I haven't been writing summary memos since I've gotten back, I have taken this to heart in that I'm trying to offer fewer, more focused articles to my state agency patrons instead of sending lists of dozens of articles that may be somewhat relevant to their topic. I've also been re-impressed with the need for good reference interviews. We won't be able to do much "added value" type work if we're not very clear on what the patron needs.

Another concept that appeared to be emphasized from all panelists, but especially from Jamie LaRue, is that reference librarians need to be actively engaged with their communities. They need to members of the local chamber of commerce, of the rotary club, of other venues with community leaders. Only by being engaged in one's user communities can librarians get a good handle on what is important to the community and demonstrate the value of library collections and library expertise to the community. Jamie gave the example of one of his librarians joining the local downtown development committee. Now they won't meet without the librarian around to provide resources and research assistance.

I acknowledge this need, but I'm not sure what to do about it. My life seems plenty full already and I'm not much of a joiner aside from some selected church activities (where I do try to promote libraries). But I will be thinking about what opportunities I could be taking advantage of. And I may check with my coworkers and leadership to see what they're involved in. Then I'll have to see if there's anything in my life that I can downsize to make way for the new activities. Are any readers out there active in the way that Jamie suggests? What are you doing?

Another, possibly anecdotal or institution specific, idea talked about in this section was the idea that about 85% of typical reference questions could be handled by paraprofessionals. There was talk of letting frontline reference be exclusively paraprofessional with reference librarians being on-call for the other 15%. The reference professionals would then have time freed up to create the guides, the executive summaries, the economic gardening and community building suggested by most of the panelists. While this is a tempting concept, I'm wary of going through with it, as were a number of audience members. I can't really speak for my fellow attendees, but I'm wary because we as a profession haven't effectively demonstrated the difference between para and MLIS degreed staff. From the public's point of view everyone who works in the library is a librarian. And if paraprofessionals are cheaper and can answer the vast bulk of reference questions, why pay for the degree? Especially if they're not visible? Something like this actually happened at the Anchorage Municipal Libraries a few years back. Many MLIS degreed librarians were let go and hours were extended by staffing more positions at the paraprofessional level. Librarians weren't freed to add value to information the community needed, they were let go. But I suppose this could vary by community. And, not living in Anchorage, I might not be fully informed about the effects of the change.

After the other panelists emphasized the need for librarians to dedicate themselves to lifelong learning, Marie Radford practically brought the gathering to its feet by loudly pointing out that librarians already are dedicated to lifelong learning. It was a great moment, but you'll have to listen to the audio.

Finally, I need to mention something that just floored me, despite the fact I work in a very open, supportive workplace. During the question and answer period one of Jamie LaRue's employees had some very pointed remarks about some aspects of Douglas County Library's recent changes and how they weren't working for her and some other reference librarians. For all my adult life I have internalized the lessons "Thou SHALT NOT criticize your employer in public" and "If you can't say something nice about your employer, don't say anything at all." Unless my employers engage in blatantly immoral or illegal behavior that isn't being addressed in other venues, you won't see me writing negative things about them. I haven't been directed to act this way, but it makes sense to me.

So I was very surprised to hear a panelist criticized by one of his own employees in such a public forum. But Jamie LaRue appeared to handle the question and criticism with grace. I got no feeling that the librarian would face consequences for her actions. And a good discussion ensued about how supportive a workplace has been developed so that librarians feel comfortable in bringing up problems in this way.

Overall a very good and surprising session.

=========================

Reference Renaissance: Outreach, E-Learning, Resource Guides

2008-08-15T06:12:00.001-08:00

The second session I attended on Tuesday at Reference Renaissance was Outreach, E-Learning, Resource Guides with panelists:

Kathleen Keating University of New Mexico
Marleen van Wyk JS Gericke Library Stellenbosch University, Stellenbosch South Africa
Stephanie Alexander and Jennifer Gerke, University of Colorado at Boulder

Kathleen Keating began her presentation by noting that her co-author and major outreach librarian, Paulita Aguilar was unable to attend due to a major family celebration.

During this conference I began to feel that every presentation from an academic librarian would begin with demographics and facts about their college/university. I've been omitting these sections figuring you'll see them once the conference presentation materials become available. But I did want to call attention to the fact that University of New Mexico libraries have standing orders for any Latin/Central American book that is published. They must have quite the collection and I hope to visit there sometime.

It would also help you to know that UNM is a very diverse campus with strong ethnic student groups. These groups have counseling, study facilities and computer pods at Mesa Vista Hall. There are separate sections for the various ethnic groups and a common atrium. The UNM library worked with the people who run Mesa Vista Hall to setup a satellite facility for the library. This involved obtaining a grant to provide Mesa Vista Hall with reliable wifi access so the librarians could access library databases. When access to library print materials is needed, the librarian at Mesa Vista can IM the main library to have them look up print materials and send over chapters or articles if needed.

Staff for the Mesa Vista Hall is drawn from all the UNM libraries, although I got the impression that Paulita Aguilar was a major presence there. She was in many of the pictures that Kathleen showed. Librarians made sure to keep a dish of chocolate available at all times, which proved to be a major attractant.

So far, the outreach program has provided 960 hours of coverage over six semesters. During that time staff answered 845 reference questions and provided an unknown number of workshops and group instruction sessions.

One important consequence of staffing an area where students, faculty and counselors work is that stronger relationships are built with patrons while librarians learn more about the cultures they're working with. Librarians who staff the Mesa Vista Hall satellite have been invited to graduations, birthdays and other milestones for students and staff. They're considered part of the Mesa Vista Hall community and the UNM librarians find this helpful.

The next speaker was Marleen Van Wyk from South Africa. Her talk seemed to center around the challenges that Stellenbosch University Library faces, including a student community with varying degrees of information literacy, limited budgets, a low staff to student ratio and inadequate training facilities. Despite this the library has a high level of client satisfaction and have published information literacy guidelines. For some reason, my notes seem particularly sparse for this section of the presentation. I urge you to wait until the conference materials come out before drawing any conclusions about this particular part of the presentation.

After Marleen Van Wyk came Stephanie Alexander and Jennifer Gerke of the University of Colorado at Boulder (UCB). After noting the absence of their colleague Kathryn Lage, they embarked on an exciting tale of how reorganizing library subject guides and making them database searchable created an explosion of usage.

The UCB library at one time had a list of subject guides that was a simple alphabetical list. The list had 65 guides, which turned out to be a subset of what was available. Staff decided to create a homegrown database driven finding aid with metadata and put the result at http://ucblibraries.colorado.edu/research/guides/index.cfm.

The redesigned guide page offers a search box or browse options by: academic department/library, course number, citation, "how do I" and database name. There is also a listing of the "most requested guides" which are currently History Course Web Pages, Religious Studies Subject Guide, and Aerial Photography and Satellite Imagery.

A big advantage of the new database format is that library staff now have access to usage and search logs. Analyzing the "zero hits" from searches has led staff both to improving metadata to make existing guides more findable and sparked the creation of new guides driven by user data. There examples of both which will be shown in the presentation materials for this talk.

So far there have been 400,000 plus searches in the guide database, so clearly users are interested in this functionality. Usage of the guides themselves is up 48% after database implementation. Usage of business information guides is up a dramatic 112%. Stephanie and Jennifer explained this dramatic increase to the fact that prior to database implementation, business guides were not listed separately on the guide page. There was one link to "business guides." With database implementation, individual business titles are exposed to the visitor.

For the future, UCB is planning a librarian survey, some refresher training on guide creation and a usability study to make the database even more effective.

This is another example of how increased visibility leads to increased usage. And I'm happy to see more librarians shining a brighter light on the resources they create.

=================================

Reference Renaissance: Opportunistic Reference

2008-08-14T19:24:00.001-08:00

The first session of August 5, 2008 at Reference Renaissance got off to a great start with:

Opportunistic Reference with Virginia Cole of Cornell's Olin Library; Bill "Slam the Boards" Pardue of Arlington Heights Memorial Library and Greg R Notess of Montana State University and the Search Engine Showdown.

Virginia provided an evaluation of patron usage of QuestionPoint's IM-like Qwidget vs. "traditional" chat reference. Cornell's experience is that introducing IM via Qwidget did not appreciably affect the number of reference transactions. During peak usage times, people looking for chat reference from Olin Library seem to split 50/50 for the IM Qwidget vs the traditional QuestionPoint interface. Patrons did seem to prefer the Qwidget for shorter questions. There was a clear preference for IM Qwidget for transactions between 100-500 seconds. Cornell analyzed their chat reference stats by type of question and found that IM Qwidget was prefered for holdings type questions (Do you have this book/journal?) while the traditional QuestionPoint interface was preferred for research type questions. There were more stats than I could write down and I encourage you to look at the presentation slides when they become available.

Bill Pardue was the next speaker and his topic was "Implementing Predatory Reference." He was a very friendly and engaging speaker who made us laugh as he talked about how some colleagues consider the term "predatory reference" to be creepy. He suggested that we should think of "predatory" like we do in nature films. Reference Librarians consume questions and we need to hunt them down whereever they are.

Bill suggested the following reasons to "go predatory" (i.e. outside the library):

90% of people identify libraries with books and may not realize we answer questions.
People actually in the library might not have questions.
People don't think of us for answers -- turn to search engines, friends, others.
Users are going to Yahoo! Answers, Linked In and other places. Not library web sites.
It's fun to "show our chops" in non-traditional forums.

Bill stated that the main point of predatory reference is to get patrons when they're not in the library. He spoke about AHML's efforts at grocery stores and other places. He said it was very important to consider your goals when sending librarians outside the library. Is your goal to provide reference or to meet people and promote the library? Both are worthy goals and not mutually exclusive, but in Bill's experience you need to make one or the other primary. Many of AHML's experiences focused on the meeting and promoting angle, in hopes that once people had encountered librarians "in the wild", patrons might think to contact users in the library.

According to Bill, three common strategies used in predatory reference are:

Get out!
Lurk and Leap.
Weasel your way in.

As examples of getting out, Bill offered the "Answer Cart" used at George Mason University and Penn State. It looks like a hot dog stand, goes to campus events and dispenses information. He conceded that Academic libraries might have it easier because they have a captive audience in the dorm rooms. But he offered these possibilities for public libraries:

Local Restaurants, like Panera
Teen/Senior/Community Centers
Nursing Homes
Mall Information Desk
Fairs, Festivals
Grocery Stores

It is important to get permission from venue owners first and to be aware of any territory issues. Supplement what they do. Don't try to replace it unless they ask.

Lurk and Leap is a strategy suited for online reference. This is the essential strategy of the Slam the Boards project that Bill spearheads. Some ways to lurk and leap include:

Commenting on local blogs when a question of fact is involved.
Commenting on newspaper web sites when a question of fact involved.
Get non library pages to carry your virtual reference link.

Weasel your way in is to join organizations and offer your research assistance. Bill offered the following examples/possibilities:

Enroll one or more of your librarians in college Blackboard-based classes like Arizona State University does.
Join a village/city committee and offer to do fact-finding and other research.
Join your local Chamber of Commerce to learn about local business issues, take questions and talk up the library.
Hold a pub trivia contest like Jessamyn West did.

Bill concluded by leaving us with two questions to ponder:

Will doing predatory reference generate lots of questions and are we prepared to answer them all?
Should we be paying a librarian to do this sort of stuff?

My notes for Bill end at this point, but with the second question I think he suggested that perhaps paraprofessionals could answer many of the ready-reference type questions generated by our promotional efforts. This was a theme I head a lot during the conference. More about that later.

My one regret about seeing Bill Pardue at this conference and introducing myself to him was that I forgot to ask him about astronomy. According to his bio he is an avid amateur astronomer and as much as the cloudy skies of Juneau allow me, so am I. It would have been fun to talk astronomy with him.

Ok, back to the program. Greg Notess was an energizing speaker. He gave a similar talk at Internet Librarian a few years back that a colleague talked about in glowing terms. I thought I got it then, but hearing it direct from Greg energized me anew.

Greg's talk was titled "Quick Screencasts for Distance Reference" and included references to materials available from his site at http://www.notess.com/screencasting/.

He basically said that librarians shouldn't let themselves be paralyzed by perfection when it comes to recording screencasts. It is possible to make a quick, good enough video for situations like:

Responding to reference questions by e-mail, especially in situations where you'd normally type multiple steps to access a resource.
To provide a quick instructional video. Databases change so quickly that you shouldn't feel bad about making quick videos that might a slight problem here or there. People won't likely notice and it will be time to make a new video in a few months anyway.
To show tech support exactly what problem you're having with a particular program. Not only does this document the steps you've tried, but it may intimidate vendor front-line staff to immediately escalate your problem to a supervisor.

Greg mentioned a number of software packages that you can use to record video and all of them are listed at http://www.notess.com/screencasting/software/. For commercial software he recommends Camtasia. For free options he recommends Jing, although an audience member state she *hated* Jing based on last year's release.

Some tips that Greg offered:

Go lightly on the editing. Aside from speeding the production process, it will keep you from having a very choppy video.
Don't record full screen. Just select what is absolutely needed. Recording full screen not only increases your file size, but it encourages people to try and figure out what other software your computer is using.

All in all, a very interesting session. Hope to put some of "good enough" concepts into both personal and professional projects.

=================================

Reference Renaissance: You Bought It, Now Sell It

2008-08-13T18:00:00.000-08:00

The fourth session I attended at 2008 Reference Renaissance was called, "You Bought It, Now Sell It!: Merchandising Reference Services" with presenters:

Karen Long, Farmington Public Library
Bernadine Goldman, Los Alamos County Public Library System
Lizzie Eastwood, Los Alamos County Public Library System

Karen spoke on her library's efforts to market their reference services. Not just chat reference, but reference by any venue the library does. The first step was designing a logo. They settled on a puzzle piece with the words "just ask!" which you can view at Farmington PL's web site at http://www.infoway.org/. The next step was to put the logo all over their library (including large versions plastered to the ref desk), web site and brochures. They also have some of their employees wear "just ask" pins. They also use mp3 "cordmen" earbud holders to promote the IM part of the "just ask" service. Karen emphasized that it was important to do demonstrations of chat reference for your staff. They have to understand the product and its potential before they can promote it to others.

In addition to the "in the library" measures above, Karen talked about the importance of getting the message out into the community. She does this in part by radio spots and attending rotary club meetings.

After Karen was done, it was time for Bernadine and Lizzie to talk about their promotion of reference collections. Bernadine had the goal of "To make sure that all users of the reference collection are aware of all the resources available, and are introduced to them all in one place." The idea was to show patrons and other staff all the tangible AND electronic resources the library had to offer on given topics in the reference collection. Bernadine led the reference department to do this in three main ways:

Rearrange the physical collection into broad subjects without abandoning Dewey entirely.
Integrate electronic resources into the physical collection through the use of lists and brochures
Create displays of reference materials in the low shelving areas of reference.

For the rearrangement of the physical reference collection, Bernadine came in over a weekend and created several sub-collections in reference including: Aging, Health, Weapons, Environment, Culture, and Jobs. She then brought all the books together on these topics regardless of Dewey classification. For example the Health section includes Public Health items from the 300s as well as medical books from the 610s.

The next step was to comb through their databases and the list of RUSA Best Free Reference Websites list and classify them into the same keywords as the reference books. These lists of "resources by keywords" were then posted by their corresponding section in the physical collection.

Finally, books and resource lists were put on display using low shelving in the reference area. Another promotional tool used with highlighting the availability of 10 free photocopies from books in the reference collection. This seemed to give patrons permission to use the "don't check out" collection.

No formal assessment has been done to judge the effectiveness of these measures, but comments from patrons has been positive. They received one comment that the library has "doubled the value of the collection."

At my library, we're busy trying to highlight our circulating collection, something we really hadn't focused on for the past few years. We're creating more display space and trying to push interesting looking books through our RSS feeds. So we're going to complete that process before moving on to reference.

But these seem like intriguing ideas for promoting reference. What do you think?

-----------------------

Reference Renaissance: "Okay This is Just Too Weird"

2008-08-12T17:57:00.001-08:00

"Okay This is Just Too Weird": Identifying Outreach Opportunities in Facebook by David Bietila and Elizabeth Edwards of George Washington University (GWU) was the third session that I attended at the 2008 Reference Renaissance.

This was a fun session to be in. And as someone who dabbles in social networking sites both personally and professionally, quite interesting. The session had a definite effect on my planned future friending behavior.

David and Elizabeth switched repeatedly during the presentation, so I'm not going to separate out their contributions like I've done with other speakers.

They did a study with the help of an anthropology student shortly after the GWU libraries had just completed a "friend a librarian" publicity campaign. About half of GWU librarians had Facebook profiles and students were aware that librarians were avaiable to be friended. But no students had friended any of the GWU librarians by the end of the publicity campaign. This study looked for the reasons for this result, among other purposes.

The study consisted of a survey, plus some ethnographic observations and interviews. Librarian profiles were also studied. While presenting survey results, David and Elizabeth compared their findings to a literature review they did. I omitted the references to the Facebook literature because 1) I trust you're keeping up with it and 2) this will be included in the proceedings and I'm not a transcript service.

How GWU students used Facebook

David and Elizabeth reported:

Majority of GWU students use Facebook more than once a day.
Strong majority of students use Facebook to maintain existing relationships. That is, they "friend" people they've met in real life and don't mine Facebook for new "friends."
Students use Facebook for academic purposes including - communicating about assignments (68%); arrange study groups (61%); and communicate about academic interests (47%).

Despite using Facebook for academic purposes, most students also use Facebook for "study breaks" and self-report that Facebook negatively affects their studies.

For contacting the library, students prefer to e-mail or IM to using Facebook. In response to a question from me, Elizabeth thought this result might change now that Facebook has integrated chat.

What GWU Students Think About Librarians on Facebook

According to surveys and interview data:

32% of students said they were NOT interested in seeing librarian profiles.
60% of students wanted to see study suggestions on librarian FB profiles
55.7% of students were interested in tips on accessing library resources
26% of students were interested in personal information about librarians at their school

In general, students felt varying degrees of discomfort about librarians friending them without being asked. In interviews, none of the students cared for the ideas. But they were ok with the concept of adding librarians as Facebook friends IF there was some sort of face-to-face or IM/e-mail encounter first.

There is more to the study than is in my notes. Be sure to check the conference site (see below) for presentation slides when they come out. There were some interesting comparisons between librarians, parents and faculties in terms of how much students want to see them on Facebook.

David and Elizabeth concluded by saying that their library still saw value in having a Facebook presence for the library. Based on the student study, they offered some recommendations, which they cautioned should be taken with a grain of salt:

Create a fan page for the library for patrons to link to. This seems more comfortable to students than directly friending librarians. They offered the Gelman Library fan page as an example. A stroll through their 87 fans shows some current GWU students and several alumni, so this approach seems to workfor them.
In librarian profiles, keep a personal/professional balance. No personal is viewed as too cold, too much personal is seen as odd. It's important to include a picture and the librarian's subject expertise. Having one of Facebook's book recommendation applications is a good idea since it ties into the traditional library brand.
Let others friend you. Try to make connections in RL to encourage students/patrons to friend you.
Put a few, library-related applications onto your fan page. Gelman offers a meebo chat ref app and an Open WorldCat search.

Elizabeth and David said the grain of salt was necessary because your patron base might be different and these recommendations might get out of date in the next year or two as Facebook and other social networking sites change.

In the course of building their Facebook fan page, they found a few preexisting groups for the Gelman Library. These proved useful recruiting grounds for their study, but surprised them. I looked for my library, but found no groups or fan pages. How about you?

What I took home from this presentation was 1) I will not friend my patrons unless I've had some prior interaction with them and even then will probably wait for them to friend me; 2) might seek permission to create a library fan page before someone beats us to the punch; and 3) update my govdocs related groups and fan pages in the next few weeks.

=========================

Reference Renaissance: Staff Training in 21st Century

2008-08-07T17:53:00.001-08:00

Also, as I write up sessions, I very much welcome comments and corrections. Just as I was physically unable to attend all 36 sessions, so too I might not have picked up on everything in the sessions I did attend or I might have accidentally misinterpreted something. Or maybe you've got a different take on the session you'd like to share.

--------

The second session I attended at RR 2008, was Staff Training in the 21st Century and featured presentations by:

Beth Jones (via DimDim) - Jefferson County Public Library
Leslie M. Hass - Loyola University Chicago
Flora Shrode - Merrill-Cazier Library

This session featured one public librarian and two academic librarians sharing how they train staff. Overall, I didn't find much to take home from this presentation, but that probably reflects my library's staffing situation. Since you might benefit from their remarks, here are my impressions of what people said:

Beth Jones came to us virtually via DimDim, a free web conferencing service that allows you to see the presenter via webcam with audio while she shares her slides. During her presentation, the panel moderator texted questions to Ms. Jones. The approach worked well enough that I hope to see it employed more often at more conferences. It will give people who have expertise but who lack travel funds the opportunity to present at regional and national conferences.

The Jefferson County Public Library has over 250 staff members scattered over a number of locations. So Ms. Jones has focused on creating online courses for them. She stress it was important to have standardized courses and make good use of "visual property." She primarily uses Adobe Presenter and Adobe Captivate to create her online courses which all include audio. She creates the courses with input from subject matter experts.

Ms Jones cited several challenges in creating and using in-house developed online classes, including:

Finding staff time to take courses
How to use audio without disrupting others (creates need for headphones)
System errors and problems using attachments (Internet filtering often blocks retrieving files linked from courses)
Finding enough development time and expertise to create new classes

Ms. Jones also offered some "new frontiers" for training in her system, including:

Create classes for products staff do not have on their computers, like Overdrive Media Console
Mini (5 min) database courses - For these, Ms. Jones might make use of tips from Greg Notess' talk on quick screencasts I'll write about later. And don't forget about vendor-generated tutorials like EBSCOhost's excellent videos.
Create a staff wiki to support database searching - My library has a staff wiki we find useful for a number of projects and manuals.
Create simulations
Including branching (decision-making) in online class modules
Incorporate game theory into online class modules.
Add video (i.e. not just powerpoint and screenshots) to online classes.
Make better use of shared resources - Ms. Jones pointed to training resources from Colorado's CLiC consortium at http://www.clicweb.org/continuing_education/index.php as an example of what she was talking about.

Leslie Hass of Loyola spoke about her experience in hiring and training the first employees of a new Information Commons that would include working with staff from the Library and the University Information Technology Department. They use a staff wiki for policies and procedures. All staff were given a three day orientation - day 1 - Information Commons 101, day 2 - Library 101, day 3 - Information Technology 101 to enable them to know what the university's expectations of them were.

Staff currently employed by the Information Commons current have IM access as a backup if they need additional information on policies or procedures while serving at their stations. I'm not sure I'd call that training, but I can see an argument being made that it is ongoing one-on-one training.

Ms. Hass noted that since the Information Commons was built as an addition to the library, library usage has increased. A happy result.

Flora Shrode of the Merrill-Cazier Library at Utah State University shared the several ways they train student assistants:

A staff blog for searching and service hints
A significant amount of face-to-face training
Camtasia videos on frustrating tasks - I don't remember being given an example - does anyone else out there?
Online computer training through Lynda.com

I said at the beginning of the entry that I didn't have many take-homes about training staff. And that's true. I run a department of 11 people and so don't need techniques for training large numbers of people. I was personally hoping for more on topics to teach and resources for teaching those topics.

But a number of the hints and approaches above may well come in handy for creating educational opportunities for our patrons, especially for the 2/3 of state agency employees who live outside Juneau. So I think my time was well spent.

Reference Renaissance: Reference in the Age of Wikipedia

2008-08-07T17:49:00.004-08:00

Hi All,

I recently attended the Reference Renaissance conference in Denver. I started blogging about this conference on my personal blog, but thought the information should be put here as well. So over the next week or so, I'll be blogging here about my experiences as well. I was fortunate enough to hang out with two Alaskans at the conference, so I hope they'll be chiming in from time to time since we saw different stuff.

Here goes ...

Note: By August 20, 2008, all of the presentation slides and handouts for Reference Renaissance will posted to the conference site at http://www.bcr.org/referencerenaissance/index.html. Later in the year, Neal-Schuman will be publishing conference proceedings. I'm looking forward to those, since I (or anyone else) could only attend 1/6 of the offered sessions, plus the Keynote and the Plenary Session.

----------------

The first session I attended at Reference Renaissance was the Keynote, Reference in the Age of Wikipedia, Or Not, offered by David Lewis, self described renaissance scholar and Dean of the University Library, Indiana University Purdue University Indianapolis. I started out being impressed with Dean Lewis because his very first powerpoint slide stated that his presentation could be used by anyone under a Creative Commons attribution/non-commercial license 3.0. Not only is that a nice thing to do, but it showed his belief in the words he spoke to us.

Dean Lewis began by suggesting that the term renaissance wasn't really the proper term to describe our common vision for reference. The original Renaissance involved the rediscovery of Classical resources and techniques. He pointed out that we are not reviving classical models for reference, but are in fact reacting to the last of three major revolutions.

These three revolutions were:

The invention of moveable type printing in the 15th Century
The industrialization of printing in the 19th Century
The continuing internet/web revolution of the late 20th Century

Each of these revolutions expanded the availability of information by orders of magnitude and created new ways of organizing information. They also led to the destruction of some trades and the rise of others.

For example, the invention of movable type printing destroyed the pre-existing scribal culture within 50 years of Gutenberg's invention. Dean Lewis also argued that the printing press led directly to the alphabetical arrangement of knowledge as found in encyclopedias and dictionaries.

The industrialization of printing in the 19th Century led to mass literacy through the large quantities of textbooks, newspapers and dime store novels that industrial printing made possible. The modern library and the Dewey Decimal System date from this era.

In our own era, the internet has made amateur content of all types easy to create and share. I share Dean Lewis' view in this and have over 3,000 photos on Flickr to prove it!

The next part of Dean Lewis' talk drew heavily on two books - Innovator's Dilemma and Innovator's Solutions by Clayton Christensen. (Details on these and other books I heard about at RR 2008 can be found on my WorldCat list.) Dean Lewis talked about sustaining innovations (making productions better) vs disruptive innovations (creating new markets by targeting non-customers). He suggested that libraries are facing disruptive innovation and offered the phone service Cha-Cha as an example.

Dean Lewis then turned to the book Here Comes Everybody by Clay Shirky. Mr. Shirky posits that we are in a "cooperation revolution" characterized by mass amateurization and where authority as institutional guarantee has been replaced by probabilities supported by process. Dean Lewis offered Wikipedia as an example of this new kind of authority.

For Wikipedia and like social tools to work and attract collaborators, Dean Lewis suggested three elements that must be present:

A plausible promise
An effective tool
An acceptable bargain

He showed how Wikipedia fulfilled each of the above criteria, but I did not get that down in my notes. You'll have to wait for the conference proceedings to become available.

After showing us a Wired video featuring Chris Anderson explaining why $0.00 is the future of business, Dean Lwis quoted someone who said "When everything can be copied, the only things sold will be that which cannot be copied." What can't be copied? He offered us: trust, immediacy, personalization, interpretation, authenticity, accessibility, embodiment, patronage and findability.

Dean Lewis closed with four questions and a challenge. The questions were:

What happens when information skills become a mass amateur activity?
Can we survive with one foot in proprietary resources and one foot in the open web?
What is the role of the institution in a Network World?
Do we support users as information users or as information creators?

Dean Lewis gave what he himself said were tentative efforts at answers, but that it was more important for the rest of us to consider the questions. I agree. I think question 4 is particularly important for libraries. He concluded by challenging libraries to create the tools and communities for open scholarship.

Overall it was a great start to the conference. I had a few quibbles. The main one was about whether the cost of information would ever truly reach zero. Google and Yahoo were given as examples of companies that "gave away everything to users but made billions." Free to users, maybe, but Google and Yahoo charge companies for advertising and use the revenue to run the search engines. If the future of business is really $0.00, then people would stop buying and ad revenue would dry up, taking the search engines with them. I probably need to examine the premise more closer before making such a bold statement, but that's my initial take.

I actually believe in the "gift economy" as a valuable supplement to economic activity and as a venue for human creativity. This blog and the others I contribute to are testimony to that. But I can't buy Wired's argument that the gift economy will replace our current economic structure.

In the coming entries, I will blog about the 1/6 of the conference I attended and once I'm done with session blogging, offer some thoughts about the conference as a whole. As I'm writing this, one great day is behind me and I'm looking forward to another great day of good ideas that will either be thought-provoking or find implementation in my community. I am very glad I made it here to Denver.

Ketchikan PL Tries MonoMouse

2008-08-04T06:00:00.002-08:00

Back on July 18th, the Ketchikan Public Library announced it was doing a three month trial of the MonoMouse for visually impaired users. What's the MonoMouse? Let Rainbird Librarian explain:

The MonoMouse is an electronic magnifier that is light, quick to install, easy to use and very portable. Slightly larger than a standard computer mouse, you simply plug one end into an electrical outlet, the other into the VCR jack on your television, press the button and voila! It will magnify any print onto your TV screen; you simply slide the mouse across the page. You can use this to read books, magazines, newspapers - even your mail! Our device magnifies type 13x, so that it is larger than the standard Large Print format. It's designed to be ergonomic and lightweight, so even if you suffer from arthritis it will be easy to use. The instructions are even in a large print font!

If it works as advertised, it should be a boon to readers with vision difficulties. I know our library will be watching this experiment. How about yours? Are you using something similar already?

Poet Laureate, Kay Ryan

2008-07-30T08:11:00.002-08:00

I subscribed to the Library of Congress's blog. I generally find the posts witty and interesting, a light and refreshing break to the day. Today's post was about new poet laureate, Kay Ryan. The LC blogger, Matt Raymond, clearly appreciates her and her work, so I thought I'd take a peek. I'm not generally a poetry fan, but I enjoyed it. You might want to check it out too, and perhaps share it with aspiring poets and poetry lovers alike.

Cuil. The new Google?

2008-07-29T14:09:00.003-08:00

A friend just told me about Cuil (an Irish word pronounced "cool"), a new search engine that her middle-school-aged son said was "the new Google." I don't know if it is, or not, but it claims to have crawled three times as many pages as Google, and has an interesting layout for results. Personally, I'm kind of impressed that it launched yesterday and already a teen in Juneau knows about it.

So far, I haven't been able to find the advanced search operators, although they claim that they are especially good for complex queries. But I like their privacy policy, and see no ads, yet.

Will Cuil knock Google off it's pedestal? I don't know, but it seems like it might at least be a good one to watch.

Sirsi Unicorn: how to have multiple windows open at one time

2008-07-25T16:16:00.003-08:00

We recently had an outbreak of a minor but annoying problem in the Sirsi WorkFlows staff client here at UAA. It took the form of an error message from Unicorn WorkFlows telling the staff user There are open wizards that require attention. Please close the wizards. For the folks in tech services, who often have several windows open during their WorkFlows sessions, it was a real time-waster to have to interrupt their flow, find a hidden window, and close it.

The problem only occurred if the staff person was using the themed interface that was delivered with WorkFlows Java client 3.0 and later. If you are having this problem, follow these instructions:

1) Open WorkFlows
2) Click Preference in the topmost menu bar
3) Choose Desktop, then Desktop Setup
4) Find the "Multiple windows mode" checkbox at the bottom
5) Check it
6) Click "OK"
7) Restart WorkFlows.

As a side note, when I said "… an error message from Unicorn WorkFlows… " I was being quite literal. I knew what application generated the error by the name in the title bar of the error message (e.g., "Unicorn WorkFlows"). When you report an error to a systems person, it is often helpful if you can also tell them "who" it is from. If the message had been from Windows XP, for instance, we would know to start looking there for the cause of the problem instead of in WorkFlows itself.

Even if systems doesn't need that bit of information for a given situation, you are sending them a subliminal message that you are doing your bit to help find a solution. And systems people need all the messages like that they can get.

-mstallings@uaa.alaska.edu

Libraries as Anti-Depressants?

2008-07-21T06:00:00.000-08:00

I subscribe to Hold This Thought, a daily blog/podcast featuring quotes from books that have touched various people. According to their about page, Hold This Thought was started through grants from the Alaska Humanities Forum and the National Endowment for the Humanities.

I think the blog features great books and great thoughts nearly every day, but I am highlighting the July 15, 2008 episode because libraries are all about lifelong learning. In this episode, Wayne Mergler shares this quote from the Once and Future King:

"The best thing for being sad," replied Merlyn..."is to learn something. That is the only thing that never fails. You may grow old and trembling in your anatomies, you may lie awake at night listening to the disorder of your veins, you may miss your only love, you may see the world about you devastated by evil lunatics, or know your honor trampled in the sewers of baser minds. There is only one thing for it then -- to learn. Learn why the world wags and what wags it. That is the only thing which the mind can never exhaust, never alienate, never be tortured by, never fear or distrust, and never dream of regretting. Learning is the thing for you."

And what better place for people to learn at their local library? So the next time you're feeling blue or overwhelmed by life, try learning something new at the library. But if you feel down for more than two weeks or have some of the symptoms from the Medline Plus article on Depression at http://www.nlm.nih.gov/medlineplus/depression.html, consider getting professional help.

Good Idea for Subscription Evalutions

2008-07-14T11:50:00.000-08:00

Back in June, the Rainbird Librarian at Ketchikan public library wrote about how she determined the popularity of magazines in a post at http://ketchikanpubliclibrary.blogspot.com/2008/06/and-winner-is.html:

As part of the decision-making process, I go through and count how many times each issue of each magazine has been read and/or checked out (one of the reasons we ask people to leave magazines on the tables rather than reshelving them is because we keep count of this use).

Based on this process, she has ranked 109 serial publications at the library according to their usage. Most popular magazine? Fine Homebuilding followed by National Geographic. See her post for more results.

This seems like a very user way of making choices about what must stay and what could go in a pinch. It's an idea I might run by people in my library to see if we could make it work here. One measure we use is requests for articles from our state employee table of contents service.

Do you measure magazine/journal usage at your library? If so, how?

More than 120 books in just 3 weeks!

2008-07-08T13:35:00.002-08:00

That's how many books that were read by Delta Junction children through the Catch the Reading Bug summer reading program. For a picture of some of the happy children, please see the July 7, 2008 Photo of the Day from Delta Community News.

Congratulations Joyce and the rest of the people involved with this program!

How's the summer reading program doing at your library?

True Then, True Now - What Libraries Do

2008-07-07T13:27:00.001-08:00

During a recent research project, I came across this article from AkLA's newsletter:

Libraries: Alaska built.
DeForest, Emily.
Sourdough 1987, v. 24, no. 4 (Winter 1987) p. 7.

One paragraph about the role of libraries in communities really struck me as being just as true today as it was 21 years ago:

Libraries, and the buildings they are in, are a vital part of the state economy and the upturn thereof. Libraries encourage tourism by offering programs geared directly for the tourist. Libraries also assist in the many programs for the blind and handicapped. Libraries offer state and federal documents on economics, job hunting, careers, and education, all of these readily available for perusal by the public. Libraries offer educational assistance to students, story hours and reading programs for the younger set, family type film programs, discussion groups, and many, many other services over and above the lending of books, phonodiscs, tapes, etc. Libraries are among the first community facilities investigated by prospective residents.

The main correction to the above statement would be that thanks to local and state investments in remote databases like the Digital Pipeline and Homework Help, people can reap many of the benefits of the library without leaving home. But our buildings are still vibrant places as described above. Just with more media types.

At least that's true for my library. What about yours?

Copyright Slider now available free online

2008-07-06T21:18:00.005-08:00

Those of you who attended my copyright session at the '08 AkLA conference or stopped by the Copyright Advisory Network (CAN) poster session may remember the copyright sliders made available by the ALA Office for Information Technology Policy. These handy tools simplify the process of determining whether or not a work is in the public domain, and they were quite popular. Well, if you didn't get one at conference, or even if you did, you are now in luck: they are now available online!

To use the digital sliders, simply use your mouse to drag the red arrow to the year (or range) when the item in question was published or written, and it will let you know if it is under copyright, in the public domain, or (alas, even here) maybe either. It also provides information on any caveats or other information you may need to know.

If the slider doesn't answer your copyright questions, try checking out the CAN website.

ALA Presentation Materials Available Online

2008-07-02T05:58:00.002-08:00

If you couldn't make it to ALA or wanted to relive fun sessions, then check out ALA's page for 2008 Annual Conference program materials at http://presentations.ala.org/index.php?title=Main_Page.

Some materials are already up, and more will be up in the next week or two. I can't wait to see Joe Janes'/OCLC bloggers LITA talk on "Isn't It Great to be in the Library, Whereever that is."

Grateful @ Your Library

2008-06-30T10:30:00.000-08:00

In her American Libraries' Working Knowledge column for May 2008, Mary Pergander offers some helpful advice to stressed librarians everywhere:

How much better might we serve ourselves by letting up on the relentless disappointments and focusing, if just once per day, on all that we love about our jobs, our profession, and the libraries in which we have the privilege to work?

She takes her own advice to heart and offers a number of reasons why she enjoys her library and being a librarian. I identify with several including being surrounded by knowledge and interesting and friendly coworkers. I also greatly appreciate having a license to be curious about everything. No one asks why you should be interested in "topic x" when you're a librarian, whether it's quantum gravity or Peter Rabbit.

What are you grateful for in your library or in the library field as a whole? Will you commit to finding one thing to be grateful for each day? It could improve your morale and through you, the morale of your whole library.

-----------------
Cited Article:

Title: Living the Dream.
Authors: Pergander, Mary
Source: American Libraries; May2008, Vol. 39 Issue 5, p69-69, 1p
Full Text via Digital Pipeline - http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=f5h&AN=31873328&site=ehost-live

E-Books: Still not ready for prime time?

2008-06-23T07:14:00.002-08:00

In a May 2008 American Libraries article titled The Elusive E-Book, author Stephen Sottong argues that aside from reference titles, e-books (the kind meant to be read off a computer screen) have no future for the foreseeable future.

Part of his pessimism comes from experience:

My own experience with computer- based subscription services was as a librarian in the California State University (CSU) system. From March to December 2001, all but CSU's smallest campus participated in a pilot e-book project with NetLibrary. In that time, there were 17,473 accesses to the e-hook collection. If that number were annualized and each access assumed to be from a different person, then, at best, only 5% of students and faculty would have accessed the e-book collection--and many of the accesses during this period were actually by librarians demonstrating the new system. Each access during the pilot project cost the university more than $5, This is not to fault CSU's implementation of e-books. The trial was well-planned, with most campuses integrating NetLibrary's e-books into their catalogs and providing a spate of publicity for the new service. Our students--who should be a group that readily accepts new technologies--just preferred paper books.

And part comes from ergonomics analysis that seems to indicate that reading off a screen is intrinsically harder than from a book:

Because both convergence and accommodation occur at a further distance when looking straight forward, monitors must be placed further from the eye. Since monitor resolution is less than print, the text on a monitor must be made larger to convey the same amount of information, which means that the width of the monitor must be wider to handle the same amount of text. As the eyes cans across text on a monitor, the distance between the eye and the monitor varies: closer to the eye in the center, farther at the edges. This means that the eye must constantly adjust for both accommodation and convergence as each line of text is read.
The consequences of these differences are enormous. Most computer users try to keep their eyes in the center of the screen, ignoring information at the edges. They skim text rather than read. When confronted with blocks of text longer than a couple screens, users either print the text or ignore it. This strategy works well with journal articles: Users can skim for relevant entries and print the ones they want to peruse in detail. But it doesn't work for book-length manuscripts or other lengthy text forms that require detailed reading.

My spouse likes to use our XO Laptop to read fanfic stories and it seems to work for her. But stories are sort of like journal articles. I've tried using our XO Laptop for reading some book length works and I can attest that it's a more tiring experience. Although my main issue with using my laptop is that there isn't a good way to bookmark your place. I have to make a notation in another file or on paper to get back to the page where I left off. On the other hand, the laptop is a great and comfortable tool for getting through my personal RSS feeds.

Does your library offer e-books for reading? What has your experience been with them? Are any more popular than others?

-------------------
Cited Article:

Title: The Elusive E-book.
Authors: Sottong, Stephen
Source: American Libraries; May2008, Vol. 39 Issue 5, p44-48, 5p, 1bw
Full text via Digital Pipeline: http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=f5h&AN=31872775&site=ehost-live

Canneries, Cabins, and Caches of Bristol Bay, Alaska

2008-06-20T11:54:00.002-08:00

The Alaska State Library recently received a copy of the National Park Service publication The Canneries, Cabins, and Caches of Bristol Bay, Alaska. Any library with an interest either in the history of Alaska or salmon fishing owe it to themselves to get a copy of this richly illustrated book. According to the letter that came with this item:

The book documents long abandoned canneries, and those still in use, in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The Canneries, Cabins and Caches of Bristol Bay, Alaska also provides a view of life upriver, during the winter, along the length and breadth of the three great salmon rivers in the Bay, the Nushagak, Kvichak, and Naknek Rivers. These wild bountiful rivers all head partially or completely in Lake Clark National Park and Preserve and Katmai National Park and Preserve."

Check it out. If you've read it already, let us know what you think.

Primer on Digital Preservation

2008-06-16T07:04:00.003-08:00

More and more, libraries of all sizes are faced with the problems of digital media - library photos taken with digital cameras, town meetings recorded in MP3, finding aids and library brochures in Word, WordPerfect, etc.

If you're interested in a quick and general overview of the challenges involved in preserving digital materials, check out this one page article from the May 2008 issue of American Libraries:

Title: Digital Defense.
Authors: Caplan, Priscilla
Source: American Libraries; May2008, Vol. 39 Issue 5, p38-38, 1p
Full Text via Digital Pipeline: http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=f5h&AN=31871877&site=ehost-live

Does your library hold digital materials -- either in your collection or on staff computers? What sort of stuff do you have? And do you have worries that you won't be able to pull it up in a few years?

Are you being killed by Kindness?

2008-06-14T09:52:00.002-08:00

The May 2008 issue of American Library features an article called Killed by Kindness by Julia Keller, cultural critic of the Chicago Tribune.

Ms Keller says we should beware of people quoting Jorge Luis Borges saying "I have always imagined that paradise will be a kind of library." In her words, "Paradise is a place to which you aspire, not a place to which you make frequent visits or insist that your tax dollars be directed."

As for the people who express love for libraries in nostalgic terms:

Everybody loves them; in fact, they're loving them to death, especially in our schools. Libraries are routinely discussed in warm and reverent tones. Personal reminiscences with libraries as the centerpiece are earnest and heartfelt, set against a pastel wash of nostalgia. Most people have a favorite story about the library of their youth--the day they discovered, say, A Wrinkle in Time or Codes and Secret Writing--and they adore telling it, after which they sigh and offer a those-were-the-days shrug of bemused resignation. Yet these same people--the ones who rhapsodize about finishing off the entire Nancy Drew or Tom Swift oeuvre over the course of a single enchanted summer--often haven't stepped inside a real, live, functioning library in decades.

Do you feel your library is being loved to death? Do you think that libraries need all the support they can get, whether it is rooted in the present or past? How would you like to see libraries talked about?

-----------------
Cited Article:

Title: Killed by KINDNESS.
Authors: Keller, Julia
Source: American Libraries; May2008, Vol. 39 Issue 5, p50-51, 2p
Full Text via Digital Pipeline: http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=f5h&AN=31872790&site=ehost-live

Students ask for "real", not "e" books

2008-06-11T06:29:00.001-08:00

Think millennials prefer reading online? That's not the conclusion of a 2008 article in Reference and User Services Quarterly, titled But I Want a Real Book": An Investigation of Undergraduates" Usage and Attitudes toward Electronic Books:

If students were to be given the choice between using either a print book or the book's electronic equivalent, 66 percent would choose the print book while only 34 percent would prefer the e-book.

Here's how the article described the participants:

A total of 106 questionnaires were completed: 105 were from undergraduates and one was from a graduate student. Since the study focused on undergraduates, data from the one graduate survey was eliminated. The subjects were 60 percent female and 40 percent male, which is reflective of the college's en-rollment data. The academic status of the participants was 38 percent sophomores; 30 percent juniors; 17 percent seniors; and 15 percent freshmen. Ages of participants ranged from 17 to 46, with the average age being 21 years and the median age being 20 years.

The article isn't quite as cut and dried as I make out. Student would use an e-book if it was the only resource available and there is the fact that over a third would choose an e-book. But I think this article is a caution against making assumptions about users based on age.

Does your library offer e-books? What is your experience?

Full article citation (should be available from your desktop):

Title:"But I Want a Real Book": An Investigation of Undergraduates" Usage and Attitudes toward Electronic Books.Find More Like This

Authors:Gregory, Cynthia L.

Source:Reference & User Services Quarterly; Spring2008, Vol. 47 Issue 3, p266-273, 8p

Direct Link: http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=f5h&AN=32147098&site=ehost-live (Only in Alaska)

June/July Online Training for Small Engine Repair

2008-06-09T08:36:00.001-08:00

Now that Alaska has the Small Engine (snow machines, ATVs, etc) Repair Reference Center, would you like to know it better? EBSCO, the database vendor, recently sent out this training notice (Alaska Times supplied by Daniel):

-----------------

Dear EBSCO customer,

Did you know that EBSCO Publishing offers online, one-hour training sessions on our Small Engine Repair Reference Center each month, free to EBSCO customers? We know that training reinforces product knowledge and stimulates interest, helping you to get the most from your EBSCO databases.

Small Engine Repair Reference Center training is available as follows:

Monday, June 16, 2008 from 3:00 to 4:00 p.m., Eastern Time (11-Noon, Alaska Time)
Thursday, July 24, 2008 from 3:00 to 4:00 p.m., Eastern Time (11-Noon, Alaska Time)
Monday, August 4, 2008 from 2:00 to 3:00 p.m., Eastern Time (10am-11am, Alaska Time)

TO REGISTER, go here (http://training.ebsco.com/training_request.asp), select the desired class from the "Which service?"drop-down list, and complete the form.

Please visit EBSCO's Support Site (http://support.ebsco.com) to learn about all of EBSCO's products, search among thousands of FAQs, or download Flash tutorials, Help Sheets or User Guides.

Sincerely,

Marcie Brown
Technical Communications Manager
EBSCO Publishing
10 Estes Street
Ipswich, MA 01938

-----------------

If you attend one of these free online trainings, would you leave a comment about your experience? Or blog about it if you are one of the 33 AkLA members with blogging rights on this blog?

The Small Engine Repair Reference Center is one of the Digital Pipeline databases.

WA State Library Does Sci-Fi What are your bibs?

2008-06-06T10:56:00.000-08:00

The Washington State Library recently posted a bibliography on Science Fiction/Fantasy novels set in the Northwest. This bibliography is one of several posted at http://www.secstate.wa.gov/library/wa_collections.aspx (Scroll down to Bibliographies).

Does your library post bibliographies or other lists? Fiction, non-fiction, multimedia? Let us know in comments. Also, let us know whether you think (or have measured) whether your patrons or other web visitors use these bibliographies.

Far North Issues at Polar Libraries Colloquy

2008-06-04T07:03:00.003-08:00

If you or your patrons are interested in issues and resources concerning the polar regions, check out the Polar Libraries Colloquy Blog at http://www.plcblog.blogspot.com/. This week the blog is featuring daily posts from the 2008 Polar Libraries Colloquy, but the blog is active year round and highlights resources and news items about the polar regions.

Day One of the Colloquy featured positive reviews of two new documentaries that might be of interest to your collections.

Local News Blog for Delta Junction

2008-06-03T08:17:00.002-08:00

I'm sure Joyce knows about this resource, but other Alaskans might want to know that the Delta News, a local paper in Delta Junction, Alaska runs a blog of news stories. The blog allows comments, although I didn't see any. The blog features local events and carries local photographs. I could see it being useful to visitors or prospective residents.

The main Delta News web site has a good collection of standard news resources and links to blogs written by current and former Delta residents.

If you or your patrons are interested in other Alaska news sources, be sure to check out the News and Weather category on SLED at http://sled.alaska.edu/news.html.

Space @ Your Library? Let them know how you feel

2008-06-02T13:43:00.003-08:00

Thanks to the RI State Library Blog for mentioning that the Colorado-based Space Science Institute is conducting a survey to gage public/school library interest in space themed traveling exhibits. The survey can be found at http://www.surveymonkey.com/s.aspx?sm=KLbzl7gxNGAh6pjH4Q33QA_3d_3d and should take between five and ten minutes to finish.

According to the survey, "The Space Science Institute (SSI) in Boulder, Colorado, has developed a number of hands-on science exhibits that have traveled to science centers and museums across the country. With help from advisors and partners (such as the American Library Association), SSI has begun a program to develop smaller exhibits on a variety of science and technology topics that will travel to libraries."

The SSI maintains a presence at http://www.spacescience.org which features information and science-based games for students.

Know a deployed staff member or patron? Show their blog

2008-06-01T07:58:00.000-08:00

Here's an interesting idea I ran across. The Public Library of Westland (Michigan) front page features this link to a blog of a local resident currently with a Styrker brigade in Iraq:

-------------

The Blog of Adrian Massey

Westland, MI poet and soldier Adrian Massey has started a blog to share his thoughts and experiences while stationed in Iraq with his friends and the Westland community. He is the author of A Soldier's Poetic Response: A Slice of his Life by Robbie Dean press in Ann Arbor.

-------------

According to anecdotes, there are a number of military bloggers who are deployed overseas. If one is from your community, consider featuring his/her blog. It is one way of showing your support for the soldier and highlighting their continued connection to your community. It's a good idea to check with your prospective milblogger first.

Do you know of other libraries working with/highlighting deployed personnel in some way? Let us know in a comment.

Audiobooks are popular sez LJ, what's your experience?

2008-05-29T07:30:00.002-08:00

A recent article in Library Journal:

AUDIO FIXATION. (cover story) By: Kaye, Alan L.. Library Journal, 5/15/2008, Vol. 133 Issue 9, p34-37, 4p, 2c;
Full text available to Alaskans at http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=f5h&AN=32071086&site=ehost-live.

Notes that the national demand for audio books is growing, although formats are shifting:

A 2007 sales survey provided by the Audio Publisher's Association (APA) highlights the increasing market hunger for aural entertainment and information. In 2006, audiobook sales rose six percent to a record $923 million. Seventy-seven percent of sales was for CDs, a far cry from 45 percent in 2003. Fourteen percent was in downloads, up from nine percent in 2005. Seven percent of sales remains in cassettes, less than half of its 2005 figure, and one percent was in MP3-CDs. Adults account for 87 percent of direct sales. Sales to libraries are growing and are slightly ahead of retail sales, representing 32 percent of sales ($295 million) versus retail's 30 percent. Unabridged audiobooks represent 71 percent of total sales, and fiction represents 69 percent. Sales data for 2007 is being gathered for the 2008 report, and APA plans to do sales surveys annually.

The article reports that library acquisition of audiobooks are driven by patrons. And they seem to be using them. In 2006, the APA found that 50% of people who listened to an audiobook borrowed the audiobook from a library.

What's your experience? Does your library offer audiobooks? If so, what formats do you offer? How are patrons receiving them?

Looking to Lead? Check out PLN

2008-05-27T07:30:00.001-08:00

If you're looking for leadership tips or library trends, check out the offerings at the PALINET Leadership Network, PLN. According to their website, the purpose of PLN is "designed to help library leaders (and those who will become leaders) communicate, coordinate, find resources and share information."

According to their website, some recent features have included:

Positioning the library for 2020 - the May 2008 PLN Challenge follows up on the April topic	Leader's Digest--weekly items on leadership from outside the library field
Wikis and libraries and Transparency and MediaWiki - what you need to know	PLN highlights--posts about PLN
Directors, leaders and work-life balance - now including public and academic library perspectives

--------------------

It looks interesting and the PLN Director, Walt Crawford, will be familiar to attendees of the 2003 AkLA Conference in Juneau. Walt gave our keynote address back then.

If you do check out the site, or if you're already a PLN member, please let us know what you think about the site by leaving a comment.

Two Virtual Worlds Items

2008-05-22T14:47:00.003-08:00

As an ALA member, I get the weekly e-mail newsletter AL Direct. Since not all of us are ALA members, I wanted to highlight a couple of items I saw in a recent issue:

1) The Blue Book: A Consumer Guide to Virtual Worlds - This guide from the Association of Virtual Worlds documents over 250 virtual environments. These run the gambit from Second Life to the odd sounding "Disney Fairies Pixie Hollow." I can count the number of virtual worlds I'm aware on one hand, so it's interesting to see that the concept appears to be growing by leaps and bounds.

2) Time's May 12, 2008 issue has an article titled How Second Life Affects Real Life that "suggests that the qualities you acquire online — whether it's confidence or insecurity — can spill over and change your conduct in the real world, often without your awareness. " Some interesting and somewhat unsettling research here. If you read this article, let me know what you think. Perhaps we should try to find a confidence-building reality before hitting the ref desk. Or avoid ones that convince us the online world is filled with Orcs.

My personal opinion is that currently most of Alaska lacks the bandwidth to make AK library presences in Second Life and other 3-D virtual worlds worthwhile. What do you think? Should there be an AkLA pavilion on InfoIsland?

CE Tip: Webcasts from OCLC

2008-05-20T15:50:00.000-08:00

Wonder what keeps OCLC people up at night? Want to spend some time learning about ideas to link physical libraries with the online world? Check out OCLC PARcasts at http://www.oclc.org/programsandresearch/parcasts/. These podcasts/webcasts will soon be available in iTunes.

Sealaska Heritage Institute Collection Upgrades

2008-05-19T13:24:00.002-08:00

The SHI Archivist announced that the Sealaska Heritage Institute Special Collections in Juneau were receiving some welcome upgrades:

For patrons this new facility will host a more accommodating research area or Reading Room, which consists of a room for patrons to come in and sit down at a workspace, obtain computer access, and conduct research by using our materials. We plan to use the Reading Room to host other small educational events as well. The move to the new facility is especially great for Special Collections because we are getting more storage space for our growing collection holdings.

Congratulations to SHI Special Collections on this new development. I look forward to their educational events.

New(ish) Roundtable Blog - Information Homestead

2008-05-18T13:56:00.001-08:00

If you're wanting to keep up with government information with an Alaskan perspective, please check out Information Homestead, the blog of the AkLA Government Documents Roundtable. The blog may be found at http://informationhomestead.wordpress.com/ and has been added to our Alaska library blogroll on the left side of this page.

If you are a member of an AkLA chapter, Roundtable or Committee that has a blog that you think the rest of the association should know about, please let Daniel or Freya know (or respond in comments) and we'll get your unit's blog added to our list. Same goes for any library in Alaska that doesn't see their blog featured in our blogs list.

CE Tip From BlogJunction

2008-05-16T06:52:00.002-08:00

The folks from OCLC WebJunction recently highlighted their webinar archive in a post at http://blog.webjunctionworks.org/index.php/2008/05/08/weekly-tips-traverse-the-webinar-archives/. One of the categories of webinars they highlighted was for small and rural libraries. Archived webinars can be viewed at any time. Check to see if your computer and internet connection can handle WebJunction webinars by visiting http://webjunction.org/do/DisplayContent?id=13377.

Relief for Gas Prices (Information)

2008-05-14T04:37:00.002-08:00

With gasoline at or above $4.00/gal in many Alaskan communities, there is growing interest in the forces and news behind rising gas patrons. While a library can't cut the price of unleaded, the University of Michigan has posted a new resource on gas prices at http://www.lib.umich.edu/govdocs/dn08/dn08gas.html. It can answer questions like:

How much does crude oil contribute to the cost of a gallon of gas?
How much taxes are paid on gasoline?
Where does gasoline come from anyway?
What are people across the nation paying for gas?

So stop in and fill 'er up with gas facts.

What sorts of subjects are your patrons asking you about? If you're having trouble finding resources in a given area, let me know and maybe I can find enough to do a post about it.

Quick Tour of Web 2.0 via Library Journal

2008-05-12T09:03:00.002-08:00

The May 1st issue of Library Journal carries an article worth reading by anyone who needs to brush up on so-called web 2.0 technologies like Facebook, Flickr, Second Life, iPods, etc. The citation for the article is:

Title: THE PARALLEL INFORMATION UNIVERSE.
Authors: Eisenberg, Mike
Source:Library Journal; 5/1/2008, Vol. 133 Issue 8, p22-25, 4p, 1c

It is available thanks to the Digital Pipeline and you're reading this in Alaska, you should be able to read the article at http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=f5h&AN=31743791&site=ehost-live.

Each type of technology is briefly analyzed according to Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats. I especially like this article for its balance. It is neither a manifesto to adopt every shiny new toy nor a call to return to 1965.

Seldovia PL Cited at Canadian Library Conference

2008-05-09T12:17:00.002-08:00

Amanda over at Blog without a Library shared a presentation she's giving at the Atlantic Provinces Library Association conference in Charlottetown, Prince Edward Island. The presentation is on social software and she cited Alaska's Seldovia Public Library for it's good usage of the social bookmarking site del.icio.us.

Tougher in Alaska premiers on the History Channel

2008-05-08T08:21:00.002-08:00

As mentioned on our list, this series on Alaska might be of interest to some of you and your patrons. For more information, see http://www.history.com/minisites/tougher-in-alaska. I'll miss the premiere tonight, since I don't get the History Channel and I have a Juneau Chapter meeting to attend (with a tour of the new Auke Bay Labs NOAA facility!), so I'll be interested to hear what others have to say about it.

Please share in a comment to this post, or in your own!

Give your patrons some preventive maintenance!

2008-05-03T07:41:00.000-08:00

If your community has veterans of the Korean War era or later, chances are good that they've read at least one issue of PS Magazine, the Army's preventive maintenance journal. Consider telling them about older back issues that have been digitized by Virginia Commonwealth Universities libraries.

Why would they, you, or anyone else care about back issues of maintenance journals? Because they are also comic books:

Each issue of PS Magazine consisted of a color comic book style cover, often designed and drawn by Eisner; eight full pages of four color comic continuity story in the middle; and the rest was filled with technical, safety, and policy information printed in two color to save money. The continuity story starred his earlier character and was called "Joe's Dope Sheet." Each episode offers the same cautionary tale: a soldier who ignores preventive maintenance learns of its importance in the end. Eisner commanded a high level of freedom to create the continuity section and he used his colorful comic style to draw the reader in.

So this could be a fun memory. Check them out, and remember:

Free postage coming for recycling?

2008-05-02T11:13:00.003-08:00

According to a post last week at Resource Shelf, the USPS has started a pilot program with a private company to provide free shipping for recycling small electronics.

Postage is paid for by Clover Technologies Group, a nationally recognized company that recycles, remanufactures and remarkets inkjet cartridges, laser cartridges and small electronics. If the electronic item or cartridges cannot be refurbished and resold, its component parts are reused to refurbish other items, or the parts are broken down further and the materials are recycled.

Although currently only available in 10 major cities (all Outside, of course), the USPS anticipates that the program could go national in the fall. The devil is in the details, as they say, but what a great idea!

When Election Fur Flies, Try FactCheck!

2008-04-27T07:46:00.000-08:00

I don't need to tell you that 2008 is an election year. Election years mean campaign ads in large quantities and they'll usually be some errors in some ads. Whether those errors are intentional is something I'll leave to the judgment of the reader.

But if these ads have you or your patrons scratching your heads in puzzlement, there is relief at the national level. There is a site called Factcheck.org that is run out of the Annenberg Public Policy Center of the University of Pennsylvania. It is non-partisan and in my judgment seems to go after Republicans and Democrats with equal vigor. Here's how they explain their mission:

We are a nonpartisan, nonprofit, "consumer advocate" for voters that aims to reduce the level of deception and confusion in U.S. politics. We monitor the factual accuracy of what is said by major U.S. political players in the form of TV ads, debates, speeches, interviews, and news releases. Our goal is to apply the best practices of both journalism and scholarship, and to increase public knowledge and understanding.

Some of their recent articles on misspeaking and misleading have included:

Reprehensible Misrepresentation"
April 24, 2008

A conservative adman striving to regain his Willie Horton notoriety produces a death-penalty dud aimed at Obama.

Misleading Pennsylvania Voters
April 21, 2008

Clinton and Obama trade bogus charges about health care.

Oily Words
April 11, 2008

Clinton and Obama shade the truth as each claims to be tougher on oil companies than the other.

McCain Ads Attack Romney
January 28, 2008

New Web and radio ads by the Arizona senator lack context.

In addition to correcting facts in speeches and debates, FactCheck also answers reader questions when they have wide interest. A few answers out of their mail bag include:

Is it true that even though John McCain calls himself a Republican, he has sided more with the Dems than with the Repubs?
March 8, 2008

Not true at all. He voted in support of President Bush 95 percent of the time last year, for example.

Did Obama say the National Anthem conveys a "war-like message" and should be swapped for something such as "I'd Like to Teach the World to Sing"?

No. That's false. The quote was one conservative writer's idea of a joke, which has been picked up and repeated as though it were true in a chain e-mail.

What percentage of the U.S. population makes more than $250,000 per year?

Roughly one in 50 households will take in more than $250,000 next year.

Each article is well documented. You see exactly where FactCheck pulls their corrections from. Occasionally they will make a mistake themselves and will run a correction.

If your library has a web page and you are listing election resources, this would be an excellent addition to it. FactCheck would also be a good post to consult whenever someone comes to you with the latest rumor about a Presidential candidate. If you can't find an answer, then Ask FactCheck. They just might post an answer to your question.

What Treats do You Offer?

2008-04-20T08:37:00.002-08:00

Have some pizza!
Originally uploaded by Lester Public Library

This picture is from the Lester Public Library in Two Rivers, Wisconsin. It's from a shelf-straightening party and I'm posting this Outside photo here because I've been to similar library functions in Juneau.

I imagine a lot of us draw upon our communities once in awhile for shelfreading or other library tasks that sometimes get lost in the shuffle of serving our patrons. When you have such occasions, what do you serve your volunteers? Or does the sight of fingerfoods in the library under any circumstances fill you with dread?

One Stop AK Database Shopping

2008-04-18T11:58:00.003-08:00

Do you know where to go to verify a contractor license? Find child care facilities? See if there are toxic sites in your neighborhood? Find out where your schools are? How about finding about the water quality in your area. All of these questions and more can be answered using a database produced by an Alaska state agency.

The ALA Government Documents Roundtable has compiled a list of Alaska state agency databases at http://wikis.ala.org/godort/index.php/Alaska as part of their larger State Agency Databases Across the Fifty States project.

Full Disclosure: I coordinate this project outside work, but would recommend it to you anyway.

Wiki options

2008-04-18T08:33:00.005-08:00

AkLA's Continuing Education committee is looking at Web 2.0 tools for use with next year's conference. As part of this, we're researching wiki options, and decided to post the results here, so that anyone else who is interested in implementing a wiki can take advantage of our efforts.

Robyn Russell, of Rasmuson Library at UAF, suggested starting our comparison with WikiMatrix. Using their wizard, I came up with 13 wikis, to which I added MediaWiki, which AkLA already is planning on implementing for other uses. I narrowed this down by removing those which lacked features important to me, like the ability to export to PDF, to use CSS, and more, and ended up with.

	BrainKeeper,	PBwiki,	SamePage,	Socialtext,	MediaWiki

Of these, my top two are PBwiki, because I'm the most familiar with it and I know it's easy, and MediaWiki, because AkLA has access already and because I'm somewhat familiar with it and know that it's fairly easy and has some really useful features.

Copyright for classes

2008-04-03T14:11:00.003-08:00

In the Copyright Q&A session at conference, one topic that we discussed was that of using materials for classes, over a period of time. This might involve multiple copies for classroom use or course reserves (paper or electronic). We discussed how the traditional interpretation of this practice was that it was fine for a single class, but not allowable over time, that is, each semester or even each year. Now, I've just read a discussion on the Copyright Advisory Network (CAN) forum which seems to imply that our interpretation may have been too restrictive. It might be valuable for academic and school librarians to take a look at this discussion. And, if you have something more to add or ask, I encourage anyone who's interested to register (it's quick and easy - more to discourage spam than anything else) and comment. While you're at it, check out some of the other resources at the site, and please let me know if you have any suggestions for improvement (either email me or mention it in the comments to this post).

Wild new collection from the Alaska Library Commission

2008-04-01T11:57:00.005-08:00

****For Immediate Release: April 1, 2008****
********Alaska Library Commission*******

This one's not digitized! In order to foster a better understanding of Alaska's unique wildlife, the Alaska State Library is adding a new lending collection. Available to those with local or statewide cards, or through interlibrary loan, you can now borrow a bit of Alaska's natural history: live birds and animals! Borrowers are responsible for the care and feeding of their creature while checked out. There are no charges for this service, but I'm sure you can all understand that loss and damage fees are quite high. Loans do not come with trainers and the State Library cannot be held responsible for any damage by the collections, so patrons with young children or small animals are encouraged to seriously consider whether or not this service is appropriate for them.

For more information about this service, see the finding aid.

What’s going on in library associations around the country?

2008-03-28T13:20:00.004-08:00

Check it out. Go to the ALA list of state library associations and click on a few links. If you see anything good - be sure to let your AKLA roundtable and committee chairs know.

Sticker shock presentations...Wow!

2008-03-26T13:36:00.002-08:00

We all hear about the growing costs of serials, and about some amazing titles in particular, but this graphic representation from the Engineering Library at Cornell University really brings it home. This site also includes links to an earlier version and to a similar exhibit from the Health Sciences and Human Services Library at the University of Maryland.

While shocking, it's kind of fun. I don't know whether seeing such extreme cases makes all journal price increases seem bad, or if it puts a whole different perspective on "normal" prices and price increases.

4th Annual John Trigg Ester Library Lallapalooza & Book Bash

2008-03-25T10:15:00.002-08:00

The fourth annual John Trigg Ester Library Lallapalooza fundraiser will be held from 1 to 6:30 p.m. Sunday, March 30 at the Annex gallery, 2922 Parks Highway, near Water Wagon.

This fun event features live music, a lasagne feed and silent auctions of jewelry, art, clothing, gift certificates, baskets of items, and, of course, books. A few specific examples: Alaska memorabilia such as a Fireplug sled dog stage race patch, a four-person silver salmon fishing charter, rhubarb wine, a Guy Noir bobblehead & vintage mystery basket. Musical performances will be given by guitarist Chuck Brainerd, jazz pianist Desmond Cole, rock trio GRL Jam, and saxophonist Nelson Felix.

Proceeds from the event will go toward a new library building. Construction is to begin this summer; preliminary designs and a site survey will be available to view at the fundraiser.

For more information, contact Melinda at 455-4349/378-6744 or e-mail library@esterrepublic.com.

PNLA Institute Accepting Applications

2008-03-19T10:41:00.003-08:00

Applications for PNLA Leads 2008 are currently available on the PNLA website.

DATES: Sunday (evening) October 26th through (noon) Friday, October 31st

FACILITATORS: Becky Schrieber & John Shannon, Schreiber ShannonAssociates

QUALIFICATIONS FOR APPLICANTS: *Employed in a library organization within PNLA's seven state/provincial region: Alaska, Alberta, British Columbia, Idaho, Montana, Oregon,Washington*At least five years work in a library setting*Current member of PNLA or one of the affiliated state/provinciallibrary associations

For more information go to: http://www.pnla.org/institute/index.htm

Doggone Helicopter - CC Photos by Army

2008-03-14T16:28:00.002-08:00

Alaska
Originally uploaded by soldiersmediacenter

Here's a good Friday treat -- The US Army has a presence on the photosharing site Flickr at http://flickr.com/photos/soldiersmediacenter. The photos are taken and posted by Army photographers and carry a Creative Commons Attribution license. That means you can use the photos in whatever way you like provided you give the photographer credit.

Doing a search on the word "Alaska" brought up 30 photos, including the one pictured here with the capition:

"Meki, an air Force military working dog, is hoisted up to a medical evacuation helicopter during training held at Fort Wainwright, Alaska. (U.S. Army photo by Staff Sgt. Matthew T MacRoberts) (Released)"

Learning 2.0 presentation- blog available

2008-03-12T10:02:00.002-08:00

If you attended the Learning 2.0 presentation on Sunday given by Natalie Forshaw and myself, you might be interested in looking at our Learning 2.0 blog. I understand it is now out from behind the firewall, so it should be accessible. If you can't access it, let me know and I'll attempt to troubleshoot.

Learning 2.0

Feel free to use it, copy it, whatever you'd like to do with it. If you have questions, let me know.
Karen Jensen
karen.jensen@uaf.edu

AKLA Conference 2008 - All work and no play?

2008-03-11T22:04:00.004-08:00

No way! The conference programs were fantastic plus our hosts in Fairbanks planned the perfect mix of work and play. I had the chance to visit Muskox at the Large Animal Research Station, the new Cold Climate Housing Research Center Library, the World Ice Art Championships, and a K-6 science fair in North Pole.
Where did you go?

Collection Development Makeover: Rethinking Buying and Weeding Patterns

2008-03-11T15:19:00.004-08:00

My thanks to the wonderful Michele Leininger from the Iowa State Library [and Aja for recommending her as a presenter]. Michele inspired me to think, make a plan, and begin immediately. Weeding has never been so much fun!

Copyright resource for educators

2008-03-07T13:41:00.002-09:00

In the Copyright Q & A, at conference, someone asked about resources for teaching copyright to elementary or high school students. I didn't have much to offer, because the basic resources that I've seen are either very dry or very biased. I mentioned this on the forum at the Copyright Advisory Network. There, Carrie Russell of the ALA Office for Information Technology Policy suggested a neat resource: ReadWriteThink, a service of the International Reading Association and the National Council of Teachers of English. When I did a search on copyright, I got some great copyright lessons, mostly geared towards grades 6-12. Check it out!

Purchase ideas

2008-03-06T12:09:00.003-09:00

There was a lot to see in the exhibits area, with great books, DVDs and more from longtime and new vendors alike. I also discovered quite a few titles mentioned in the various sessions attended. Here are some of the titles I found jotted down in my notebook. I may post again if I find more goodies as I sort through my notes.

Books
Labels for Locals: What to call people from Abilene to Zimbabwe, by Paul Dickson, rev. ed. 2006
I actually had this listed as Names for Locals, but this is the closest I could find on Amazon,
where it has 5 stars (albeit from one review). Basically, it helps you be culturally respectful by letting you know the correct naming convention for residents of various locales, so we don't all
fall for JFK's classic mistake of calling himself a jelly donut (ein Berliner).

Don't Make Me Think: A common sense approach to web usability, by Steve Krug, 2005

Prioritizing Web Usability, by Jakob Nielsen and Hoa Loranger, 2006

Design of Everyday Things, by Donald A. Norman, 2002

Emergency Response and Salvage wheel and Field Guide to Emergency Response
The text for the wheel is available at http://www.fema.gov/plan/ehp/response.shtm, or it can be purchased in combination with the guide at https://www.heritagepreservation.org/catalog.

List
PRESERVENW: An unmoderated list for discussing "the preservation of archival, library, and museum collections in the Pacific Northwest." To subscribe, go to https://mailman1.u.washington.edu/mailman/listinfo/preservenw.

What titles did you find when going through your notes?

Blogging conference

2008-03-05T11:46:00.003-09:00

As I was attending sessions at the wonderful AkLA conference last weekend in Fairbanks, watching people with laptops interspersed with those with notebooks, I thought, "wouldn't it be great to share all of this information more widely by blogging the conference, as I've seen with ALA, Internet Librarian, and more? We should do this next year!" Then, upon returning to Juneau, it finally dawned on me that the conference didn't need to be ongoing to do this, and we could blog the conference now! We even have this sleeping but functional blog to use! So, I'll work on getting some posts together for the sessions I attended, and I encourage others who attended the conference to add posts and comments as well. Conference is such a whirlwind, that I imagine 10 people attending the same session would probably have 15 different things to share from it!

If you haven't yet posted on the AkLA blog, please contact Elise Tomlinson at the UAS Egan Library so she can register you. Her email is elise dot tomlinson at uas dot alaska dot edu, where all the spaces are removed and punctuation words are turned into actual punctuation. It might help her if you mention the AkLA blog in the subject line.

Blog Discussion Topic for May - Read-Alikes!

2006-05-18T15:57:00.000-08:00

As we move into summer I thought it would be fun to use the rest of May for a reader advisory thread on the AkLA blog. Here's how it works:

Post the name of an book or author that you absolutely love and what you love about them. Next, let your fellow librarians give you suggestions of other authors and books you might enjoy.

I'll go first...I *loved* Kurt Vonnegut Jr's. Bluebeard because it was about a painter and the writing was excellent. I'm always looking for novels about visual artists, particularly painters. Any ideas?