Giving Good Airport

While on my flight home from NASIG last week, I used my iPod Touch to watch a New Yorker conference session called Deconstructing the Airport. Paco Underhill, founder of market research and consulting company Envirosell, talks about how to remake air travel for the twenty-first century. Underhill has written books on the Science of Shopping and the Call of the Mall (subtitled "the geography of shopping"), and now turns his attention to airports. If I may translate what he does into library / IT language, he talks about usability / user interaction assessments of people as they use airports.

For instance, he says that people's perception of time spent waiting while in a security or check-in line is usually longer than the reality -- up to 50%, in fact! Underhill suggests that the entire airport needs to be completely redone, in part for functionality, and in part to reduce our perception of this long wait time. He gives many examples of functionality, but here are two I liked: the "body bubble" is different in airports than it is in other areas of our lives -- we have only one hand free (if that) and we are pulling / carrying a suitcase, and possibly also a backpack. So our peripersonal space is totally different - but that is not taken into consideration when designing the airport. Another ha! moment: "the filthiest place in the first world is the bathroom in the economy section of an airplane."

As I watched all this, I started thinking that there are a lot of similarities between how Underhill describes the problems with airports and the difficulties some of our patrons face in libraries.

Underhill says: "... we live in a world that is owned by men, designed by men, managed by men, and yet we expect women to participate in it." Amen, brother! (but I digress) Except ... I'm not really digressing. What if we modify that phrase like this:

"... we create a library that is owned by librarians, designed by librarians, managed by librarians, and yet we expect novice library patrons to participate in it." (changed words italicized) It's a slight modification, but all of a sudden some of us might have a better understanding of what the library is like for our patrons. D'oh!

Underhill gives some great ideas on how airports could be "reinvented:"

• Free WiFi everywhere, among other suggestions to improve incessant travel waiting. again I say, Amen, brother! (and also: thank you! to my local airport, BDL, which does offer free WiFi)
• Offer different lines at security, for families, registered travelers, etc.
• Offer healthy food choices! halal, vegetarian ...
• Shopping (and other services) that reflect a one-handed customer. He suggests offering a wand-style checkout like the Exxon/Mobil Speedpass to reduce physical difficulties paying for items in an airport.
  
• Rocking chairs like at the Charlotte airport, and other kinds of movable seating (his demonstration of the rocking movement is charming).
  

Sounds like it could be called Airport 2.0. Let's hope airports and libraries can both redesign themselves (quickly) to be usable, and functional for real users.

For More Information

• Underhill, Paco. Deconstructing the Airport "Stories from the Near Future," the New Yorker Conference, May 23, 2008. Available through iTunes.
  
• Also possibly of interest: Airport Wireless Internet Access Guide, which lists airports which offer free WiFi. Yay!
  

Presentation on Marketing the Library

I'm just finishing up my attendance at NASIG 2008 (that's the North American Serials Interest Group) on the collaboration between vendors and libraries to market (or promote, if you prefer a softer touch) library databases to patrons.

| View | Upload your own

We broke the session into three groups: Brie Betz, Account Development Manager at Elsevier spoke about the program from the vendor's perspective, and how it's been a great success at the University of Connecticut and other places at increasing usage. I spoke about managing the program from the librarian's perspective and Deb Barberi, one of my GSLIS students and Student Ambassador for the 2007-2008 academic year, talked about teaching the program and working with the UConn graduate students.

The conference folks have created a NetVibes page () for the conference - they're pulling in Flickr photos, blog posts, and other material tagged with nasig2008. Check out all the activity, and see if you can find the photo of me at David Lee King's presentation on Emerging Trends & Web 2.0 on Flickr, or on David's blog.

PrimateLit -- free database!

One of my colleagues at the University of Wisconsin has worked on an impressive database called PrimateLit. This database

provides bibliographic access to the scientific literature on nonhuman primates for the research and educational communities. Coverage of the database spans 1940 to present and includes all publication categories (articles, books, abstracts, technical reports, dissertations, book chapters, etc.) and many subject areas (behavior, colony management, ecology, reproduction, field studies, disease models, veterinary science, psychology, physiology, pharmacology, evolution, taxonomy, developmental and molecular biology, genetics and zoogeography).

I did a search for mirror neurons, and found over 200 results -- plus a subject heading for mirror neurons. The metadata is impressive: you can search or browse by taxonomy (macaca), diseases (depression) anatomy (frontal cortex), behavior (theory of mind), disciplines (experimental psychology), and much more!

A cool feature of PrimateLit is that it

... attempts to identify each user's institutional affiliation and automatically provide links to that institution's online journals and other content from within search results. If PrimateLit can't automatically identify the proper institution, the user is prompted to manually set the preference through a simple form.

For librarians, this means that it takes advantage of OpenURL technology, and if you've registered your OpenURL resolver with WorldCat.org, it will automatically display your OpenURL resolver of choice. For researchers, if your library has done this behind-the-scenes magic, it means that if your library has the full-text of an article cited in PrimateLit, you will be able to get to it easily. Click on the "Institutional Affiliation" button on the search page to see if your institution is participating.

Here's what it looks like at UConn:
Where clicking on "UCONN Links" will ultimately lead you to the full-text of the article, if UConn has it online.

Quite impressive!

More About Feline Diabetes & Diet

My first post on Feline Diabetes & Diet is still getting hits in Google searches, so I wanted to update what I've since learned about it ... just to keep the record balanced (or perhaps more muddled).

In that first post, I cited an unpublished study suggesting that carbohydrates weren't less important than weight in treating feline diabetes. Which suggests that carbohydrates aren't bad for cats with diabetes.

BUT!

I’ve since read Your Cat : Simple New Secrets to a Longer, Stronger Life, by veterinarian Elizabeth M. Hodgkins (c2007). She has carefully studied diet and feline diabetes in her practice and she strongly believes that cats shouldn't eat carbohydrates at all. Her own practice suggests that diabetes can be completely controlled by diet, and she cites examples of cats she has known who have switched to all canned food and no kibbles ... and who have no longer needed insulin. But this is only her practice and not a solid clinical trial, so your experience may vary.

Hodgkins pokes holes at some mainstream studies showing that cat food is healthy, and overall makes some very compelling arguments. Primarily, she states that "studies" show that for young cats, a short-term diet including a lot of carbs does no harm; she argues that this does NOT show that long-term, carbs do no harm.

Research is starting to support Hodgkins' arguments. Deborah Greco, DVM, PhD, an endocrinologist at The Animal Medical Center in New York, explained a "Catkin's diet" (Google search results) at the 2004 American College of Veterinary Internal Medicine. Her report was cited in a November 2004 article in DVM Newsmagazine:

Greco notes that in a cat's natural environment, mice would be a main staple, composed of roughly 40 percent to 45 percent protein, 3 percent to 5 percent carbohydrate and 40 percent to 45 percent fat.

"Cats should have a diet that is high protein, high fat and low carbohydrate," Greco says. "High levels of carbohydrates in dry food causes overproduction of insulin, increased hunger and weight gain."

Hodgkins' book strongly encourages cat "owners" to remove all carbohydrates from their cats' diet, and feed their cats nothing but canned food (or even raw food). Note that her recommendation is for ALL cats, not just cats with diabetes.

As a science librarian, I would like to see well-crafted, substantial, long-term, large-cat, published clinical studies of carb or no-carb diet in cats, diabetic or not. But until then, I will be feeding my healthy, non-diabetic cats low-carb, high protein diets in the hope of keeping them healthy and non-diabetic.

For More Information

• "Battle feline obesity with 'Catkins' diet, expert advises." DVM Newsmagazine 35.11 (Nov 2004): S6. Academic OneFile @ your library.
• Hodgkins, Elizabeth M. Your Cat : Simple New Secrets to a Longer, Stronger Life. St. Martin's Press, 2007
• Tremayne, Jessica. "Tell clients to bite into 'Catkins' diet to battle obesity, expert advises" DVM Newsmagazine (Aug 1, 2004).

Disclaimer:This blog is not a tool for self-diagnosis or a substitute for professional care.

Updates

In which we revisit some earlier posts and see what's new. This is partly because now that classes are over, I have time to catch up on old issues of the New Yorker and New Scientist, leading to some blog bits.

Crows
Last July, I wrote about the intelligence of crows and scrub-jays. In March, "hacker and writer" Joshua Klein spoke at TedTalks about crows and how he taught them to use a specially-created crow vending machine.


As Klein leads up to the vending machine (truly amazing), he shows some fascinating videos which nicely illustrate how crows learn, specifically a shot of a crow bending a wire to pick up food in a lab, and another shot of a crow using cars to crack her nuts -- then waiting for the light to change so she can collect the nut bits in safety. I won't spoil the vending machine story for you, as it's really fascinating.

Politics, Emotion, and ... Genes?
I've written occasionally about politics and the brain, and I read an article in an early February issue of New Scientist about some studies that suggest "political positions are substantially determined by biology." Jim Giles summarizes recent studies in various journals, and the findings are startling: twin studies suggest that political orientation is genetic (American Political Science Review, 2005); there may be a connection between fear of death, art preference, and one's political leaning (American Psychologist, 2003), and "there is probably a set of genes that influences openness, which in turn may influence political orientation" (Journal of Research in Personality, YEAR). Giles cautions, however, that "there is no shortage of critics who question the whole idea of linking politics with biology." For more, check out the article, or read some of the articles that Giles summarizes.

The Pirahã
I summarized a New Yorker article about the Pirahã about a year ago; in January, New Scientist interviewed the linguist Daniel Everett, who, along with his family, are the only non-Pirahã who speak that language. If you're interested in the story of the language of the Pirahã, and what it says for language acquisition (including a conflict with Noam Chomsky), the interview is a good read.

For More Information

• Klein, Joshua. The Amazing Intelligence of Crows. TedTalks, March 2008.
  
• Giles, Jim. "Born That Way." New Scientist, Feb. 2, 2008. Not available for free online, but full-text may be available @your library, in Academic Search Premier and other databases.
  
• Alford, John, Carolyn Funk, and John R. Hibbing. Are Political Orientations Genetically Transmitted? (pdf) American Political Science Review. Vol. 99(2), May 2005, 153-167.
  
• Jost, John T. The End of the End of Ideology (abstract). American Psychologist. Vol 61(7), Oct 2006, 651-670. Full-text may be available @ your library in PsycARTICLES.
• "Heritabilities of Common and Measure-Specific Components of the Big Five Personality Factors" Journal of Research in Personality, vol 32 (4), April 1998, p. 431. Not available for free online, but full-text may be available @your library, in ScienceDirect.
• Else, Liz and Lucy Middleton. "Interview: Daniel Everett." New Scientist Jan 19, 2008, p42-45. Subtitle: "Out on a limb over language: linguist Daniel Everett went to Brazil as a young Christian missionary to work with the Piraha indigenous people. Instead of converting them, he told Liz Else and Lucy Middleton, he lost his faith and his family, and provoked a major intellectual row." Not available for free online, but full-text may be available @ your library, in Academic OneFile.

Pet "How To" Videos from Cornell

I found some wonderful cat videos @ Cornell University College of Veterinary Medicine which provide details on how to care for your ailing cat.


In this case, not even ailing -- but how to brush a cat's teeth. We have a cat struggling with gum health, and we have been brushing her teeth for well over a year. We don't use the implements shown in the video; rather, we use a q-tip and some veterinary oral rinse. And we didn't introduce the new health regime the way the video suggests, tho' if I had to do it over, we would have. (note: early in the video are shots of sedated cats getting their gums cleaned; be prepared to cover your eyes if you don't want to see cats in an operating theater)

They have a long series on Caring for Your Diabetic Cat, which, sadly, I no longer have to do. The video has a great explanation of what diabetes is and how it affects your cat (including some distinctions between feline and human problems related to diabetes), how to give injections, and nutritional therapy. The series on Trimming Your Cat's Claws is very helpful -- and useful if your cats like to scratch things.

If you are caring for a cat, I recommend looking at the list of videos Cornell offers and watching the ones that apply to your cat.

For More Information

• Videos for Cats, Partners in Animal Health and Cornell University College of Veterinary Medicine. 2008.
• Videos for Dogs. Partners in Animal Health and Cornell University College of Veterinary Medicine. 2008. Only one there so far; maybe they'll add more soon.
  

Database of Political Ads

There's a cool database of political ads online at http://projects.washingtonpost.com/politicalads/

The Washington Post has collected (links to) over 500 ads in the database, and this is the description of the resources:

The database includes political advertisements funded by campaigns, parties, committees, and independent advocacy groups. Most of the ads are tied to specific U.S. House, U.S. Senate, or gubernatorial races throughout the country. Some of the ads are more general "issue" or advocacy ads not tied to a particular race or candidate. You can search for ads based on the criteria listed below.

They are categorized by campaign, person, content, tone, characters, etc. Some of you may be especially interested in this group of emotional ads.

It's a nice idea in theory, but of the 5 ads I tried to watch, only 2 worked. Still, if you're interested in politics & communication, you might want to check this out.

Teaching Citation Searching to Grad Students

One of my student / trainers / colleagues and I co-wrote an article for Computers in Libraries about the UConn peer-to-peer training program. I've written about the Elsevier Student Ambassador Program here before (June 2007), but that post was brief, and the article is more detailed.

Chelsea writes a great deal about how she taught other UConn graduate students the nifty process of looking to see who's cited an article, and by doing find MORE related articles, and finding seminal articles in a particular field. We both like citation searching databases like Scopus and Web of Science because they let you do some very interdisciplinary searching with a few mouse clicks.

The article was great fun to write, and I hope it gives you some ideas about a novel way of searching.

For More Information

• Hammond, Chelsea C. and Stephanie Willen Brown (2008). Citation Searching: Search Smarter & Find More. Computers in Libraries, Vol. 28 No. 5. Thanks to the folks at Information Today for making the article free online!
  

Friday Fun

Saw this amusing web-based librarian colorforms-like game (anyone remember colorforms from childhood?) where you dress up your librarian any way you like. I pretty much liked the basic buttoned-up librarian, but I did revise mine just a bit to include beads, a splash of color, and un-bunned hair.

take a look at librariandressup.com & see what you think!

(thanks, as always, to Candy)

Memory and the Reference Librarian

Ah, the intersection of cognitive and information science -- truly a dream for the CogSci Librarian. Today's confluence twins the reference librarian and memory, based on a recent article by Walter Butler in Reference Services Review entitled "Re-establishing Memory: Memory's Functions and the Reference Librarian."

Butler does a nice job of defining memory and then using some practical examples of how this relates to the work of a reference librarian. I'll summarize the bits I like, but if you are interested in memory, I recommend the article in full because the explanations are relatively simple and very clear, especially with respect to how memory works.

In Butler's introduction, he explains how memory is a "tacit expectation" for reference librarians, and he breaks memory down into three realms:

• Memory in the librarian's brain
• External devices which assist in knowledge storage
• The establishment of memory in the patron's brain

For a great definition of memory, I turn to my trusty reference friend, the Dictionary of Psychology by Raymond Corsini. Memory, he writes, is

1) the ability to revive past experience, based on the mental processes of learning or registration, retention, recall or retrieval, and recognition; the total body of remembered experience. and 2) A specific past experience recalled.

The entry lists 24 different types of memory and provides 16 see also references. My other trusted friend in this realm is the International Encyclopedia of the Social and Behavioral Sciences, which has 48 articles with memory in the title. If you want to learn more about memory, I encourage you to refer to these sources. But I digress.

Butler talks about memory in the context of both neuroscience (where memories are stored) and psychology (describing types of memory). It's fun to mesh the types of memory with the reference librarian's toolkit. For instance, semantic memory -- which refers to "knowledge about general facts," such as "words, chemical formulas, equations, and names" -- might map to ready reference in the librarian's world. Butler refers to Tulving by defining episodic memory as "something which is personally experienced and includes a place and time" -- which might map to the patron's personal interaction with the librarian. Finally, schematic memory, referring to how we perceive objects, people, and events, refers more to the place of interaction -- and maps (heh) to where the interaction takes place: in the library, online, or remotely.

Butler suggests that these types of memory relate to three areas of reference librarian tasks, which he selects from the Reference and User Services Association (2000) Guidelines for Information Services, where librarians are considered ...

1. Service providers: Butler talks about working or short term memory and long-term memory for librarians as service providers with this example of a patron who asked where he can find the chemistry books: "The location of chemistry books is the long-term, schematic memory [for the librarian], whereas the user is the new, short-term memory, which has the potential to become an episodic memory." Reference librarians may use systems such as written lists, browser bookmarks, or folksonomy tags as external memory devices.
2. Educators: Written notes for the patron, handed to her after the session, may serve to reinforce learning. Further, Butler suggests that an interview closure tool such as a short survey could serve as an external memory aid to help "trigger ... both the short-term memory and possibly strengthening associative long-term memory." Butler wonders how this kind of tangible memory tool might be used for phone transactions; I would argue that an email might serve to reinforce what the patron learned during the phone conversation . For IM / chat / electronic encounters, the physical act of typing back and forth with the librarian may serve as an additional learning function for the patron.
   
3. Knowledge managers: Librarians need a lot of memory to manage their knowledge! There are many different types of knowledge to manage in the librarian's world: awareness of their users, technical and resource literacy, and the ability to appropriately share this information with their patrons are a few that Butler mentions; he adds that "the institution [must] practice memory skills" as well -- the librarian's knowledge is great, but it does the institution good if the librarian can share her managed knowledge with new colleagues.

Going back to librarians as educators, I was struck by Butler's assertion that if librarians use "diagrams to show a process of structure, users may be able to secure memory better." Remember (ha!) that next time you are tempted to draw a Venn Diagram to illustrate some complex library math.

And then go ahead and draw the diagram!

For More Information

• Butler, Walter. (2008) Re-establishing Memory: Memory's Functions and the Reference Librarian. Reference Services Review, 36(1), 97-110. Available through Emerald online, or @ your library.
• Corsini, Raymond. (1999) Dictionary of Psychology. Routledge. Possibly available @ your library.
• Smelser, Neil J. and Paul B. Baltes. (2001) International Encyclopedia of the Social & Behavioral Sciences. Elsevier. Sometimes online and possibly available @ your library.