Are We There Yet and What I Don’t Want to be When I Grow Up!

I learned today that I definitely do not have the skills or desire to be a systems librarian. These presentations were valuable but not my cup of tea. I also learned that rare books are interesting but I had a hard time maintaining a high level of attention. It was very visual and I was very tired. I did find out from the presenter that I can go look at most of the books in digital pictures online. I can’t wait until I have the time to do that. The facts given verbally were fascinating. I had a lot of questions but was afraid to ask them because I am unfamiliar with this field. I did ask a question and it didn’t even kill me. The artifact repair was incredibly fascinating. It was a lot of science. It must be gratifying to bring something that was broken to a usable state. It was one of those things that I would love to do but too much science for me. We also saw how to repair books that circulate in the collection. I used to do this at my library but have not done it in awhile. I still have to assign volunteers to repair books and I know the items we use for repair. They are very different from what Bird Library uses to repair their books. This made me wish for better materials to repair the books in our collection. The group work dynamic is totally different from the group I had in 601. It feels like an uphill battle. There is not much consistency and things keep changing. I feel like I will learn from this experience. I am just wondering, when and what? I will let you know!

Time is a Precious Commodity!

Today’s topics were intellectual property and copyright. We learned what were appropriate items to use for research and not so credible items. We also had quest speakers about special libraries and academic libraries. I thought I would enjoy the special libraries presentation because I work in one. However, I really enjoyed the academic librarian perspective. It definitely gave me pause for thought. We learned more about electronic resources. This became VERY handy during my three and a half hours of research tonight. We also found out that the two and a half hours I spent last night on the searching assignment now won’t count because some people had problems. Whew, I was one of them. It is just frustrating when you spend that much time on something for it not to count. I do realize the point is to learn the material and not so much the end result. This is going to be a difficult transition for me to make because I am so results oriented. I did get to learn that one of the databases that I used to search tonight had an audio output component so that I could hear some of the abstracts and not use a reader. The problem was that they did not work or load consistently so it ended up to be a good thing that I had a reader.

The First day of 511

My first thought was, all I really want is to live through this and put forth my best effort. We had been asked to do a lot of prep work before the class and I had just barely gotten that completed. We had been told there would be work during this week as well because it is one semester of class in a week. I really had no clear idea what that would look like…until I saw the day by day syllabus. Even the words on the paper didn’t seem real. On the syllabus, each night had assignments and most had two assignments per night. Wow, this is going to be a long week. The topic for today was public libraries. I work in a public library but it never surprises me how much I can learn from others speaking about their profession. It invigorated me. I was thinking during class WOW! I can go back to work and change some things. Oh wait I don’t have the degree yet!

In the afternoon the topic was searching techniques. I am discovering that the things I took away from the required reading are not the same things that the professor is focusing on. So for tomorrow we have to meet online to pick a topic for our group for a poster session on Friday. Meanwhile, we have a three to four page searching assignment to complete. Luckily, we had one to do before we arrived so I may be somewhat familiar with the process. It was definitely slow going. I am working on an old laptop, which has given me problems. This does not include the reception we attended and the effort it took to hook into the online security at Syracuse. It took me at best two hours to get my computer to play nice with the SU network. Oh well. Midnight is early right?

601 A Group and its Dynamics

In this class we were assigned to work with a group. Group work is the luck of the draw. In this case I was in a group with fantastic people. Our goal was to come up with a problem and essentially fictisciously fix it. The group that I was in worked well together in a collaborative manner. Each person took a role, did the work assigned, and accepted and listened for critical feedback. We really did work well together. Two people worked on the PowerPoint slides, while the rest of us fed them research to put into the presentation. We all accepted or rejected ideas. I liked that every idea was given serious consideration. After the presentation the professor asked us questions and every group member knew what they were talking about because we processed and learned the information together.

In this same class, on the last day, we were asked what we felt we would take away from the class. We had been given five minutes to write down some ideas. I wrote down things like “we now know what is expected of us”, “I am smarter than I thought” and “maybe I CAN do this”. When the class was asked for their responses they all started talking about literally what they had learned in the class. I am still wondering was the introspective way a better way or was the professors intention to cull out what we had learned from the class and not what we had learned about ourselves. Both are important in their own way. I wish he had asked from a more personal perspective. I would have liked to have known how others were feeling. I know others were exhausted but were others overwhelmed or frustrated? I think my fellow boot camp members would have benefited from that information.

Readers Response

This is a readers response about facebook. It was taken from a journal that was peer reviewed. I use facebook at work and at home to keep in touch with family. I hope you find this as interesting as I did.

In the article, “Use of Facebook in Academic Health Science Libraries,” the discussion is centralized around a study of the use of Facebook in these types of libraries. Facebook, one of many social networking tools, was originally founded for college students to use internally. The purpose of the study was to figure out if Facebook was being used consistently and if not, why academic health science libraries are not drawn to this technology. The study was available online for two weeks. Survey respondents were department heads, Outreach Librarians and library directors.

The study found that Facebook is not widely used in academic health science libraries. A total of 144 people took the survey and half responded. Eighty-five percent of them did not have a Facebook page at their library. The reception about Facebook was lukewarm at best. The perception is that Facebook was developed for non-academic use and that is its only purpose. Reasons given for not using Facebook were no administrative support, lack of knowledge, and time to set up and maintain a Facebook page. A greater concern was the possibility of networks blocking access for security.

There are many positive uses for Facebook in an academic health science library. Some of these include flexibility, visibility, and serving large groups who can form at will. Some uses specific to academic libraries are to provide chat reference, searching databases, catalogs and tutorials. It seems the use of Facebook at academic health science libraries remains small. Though use is growing, the ultimate results remain to be seen.

Hendrix, D., Chiarella, D., Hasman, L., Murphy, S., & Zafron, M. L. (2009). Use of facebook in academic health sciences libraries. Journal of the Medical Library Association (JMLA), 97(1), 44-47. Retrieved from http://www.mlanet.org/publications/jmla/

MLIS Research

This was the most challenging chapter yet. I don't deal with formal research in my life. A reason to go for a masters is to get better at things. Now is my chance!

I wrote a lot down and at one point just stopped due to overload. Research for me is getting on the Internet and looking at the responses and evaluating them for what I need. This is far from the research this chapter speaks about. I learned about the difference between qualitative and quantitative research. This was another one of those terms that I knew what it meant but not formally. Quantitative deals with the numbers side and qualitative deals with behaviors and observations. I learned so much in this chapter that it is too much to name in this setting. I am going to give you the highlights of what I found interesting.

True research vs research. Research doesn't use a lot of primary sources and is based mostly on opinion. True research deals with the resolution of a problem. There are different types of research methods, such as the scientific method of inquiry and applied research. The basic differences in these are the methods used and the results obtained. Then there is formulative and summative research. Formulative research takes place while the something is in progress and summative research takes place at the end.

I stopped counting at twelve different methods of research. Surveys and benchmarking to name a few. My favorite was the delphi study, which is a process to develop a consensus among experts in that field and get them to edit and add to the work. I have to say my brain froze when I came to the term bibliometrics, it is not as bad as it sounds. Bibliometrics is looking at written communication to see how it is formed and how many times certain terms appear within certain works. This is fascinating to me. In writing this entry, I don't think the chapter was as daunting as I originally thought. In sum I have learned a lot and hope to pass it along so you can enjoy this learning process along with me!

Powell, R. (2008). Research. In Haycock, K., & Sheldon B. E. (Eds.)

The Portable MLIS: Insights from the experts. (pp. 168-178).

Westport, Connecticut. Libraries Unlimited

MLIS RA -Reader Advisory, Familiar Territory!

Wow! Something I know a bit about. I am an avid to addicted reader. I had not really started reading until my late twenties. Now you can't stop me; I have so many books they live in my office at work and at home and I still go to book stores! I say this to say that Reader Advisors are a large part of my life. The library that I work for; houses over one hundred thousand titles, therefor you don't just browse the collection. When I want a book I either search our online database or go to a Reader Advisor.

I was intrigued by the difference between recommending and suggesting titles. The difference being this is what I think you should read vs. this might be a good read. Reader Advisors have to walk this line. I also learned about cultural capital and asynchronous book clubs. As I mentioned I often find myself in bookstores and libraries other than the one I work for, this gives me a firm grasp on marketing techniques used to draw in readers (I get caught by them a lot). Here in Raleigh we have a wonderful privately owned bookstore that employs a lot of these marketing concepts. They host book clubs, author events, and online book lists. For this Blog entry I tried out http://www.nextreads.com/ and http://www.ebscohost.com/novelist/ I like the concept but I will have to try them out. I also have never seen a "read a like", now I am on a mission to find one! One of the other libraries that I go to often has e-notifications. I originally could not use them because of the format they came out in, until they changed to an email format and now I am a part of that service and enjoy not paying late fines. I am grateful for Reader Advisory services and think that they are valuable. I hope to never see technology take over such a personal touch. Those relationships are valuable to the very success of libraries.

Chelton, M. K. (2008). Readers Advisory Services: How to Help

Users Find a “Good Book”. In Haycock, K., & Sheldon B. E.

(Eds.) The Portable MLIS: Insights from the experts. (pp. 159-167).

Westport, Connecticut. Libraries Unlimited

MLS Words all around...what are they and what do they mean?

Have you ever seen or heard a word and thought, what does it mean? Have you known about something but could not put the word to its definition? That is how I felt about this chapter. It was full of words and definitions that I hear on a daily basis at work. I kept having Ah Hah moments and moments of complete agreement.

Take a problem and find the best solution. Findability and usability, these are phrases from The Portable MLS that I use on a daily basis. When you work with people everyday they become your focus. In this chapter these phrases are applied to information retrieval. I liked the talk about wicked problems and tame problems. Wicked problems being ambiguous and tame problems having definition and an end. This was one of the points that I think about every day but had never put into words, "I like these words." Where I work I deal with databases on a daily basis. Never before did I understand that representations are things like author and title and classification, is the way information is grouped. Just the other day in a meeting our IT librarian was talking about meta data. I knew what he meant within our project but I had never seen a formal definition. I like to think of myself as a person who is adept at using search engines. However, I had never thought about one word having many meanings, or two different words that have similar meanings. There were lots of words that I had no idea what they meant (thank goodness for the book). I now feel very well informed. This is the chapter that I took the most notes on and will probably learn the most from. At this point it might be embarrassing so I will keep you posted on what I learn.

Weedman, J. (2008). Information Retrieval: Designing, Querying,

and Evaluating Information Systems. In Haycock, K., & Sheldon B. E.

(Eds.) The Portable MLIS: Insights from the experts. (pp. 112-126).

Westport, Connecticut. Libraries Unlimited

MLIS, Reflections Collections and Money!

My day job is at a public library. A lot of this information hit home for me. Particularly the parts about budgets for a collection librarian. A budget is a necessary evil for any library. A librarian using their judgement gained through education and service can be questioned about any purchase due to monetary constraints. It is unfortunate that in most public library systems the people who control the money aren't serving the patrons and seeing their needs on a daily basis. This chapter talks about needing to obtain expert reviews and opinions to justify purchases. In the real world these things may not matter when the budget needs to be cut. I hate that I agree with the point that usually the most vocal people get what they want and those that are under served don't get heard.

I work at a library where we have lots of different formats of books. We too struggle with space issues, what do we get rid of or relocate to a different library. These are tough questions. In the end someone is going to lose a service that they value. Another issue our library faces is funding (like everyone else in the world). We have a collection that the FRIENDS of our library support because our administration can't afford to support it. In reality each entity can fight for what they "want" to fund, which may not necessarily be what "needs" to be funded.

I learned to be proactive when it comes to budget and change. Collection librarians should also try to look at collections that will be around for a long time. I can see how it would be difficult to forecast this. Things that were not surprising to me are to network, read professional journals, and develop a complaint process. I view my world as a work in progress and if people don't complain you won't learn.

Evans, G. E. (2008). Reflections on Creating Information Service

Collections. In Haycock, K., & Sheldon B. E. (Eds.) The

Portable MLIS: Insights from the experts. (pp. 87-97). Westport,

Connecticut. Libraries Unlimited

MLIS Then and Now....what do you think?

In the following posts I am to describe the chapters that I am reading in the book The Portable MLIS Insights from the Experts
Edited by Ken Haycock and Brooke E. Sheldon.

Presented here are my thoughts about Chapter 1 "Stepping Back and Looking Forward"

I had read about this book and read that it was an "easy read" in that it was not full of language that one would have to look up in a dictionary or beyond the average persons ability to understand. Admittedly, I was skeptical. I was proven wrong. This book is phenomenal. A brief history of libraries, five laws of librarians, four core values for librarians and definitions were outlined. I found the book to be a page turner and interesting. It takes a bit for me to say this about a book given as an assignment.

I would like to share with you some of things that I found most interesting. I, in general like facts and new information. Early on in the world of libraries they were mainly used by the elite and one had to pay for service (I can't imagine). Then libraries were used to educate immigrants. Librarians back then were male, scholars, priests, monks or bookkeepers. The monks were charged with making copies of the texts. It was said that if they did not like or understand the text they would change it. I was in awe at this, imagine changing the dictionary or The Bible. The other thing that was striking was that books were not viewed as sacred or fact. They were burned and banned. I personally agree with the premise that books are there for the people whether we agree with them or not. Some of these items are things we may never again gain access to items like the Constitution of the United States. Libraries are now places to explore new ideas without judgement or negative repercussions. I do not even want to think about what it is like in places where you can't read a book because someone else deems it dangerous or inappropriate. I am of the belief that I should get to decide what I read!

Rubin, R. E. (2008). Stepping Back and Looking

Forward: Reflections on the Foundations of Libraries and

Librarianship. In Haycock, K., & Sheldon B. E. (Eds.) The Portable

MLIS: Insights from the experts. (pp. 3-14). Westport, Connecticut.

Libraries Unlimited

My FIrst Blog Post

I am part of the iSchool at Syracuse University and part of my classwork is to set up and maintain a blog. The name I selected has to do with the fusion of my professional and personal lives. I feel identity is wrapped all around us and I choose this space to explore the growth of our personal and professional identities together.