Do You Like Being a Librarian?

"Do you like being a librarian?" asked the student. I was helping her track down the journal article she needed. She couldn't find it in print upstairs. We'd looked up the title (she'd gotten it wrong a few times while we figured it out.) It started with "U.S.", which puts it at the very beginning at the U's. So as I went upstairs with her to make sure she could find it, she asked me, "Do you enjoy being a librarian?"

I must have been having a good day. Without even thinking about it much, I said, "Oh, yes. It's like being a detective. Right now, I'm helping you find something. And it's like solving a mystery." And I went on in my head, "The research process is a lot like that. Which way do I go, which terms do I use, how do I even get started." Much of life is a mystery to me, trying to make sense of the world, and it's such an important part of my life, that it's my vocation.

It's interesting that in 20+ years of being librarian, this is the first time I can remember a patron asking me if I liked doing what I do. I've been asked why I do it, how I got into it. I wrote last time about why I do it. I remember (with some embarrassment) years ago when a colleague introduced me to a friend who was planning to go to library school, and I laughed. I was thinking at the time, "why would anyone just starting out want to follow MY example? We're all going to be obsolete in a few years anyway." So I guess I was young, and very foolish.

Things are very busy at work. Change is happening faster, and faster. Much of technology is confusing to me, and I don't like many user interfaces. Times to think are few and far between. But I'm fortunate to have a job, and I'm happy to say that I like being a librarian.

That's my job

Sometimes in the rush of actually doing your job, you don't notice, or have time to savor, the best moments of your job. In my case, the moments that say, "and that's why I became a librarian." I was lucky enough to have two of those moments this week, so I'm taking the time to enjoy them.

On Monday night I talked to an Entrepreneurship class. I was asked to update a case they'd studied this term, and show resources to find information on the industry, where to look for articles, etc. One interesting thing was the different ways that the faculty member (who's in the field) and I talked about what information they would want to find. I used terms as you saw above - about the industry, about companies, about products and markets, etc. Her terminology was more specific - customer segments, industry economics, regulatory issues, etc. (Luckily, we both use the term "competitors!") The variation in the industry that they wanted to explore was "green" - i.e., how to produce the service in an environmentally responsible way (or however you define "green.") One student asked me to do a search on that industry and "green" in one of our subscription databases. Here's my "ah-ha" momement: just as I'm saying that "green" is a broad term, which doesn't have an exact definition, I find that the database has added the subject term "green business." Bless their hearts! You learn something every day in libraryland.

The moment I cherish happened at the reference desk this week. I'd been helping a student find books and book chapters on his topic - first how and what to search, then how to find books in our building. Soon he came back to the desk and said, "I can't find it." (I always try to tell students if they can't find something, to let us know.) I offered to go to the shelves with him, with my usual patter about sometimes the books don't want to be found, etc. We found the book, not quite in the place he'd been looking. He apologized for bothering me, but I said, "no, no, I'm glad to help. And that book looks right on for your topic." I didn't want to embarrass him further, but I wanted to say, "that's what I DO as a librarian. It's my job - every reader, his or her book. And I really do enjoy it!" I didn't say it, but I thought it. And I savor it, because it's my job.

Technology thoughts

I've been working hard preparing for classes, and teaching classes (and working on an article-in-progress), so I haven't been blogging much, or following other blogs. I didn't realize that Free Range Librarian had asked for ideas on netbooks and other technology purchases. What would have been my advice? My Samsung NC10, how I love it! Lightweight, portable, friendly - did I mention that her name is Harriet Jones? (All of our computers and peripherals are named after Doctor Who characters.) But Free Range is waiting for Windows 7, and has her eye on an Acer. I think that was on our short list; we just preferred the Samsung.

I got a great error message from Firefox this week: "Well, this is embarrassing. Firefox is having trouble" doing what I wanted it to do. I have never seen a Microsoft product indicate that it was embarrassed (although as a friend pointed out to me on Facebook, maybe it wasn't Firefox that was supposed to be embarrassed.) It's still one of my favorite error messages.

The Best Classes

The fall rush is on, and I've been teaching a lot of classes on library stuff - mostly marketing classes, with some finance thrown in. Still to come are advertising/public relations classes and accounting. I've had some great sessions and some not so great, so my thoughts today concern what leads towards the best library instruction classes.

• Faculty buy-in. Generally, most faculty don't schedule a library session for their class unless they believe it's important (not counting the "I'll be out of town, can you talk to my students?" minority.) But there are levels of buy-in, including those who collaborate with the librarian on the assignment, or share a copy of the assignment before the session, or who attend the session and participate in it, or time it so that the students realize its importance.
• Student buy-in (which depends a lot on faculty buy-in.) There's nothing like the faculty stressing the importance of the session to make students pay attention (except maybe "this is due real soon, so I'd better pay attention.") When they're really interested, it generates an energy like nothing else.
• "Ah-ha" moments, for the students, and even for the presenter. It's great when the "I get it" light bulb goes on (for them, and for us.)
• Technology that behaves. This includes hardware that works (machines that aren't in la-la-land, computer mice and monitors that are actually talking to the computers) and a network that's in a good mood.
• Databases and other resources that behave. Two weeks ago I presented at one of our satellite locations: the first database I went to gave us the "we're too busy, try again later" message; the third database had a similar message (and these were database messages, not our network.) It's nice when that DOESN'T happen, when everything behaves as it's supposed to.
• Databases that haven't done anything wacky since last term. I understand vendors changing interfaces; I can handle that, and the students can handle that. What I don't like are vendors asking for mysterious plug-ins that you didn't need last term (never mind the fact that you probably don't have admin rights on the machine you're using, and couldn't download a plug-in anyway.) Nor do I appreciate vendors whose products suddenly have less functionality that they had last term (if I could use this example in the spring, why have you changed your content so that it's not possible to recreate that search?)

Here's hoping that your fall is going well, and that things are behaving themselves.

This 'n That

• Twice recently I've been asked, "so what kind of netbook did you get?" I realized yesterday that I didn't put that info in this blog! So for the record, I have a Samsung NC10. Have I mentioned that I love it?
• I have had a small flood of faculty asking me for presentations this semester. So far my peak time is the week after next, when I have 6 library sessions, 3 finance and 3 marketing. So I won't be very profound in my blog posts for now.
• I have a reference desk shift this weekend, so one thing I could work on if it's slow is collection development. It's not very flashy, or very 2.0, but I enjoy it. At least I do nearly all of my selecting online, and use almost no paper!

Library 2.0 seeds take root

We're seeing a few 2.0 changes around my library these days, which is exciting (when I have time to think about it.) Here are some things that are happening, or going to happen soon:

• We've added a Discover Layer to our public catalog. While it's sometimes confusing to me as a power user, I think it's appealing to the novice. (It's funny that the html title for the initial page is 'Encore,' while the "classic catalog" has the regular catalog's name.)
• We're moving along in implementing Sharepoint as our new intranet/wiki/online bulletin board. We've roughed out a structure, and we're opening it up to staff to use. Our first 'killer app' is a new statistics application, which all staff will use to track patron questions. (It's great to have a web developer on staff!)
• We're looking at sprucing up our subject/resource guides. We've come up with a few short-term facelifts for fall; long-term, we're looking at products like LibGuides and Library a la Carte.

It's been interesting being involved in these developments. Sometimes I have the reaction, "Well, it's about time. I thought we should do something like this years ago!" Sometimes it's gratifying when staff are getting it. Sometimes I have to stop and take a breath, and get used to change. But I guess it keeps me on my toes.

Subject guides, netbooks, and Cary Grant

I'm on a task force at my library looking at various options for subject guides (aka research guides, pathfinders, etc.) I've registered for a free webinar that OCLC is doing next week on Library à la Carte from the University of Oregon. I'm glad we're finally going to do something about our guides. This has been one of my interests for years, and I remember being excited some years ago when I first heard about SpringShare's LibGuides. We've needed products like this for a long time, and it's great that there's now competition (I feel like I've been ahead of the pack in MPOW on this for one so long.)

In netbook news, I watched a movie on my netbook this week. Now this is no big thing for many people, but my personal movie-watching time has been quite limited as a working parent, and my chances to play with my netbook haven't been plentiful either. This week my family wanted to watch "Coraline" on the dvd we'd just bought (they'd seen it a week earlier, at the World Science Fiction Convention, but what the heck?) I'd noticed that "An Affair to Remember" with Cary Grant and Deborah Kerr was on Turner Classic Movies, realized that we had dvds of both films, and I said, "We can watch one on the TV and one on the netbook. I don't care which one I get." So I got to sit in the comfy chair and watch my movie, while they watched theirs. Very nice.

My Own Travel 2.0

So next week (I hope), I'm off on vacation. Since spouse works for an airline, we fly "standby." This is not my idea of a good time, but he prefers to take advantage of this perk. I'm crossing my fingers, and toes, and anything else I can cross without being a safety hazard.

But in the spirit of 2.0, I revisited my Travel 2.0 posting. The Travel 2.0 blog reminded me that airlines charge fees for a lot these days, including bags (I don't think we stand-byers have to do that, but this may have changed.) I still haven't decided if I'm taking my new netbook, or we'll be bringing a couple to share for the family (it will depend on how much carry-on weight/bulk I want to deal with), but I probably won't be keeping a travel journal on Mapness. I think it would take away quality time from La Famille. I hope to be on Facebook, though, so I'll still keep a hand in the 2.0 world. So far the ratings on TripAdvisor for our hotel are positive, so once we get there, we should be fine.

I have a new error message to add to my collection. Yesterday I was trying to get into our content management system to update some web pages, and I got this friendly error: "Several Java Virtual Machines running in the same process caused an error." Yeah, well, what does that mean? There's too much going on somewhere, I get that part. Does that mean it's on my computer, at the other end, or somewhere in between? And what should I do about it? What process were they involved in, and is it legal in all 50 states? In the end, the brower crashed, so all the windows I had in that brower disappeared (at least it wasn't ALL of my browser sessions.) Will the new Millennium eventually bring error messages that make sense to non-techs? I'm not holding my breath on that.

This morning's hailstorm

We had hail this morning. It was worse in the cities around us, but we had weather enough to keep us home longer than usual and away from the windows (although we did have to look when the hail started.) They'd been talking about golfball-sized hail on the radio; we didn't quite get than, but some was definitely 3/4-inch size. I said, "I should use my new Netbook to take a picture or something." (Yes, the Netbooks are configured, and I've used mine a little bit. Her name is Harriet Jones, after the Doctor Who character.)

My husband said, "I'll take a picture on the digital camera, and you can upload it." So he walked my through it, first on Facebook and then onto my email (I hate the new Outlook web access; it's SO hard to look up an email address, and move around your email, grrr.) The Netbook has a slot on the bottom for a memory card, of the kind our camera uses. Now I'll see if I can upload it here. It worked! I feel so very 2.0 today.

A puzzlement: it's pretty easy with the right tools and a bit of help to do this sort of thing (upload a photo, make a video, etc.) Why does it seem so difficult at work? How much of it is my being used to the old, hard way of doing things, and how much is that I just don't have the right equipment?

P.S. My one fan asked what happened to my avatar. I didn't do anything to it, but it seems to be messed up. I'll have to try troubleshooting it sometime. And the paragraph spacing at the end of my post is being flaky - what's up with that?

It's time for Laundry 2.0

I've been using Facebook for almost a year (I started it in connection with 23 Things on a Stick.) My non-work friends became a critical mass earlier this year, so I check in every day or so to see how people are doing. Given my circle of friends, I thought my post this week about the website recreating the Apollo 11 mission, We Choose the Moon, would stir up some interest. But no. What got people commenting this week? Laundry.

I noted that my family had been asking about laundry this weekend, since we'll be on the road soon. I said, "Who needs clean laundry?" Well, a goodly number of my friends had thoughts on laundry, whether it can be planned, how it can be done, and who should be able to do it. (I agreed with the comments on red clothes. Only once have I had something bleed significantly that wasn't red, and it was a dark green t-shirt from Wales.) Who knew that laundry would be such a hot item?

So given this flurry of interest, I propose that it's time for Laundry 2.0. Dare I paraphrase from A Librarian's 2.0 Manifesto?

• I will recognize that the universe of cleaning culture is changing fast, and that laundry and cleaning services need to respond positively to these changes to provide what users need and want.
• I will try to educate myself (no promises here) about cleaning culture and look for ways to incorporate what I learn into laundry services.
• I will not be defensive about my laundry, but will look clearly at its situation and make an honest assessment about what can be accomplished.
• I will become an active participant in moving my laundry forward. [There's got to be something about user contributions in this - hold on - yeah...]
• I will recognize that homes and cleaning processes change slowly, and will work with my colleagues to expedite our responsiveness to change.
• I will be courageous about proposing new cleaning processes and services, and new ways of providing cleaning services, even though some of my household will be resistant.
• I will lobby for an open laundry room that provides personalized, interactive features that users expect in modern cleaning environments. [!]
• I will encourage my household's administration to clean.

What do you think? Will it ever take the place of night baseball?

What can I do to improve patrons' lives?

Al Franken was sworn in this week as Minnesota's junior senator, many months after the election. In his remarks after taking the oath of office, he said (quoting the late Paull Wellstone) that he's going to "wake up every day saying, 'what can I do to improve people's lives?' " As I librarian, I find that very inspiring. Here's why.

At my institution, we are intensively weeding the print reference collection, to remove resources that are no longer relevant. The web has changed how students and faculty do research, and it has changed the kinds of questions we get as reference librarians. Statistics in books? If they can't download them, they don't want them. Quotations? They look on the web. Big encyclopedias? Why come in to look at books - the library may not even be open when they're doing their research.

We acquire online databases, and monographs - to the point that we don't exactly know what "reference" works we have right now. The print reference collection was a collaborative effort, librarians working together to recommend titles, including titles not in their subject areas. The online collection is often developed in a vacuum, or at least done solo - fewer discussions on how this fits into the greater collection, or gaps we see in others' subjects. I feel sad to see the old collections going away, even as I know it's part of modern reference work.

Then I hear a quote like Franken's, reminding me that my job, the reference librarian's job, is to improve patrons' lives. To help them find their stuff. The patrons are online, so we need to make sure they find their stuff online. Some will continue to use print, or need to use print for their disciplines or topics, but we need to have the stuff online. And we need to know what we have online, so that we can connect patrons with it. One of Ranganathan's laws of library science is "every reader his (or her) book." Which today might be "every researcher his/her source," be it online or print, pdf or html or ILL or paper. And I wonder if I can live up to the call of waking up every day, thinking about how I can improve patrons' lives. I'll try.

New computer (I think)

When I went to Computers in Libraries in March, I noticed many people at the conference with small laptops, which I found out are often called "notebooks" or "netbooks." I thought, "This could be a killer app for me. If I had a small, lightweight computer, I might really use it! and take it with me out of town!" I went to a session about mobile reference at the Frederick County Public Libraries (they use Samsungs) and got more excited. Then I went to Wiscon (the feminist science fiction convention) in May, and attended their session on netbooks with my computer spouse. Oooh, we wanted them!

Computer spouse did some research, and we decided to get one to try out - if we liked it, we'd get more of the same. He couldn't find what we wanted in a bricks-and-mortar store, so he ordered one online. After several days of trying it out, we were hooked. So the new ones were ordered (a total of one each for me, computer spouse, and daughter.) But so far the first one is the only one he's had time to configure, so I almost have a new computer. Real soon.

At my library, a few of us are thinking about how to let students know what we have in the realm of online reference tools, particularly the specialized dictionaries and encyclopedias. Do students even use that terminology anymore - should we be calling them "background sources?" Reference work in the modern world is anything but dull.

End of the fiscal year

I'm sad (and surprised) to realize how long it's been since I've blogged. No good excuses, but the reasons include using up vacation time before the end of the fiscal year, reviewing databases that come up for renewal at this time, and summer projects. Today I have to work on another database renewal and my performance review. On the 2.0 front, I can report that a coworker and I are planning this summer to work together on some of the 23 Things.

In a totally different vein, I have to say that lately I've become more thoughtful about my writing style. I recently purchased a book for my daughter called Writing Magic: Creating Stories That Fly, by Gail Carson Levine. My daughter is a writer, and for her at age 11 this sounded like a good title. She hasn't read it yet, but I have. Among other things, Levine talks about what to include, and not include, in your writing (for example, appealing to the senses - what does the character hear? what does the character touch?) as well as the craft of writing. I find myself doing more tweaking of my sentences, to make them read more clearly. Maybe someday I'll be a writer after all.

Thing 33: Travel 2.0

I kind of like this Thing, although I don't travel as much as many do. We've done a little more traveling recently as my husband now works for an airline and we can fly standby. I like Lonely Planet's Thorn Tree Travel Forum, since I buy Lonely Planet country books for our reference collection (I hope we can get them online soon.) LP books have good cultural information on countries. I was amused by the entry I read in the Travel 2.0 blog (written by two travel industry professionals.) It was about the re-branding of Montana, in a travel sense. As a business librarian, I'm often intrigued by things that re-brand, or feel the need to re-brand. "Montana's redefined brand is all about natural splendor, charming and vibrant towns, and invigorating experiences by day with relaxing hospitality in the evening." It just makes me smile.

I know I've seen various travel review/rating sites as I've done travel planning. Took a quick look at TripAdvisor, and it doesn't look like they list MY favorite hotel in San Francisco (maybe someday I'll remedy that.) Given my recent adventures with Google Maps, Mapness (travel journal plus Google Maps) looks interesting, but feels intimidating (it gets you started at the get-go, but that's how I crashed my browser with Google Maps.) I took a brief look at the Travel Mashup - Mashup Awards; I'm not excited about the Twitter winners, but the others seem worth a visit.

I'll think about adding the Lonely Planet site to our country information guide. My favorite of those I saw is still the Travel 2.0 blog. I seem to remember the Twin Cities was trying to re-brand before the Republicans came to town. I wonder how that turned out?

Thing 32: Google Maps and Mashups

Well, I was a little "anti-Google" when I started this (surprise, surprise.) I'm not a big fan of Google taking a picture of my house and posting it on the internet without my permission. Yeah, I know, I could opt out. But my husband believes in this stuff, so I err on his side. But I ask you, if this had been a government agency going around taking pictures of people's houses, and posting them in a public place, don't you think people would be up in arms? Why is it perfectly fine when a company does it?


Anyway, I've tried to use Google's mapping a bit, since I've gotten mislead a few times by MapQuest (I don't know what it is, but there directions are just plain wrong sometimes. We've gotten lost.) I have never been able to figure out the zoom out/zoom in symbols, much less how to go east, or north, or whatever. It always does what I don't want it to do.


So you won't be surprised when I tell you that my browser crashed while I was making my Google map, will you?



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At least when it crashed I didn't lose the whole thing. "Google My Maps is easy to use." Ha! After spending too many minutes trying to get the map to do what I wanted (sometimes there's an "undo" link, sometimes not), I realized that I should have tried my initial thought, "a map of my daily commute." It's easier to make a map of streets that you're very familiar with (at least, I assume it would be.) So I've only got two places marked on my map, but I really can't spend any more time on this today. I'd like to put in a picture, but the pictures must still be on the camera (they don't seem to be on our website yet.)


Let's see if the link to
View
View Mike, Marianne, and Ellie go to San Francisco 2009 in a larger map'>Mike, Marianne, and Ellie go to San Francisco 2009 in a larger map'>our San Francisco trip works. I hope so! (Yeah, I know, it's not displaying correctly. But I've been messing with it for 10 minutes, and I'm fed up.)


Other maps/mashups that I found interesting: the various ZIP code maps, since we get regular questions about ZIP code boundaries (too bad the maps had disclaimers about not necessarily being accurate); the World Bank's mashup of ease of business in different countries. We have Google map things on our library websites. I'd really like to spend more time doing this - it could be fun, for creating work-related things, maps of vacations, etc. But I'll have to do this later - gotta get back to work.

Thing 31: More Twitter

First, I have to follow up on my last post about Delicious. In the "I have to see somebody doing something before I realize its usefulness" department: just after that post, I went to a meeting of local library colleagues. One of them is developing library subject guides using LibGuides, a newish tool for developing library subject guides (that I wish we'd look at.) In his subject pages, he's using Delicious tag clouds to provide links to useful websites by subtopic (it's not live yet, so I can't link to it.) Now this is an application that makes sense to me. I do have a couple of reservations - I'm not sure I want the "group mind" to prioritize recommended websites (although I'm interested in trying it out), and I don't have too many guides where "websites" is a category. I tend to group things by content (industry overviews, demographics, etc.) But it's an intriguing idea.

Twitter. You know, I'm just not a Twitter person. Maybe if I had more current mobile technology, and/or were online more. I don't have the dexterity to text on my cell phone to begin with (not to mention trying to read the small display.) I don't have an iPhone, or a BlackBerry. My cell phone is a Nokia, no camera, with a font that's about two sizes too small for my eyes. I can't remember where the backspace key is. Maybe this sounds lame, like I'm some klutzy antique who just can't figure things out. But it seems to me than some responsibility for usable interfaces falls on the designers of these technologies, and why do I keep hearing stories about people who hate their cell phones.

I'm not going to do mobile twittering. I could do email, but I'm still a day behind on my recent work email (the price of taking a real day off), and I'm three days behind on my personal email. Doggone it, it's the gardening season! I've been in the garden, not online!

I've looked at some of the Twitter options, and examples. I like the idea of Twilert, that gets you updates on product availability. I can think of several times recently I could have used that (I wonder if I could get to a store in time to get an item before it's sold out?) And TwitterSnooze, which lets you "hit the snooze button on your verbose Twitter friends" (I could something like that in Facebook.) So I'm at the Denial/Presence, "I don't get it, but I have an account" stage of Twitter. What do I think Twitter is? I think it's a scene from the radio play "The Hitch-Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy," where our hero Arthur Dent is vainly trying to communicate something, and no one quite gets what he's saying.

But one thing I can say about these last several weeks of looking at new tools: sometimes the "killer application" has to hit me on the head, by seeing somebody else do it, or by letting it percolate in the back of my head until the connections are made. Sometimes I really do Get It.

Thing 30: More Ways to Use RSS and Delicious

I've been struggling with this Thing, and I think I know why. One of the things I struggle with is sensory overload: too much coming at me at once to make sense. The more that new things come at me, the more I need to step back and go STOP! Let me make sense of this at my own speed! Another thing I struggle with is that I have LOTS of interests (gardening and books and old movies and old television and library stuff and....), and I struggle with "moderating" the flow of my information so that I don't miss things that might interest me.

I have not been using my Bloglines account for RSS feeds, and have been feeling "guilty" for not using it. Going directly to blogs that interest me and reading them "live" on the web works better for me, partly because I feel more in control. I can read it when I want to, and what I've missed, I don't know about. The idea of using keywords to filter RSS feeds is interesting, but what keywords would I choose? The trick with keywords is that there isn't necessarily standardization (none of that subject heading or descriptor stuff.) I should be interested in Delicious, despite my privacy concerns, since I do use things on multiple computers, and it would be nice to have my bookmarks someplace. But I'm just not there yet. I think it would be handy when planning a trip, for example, to have links to sights to see, to plan with your fellow travelers. And you could share links with your colleagues (we used to do that on our reference desk computer, but they kept getting purged by the tech folks.)

When I first finished doing the 23 Things, I tried to set up a schedule of 2.0 activities (schedules are something that work really well with me.) Doing my blog posting on a schedule worked pretty well (I posted most Friday mornings.) I didn't find a workable schedule for the other things I tried to do. Since we don't have regular schedules at my institution (i.e., I don't have a regular schedule that I'm on the reference desk, it's different every day, every week), that makes scheduling other things more challenging.

I guess I just need to make some time in my schedule to play around in these things, so that they work well for me. What works for me seems to be different than what works for most people.

Thing 29: Google Tools

Ah, yes. The World According to Google, again. This things deals with various lesser-known features of Google, with the option to use other, similar tools if you're not a Google fan. I think I've blogged before about my adversion to putting all of my eggs into anyone's basket, including Google's, so I'll be looking non-Google.

News: Google News lets you personalize your news page and get sources by topic. The ProQuest databases are listed as an option, and we get ProQuest Newsstand as part of the ELM database collection. In ProQuest Newsstand you can set up table of contents alerts for new issues of a magazine or newspaper, and search alerts for new articles on a particular topic. ProQuest doesn't make it easy to figure this out, and I can't think of a publication or topic right now, so I changed my mind and moved on to EBSCO databases.

Currently I have one search alert through EBSCO (I used to have more, but I tended not to check them.) I've been meaning to get a family subscription to Newsweek for a long time (we thought we got one last year, but somebody got our money, and no subscription.) So I signed up to get an alert on Newsweek. I guess I'm just used to the odd, library way of doing things, rather than the new-millenium Google way. The search alert I have been using is for Computers in Libraries, and I do like that, and much prefer it to the system of routing paper journals (which I'm really bad at, and should get off all paper routing. Really.)

For the other part of this Thing, I have to choose between Mail, Calendar, and Web Site creation. I'm not keen on corporate America peeking into any of these parts of my life - which is the lesser evil? Sigh. I thought I already had a Google Mail account, since I've had to use Google for other things (this blog, a Google Groups activity at work last year), but no G-Mail, apparently. So I turn to Yahoo Mail, which I know I've used before. And guess what? I'm deactivated (either I turned it off, or I haven't used it for four months.) Grr. Well, poop on this mail stuff. I have two email accounts already (work and personal); I don't need more. What about Calendar?

Calendar: Yahoo Calendar lets me in (even though my email through them is deactivated.) So I've been tweaking settings and so forth. It is nice that you can make your day as long or short as you need. One of the big drawbacks of my paper calendar is that it's a traditional, 8-to-5 calendar, with little room to add details for the evening (and miniscule space for weekends.) It's interesting that you can only set appointments on the "15s" (i.e. 9:00, 9:15, 9:30, 9:45.) It would be tricky for our university setting, where we have classes starting at times like 9:40 and 1:35. I DO like the Event Type pull-down, with a LOT of possible settings (anniversary, appoinment, breakfast, interview, movie, etc. - interesting that they have Breakfast and not Brunch. Oh, well.) Much nicer in this than Outlook Calendar. I like that the display of one week seems to be customizable, you can go Friday through the following Thursday, for example. If I didn't have such major privacy concerns about this, it would be an interesting way to set up family calendards, schedule what our daughter is doing which week this summer, etc. I'm not sure this calendar can be embedded in the blog, as suggested in the Thing, but here's the URL: http://calendar.yahoo.com/marianne.hageman.

This calendar thing is worth thinking about.

Thing 28: Customized Home Pages

Before I blog about today's topic, I have a Twitter addendum. After I logged off the other day, I listed to more news on the radio about the flu outbreak. A reported noted that MANY people were following the government's public health presence on Twitter, to keep up with the latest information. So for many folks, Twitter is becoming what the radio (or television news) has been for past generations: a way to get current, reliable information where they are. Since I'm not "there" in Twitter very often, no wonder I don't get it!

On to Thing 28, customizing a home page. This covers iGoogle, PageFlakes, My Yahoo!, and other productivity tools. I looked back in my blog, and we first focused on this in Thing 13. I looked at the three, and liked PageFlakes the best, so I opened it up. (I discussed in my earlier post what I liked about PageFlakes over the others, but basically it could tell the difference between St. Paul and Minneapolis, and displayed better.) It took me a minute to remember how to navigate, but it was pretty easy. Had to add that Facebook widget right away! I would like to get more on top of podcasts, but I need to learn more about the relationship between my home laptop, iTunes, and podcasts before I get started. I think I'd like to dink around with it a bit more, but I'm going to do some blogging before fun. ;^)

But wait - this is interesting. I looked at the link to the blog post about PageFlakes, and discovered that there's a teacher edition of PageFlakes that can be customized for educators. How cool is that! I like what's in the example - a to-do list, research link (Google, Google, always Google - funny how it isn't "Link to My Library"), educational bookmarks, etc. When you have your "work" hat on, this makes more sense that all of the entertainment widgets in the regular PageFlakes (I'm not that much into modern entertainment.) I want to look at this more later.

On portals and customized pages: we have been talking at my institution about personalized library experiences for a long time. We'd look around the web and see it done at other institutions; why not here? Either our IT folks didn't get it (for the library experience), or we didn't have the software tools we needed to make it happen, but we made little progress until just recently. This semester the university did a beta trial of a student portal, and over Easter break it was opened up to all students. The library had been consulted on our presence last year, and the subject librarians ranked databases and other content that students could pick. Then, as it came closer to going live, it sounded like we wouldn't have access to it right away (we weren't students, after all!) So our library tech folks made the case that we couldn't help students with library-related portal questions if we couldn't see what they were looking at, so we were given accounts. And I think we're using Google Analytics to get some good data on use. I don't have a good impression yet on how it's going over with students, but I think they'll be comfortable with using it.

Portals for library staff? I think I've pondered in other posts about coming up with a go-to place for my colleagues. We've had Outlook Public Folders, shared network folders, a commercial wiki, a staff presence in the Blackboard course management system. Now we're beginning to talk about Sharepoint, and our tech students are using it already. We need something to get people into the same shared space, which is something of an uphill battle (not all staff seem to be OK with email, for that matter.) We need some big nudges.

More Things: Thing 27

Thing 27 is Twitter. I have heard a lot about Twitter for at least a year. We watched a YouTube video on it at home a few weeks ago, spoofing it and the "Fail Whale." I admit to being one of the ones who so far doesn't "get it." Who wants to know what I'm doing in odd minutes of the day? It sounds to me like a cross of Marshall McLuhan (everyone's famous, for 15 minutes) and Dickens/stream of consciousness narration (BTW, I really dislike novels written in the present tense. Seems to be a recent trend in literature, and it just rubs me the wrong way.)

So I got on to Twitter yesterday, and tried to find some people/personalities to follow. I searched for a friend that I know is on Twitter. I searched by her professional name. Searched her married name. Searched several combinations - no luck. I am not impressed with the searching on Twitter. Signed up to follow a writer I've heard of, a public radio reporter I've heard of, my library. Also Weird Al Yankovic and the More Things feed. This morning I found my friend (firstnamelastname all squished together), and am following her. Big whup. For the benefit of my one follower (so far), my Twitter username is mdhageman.

Our library just started using Twitter a few weeks ago, I believe (I happened to see this in some meeting minutes, I don't it was announced widely.) They're thinking of using it as a "here's what's going on" notification - "cookies in the library have arrived!" Since we sometimes have food left over after events, they could tweet about that - could have tweeted about activities during the recent Library Week. The trick is that I've read recently that college students are underwhelmed with Twitter - I'm not sure are students are there. We'll see.

I really don't think Twitter is my thing (until they improve the searching, at least.) I like the social networking features of Facebook (and similar sites) that make it easier to find people you know, or are interested in, and have more of a context (here are their photos, here are groups they've joined, etc.) And Facebook changed their status field to say "What are you doing?" - just like Twitter.

I have to admit this is difficult as I listen to more news about the swine flu; it sounds like the first case may have come to Minnesota. Stay healthy, follow common sense. And wash your hands.

More Things: Thing 26

Thing 26 is Ning, specifically the 23 Things on a Stick Ning. I joined it in the last go-round, and frankly, it just hasn't captured my fancy. Maybe I haven't made the effort to make friends there. Facebook has been more compelling to me, partly because I already know people I've connected to there. And of course that I'm now trying to do More Things on a different schedule from others doesn't help. But I did upload some photos, now that I have some thanks to my personal tech support. I wanted to upload one of my newest favorite toy, but since I don't own the rights to the image, I didn't really feel that I could. I looked back at my blog from last summer, and I had Ning on my list of "things I'm excited about," but for some reason I didn't keep with it.

I looked at some of the videos, and made some comments. There was a film of library dominoes (we did something similar a few weeks ago at my institution to kick off Library Week.) And one of my all-time favorite YouTubes, the Medieval Help Desk.

I could see getting involved in an interest group in Ning (my husband is active in some on Facebook.) I just haven't found/made time in my life for that, not in Ning or Facebook. I said last August that I have the problem of having TOO MANY interests - how to limit oneself by the time available?

More Things: Thing 25

So I've spent time trying to add some gadgets/widgets to my blog tonight. I tried a couple of clocks, but Blogger said the first one was broken, and the second one doesn't seem to appear (and Blogger is having some trouble tonight - I've gotten several error messages in the last few minutes.) I tried to add some "quote of the day" things - at least three that Blogger said were broken. The Cave Photo one was broken, too. One is working: the Britannica "library quote of the day" gadget (which I've had to relocate a couple of times.) I'd added the Follower thing earlier, and that's been working.

Err. The clock is on the bottom. Oh, well.

If I were doing this at home, I'd try to do more picture stuff. But I don't have my own digital camera, and our better photos are at home. I did manage to open up the comments on the blog the other week, encouraged by my Follower (Google Mail recognized him for one blog he was following, but not mine.) I was intrigued by the "trackbacks" idea, but Blogger searching isn't working right now. Maybe later.

More Things: Thing 24

I got an email late yesterday from the More Things on a Stick folks. I'd registered fairly soon after they started, and tweaked my blog a trifle, knowing that my library would be a pretty busy place at the beginning of term, but certainly I could get started on this in early March. I'd made a commitment.

And then Life happened, including a semi-impromptu spring break trip with some good things (got to see Wicked!) and not-so-good things (2+ days at airports, waiting for a flight home - the joys of flying standby.) Also a trip to the Computers in Libraries conference. So by the time I semi-started my expense report after the conference, I'd written off doing More Things. "There's only a month left," I mused. "No way I can do this." But the More Things email said, "If you complete at least 10 of the things and blog about them," I can get a bag. And they won't be doing a second round of More Things. So I'm going to try, and see what I can do.

As it turns out, I'd already done a chunk of Thing 24 and didn't realize it. I'd refreshed my blog, and due to some nudging from my Number One Fan (and Follower), I'd played with the gadgets. So I did some more refreshing, and now I'm blogging away again.

They ask, "How much have you blogged since you finished 23 Things on a Stick?" I finished in August, and according to Blogger, I had 13 posts for the rest of 2008, and 12 (and counting) for 2009. I haven't been commenting much on blogs, but I do have some blogs (and friends on LiveJournal) that I check on a regular basis. The library blog that I look at the most is Free Range Librarian, Karen Schneider's blog. She's quirky, and interesting.

They ask, "What do you like about blogging?" I like sharing odd bits and pieces of things, when I come across something of interest. I usually need something external to give me a "poke" (to use a Facebook term.) And I have to say again that Facebook has become quite the "killer application" in our household, since my husband discovered it in January, and more and more of our friends pop up on it. None of my friends from high school yet - maybe they're all on MySpace?

Government 2.0

National Public Radio ran a story tonight about Recovery.gov, the website that's tracking spending on the economic recovery. "It's an enormous task - publishing a real-time, reliable account of what the government is doing - and it wouldn't have been possible a decade ago. Call it Government 2.0."

High school students and library research experiences

Next week a colleague and I are doing a brief presentation for coworkers about what high school students do and don't learn about libraries and library research while in high school. She will discuss a University of Montana poster session at ALA last summer, and I will discuss a session by Kellian Clink at the Minnesota Library Association conference last fall. In both cases, college librarians surveyed and interviewed high school librarians at their institutions' "feeder schools," the high schools from which a number of their entering freshmen graduate. Many high school libraries and media centers have had their book budgets decreased or frozen for years, although state programs do provide access to online databases. And high school librarians report that students are creating more PowerPoints and iMovies than research papers. This has interesting implications for those of us doing college-level library instruction, about what concepts first-year students have experienced (library databases, online catalogs, citing sources, Dewey classification) and those they may not (evaluating sources, controlled vocabulary, synthesizing & analyzing information.) My colleague hopes to do a similar study of feeder schools of private colleges in Minnesota. The findings should be interesting.

Computers in Libraries 2009

Amongst my recent traveling adventures, I attended Computers in Libraries 2009 in Arlington, Virginia. Some highlights:

• Mobile is hot: there were sessions on mobile searching, applications for mobile devices, and mention of websites that will let you develop a mobile-friendly version of your own website.
• Twitter is still hot (at least in some circles.)
• What do you think is Facebook’s fastest-growing demographic, as of January? I’ll put the answer at the end of this message, so you can think about it.
• “Steal this code!” session: presentation on encouraging faculty to link to library content (in course management systems, etc.) by putting “cut and paste the code” info on your library website. They suggested “search the catalog” and “search databases” links. Here are some examples from Auraria and UM-Duluth.
• Frederick County Public Library talked about Mobile Reference using Samsung mobile computers networked to library printers.
• I went to a couple of presentations on getting/improving library content in course management systems, including customized portals and sending library content info to faculty that they can upload into their courses.
• I also saw a couple of sessions on training and e-learning, for teaching/training library staff and patrons. I also attended some interesting sessions on using Web 2.0 tools for library content (Flickr for library tutorials, “Meebo me” widgets, podcasts and screencasts on library guides, etc.)
• Townson University talked about their Sharepoint reference wiki (Powerpoint link.)
• So, what do you think Facebook’s fastest-growing demographic was in January 2009? Seniors! I knew that was coming as soon as my mother-in-law joined Facebook. ;^)

What Was I Thinking?

Christine Lavin has a great song, "What Was I Thinking?," where she ponders some choices that weren't perhaps the best. Here I am, just back from a spring break trip to San Francisco (which included two days at airports awaiting a flight home - ah, the joys of flying standby.) Tomorrow I leave for the Computers in Libraries conference in Arlington, Virginia. I'm sure the conference will be great, but right now I don't want to see an airport. Never. Well, maybe in a few months, but not NOW. I'm still tired from trying to sleep in the San Francisco airport Sunday night.

I hope the conference will regenerate me. And I'll get back into blogging again.

Snowed Under

We had several inches of snow yesterday, PLUS I got a last-minute request to teach a class next week, so "snowed under" is how I feel. But I can share a few tidbits:

• A counterpoint to the "Facebook, I Quit!" article I linked to last week: "Why Facebook is for Old Fogies" from Time Magazine (especially "Facebook is about finding people you've lost track of... son, we've lost track of more people than you've ever met.")
• My husband was out of town during yesterday's snowstorm and expected back last night. I missed his call to my cell phone (I was shoveling out my car) and only got his voicemail message much later. He said, "But I changed my Facebook status!"
• I got my first File 404 error message from the new administration the other day:
  "The page you requested wasn't found at this location. The Obama Administration has created a brand new White House website, and it's possible that the page you were looking for has been moved. Please take a moment to explore our new site, learn more about President Obama and his team, and read about their plan to bring about the change America needs."
  
  

Facebook, I Quit!

I don't have a lot of time today, but I do want to post a link to the Newsweek blog post by Steve Tuttle, "You Can't Friend Me, I Quit!" Quite ironic, in our context. (I'm not quitting Facebook yet, in fact I'm in about once a day.) I'm getting error messages from Blogger, so I'd better stop for today.

Why I'm Not Doing More Things, Yet

• Got upgraded to Microsoft Office 2007 on Monday. Still learning some of the ropes.
• Preparing for 4 classes next week (marketing, entrepreneurship, and 2 sections of finance.)
• Ordering books in my subject areas as fast as I can, before the end of the month.

These are not good excuses, I suppose, but I knew when I signed up that I probably wouldn't have time for More Things in the month of February. This has proven true. So I will be behind people, but I have at least one coworker in the same boat as me.

How I Love My Spam Filter (Not)

Ah, the joys of the Spam Filter, that interesting piece of software that's supposed to make your life easier. Ours at work is slow, p-a-i-n-f-u-l-l-y slow, and I often get the "server timed out" message. So I sometimes miss a useful message.

I registered with More Things on a Stick earlier this week, and while looking at the site, was wondering if there was much activity yet. Little did I realize that with one exception, my "More Things" messages were getting caught in the spam filter. I made the mistake of looking yesterday afternoon, and have been wrestling with the filter since then to get a dozen or so messages out of there (perhaps even deleting the real spam, hmmm.) So if anyone of the More Things participants come across this blog, I have started Thing 24, but I'm not getting the messages - yet. This too shall pass, right?

This 'n' That

• Update on my Computer Woes: after taking a turn for the worse, today my computer seems better. Yesterday was a mixed bag: my second Outlook personal folder came back, Outlook slowed to the occasional crawl, and my calendar reminders refused to work - which was where I started 2 weeks ago. However, a wonderful tech has worked on my machine, and when I logged in today the Terrible .DLL Message did not come back (although Outlook was slow to load again.) I'm crossing my fingers.
• Ever since my earlier post on computer error messages, I've been saving examples for another fun-filled post. But now that I've been in DLL Hell, it's not so fun anymore. That blog posting will have to wait.
• More Things on a Stick has opened for enrollment; that's still on my to-do list. Maybe today. They recommend using Firefox to do the Things, so I have to remember this. I've gone back and forth in the browser wars over the years, but I retreated some years ago when my institution said that they only supported Things Microsoft. (Which didn't stop me from installing Firefox on my newly-leased computer this summer.)
• Web 2.0 hit our household last weekend: my husband discovered Facebook. (He did help me load a picture of myself to Facebook, which is nice. The picture I did months ago on this blog was the only digitized one I could find at the time, and it's of me and our dog.) He's still in the infatuation stage ("I have 24 friends!"), but he assures me that he'll settle down soon. I wonder...he's thinking about encouraging his mom to get on Facebook, that it might be a killer app for her. My killer app is my handheld, an antique Palm III Palm Pilot which has 3Com on its lid, bless its heart. I use it every day, and haven't migrated to the newer Palm that I was given by computer spouse some years ago because I can sync the old one at home, but not the new one.

Onward to the new week. I assume that once I get going on More Things, I'll be posting more often.

Computer Woes

I'm having a bad week. My computer has a Something. I'm not sure if it's a virus, or spyware goop, or what. Being a mere user, I am not privy to the illness that has befallen my machine. I'm told it's not even my fault, that it came through the network, and is not a result of anything I did. But it's ill. It started with my calendar, which spread to other pieces of Outlook. My preferences and personal files are gone, at least for now. I've had a wonderful tech person here several times for the past few days, and she's referred my problem to another tech. So I wait, and suffer.

It's not unlike the Bad Old Days that we tried to explain to our daughter the other day, when a child in the family was dying, and the mother wasn't told what was wrong (it might upset her, which would upset the child and delay recovery.) The child wasn't told (the child would be upset and delay recovery.) So I know there's a Something on my computer, and that I get a System32 message when I log on that ends in a .dll. We tried looking up the particular error message on the web and couldn't find it. But now I feel better knowing that Wikipedia has an entire entry on DLL Hell (DLL means "dynamic link libraries," and is a Windows thing. Learn somethin' every day, don'tcha?) Now I know where I am. DLL Hell.

Meanwhile, I've learned that More Things on a Stick is coming, starting on January 20th! I hope I get out of DLL Hell before then.

What is Presearch?

One blog I like to scan on a regular basis is Karen Schneider's Free Range Librarian. Recently she had an interesting post on her Top Ten Words and Phrases for 2008, and the one that caught my attention was "presearch":

"Presearch: the informal Google/Wikipedia look-ups students do before digging into better resources (and yes, they do that!)"

That definition hasn't hit Wikipedia yet (maybe a good thing?), but I like it. Years ago I worked with some folks at our campus Writing Center, and I remember they emphasized "prewriting," the writing that goes on as you're just getting started. It doesn't have to be perfect, and it's not unlike brainstorming on paper. I think this is an intriguing idea, and it will be interesting to see if the term/definition catch on.

Musings on Web/Library 2.0 Reluctance

Recently I received an email from a student librarian asking for my thoughts on why folks are reluctant to use Web 2.0/Library 2.0 technologies. I hadn't thought conciously on this much, but my subsconscious must have, because I was able to distill several ideas into some coherent points. Here's what I came up with, from an academic library perspective:

• A feeling that it pulls us away from what’s been important in our profession: the personal contact with patrons, diminishing the human touch.
• The thinking that our patrons aren’t there yet. I’ve heard from some colleagues that students (particularly graduate students, but not limited to them) aren’t aware of these technologies, and students want things to be as simple as possible. And many faculty aren’t there either.
• The belief that making things too simple is not good pedagogy. Research is a process, and it’s work, which isn’t necessarily easy (at least at the college level.)
• An impression that faculty make assumptions about student use of technologies, that students know more than they do; this idea is in tension with library staff perceiving that students know less than they used to, and/or have more to deal with than they used to.
• It’s a fad, another “trend” that will be replaced with something else.
• Lack of time to learn new technologies.
• Lack of support, in training and in ability to acquire and use new tools, both hardware and software.

She also asked about how we might overcome these obstacles. I didn't have many ideas there: frankly, we haven't made a lot of progress at my institution. But here are my thoughts:

• 23 Things programs of various types are helping library staff get on board with new technologies. Here in Minnesota, we’ve had two rounds of 23 Things on a Stick, with new Things promised for 2009. (The joke is that at our Minnesota State Fair, which is one of the biggest in the country, you can buy almost anything on a stick, including turkey, ostrich, and alligator.
• Incentives, even small ones, can be helpful. The original 23 Things program, as you may have seen, offered a prize for completion, as well as a chance to win a laptop computer and other prizes.
• I think any kind of partnering, or teamwork, or mentoring can help. Working with someone else, or a group, can give you encouragement and someone to ask if you run into problems.

I hope we can make some progess in 2009!