Information Now! "Graphic Textbook" for Info. Literacy

Information Now: A Graphic Guide to Student Research by Matt Upson, C. Michael Hall, and Kevin Cannon is a terrific addition to the tools I use to teach students how to do online research.

I love it for two reasons:

1. It's graphic, cute, and trendy ...
2. It's accurate, thorough, and humorous.

Here are some specifics of what I love about the book:

• The librarian uses chairs to illustrate why subject headings can be helpful -- adding that chairs are also seats, and are within the category of "furniture."



Chairs, p. 34

• She illustrates Boolean operators with Venn diagrams, by talking about a search for Pirates (no, not the Pittsburgh Pirates), ships (no, not a UPS truck), and history: 

History of Pirate Ships, p. 46

• There's a whole chapter devoted to journals & databases, and I've used the 7-page discussion of popular, trade, and scholarly journals in classes with good results.

Journals, p. 55

• The chapter on searching the web (including Wikipedia) is followed by a chapter on evaluating sources. The librarian offers the usual (to librarians) questions about authority, purpose, accuracy, relevance, and objectivity. Here's an illustration of a persuasive site:

Persuasion, p. 86



• The book concludes with a chapter on Using Information Ethically, which covers plagiarism and citations, as well as how to quote or paraphrase what you've read.

Paraphrasing, p. 92

I've used it with undergraduates in one-shot sessions -- asking them to read a chapter or two before class, and then discussing the content in class. I've also taught the book in an introductory reference class at UNC's School of Information and Library Science. Finally, I've had my student workers read chapters of the book as part of their training on what a library does -- so they can better help their fellow students from behind the reference desk. I will definitely continue all of these.

If you teach anyone to search for information, I recommend using this book as a supplement to instruction. It's terrific!

Bonus: the book succeeds at being relatively inclusive in its graphics (although the librarian does reflect the majority of U.S. librarians in her look and gender).

People Reading, p. 56

Confession:

I must raise an ethical question of my own: is it ok for me to use so many photos of graphics used in the book? Chicago University Press can answer the question ... but in my defense, I...

• took photos with my phone (i.e., lower quality) 
• blurred out some of the text.
• only used a tiny handful of graphics

AND since the illustrations are what make the book so great, no review would be complete without at least a few selected images.

Make it Matter @ #NCLA15

I've been very involved in the North Carolina Library Association 61st Biennial Conference, and I've been able to collaborate with my colleagues and students at UNC's School of Media & Journalism as part of that involvement.

I served as chair of the publicity committee, which involved all aspects of promotion for the conference. To start with, I asked two MEJO design students to create the conference logo, which was used on all of our material and on our conference bags:

Thanks, Katie King & Camille Romac-Gullo!

Katie King also designed our program and pre-conference brochure, and both look terrific.

I've also worked to promote the conference on social media and other methods -- and filled in content for the pre-conference brochure. Fortunately, my awesome colleague April Everett from the Rowan County Public Library filled in all the content for the final program. Follow the conference tweets at #ncla15.

At the conference, I collaborated with two colleagues from the Durham County Library to present a three-hour pre-conference session discussing the use of social media in libraries.  We primarily talked about using Twitter and Facebook (DurhamCountyLib is awesome on Twitter), and we covered issues such as content, social media clients, and control & coordination of the accounts. We also talked about social media policies, visibility, and analytics -- and we ended with a brief discussion of the other social media tools we use.

We created a guide with notes and links from the session: Social Media Hacks: Tips & Conversation for Enhancing Social Media Use in Libraries - and we had a great time talking to academic and public library colleagues across the state about using social media.

Finally, I had a poster session presenting results of my research with MEJO professor Jim Hefner: Does Forcing Students to Ask for Help Work? Assessing the Effect of REQUIRING Term Paper Consults The short answer is: YES, forcing students to ask for library help does work. See my earlier post Requiring Students to Meet with a Librarian for more details of that research.

Stephanie discusses the results with Brigitte Blanton, director of Greensboro Public Library.

It's been a great conference, and I'm thrilled to incorporate so much of my daily work into the association and the conference.

Suggestions and Outcomes of PR Writing Assessment

I'm delighted to share student suggestions and outcomes from Dr. Lois Boynton's PR Writing class.

The suggestions include (but are not limited to):

• Asking professors to give students extra credit if they talk to me as they are working on their assignment. I've mentioned this to two folks who are enthusiastic.
• Send a press release to faculty about our new website (when it goes live). This idea works particularly well in a school with a public relations department, but it's a good idea for any discipline.
• Emphasize the instant-ness of chat in classes. I think I'll ask a student volunteer to use the chat while in class - how much more instant can we get? 
• Bring in a student from an earlier semester with me to talk about how helpful it was talking to me about the class assignment.

The output includes (but is not limited to)

• A series of three short videos where I demonstrate what happens in a library interaction - and show that I don't bite. Check out the first one (the other two are on YouTube and embedded in some of my LibGuides):
• A flyer to be made available to students about what the Library has to offer. I originally balked at the idea of a flyer (print? really?) but this is the second group of PR students who recommended one, so I went ahead and made one.

• I printed 100 copies, which I've placed around the building and will share at the School's welcome reception.
• I will also post them in bathrooms to see if that increases awareness.

Now if I could just super-charge my Photoshop skills so I can create slides for the School's digital signage boards ...

As I implement more of the students' ideas, I'll blog them. 

PR Recommendations for the Park Library

My library recently served as the client for Dr. Lois Boynton's PR Writing class, where her students analyzed the Park Library from a public relations perspective. It was both a humbling and terrific experience, and I got several great bits of advice and some great videos out of the experience. Plus, I got to see some of the work our PR students do - which will help me help future PR students. It was win - win - win.

image from Microsoft

I'll start with the students' Strengths / Weaknesses / Opportunities / Threats analysis, interspersed with some comments of my own. I'll share the students' suggestions and outcomes in another post.

The strengths, as defined by the students, include:

• The library's chat feature (tho' one student had not used it, thinking it would be as slow as email; note to self: promote chat as "Instant Chat").
• The Library's website and all its resources.
• Return books from any library to the Park Library.
• Food & drink allowed in the library.
• Therapy dogs during finals.
• The Library's location within the building where most department classes are held.

The weaknesses & threats, as listed in the students' SWOT analysis, include:

• Not enough visuals on our website; library website is difficult to find on department website.
• Longer hours (mentioned by multiple students).
• We don't have a free campus printer (aka CCI printing).
• Funding.
• Students are afraid to ask questions or don't want to ask for help.
• Olivia H. wrote "Easy access to library materials on Park's website could mean fewer students actually using library facilities because of home access."
  Olivia adds: "Although Stephanie makes presentations to many classes, students may forget about the resources and information that she shares as the semester goes on."
• Too much information on our website and in our "extensive online collection." 
• Faculty don't encourage use of library in their classes.

Opportunities & recommendations

• More visuals! (on the website and on the School's digital signage boards).
• More promotion generally -- through flyers and bathroom signage.
• Extended hours.
• Update the website.
• Adding a free campus printer.
• More information about Stephanie (which seems strange to me, but this was mentioned several times, over two semesters).
• Social media contests such as hashtag promotions on Twitter or Instagram.

This statement highlights my aspirations quite nicely: "The goal is not just to get [students] in the door but to also to get them comfortable enough to ask questions while they are there." (emphasis mine)

So ... hearty thanks to Dr. Boynton and her PR Writing students. I hope to implement a few of their ideas this semester; and I will post about them as I do.

Embedding LibGuides into Course Management Systems

from
http://www.iconarchive.com/show/
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My getting-ready-for-school tasks include creating library course guides for each class I plan to talk to about using library resources. Last academic year, I taught 54 groups, including "one-shot" instruction sessions, orientations for new & prospective students, and non-course workshops.  I created 31 course guides in support of these sessions, including the ever-popular page for Penny Abernathy's Digital Media Economics and Behavior, Barbara Friedman's Women and Mass Communication, and Dave Cupp's History of Broadcasting. These three pages were among the top 10 visited pages of the whole Park Library website last year. 

Whoo! those pages are popular! I have long known that, as a student of website analytics.  A recent article in Reference Services Review provides another level of support for this assertion.

Aaron Bowen, reference librarian at the University of California, Chico, conducted a small study of students' use of LibGuides (software for creating library course guides) in Blackboard, a course / learning management system. The LibGuides were embedded in CSU Chico's Blackboard sites, much as UNC library course guides are embedded in our Blackboard / Sakai course management systems. Bowen queried students about their use of resources used to conduct research for their Communication 131 class.

The results were striking: Of the "57 valid responses, 36 students (63.16 percent) responded they did not use any internet resources, other than the Guide, to complete their assignment." In my words: wow! 63% of students who responded to the survey only used library-sanctioned resources to do research required for their assignment. Those students did not use Google or Wikipedia (or they didn't admit to having done so), while 30% used Google and 16% used Google Scholar in addition to the Guide (9% admitted to having used Wikipedia).

Lots of research indicates that students use Google or other resources on the free Internet to research for their courses. Bowen's research is more consistent with Alison Head's 2007 research described in First Monday that only about 10% of students use Google and other free websites to start their research for courses.

So, good news broadly for student research: there are cases when students are more likely to use library resources to complete their assignments. And good news more specifically for me & my UNC colleagues: embedding library guides into course management systems improves students' use of our resources.

http://www.iconarchive.com/show/
red-little-shoes-icons-by-raindropmemory/
Document-icon.html

For More Information

• Bowen, Aaron. (2012) "A LibGuides Presence in a Blackboard Environment," Reference Services Review, Vol. 40 Iss: 3, pp.449 - 468
• Head, Alison. (2007) “Beyond Google: How Do Students Conduct Academic Research?” First Monday, Vol. 12 No. 6.
• JOMC Library Course Guides, Fall 2009-present.

Mining User Data: E-Books & E-Journals

I've been meaning to blog about the recent Wall Street Journal article "Your E-Book Is Reading You" and now there's a companion post to write: "Mendeley Injects Some Pace into Academia with Fast, Big Data" (reporting by GigaOM).

Both talk about mining user data generated from use of a product. Alexandra Alter reported in the June 29, 2012 print edition of the Wall Street Journal (online July 19, 2012) that e-book vendors (specifically Nook and Kindle) have data "revealing not only how many people buy particular books, but how intensely they read them." The data "focuses on groups of readers, not individuals," and leads Amazon to identify popular passages of books (by looking at the most underlined sentences in books downloaded to their Kindle device). This is moderately interesting: the most underlined is a passage from the Hunger Games trilogy, followed by the first sentence of Pride & Prejudice (see for yourself on Project Gutenburg).

E-book vendors are starting to share data with publishers, "to help them create books that better hold people's attention." (according to Alter's interview with Jim Hilt, Barnes & Noble's vice president of e-books). ACK! Writers may start to use metrics to determine the outcome of their novels, or to shape their nonfiction. As a fiction reader, I would much rather that my authors construct the entire novel from their imagination instead of relying on a reader, or worse, the lowest common denominator of readers, to help guide the novel's conclusion. That's why I read fiction: because I want to inhabit the writer's world. Not the writer's world heavily influenced by my fellow readers' opinions.

Further, as a librarian, I'm very wary of the assertion that the data "focuses on groups of readers, not individuals." That may be true today, but will it be ever thus? Can I opt out of having an e-book reader report back what I am reading? Apparently not. I still read my fiction the old-fashioned way, so no one knows what I read. In fact, since most of my fiction is borrowed from the library, the only one who tracks what I read is me (via Goodreads). Most libraries actively do not keep data on what books patrons read, because we believe so strongly in a reader's right to privacy.  Alter quotes security expert Bruce Schneier, who "worries that readers may steer clear of digital books on sensitive subjects such as health, sexuality and security—including his own works—out of fear that their reading is being tracked."

I'm definitely not a fan of e-book vendors tracking my reading habits on a Nook, Kindle, or any other device.

And yet, I cheer at the prospect of "reference manager and PDF organizer" Mendeley offering me data on journals faculty are reading or not reading. TheNextWeb reports that "Users can gain insight into how academic research is consumed, discussed and annotated with social metrics in granular detail" through Mendeley Institutional Edition ("powered by Swets").  Dutch library subscriptions agent Swets says this would offer "real-time visibility into the usage of your library content," but it is not clear how this data would be shared, or at what level.  For instance, would we see only a list of the most and least popular journals? The most and least popular journal articles? Would we see this by discipline? By university? By university and discipline? The more granular the data goes, of course, the greater the chance for veering into user privacy issues noted above.

• Then again, if I as a librarian who pays a lot of money for academic journals could see which articles or which journals are most and least popular with journalism faculty, or neuro-marketing researchers, I could make better financial decisions about journal subscriptions.
• Then again, if I ceased to purchase journals because they were not popular, I might enhance a journal's demise by not making it available ... which veers towards the idea that the way e-books are consumed might influence the way fiction is written.
• Then again, this seems to offer a viable alternative to the slow-moving and proprietary journal assessment tool offered by ISI's Journal Impact Factor.

I'm definitely conflicted on Mendeley's International Edition, but I look forward to hearing more. I'm not conflicted about e-book vendors keeping statistics on what I read, so I'll continue to use the library for my fiction fix.

For More Information

• Alter, Alexandra. July 13, 2012. "Your E-Book Is Reading You." Wall Street Journal. 
• Johnson, Bobbie. August 6, 2012. "Mendeley Injects Some Pace Into Academia with Fast, Big Data." GigaOM.
• Knowles, Jamillah. August 6, 2012. "Mendeley's Analytics Dashboard Speeds Up Academic Impact." The Next Web.
• Swets. nd. "Organize, collaborate and discover research | Mendeley IE."

My Library Life, Last Week

Once again, I participated in #libday8, a semi-annual event coordinated by Bobbi Newman of Librarian by Day. Twice a year librarians, library staff & library students share a day (or week) in their life through Twitter & other social media tools.

I like to do this for a few reasons. First, I find it fun to chunk my work into 140-character segments -- and amusing to see how much time I spend on the same projects.  By the end of the week, I was tweeting less because the tweets would have read "still working on that LAUNC-CH project" or "still slogging through the 10,000 volume reclassification project."  In fact, I did tweet "still preparing for class" -- but at least in that case, I was preparing for different classes.

My ulterior motive is to show folks, my students and colleagues mostly, what all we librarians do.  Everyone associates librarians and libraries with books, when in fact, most of us do so much more than just deal with books.  The fact that we do more is illustrated, 140 characters at a time, over several days, twice a year, and I think that's good public relations for all librarians & libraries.

I also enjoy the camaraderie of tweeting along with other librarians about their day -- it helps lessen the isolation of dealing with yet another missing book, or corralling another "cheeky journal" (tm @wigglesweets). Plus it's fun to see what other kinds of librarians do, like public librarians and children's librarians.

Thanks to Bobbi & everyone who participated. I had fun!

You can see what I was up to last week by reading these tweets: 

How Librarians Can Help in Real Life, at #scio13, and more

Librarians are so helpful!
(Creative Commons image courtesy of
Christchurch City Libraries on Flickr) 

How do librarians help scientists? If you haven't worked with a good librarian, it's hard to know what we can offer and how we can be useful. I'd love to see a session at a scholarly conference (ScienceOnline, AEJMC, I'm looking at you!) where librarians model how we work our magic with patrons.

I envision a real-time demonstration of the "reference interaction"* between a librarian and a grad student or other patron type. *The term "reference interaction" is used to indicate the session where one of us meets with a researcher ("you") and asks questions about what kind of information you need. We then suggest resources tailored to your need and make sure you know how to use them. 

In my current position, as librarian for journalism & mass communication, recent questions have included:

• How to download the entire issue of magazine from HathiTrust 
• Information about online advertising rates for newspapers. Patron needs both the rates themselves as well as scholarly articles about online advertising for newspapers. 
• Looking for NBC News archives for possible use on Carolina Week. 
• Need scholarly articles on the history of social media for an independent study. 
• Fact-checking resources for a class of advanced editing students (list of resources) 

As a super librarian / information coach, I was able to help all of these patrons. But if you didn't know someone could help you find resources as diverse as these, you'd just go to Mr. Google (or Dr. Google Scholar; read my thoughts on this) and see if you could find something useful. 

Maybe you'd go to your favorite database -- many students would go to JStor to get scholarly articles because they'd learned about that terrific search engine in a class. BUT that would be unproductive, because JStor doesn't contain current articles in it (why? "moving wall") ... so if you wanted articles about the success of advertising for online newspapers, you'd get frustrated and go back to Mr. Google.  Or maybe you'd go to LexisNexis, because you've used it before. But you wouldn't find scholarly articles there ... so back you'd go to Mr. Google.

Another reason to talk to a librarian is that we work with folks from many disciplines and can often refer you to someone doing related work. For instance, Student A recently asked me how she'd find a list, (ideally with contact information) of African American newspapers. I pointed her to an excellent resource (the Gale Directory of Publications & Broadcast Media) AND mentioned that one of her colleagues, Student B, had used the resource to identify Latino media outlets. I suggested that Student A contact Student B for tips on how best to use the resource for this project.

These reference sessions generally take 10-30 minutes, depending on how detailed the question is and how knowledgeable the patron is about the resources available. Good librarians will make sure that you know the best resources to use AND that you know a few tips on how to make the resource(s) do what you want.

It's one thing to write about this in a blog post, or for librarians to study and discuss this amongst themselves.  There's got to be a way to show you what we do and how we can help ... so I propose a librarian demo at conferences to demystify our services and share resources with a broader audience.

A Librarian's View of ScienceOnline

I've submitted a photograph to #scio12 science-art show.  I wanted to convey something about science, which is tough since what I most like to photograph is flowers and cats. Ok, I could have argued that they were science photos, but I thought it was a stretch.

I thought more about it and decided to take photos of some of the books I've acquired (for myself or for my library) as a result of ScienceOnline past & current.  Here, therefore, is my view of ScienceOnline:

The books are, from top to bottom:

• Graedon, J., & Graedon, T. (2011). The people's pharmacy quick & handy home remedies. Washington, DC: National Geographic.
• Zimmer, C. (2011). A planet of viruses. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
• Skloot, R. (2010). The immortal life of Henrietta Lacks. New York: Crown Publishers.
• Dunn, R. R. (2011). The wild life of our bodies: Predators, parasites, and partners that shape who we are today. New York: Harper.
• McKenna, M. (2010). Superbug: The fatal menace of MRSA. New York: Free Press.
• Linden, T. (2011). The New York times reader: Health and medicine. Washington, D.C: CQ Press.
• Tucker, H. (2011). Blood work: A tale of medicine and murder in the scientific revolution. New York: W.W. Norton.
• Mooney, C., & Kirshenbaum, S. (2009). Unscientific America: How scientific illiteracy threatens our future. New York: Basic Books.
• Specter, M. (2009). Denialism: How irrational thinking hinders scientific progress, harms the planet, and threatens our lives. New York: Penguin Press.
• Meredith, D. (2010). Explaining research: How to reach key audiences to advance your work. New York, N.Y: Oxford University Press.

You can check out (literally and figuratively) these books on my WorldCat list of ScienceOnline Books.

Non-Librarian Conferences, #Scio12, and #AEJMC

It's time for my favorite #funconference, ScienceOnline2012, which starts on Thursday in RTP.  #scio12 is a conference for science communicators, including scientists, students, educators, physicians, journalists, librarians, bloggers, programmers and others, who are interested in the way the World Wide Web is changing the way science is communicated, taught and done. 

Fellow librarian and conference-goer John Dupuis asked last week in his post Science Online 2012: Library and librarian sessions) about other non-librarian conferences we librarians attend.  As the librarian for the School of Journalism and Mass Communication at the University of North Carolina, I like to go to the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication annual conference. This is where the and reporting, advertising, public relations faculty go to talk about the craft of teaching and share their research. I've been twice in the past 3 years, and sadly, have been the only journalism / strategic communication librarian in attendance.  I hope to work with colleagues to change that in the future.  

Here's why I like going:

I had the luxury at this conference to attend sessions that interest me intellectually.  I heard presentations on public relations efforts at the first  NAACP conference in the South in 1920; possibly deceptive practices used in food marketing campaigns; and Advertising educators’ definitions of “diversity.” As a librarian, I rarely get to immerse myself in the literature of journalism and mass communication, so this was a wonderful opportunity.  The conference was therefore a win for reasons of pure self-interest.

I was able to see my students and faculty at work. All of the papers cited above were presented by UNC Journalism and Mass Communication graduate students and all were terrific.  I also saw a colleague lead the Breakfast of Editing Champions – and found that copy editors are a lot of fun at 8 am!

I was able to offer some reference services at the conference as well.  The public relations discussant suggested the presenters turn to polling data to help assess the results of the PR campaigns they are studying. After the session, I gave my student the name of the UNC poll data librarian who will be able to locate and interpret relevant poll data. Later, over coffee, a friend and I discussed author copyright, accessibility, reputation, and other issues related to journal editing and publishing. I offered reference to the broader community as well, by tweeting links to articles & resources mentioned in sessions to all following the #aejmc11 hashtag.

At ScienceOnline, I get to geek out on science, which now is more of a hobby for me than a profession, and I also get to hear about science journalism, social media -- and I hang out with fun scientists, librarians, reporters, and so much more.  "More" happily includes some of my peeps from UNC Chapel Hill, so I'm sure some reference and referral will happen in Raleigh too.

If you're a librarian reading this, do you go to subject-oriented conferences (as contrasted with library-focused events)?  If you're a scholar, scientist, journalist reading this, do you see librarians at conferences?  Do you see librarians at your primary place of work? I hope our presence at conferences helps persuade you that we can be helpful!

College Students @ the Library

A recent ethnographic study assessed how college students use the library for research projects and study needs. The results are worth your time to read if you expect students to do library research: basically, students rarely ask librarians for help.

USA Today summarized the study in August (College students rarely use librarians' expertise), and here's my summary of their summary.

The ERIAL (Ethnographic Research in Illinois Academic Libraries) project was a 2-year, 5-campus ethnographic study on how students use their campus library.

The researchers found that students "tended to overuse Google and misuse scholarly databases" -- they didn't understand sources (neither Google nor library databases), nor did they know how to find good articles.

Worse — in my view — when students went to use a library database, 50% of them used databases that a librarian "would most likely never recommend for their topic." (I've experienced this myself). Students "showed an almost complete lack of interest" in getting help from a librarian — despite all of the above.

Instead, students consult with faculty who:

• Tended to overestimate students' research skills
• Didn't require a visit to the library to start their research
• Had low expectations of librarians
• Had a sometimes limited ability to teach students effective search strategies and resources

The study also notes that it is difficult for faculty and librarians to put themselves in the place of undergraduate students who don't know how to do library research. No library theory of mind here!

My prior reading of the library literature suggests that the best way to overcome students' disinclination to use the library is for faculty to require them to use the library as part of their research. Students are more willing to follow faculty suggestions than anything else regarding library use, so if you require them to consult with a librarian, they are more likely to do so. This is particularly true, other research suggests, for students of color.

If you want your students to improve their research and use better articles in your classes, please encourage them to visit one of the libraries on campus. Better yet, ask your subject librarian to come to class and work with your students as a group to improve their library research. I consistently hear from my faculty colleagues that my sessions improve the quality of articles students find, so having a librarian speak formally to classes is A Good Thing.

For More Information

• Kolowich, Steve. “Study: College Students Rarely Use Librarians’ Expertise."USA Today Online Aug. 22, 2011.
• Duke, Lynda. College Libraries and Student Culture What We Now Know. Chicago: American Library Association, 2011. Information @ ALA.org or borrow through WorldCat.

"User Services" ... or helping people in an academic library

My thoughts on User Services, or providing services to patrons in an academic library are many ... and I've just discussed them with students in Barbara Moran's Academic Libraries class at UNC's School of Information and Library Science. Notably, I am an embedded librarian, which is to say that I work where my patrons work. The Park Library is on the second floor of the School of Journalism and Mass Communication, making contact with students and faculty very easy.

Beyond the location, I think about this work in terms of who I am helping, and so have organized the talk around these constiuent groups:

1. Undergraduate patrons. They are first because they are so numerous! The School of Journalism and Mass Communication has roughly 800 undergraduates, and I work with them in many ways:
   


• Instruction. In the academic year 2010-2011, I have taught or will teach a total of 33 classes, reaching about 600 students. Courses include Case Studies in Public Relations, African American Newspapers, History of Broadcasting, Law of Cyberspace, Magazine Writing & Editing, and Undergraduate Honors. I've taught two entry-level classes for MA and PhD students. You can see the full range at my course guides page.
  
  
• Face-to-face / synchronous reference. I get most of my reference business from faculty referrals or from having taught students in class. The majority of the questions are in person, but several come via our LibraryH3lp chat sessions. In the calendar year 2010, my staff and I answered almost 800 in-person or chat questions from users, mostly reference, but many directional and technical questions as well. I detailed my theories of reference back in 2008, and they're still holding up.


• The Library's website is an important component of my outreach, especially to undergraduates. I redesigned the website in summer 2010. It was intended to promote material I think undergraduates should use most (like Academic Search Premier and Communication & Mass Media Complete) -- I used a green star on the main page to highlight the really important databases.


• I promote the library via Twitter and least 85 undergraduates following me back. Check out my Twitter favorites for a sense of the library promotion I do via Twitter.


• I do my best to make the library a comfortable place to study, allowing food and beverages and offering PCs, Macs, wireless along with tables for solitary or group study.
  
2. Faculty colleagues. I collaborate with my faculty colleagues quite a bit on teaching the courses I mentioned above.
   


• I make it a point to attend faculty meetings and other gatherings of faculty. I want to be available in case they have questions for me. Often I see someone in the hall who says "oh, I've been meaning to ask you about Blah Blah Blah," and I know it's my presence that reminds them of their information need-- and the question gets answered. Additionally, it's important to be aware of what they are thinking about. It's good to know about new hires, because I can do collection development in a new area (always fun), and it's useful to know about curriculum changes or other elements of their daily work life. My role is to think about how I can help them do their work better or more efficiently.


• I've been intrigued by conversations with John Dupuis, who blogs at Confessions of a Science Librarian. We've been cyber buddies for a few years and have met at two ScienceOnline conferences in RTP. Dupuis recently blogged about stealth librarianship, whereby we infiltrate (my word) ourselves into the work lives of our faculty colleages. Dupuis strongly believes we should step away from being so library-focused and "collaborate with faculty in presentations" and "...we must make our case to our patrons on their turf, not make our case to ourselves on our own turf." There are some interesting additional opinions at the In the Library with the Lead Pipe blog: Lead Pipe Debates the Stealth Librarianship Manifesto.


• John's challenge to SILS students is: comment on his blog (at a mininum) or write your own manifesto.


• I would like to collaborate with my faculty and publish in the JOMC literature about how librarian / faculty collaborations can be effective. This is one of my 2011 goals!
  


3. Fellow librarians. That said, it's important to collaborate and cross-pollinate with our librarian colleagues as well. I was happy to have the time and energy this year to participate in Library Day in the Life #6 (see my #libday6 tweets here). I reported my daily tasks for my fellow librarians and was pleased to read about their daily tasks as well. I also participated as a way of demonstrating that librarians don't just sit quietly in the library and read and shelve. Some of the tasks I did that week:
• Staff meeting
• Future tweeting via Hootsuite
• Met with a professor about teaching her PR Campaigns students to improve their research skills
• Resolved a question regarding delivery of SRDS Circulation, an annual publication about newspaper circulation
• Showed a student how to use RefWorks
• Showed a student worker how to prepare serials for binding
  
• Tried to figure out PubMed for the PR Campaigns class.
  
• Got help with PubMed from a fellow UNC librarian also participating in libday6.
• Met a fellow Mount Holyoke librarian at UNC who was also participating in libday6.
  
• Weeded some of our book collection
  
• Looked at long-term web analytics for library website.
  


4. The Boss. I give my boss (Jean Folkerts, dean of the School of Journalism and Mass Communication) all of the above information and more. I want her to know what I'm doing and what my staff are doing. I prepare gobs of data for her, which is how I knew how many reference interactions we had in 2010 and how many classes I've taught so far this academic year. Want more data? In 2010, we circulated over 1,400 items, and our patrons requested over 700 titles from libraries elsewhere on campus. My assistant (JOMC graduate Megan Garrett) has added over 1,800 titles to the catalog in the last year. There's more data still, but I'll stop now.

The overarching theme of my services to patrons is: be where users are and stand ready to help them. I offer help in person or in class, as well as through the library website. Further, I promote the library, and back it up with solid work. I talk-talk-talk about the terrific services we offer and I back it up by offering terrific services. It's an awesome job!

Librarians & Scholars

One of my ScienceOnline goals seems to be happening: scientists and librarians are improving their (intraspecies?) communication. Several folks have blogged or FriendFeeded about the interaction between librarians and scientists. What really got me going today was Greg Laden's Do you think libraries and librarians are important?, which, happily, has been retweeted many times - mostly by scientists & other science folks.

Naturally, I think libraries & librarians are important to a variety of scholars, including scientists. I believe librarians have a perception problem -- many non-librarians think we sit around and read all day, go around shushing people, and date-stamp books. We do some of that occasionally, but we also do much more. I wrote this in response to Greg's question:

What we librarians are NOT doing well is communicating what we have to scientists & other scholars. We are also NOT making our material easy to use, the way Google is. Some of it is admittedly more complex than what Google is doing, but some of it is legacy systems (and mindset) left over from the days when the librarian was not the last person in the world you'd ask for help with research.

So, what's the solution? We must be where our scholars are. This can be done a few ways: "embedded" librarians who spend a good deal of their work time with their scholars, in their departments, at their meetings, working with their scholar peers. If this is not possible, and even when it is, we should also make it a point to engage with our scholars online and at conferences.

I am extremely fortunate to be truly live among my researchers at UNC's School of Journalism and Mass Communication, as my office / library is right in the middle of the School's building, and I attend faculty meetings, see folks in the hallways, and otherwise spend most of my day with folks I am trying to support. I casually mention my research interests (usability, interaction of undergraduates with library materials, cognitive science) in conversation, and I listen to them discuss theirs. This interaction establishes that I am (moderately) scholarly myself, and it helps me integrate my scholars' & students' interests into the library.

It is not possible, or even desirable, for every librarian to be embedded with their departments in this way. There are other activities that can achieve the same goals, such as holding office hours in a department, attending receptions for faculty and students, and spending time physically in the presence of the scholars whom we are supporting.

Additionally, we should make an effort to engage with our scholars online and at conferences. There were several librarians at ScienceOnline, as John Dupuis notes, and I believe that we generated a lot of good conversations with scientists, journalists, and others about how librarians can help further their work. I know of at least one instance where this prompted a scientist to seek out a librarian at his home institution, and I'd guess that it's made many non-librarians realize some of what we can offer.

Finally, we librarians should be reading blogs and tweets of the scientists and/or scholars whom we support. This costs no money, and takes as much or as little time as you have to devote to it. By being in the conversation, we are starting to change the way scholars think of librarians -- one scholar, and one librarian, at a time.

ScienceOnline Posts about Librarians & Scientists

• Christina Pikas' Librarians & Scientists: YMMV on Christina's LIS Rant
• Dorothea Salo's Science Online 2010: Scientists and librarians on The Book of Trogool
• Greg Laden's Do you think libraries and librarians are important?
• Martin Fenner's Scientists and librarians: friend or foe? from Gobbledygook on Nature Network
• "librarian" on the #scio10 thread in FriendFeed.
• "librarian" on the #scio10 thread in Twitter

A Good Laugh

I often quote from Ranganathan's Five Laws of Library Science. Here they are, in case you haven't committed them to memory:

1. Books are for use.
2. Every reader his [or her] book.
3. Every book its reader.
4. Save the time of the User.
5. The library is a growing organism.

What's great is that S.R. Ranganathan was an Indian librarian (often called the father of library science in India) who published these laws in 1931 -- and they are still relevant today, half a world away. The Laws are particularly valid if you substitute another library-themed word for "books," such as databases or information. While teaching reference, I often exhorted my students to "Save the time of the User" by knowing their collection and knowing how to interview patrons to find out what they really wanted. In my new position at UNC's Park Library of the School of Journalism and Mass Communication, I find myself saying "Books are for use" as we begin to circulate our books.

How is this funny? So far, it isn't. But fellow librarian Steve Lawson (check out his great blog, See Also) has created a Classics of Librarianship Mad Lib. In it you can add your own nouns and a verb or two to generate Your Own Five Laws of Whatever, consistent in form with Ranganathan's Five Laws of Library Science.

Browse some of the Laws, or generate your own with his Mad Lib machine. I am chuckling enormously, feeling about as silly as I did when I first created Mad Libs back in 6th grade. It's nice to combine librarianship with 6th-grade silly.

A Twitter Tizzy!

After tweeting privately for over 18 months, I have recently created two public Twitter accounts. One is for folks at my new position as director of the Park Library at UNC's School of Journalism and Mass Communication (JoMC), where I am @JoMCParkLib and the other is ... finally! ... as @CogSciLibrarian.

All this Twitter activity has gotten me thinking about how I use Twitter and why I feel the need for three separate accounts. I've also been thinking about it because of an upcoming study at UNC by Fred Stutzman and Woody Hartzog on privacy behaviors in online social networks. They are looking for people who "have started using social networking sites within the last two years, and maintain multiple profiles (e.g. a 'work profile' and a 'personal profile')." I'll use my blog for personal reflection and share my thoughts, in partial answer to "omg! three Twitter accounts" reaction and also in response to Stutzman and Hartzog's interesting call for participants.

My personal Twitter account is for me to stay in touch with my friends. I "know" most of the people I tweet with privately, either in the Real World or from connections made online. I talk about what I'm cooking for dinner, what license plate I'm going to get (NC State Parks), and other miscellaneous chatter that is reserved for friends.

My work Twitter account, @JoMCParkLib, is where I post library items of interest to students, faculty, alumni, and staff who use or might use the Park Library. I want to promote the exciting resources that the library makes available to members of the JoMC and UNC communities. Journalists and other mass communicators such as advertisers and marketers are making good use of Twitter, so I am consciously trying to communicate in a medium that is familiar to my library's audience. If Twitter isn't familiar to folks at JoMC, maybe my Twitter account will encourage them to learn more about it. The tweets are going directly to those who follow me on @JoMCParkLib, but I also have them feed into the library's home page, and I send out a weekly email to faculty & staff highlighting the week's top tweets.

The work Twitter account is also where I'll write the majority of my professional library science tweets; I did some live-tweeting from the recent Special Libraries Association (SLA) conference and will probably do the same for the upcoming Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication (AEJMC) conference. At SLA, I was eager to show my followers how libraries are useful to journalists (there were great shout-outs to librarians by Colin Powell, Judy Woodruff, and Robyn Meredith). At AEJMC, I will also be happy to promote the role of the librarian in educating journalists & mass communicators.

I use Tweetie on my Mac to manage the two Twitter accounts, and that is going so well that I created a third Twitter account for @CogSciLibrarian.

I haven't been blogging much, in part because I was teaching and working full-time last semester, and then moved over 700 miles ... but I was still thinking about all things CogSci. There's been some talk that Twitter is supplanting blogging (it is called microblogging, after all), where shared items (or ReTweets, as they are called; RT for short) on a topic are tweeted instead of written about on a blog. Longer, more thoughtful items are written as blog posts. My new idea is to embed my @CogSciLibrarian Twitter feed into this blog and continue blogging longer items of cognitive science interest. I don't expect to post to @CogSciLibrarian as much as I do to my other two feeds, and I will not post personal material to that feed at all.

While I am dividing my Twitter accounts, I will most likely keep one blog, under the CogSciLibrarian name. I will continue to post about cognitive science and library science, with a splash of music; and I will integrate some journalism / mass communication into the mix.

For More Information

• Common Craft. Twitter in Plain English. March 5, 2008. A short video introduction to the micro-blogging service Twitter.
  
• Stutzman, Fred and Woody Hertzog. Recruiting Participants for a Research Study. Unit Structures, blog. June 26, 2009. Consider participating!
  

Aural Synesthesia?

I was recently in DC for conference of special librarians and I was lucky enough to have a tour of the NPR building. My guide, library director Laura Soto-Barra, asked about my favorite shows on NPR.

News junkie that I am, I said that the top- and bottom-of-the-hour newscasts are tops on my list of NPR shows. Laura thoughtfully took me over to the area where the newscasters work and I was thrilled to meet Ann Taylor and Jack Speer, who speak just the way they sound on the air. I also met the other folks who make the newscast happen, producer Rob Schaefer; editor Jeanine Herbst; and associate producer Whitney Jones. I admit to gawking like a kid. (I was also excited to meet The Two-Way blogger Frank James, who sits in their corner).

The tour continued, and as we walked around the building, I heard the reporters' voices in my head as I saw name plates on cubicles and doors. Claudio Sanchez, Bob Boilen, Felix Contreras, Michel Martin. I didn't meet any of them, mind you, just saw them or even their name plates -- and yet I imagined their voices so clearly it was as if I were actually hearing them. Is this aural synesthesia? Or does everyone hear voices in their heads when they see names?

Regardless, I appreciated the tour and meeting some of the newscasters.

For more about the NPR library, check out the NPR librarians' blog As a Matter of Fact and read their response to Frequently Asked Questions about the library

The Reference Interview, Stereotypically

The librarians at UT Arlington are at it again -- if I were still teaching reference, I'd show this video to start a discussion of the reference interview.

Promoting & Poking Fun @ Your Libary

... if you're at the University of Texas at Arlington, that is.

My e-buddy Eric Frierson tweeted yesterday "librarian v. stereotype videos getting great feedback - next one will involve a gorilla suit." The current YouTube videos are a great combination of library promotion and poking fun at the profession; here's the video introducing Librarian and Stereotype:


and here are Librarian and Stereotype talking about scholarly communication:


Can't wait to see the gorilla suit!

Government Web Site Widgets

I just had two great librarians talk to my reference class, and I learned as much as the students did about government documents work and GIS / geography sources. Thanks to UConn's undergraduate and GIS librarian Michael Howser and Connecticut's federal documents librarian Nancy Peluso!

Nancy showed a fabulous feature of usa.gov, the US government's search engine. A search for the word widgets yields some amazing widgets, free for use on any web site.

The Centers for Disease Control (CDC) has many widgets, including an FDA peanut recall widget, a National Flu Activity map, and a Daily Health tip (today's is a warning not to give birds as gifts):


This is also available in Spanish:




Other cool widgets that come up include:

• San Francisco Bay Area Rapid Transit District "BART" News Widget
• AmeriCorps widgets
• Business.gov Gadgets; their widget includes a search box and links to information helpful to small businesses.
• FDA Drug Information links, including widgets for drug safety information, Medwatch, FDA podcasts, and Drugs @ FDA

... search for, oh, say, Wellbutrin & see what kind of information you get.

Take a peek at the search, too -- the results page offers a nifty preview option, displaying the widget right in the results page, and a "Remix" option on the left which lets you narrow results by topic, agency, or source.

There are some great free web resources here for libraries, health marketers, and others.

What is an Electronic Resource Librarian?

I've had a few friends ask what I do as an Electronic Resource Librarian, and I thought I'd share the answer more widely, in case others are curious.

If you are looking for a job as an Electronic Resource Librarian, I expect that most libraries (usually academic) would want:

1. Experience with licensing for all kinds of electronic resources (individual journals, journal packages, databases, e-books, etc.)
   
2. Experience using & troubleshooting access to same
   
3. Experience obtaining, compiling, and analyzing usage data
   

One big issue that many electronic resource librarians are wrestling with is how to manage the resources -- often, but not always using something called an ERM (electronic resource management system). Elements that need to be managed can include (but are not limited to!):

1. When the license was signed, by whom, and if by the university alone or in a consortium. When the license renews / expires;
   
2. What the license permits (for Interlibrary Loan -- sending by print, email, or secure transmission; for electronic reserves -- in print? an electronic course pack?);
   
3. The URL for patron access as well as the administrative interface;
   
4. If & how the resource provides access to usage statistics. If so, notes about how & where to access them.
   

ERM systems are usually based on the Electronic Resource Management Initiative (ERMI), which covers most possible permutations of data elements that electronic resource librarians need to track.

I have blogged about troubleshooting UConn's e-resources at http://elibraryuconn.blogspot.com/ which provides a real-life sense of the issues we deal with.

Definitions from the Online Dictionary for Library and Information Science

• Electronic resource management
• COUNTER (Counting Online Usage of Networked Electronic Resources); see also Project COUNTER.
  
• Usage of electronic resources

For More Information (all of these are available in Gale's OneFile database)

• Young, Jeanne. "Electronic records management on a shoestring: Three case studies." Information Management Journal 39.1 (Jan-Feb 2005): p58(3)
• Tull, Laura. "Electronic resources and Web sites: replacing a back-end database with innovative's Electronic Resource Management." Information Technology and Libraries 24.4 (Dec 2005): p163(7).
• Grogg, Jill. "Investing in digital: as electronic spending rises, ERAMS, ERM, and URM systems step in to help with acquisitions and reporting." Library Journal 132.9 (May 15, 2007): p30(4).
• "The ERMI and its offspring." Library Technology Reports 42.2 (March-April 2006): p14(8).