Library Voice

I am giving a presentation with Nancy Stimson, author of the Stark County Law Library Blawg, next Tuesday at a joint meeting of the Cleveland Special Library Association and the Northern Ohio Chapter of the American Society for Information Science and Technology. Nancy is doing the ‘about blogs and blogging’ piece, and I am going to do the part about the various blogging software options.

I have used a number different blogging systems, but only on a trial basis. Before I decided on WordPress, I tried out Movable Type, Radio, and Blogger. Based upon my brief experiences with the various options, I have a general idea of the pros and cons of each blogging system. However, I would definitely appreciate knowing what others think about the system they are currently using.

I am posing these questions:
What blogging package are you using and why?
What seems to work best about the blogging system that you use?
Have you tried other options? If so, why did you switch?
How could the blogging system be improved?
Who would you recommend the blogging system to?

Thanks in advance for any feedback you can provide. If you like, you can comment on this post, or email me your answers to cfboeningerDELETE@THISearthlink.net.

Michael Stephens at Tame the Web writes some encouraging words about the future role of librarians as teachers. I agree with him in that as long as there are new technologies, databases, interfaces, resources, and information needs, librarians will still make a huge impact as teachers.

TangognaT has a great post about information literacy and faculty collaboration.

She makes several excellent points about the collaborative process:

if collaboration is bringing a class in for a library session when the students have a research assignment, I think faculty are open to that. I think that in general it might take something extra for someone to get to the stage where they think of sharing more information with the librarian as part of a discussion or consulting with the librarian about assignment design.

In my experience, a faculty member creates the assignment or project, and then asks me to give a library instruction session to the students. I am generally asked to help the students learn about finding the necessary information to complete the project. Usually I have to teach about using appropriate databases, reference books, and some search skills. The problem with this approach is that it is very resource driven. Because what I teach is often just pertinent to that one project, the skills that students learn do not necessarily transfer to future assignments. It is often very tough to squeeze in concepts of information literacy during the typical 50 minute class session. Generally, I try to talk a little about evaluation and quality during the 50 minutes, and try to make the best out of the time that I am given.

Most of my instruction is very subject-specific, as I am the business subject specialist for our library. What I am finding is that a lot more of the learning occurs outside of the library classroom. A few days after I deliver an instructional session, the students start contacting me for additional help. This works great for the students and for me. They get the intimate attention that they need, and I get the opportunity to really dig into the resources with them, while also sneaking in some good ‘ole information literacy. I also get a chance to observe what problems they are having with the assignment, as well as see what resources they find the most useful (and the easiest to use). This interaction often keeps me quite busy, as I don’t require any office hours or appointments. Appointments are nice if it is going to be a really in-depth reference session, but generally students just come to the library and ask if I am available.

One thing that I have struggled with is the fact that while I get to help students with their learning, I never get a chance to see the finished product. The application, or how one uses information, is one of the key components of information literacy. By seeing the outcome of their work, one can see how students applied the information to the project. I told a faculty member about this last quarter, and he told me that he and his colleagues would try to do better to include me in the final presentations. I actually got invited to a few last quarter, but was unable to attend due to scheduling conflicts. I hope to try to get my foot in the door again, as seeing the final project may help to understand how students are using (or misusing) the information.

The level of instructional collaboration can vary with each school, department, curriculum, or professor. Some departments and faculty members are not very open to collaboration in the classroom, while others are quite proactive in initiating library instruction opportunities. I think it is important to start with a small group of folks who are enthusiastic about library instruction and information literacy. Word of the success of these initial partnerships will spread to others, and library instruction business will increase. It’s important not to get frustrated, as these relationships often take quite a long time to develop. As a librarian, it is essential to try to understand the academic culture, not attempt to change it. With each small success and new relationship, you will have the more opportunities in establishing new (or improving) instructional opportunities for information literacy.

You know that RSS is catching on when American Idol has an RSS feed. I wonder what is the aggregator of choice for Simon, Randy, Paula, and Seacrest? Are they part of the 16 people that are subscribed with Bloglines? Perhaps now that the competion is into the final 12 contestants, hits on the Idol feed will increase just like Fox’s ratings. Unfotunately, with the technology’s limitations, you can’t “RSS” your vote for your favorite contestant. Maybe next year.

I have blogged about using blogs for internal communications before, but the folks at Advanced Business Blogging have a good post about the topic. They too have grasped the idea of using a blog as a knowledgebase:

As your team becomes accustomed to accessing the knowledge they need from this internal blog, they win with nearly instant access to the info they need to perform. And you win with more free time because now you only have to answer questions and provide guiding knowledge once.

The same folks also write about using a blog to update clients and employees. If you change the words “clients” to “patrons” and “business” to “library” this really makes sense for the bibliobloggers:

Do you have employees in multiple remote locations? As part of your business, do you have to supply updates to clients? What about delivering “premium” content to subscribers or clients?

With the organized interactive format of your business blog, paired with the power of the RSS feed (already incorporated into your blog,) you can bypass email, Spam filters, and unreliable delivery to make sure your message gets through instantly – every time.

Update every remote employee or every premium content client instantly, reliably, and all at once. Then drive them back to the blog for posting, interaction, and commentary.

Once again, a major part of the power in this application of your business blog is the categorized historical data that is right here on the blog adding content and relational value to all the users.

Since January 6, I have had a total of eleven IM sessions with business students. Of these , nine were basically your run-of-the-mill reference questions. Most had questions about industry ratios, market shares, or SWOT analyses. However, the last two interactions were a little more unique.

The first encounter occurred last Thursday. The question started out about a business-related inquiry, and then evolved into something else. Before I knew it, I was helping a guy with de-bugging his html code. He sent me the link to his project, and then I proof-read the source code. I would tell him what he might consider changing and he would make the changes. He would tell me when to refresh my browser to see the updated version of the page. This exchange went on for at least 15 minutes, until his html code was just right.

I had a similar exchange this morning. A guy IMed me to ask how to upgrade from Windows 2000 to Windows XP. I told him where to get a copy of the OS (fortunately, we have a campus license that makes the price really nice) and then told him what he could expect during the upgrade. I also told him that after installation, he would need to do a Windows Update to get the latest Service Pack and the most current updates. He IMed me again about an hour ago and said that everything had worked fine and that he had a brand new OS on his laptop.

The stories above are not unique to virtual reference or instant messaging. While staffing the physical reference desk, I have had a number of similar encounters. Our desk is a horse-shoe shaped monstrosity, with library services staff (librarians and student assistants) occupying one side, and technology services staff (usually students) sitting on the other side. Patrons often do not distinguish between the two sides of the desk, so they ask their questions to the first person they see. As a result, the library services side, although intended for reference questions, fields a number of technical questions. We get questions ranging from attaching a file in an email to applying a filter in Photoshop.

Many of my colleagues will refer these questions to the other side of the desk, because “that’s what the other side of the desk is for.” I prefer to try to answer the tech question if I can, because this is often a way to learn something new (or at least keep in touch) with software and hardware issues. Also, I think it is bad service to pass a patron off to someone else, particularly if you are able to answer the question. Many are intimidated by technology-related questions, and that is very understandable. However, as librarians, we all know that a great way to learn about something new is to attempt to answer a new question.

Currently, we keep desk statistics for non-reference and reference questions. It might be interesting to add a third category to keep track of technology questions that we answer on the library services side of the desk. There might be some debate over whether librarians are supposed to be able to answer these kind of questions, as many feel these are outside the scope of reference duties. However, it would be interesting to see how our patrons define the scope of our reference duties. Perhaps by gathering a greater understanding of what they expect us to know, we might actually be prepared to answer new types of questions, while also providing a higher level of service. What if we have reached a new age and according to our patrons, reference librarians aren’t just for reference anymore?

LibraryInstruction.com has a wealth of resources about information literacy and library instruction.

This site contains library instruction lesson plans, articles about library instruction, a large library instruction bibliography, and links to library instruction resources. This site also includes material relating to information literacy.

The Lesson Plans section of the site appears to be really interesting, and could provide some good ideas for those whose teaching methods are stuck in a rut. One of the more creative lesson plans uses a Gin & Tonic analogy to teach boolean searching. The site’s author, Michael Lorenzen ecourages others to send him ideas to post as he explains, “This site will work best if others contribute.” If I come across any good ideas, I’ll be sure to send them Michael’s way.

I have finally gotten around to updating this blog with the latest version of WordPress. Everything ran pretty smoothly, although I did have some problems with my comments template. It turns out that my previous iteration of the comments template (which I have had since WP 1.0) needed to be tossed. I simply copied the default comments template and placed it into my Library Voice templates folder. I may tweak that a little later if needed.

I have been using this latest version of WP on a number of other blogs, and I have been really pleased with the update. The ability to change themes with the click of a button is incredible, and the spam blacklist seems to be working quite nicely. While I have yet to tinker with all of the new features, I am anxious to investigate all of the other new options. If you are looking to create a new blog, or are unhappy with your existing setup, I encourage you to give WordPress a try.

I taught an RSS workshop about a month ago, and only recently did I think to blog about my experiences. I have been a little overwhelmed the last few weeks, so my blogging has suffered immensely. I have even been so busy that I had to ignore (gasp!!) my aggregator.

This was the second workshop that I have taught on RSS. I taught the first one last April, and while it was open to the entire university community, only about 10 library staff attended. Of those ten staff members, two were from our library systems department. I have to admit that it was pretty cool to teach a couple of our tech guys a thing or two about the latest trend. Unfortunately, I don’t think any of the participants of the April class are currently using RSS on a regular basis. I have asked around, and apparently I failed at converting the masses on that occasion.

In my second class, I used the same format as before. I have a blog which gives the outline of the class. I have the class go to the blog, and we go through the various topics. Because the class is taught in one of our teaching labs, the class has the opportunity to get some hands-on experience with aggregators. Together, we walk through how to set up and subscribe to feeds with Sharpreader, FeedDemon, and Bloglines.

On the blog outline I list a variety of sites that have RSS feeds. These range from library-specific blogs like The Shifted Librarian or Library Stuff, news feeds such as CNN and ABC. We also play a game called Find That RSS Feed in which we look at the front page of ESPN.com and try to locate the link to RSS. I have the class subscribe to each of these feeds with the three different aggregators and then look at the feeds. I show them the difference between the full-text feeds of a personal blog (such as The Shifted Librarian) and the headline or teaser feeds of a commercial site (such as Business Week). All of the discussion, hands-on exercises, and questions are more than enough content to fill a two-hour time slot.

I had six people attend this last class, and only two of them were library staff members. I know for a fact that one of those two has been playing with Bloglines a little, so perhaps there is hope for my ability to promote RSS. After the class was over, I had two class members stay late to ask me questions about blogging. We wound up talking for a good half-hour. They had a lot of questions and were really interested in setting up blogs for departmental communication. I told them that this was something we had done, and we discussed the benefits of using blogs for internal communication. I need to check up on those guys, to see if they were also bit by the blogging bug. Perhaps they got hooked on RSS and blogging at the same time. Perhaps they set up a departmental blog, and now everyone in their department is subscribed to the RSS feed. If so, perhaps I need to invite them to teach my next RSS class.

One of the arguments for using Instant Messaging as a reference tool is that the technology allows the librarian to go to where the users are. However, the tool can also be used to get the patrons to come to you.

On Wednesday night I had a business student IM me. Wednesday is my usual night to work, and I think business students are becoming more aware of this. Her topic was kind of difficult, and the resources that she needed for her research were only available in print. Since we are primarily a residential campus, it was of little inconvenience for her to walk up the hill to the library.

When she got to the library, I already had a pretty good idea about her topic, and had pulled some reference materials for her to peruse (D&B’s Industry Norms & Key Business Ratios and Almanac of Business and Industrial Financial Ratios ). Her topic, as well as the resources, were definitely a little too advanced to handle completely through an IM exchange, but using IM helped initiate the in-person transaction. Because the IM is a real-time communication mechanism, I was able to conduct most of the reference interview before she came to the building. She came to the desk, got what she needed, and left happy.