Electronic vs Print?

It's a question that probably won't go away for awhile, especially for books. However, for journals I had thought perhaps that question had been answered. At least it seemed so at my previous job. There we had a collection development policy that clearly stated that for journals the preferred format was electronic. While it was the preferred format, it was also acknowledged that electronic isn't necessarily the best format. In many disciplines, Art comes to mind, electronic isn't always the best format and in some cases isn't an option.

So, I start the new job. Budget is looking static for the coming year (something I'm used to) and one of the ideas to reduce spending is to drop the print journals. It seems that for most titles we had electronic and print subscriptions and in some cases (as in newspapers) also receive the microfilm. Up to three formats for some titles and two for most. By going electronic only (mircofilm was addressed separately), the savings weren't as great as I'd hoped, but they were fairly substantial. My big surprise, though, was the response of the reference librarians. The term cancellation was bandied about as if they were losing content rather than a format, which is how they viewed it. Several pointed out that they showed the journal in instruction sessions. The actual journal. While I applaud this, the question I wanted to ask was if they also showed them the online version. We're not open 24/7 and I think it's just as important for the student to know how to access the online version as it is to see the print version.

For me it was a no brainer, if you subscribe electronically drop the print. I'd just gone through this exercise before leaving my old job (converting many print subscriptions to online and a few that were print+online to online only). There was concern for how the faculty would take it. So, it was decided that we would send a letter to faculty advising them of what were doing because we couldn't "cancel" subscriptions (read: formats) without telling them. I gently reminded them that we weren't going to be losing any content. In the end one faculty member requested that one title be retained in print. The majority didn't even respond to the letter. I'm betting a good number of them didn't even know we were still getting some of those titles in print.

We only cancelled titles that we have electronic subscriptions to or that we could subscribe to electronically. I've always thought that one should think twice before cancelling a title held in an aggregator's database and it's because of a lesson learned the hard way. However, as it appears the budget will be tight this year, I'm beginning to wonder if maybe there aren't some titles held in an aggregators database that could be cancelled. There's always the risk the aggregator will drop the title (as happened with lesson learned the hard way) yet many aggregators are fairly stable with their content and some titles, while nice to have, are not core to our programs. Other titles in the same aggregators database or another database could probably fill the need if the title in question was dropped. It's something I'm still mulling over, but I wonder if that would be a better solution that not purchasing books, which I know some libraries have been forced to do due to budgets.

CECS 5210 - Project B and my awesome team

I have a large admission to make, which is probably not news to many people that know me well. I generally do not work well in groups. I get over committed or feel like someone is not pulling their weight or something else inevitably comes up.

Working with my team on this New Faculty Orientation Moodle Course project has been great. It has been a lesson in keeping to my role of project manager and not un-delegating tasks. I've tried to keep my input to feedback without it being prescriptive. I'm not quite sure how well I've accomplished this in anyone else's eyes, but I know comparitive to my previous patterns, it's gone pretty well.

Each of my team members have taken their piece and blown my expectations out of the water. The course module (thanks Deb) is spectular. It includes not only the necessary content but online "quizzes" and checklists/treasure hunts to engage the faculty in active learning. The original hope was that our final product would give a faculty memeber an opportunity to experience an online course as a STUDENT. This layout certainly fits the bill.

The Moodle Orientation guide and the Course Guide have allowed our "documentation specialist", Kirsten, to really shine. Even in the midst of health issues, she has pulled through and created some guides that will make the life of a new faculty member easier that first week here.

Our team of video producers, Danny and William, have pulled together a polished welcome video from the dean of the new college. I saw the YouTube version this weekend and was excited that it could soon replace an old video that was a little embarassing to have on the web. They have also been responsible for pulling together our links repository and our new organizational chart.

I still have the final report to submit once we've had some evaluation and user testing this and next week. We're almost done and it's been the best team experience I've ever participated in. Thanks team!!

I'm such a geek...

So, this morning, I got email from ILLiad telling me that some of my items had arrived through Inter-library Loan. I went to pick them up and had 3 things instead of 2. One of which was a fed-ex package and had me puzzled. Well, I opened it up and apparently I had submitted a request for someone's dissertation on Cognitive Learning Styles in relationship to web-based learning. I didn't remember that.

I'm sitting here starting to read through it and I'm getting all giddy. So much so that I had to hop on here and write about it. (which if you've been following this blog a while you know I'm the slacker in writing articles) See, I have this 1st draft of a paper due Sunday at midnight that I've not been very diligent about -- and this piece is PERFECT!! It's such a shame that plagerism is frowned on because the lit review of this thing would be something I could pass in. Ah well, there's the ethical side of me I guess.

However, I'm certainly going to use the references list to ensure that I have the quintessential works I need to be able to craft my own masterpiece... (ok, a 20 pg paper is not a masterpiece, but it is going to be a MIRACLE)

Customer service...

I've been thinking about this for awhile, but today I had one of the most convulted customer service experiences yet. I registered for a webinar online with all webinar times given in GMT (Greenwich Mean Time). You had to go to another site to figure out what your time was in relation to GMT and then do the math to figure out which session you should attend. Granted it's a click away, but I'm wondering how many people will sign up for the session listed at 1:00 and miss the time zone (for me, that is a 5:00 am session). As an aside, the company is not located in the US and I'm assuming these webinars for customers in different countires, so I get why they used GMT, but most people are not used to using GMT for a time zone designation.

This is coming on the heels of some challenges in contacting support from the various vendors I deal with. I'm now the keeper of our open URL system, our A-Z e-journal software, and I'm organizing the implementation of our ERM module and looking at that company's A-Z product (we're eventually hoping to consolidate and reduce the number of products we use). Not suprisingly, I've needed to contact customer support. It's not easy. You actually have to tell them to set you up in their system or someone from your library has to tell them, because not just anyone can open a case. Then, you log into their CRM and submit your question. One vendor handles everything through their CRM. So, I get an e-mail after I submit the case and I get an e-mail everytime they reply. But, in order to reply to them, I have to log into the CRM system, update the case, which generates another confirmation e-mail and starts the cycle all over again. So far, they've responded well, so no major complaints, just a lot of hoops to jump through.

I logged a case with another vendor requesting sample records. A week later I called to see what happened. They had it, but it had not yet been assigned. They didn't consider seven days in their queue with no feedback bad. I do. At least confirm that it's been recieved. Calling them of course routed me through a phone tree and ultimately to not one but two people who didn't know anything about the product I was calling about (which at least they acknowledged). I was also strongly admonished to open everything online and have a case number when calling. I'm still waiting to hear about the sample records request and that's a week after they bumped up the priority.

Trying to find a person knowledgeable about the product to ask questions of has proved to be daunting as well. I finally did. They suggested a time to talk which I confirmed. This was all by e-mail, which included a signature block with all my information, including phone number. The response I got to my confirmation was a request for my phone number. I've set my expectations very low for this particular chat.

I'm waiting on a response from another vendor, though the logged case was acknowledged by e-mail. And, I've sent two e-mails to another vendor's support e-mail requesting technical assistance over an almost two week period. I will try calling them today as I've received no response. I'm guessing I haven't logged my question correctly, but, darn it, I looked everywhere for technical support information and the e-mail was the best I could come up with.

I have done customer service of this nature and understand the need for and the use of CRM software. I also somewhat understand the need to designate those that can log cases. From my perspective over the past couple of weeks, though, this process seems to make support choppy and almost always involves a lag time. I need to allow at least a day for a response, which impacts my work.

CECS 5210 - Project A Complete!

I met with my prof/client today to review the edits and adjustments as a result of my implementation. Despite the fact that I was trying to accomplish something specific with the different presentation and the learning aid, it all turned out well. I redesigned the presentation, updated the learning aid, and submitted it all.

We're ready to move on to Project B. This design is going to be further developed by a team of my classmates and I. We will be taking the current static materials and breathing interactive life into them through the use of Moodle. We will be creating an online course for New Faculty. I get to meet my team next week. In the meantime, I have to pull together a project scope document. Now this is what I signed up for!!

CECS 5210 - Pilot Implementation (Feedback)

Week 7 -- Live Evaluation

On Tuesday, I met with part of my client team and presented my materials thus far.

The presentation went so-so. I realized that I had not adequately prepared my participants. They were my secondary clients and I had made too many assumptions about their knowledge of and investment in the project. We spent a large portion of the meeting getting everyone on the same page - what is the project and why are we here.

As we started into the presentation, my major concern with my design was confirmed. By using two different paradigms for the presentation versus the job aid, I had confused my audience. What I had been attempting to do was create a stand-alone job aid as the takeaway and a typical F2F training session. My previous concept of an exceptional training session (especially one that uses PowerPoint) only uses the slide show as a prompting device, not the content delivery mechanism. Having taught PowerPoint ad nauseum, this is a design tip that I strongly stress. This might have worked however the presentation was category/task oriented and the job aid was linear. This disconnect presented difficulty to my audience following the presentation.

Additionally, I was surprised at a cultural sensitivity that I completely missed. By using the Children's programming titles, I alienated my audience with my first slide. "Who is Mr. Rogers?" It never occurred to me that my metaphor was culturally bound. Once I explained the metaphor being used throughout the presentation, my clients were able to follow more easily. But this certainly is an area ripe for revision.

So this week, I'm revising what I've created and hope to meet with my primary client next week. It'll be nice to put this phase of the project to rest.

Trying new things...

This new job has given me the opportunity to test drive new ways of doing things, mostly by trying out new applications. And, most of it isn't earth shattering. I'm just trying to better manage my activities and time in the new job.


One of the unexpected changes in the new job was my ability to use Mozilla Thunderbird for my e-mail. The Outlook client works okay here, but Thunderbird appears to do better. This has been good and bad. I was surprised at how used to Microsoft I was and to get what is already in Outlook, I had to find several add-ons for Thunderbird. Not unreasonable, but still it took time and some of the add-ons, well in the end they don't really meet my need. The two "biggies" were installing a calendar and Thundernote. I used the Notes feature of Outlook some in my old job and for whatever reason, don't really care for Thundernote, though it's not a whole lot different from Outlook's. I had used it for various notes to myself. This past week I've begun experimenting with Google's Notebook and it looks like it might work well for my random thoughts and notes.

Thunderbird does allow for tags, which excited me until I realized it simply changes the font color in the Inbox. There is a plug-in which might help, but apparently I've gotten very used to the way g-mail uses tags and was disappointed that it doesn't stick my tag in front of the subject line. I will eventually try the plug-in and see if that helps.


The Thunderbird task list doesn't work for me either. I tried a couple of different applications, but the two I vacillated back and forth between were Remember the Milk and Toodledo. I've wound up going with Remember the Milk for a variety of reasons, not the least of which is that it integrates with my iGoogle page. The iGoogle page is another recent for me. I've set up one to keep track of my work g-mail account, my tasks, calendar, etc. I've also set up one for personal stuff and the big surprise for me is that it seems to be working. I've only been doing it this way for about a month, but so far I think this will prove to be a good way for me to organize my work items.


The other thing I did was give in to curiosity and set up a Twitter account. I am totally fascinated by Twitter. Not necessarily about watching what others are doing, but seeing how others are using Twitter. I decided to see what the Presidential candidates were doing with Twitter. Both of course have Twitter accounts, but what's fascinating to me is the different ways they use them. I'm sure some folks got really excited when Obama started following them as well. I, on the other hand, thought clever, but wondered what poor worker on his campaign is glancing through updates of 98,000 plus people. Odds are no one is. I've also had several people follow me for marketing purposes, which I find curious. I know there are guides for using Twitter to market, but if I don't follow you back, what good is it? Do you just ignore the feeds of those you're following and hope they follow you in return? I guess I should read one of the guides and find out.

CECS 5210 - Project Analysis and Planning

Weeks 5 & 6 of Project -- Analysis, Design, and Development...

-Collected Requirements from Primary Client and Secondary Client.
-Met with SMEs regarding administrative procedures.
-Met with Student Services to gain Campus Tour script.
-Spent hours on Campus Website collecting URLs.
-Reviewed Staff Employee and Faculty Handbooks.
-Designed "Surviving your First Two Weeks" presentation
-Used Metaphor of Children's Programming to address categories of needs
* Mr Rogers Neighborhood -- people you need to know
* The Electric Company -- essential tasks
* School House Rock -- Academic specific info (grades, courses, textbooks)
* Sesame Street -- Important places on campus
* Where in the World is Carmen SanDiego? -- Putting the department in context
within UNT and the City of Denton
-Designed "Surviving your First Two Weeks" checklist
-Used Timeline structure -- Day one, day two, day three...
-Scheduled meeting with client

New Client - Learning Technologies Department

Originally, for my CECS5210 class, I was going to work with a professor to redesign and enhance her Blackboard course shell. Unfortunately, after the analysis phase, this project did not materialize. So, 3 weeks into the project timeline, I found myself starting from scratch, looking for a client. I made my way to the professor's office to explain my situation and hoped that it wasn't too late to still pull out a decent grade in the class.

What transpired next was a boon of fortune. My professor became my client. Before I had time to really think about the implications of having the person grading me also being my client, we were off and running. It appears that much like other places on campus, their department has little in the way of formal instruction for new faculty members. Most of what is learned by a faculty member in their first two weeks has come through finding the right person to talk to, asking questions of several people, wandering around aimlessly on campus being redirected to various locations, and shear luck. (Ok, there is also the official Faculty Handbook of the University but that doesn't address those "where is the library, how do I get email, what classes am I teaching, who's in those classes, and do I have wireless access" questions.)

My new project is "to create a learning tools to help new faculty members survive their first two weeks on campus".

Branding....

I'm still in the midst of updating usage stats at my new place of work. More will probably come on that as publishers do have a variety of ways of providing this information, even if it's counter compliant.

Today, I realized that one of my former places of work had changed the vendor they used to provide their listing of electronic journals. This itself is not a problem; the main thing to me is that this type of listing is available. What I did notice was the total lack of branding. Once you click on the e-Journal list, there is nothing to indicate which library the list is for or to even navigate back to the library's main website. The main logo is for the vendor! So, the user may not even realize they are still looking at resources provided by the library. And, once a user has done significate searching, they'll either have to use their browser's back arrow (possibly many times) or navigate some other way back to the library's website. If they find what they are looking for, no problem, it will take them to their selected title in whatever database. However, if not, then they're on their own for returning to the library's home page.

Most vendors offer the ability to brand a site - to put your library's name on it and to even customize the look and feel to match that of your library. This gives continuity to the user and subtly reminds them that this is a service provided by the library. It's also key to provide at least a link back to the library's home page for this type of listing.

One of the aspects of my new job is to do that type of branding when possible. It's something I strongly believe in. Yes, it takes extra time, but in the end it helps promote the library and the services being provided to users, which in this day and age of budget cuts is crucial.

Dressing for success...

I've pondered writing this post for awhile now and have decided it's worth mentioning. For as long as I've been a librarian (about 5 years now), I've seen concern about the trend to do away with librarian positions in favor of more paraprofessionals and the lack of respect in general for the degree and the profession.

I just started working in my third academic library. My first two academic libraries were state schools. The dress code at the first was generally business casual with blue jean Fridays for the librarians. For the staff, well, it was whatever they threw on. At my last library, there was no dress code for anyone as far as I could tell. The Director and Asst Director generally dressed nicely, but the rest of the staff pretty much as they pleased. This was librarians and staff. Some dressed business casual, others not so much. In fact, on one day, someone was at work in shorts, a polo top, and flip flops. One person in my department used to take off their flip flops and walk around the office barefoot. Who wants to be in an office with someone running around barefoot? Generally, they were also wearing jeans and a shirt.

What image does this set for the public? Whether we like it or not, how we dress affects how we are perceived. My current place of work has a dress code. Men generally wear slacks, shirt and tie, especially if on the reference desk. Women dress accordingly. I've generally been a slacks and sweater type of girl and yes, I will be adding some new items to my wardrobe (for a couple of reasons). It's actually nice to be back in a place where everyone dresses for the job. It doesn't have to be a suit, but for heavens sake, if you dress at least business causal, it indicates that you are a professional and take your job seriously. In the end, if you take your job seriously, so will others.

What determines usage?

I'm in my first week of my new job as Electronic Access Librarian at a University in Maryland. So, far the job is off to a very good start. It has probably been one of the best welcomes to a job that I have ever had. After my previous job, I'll admit, I was probably a bit paranoid.

One of my first projects is too look at and update the electronic resource usage stats. If you've read this blog before, you'll know I'm terribly intrigued by usage statistics. This project also allows me to become familiar with the holdings of my new library.

Over the past few days, I've come to realize that what I started out looking for, Searches, doesn't necessarily answer the big usage question. What I'm seeing more of, especially for products which host electronic journal subscriptions, is fewer searches than sessions. I've come to realize this is probably from the SFX linking (which I didn't have at my first library job) and accounts for how folks can hit the system but not search. So, now I try and look at the statistics for both Searches and Sessions. I don't think I can truly define a products usage anymore by the volume of searching; those "hits" coming in from the article linker also need to be included.

CECS 5210 Week 1 Question...

Given what you have read about instructional design, how important is it to what your future work goals are?

My career thus far has always contained a course design and delivery function. My true love is delivering technology education to librarians. No matter how I intend to accomplish this in the future, instructional design is one of the foundations of success to a good course. Making sure to analyze no only the material to be presented but also the audience which will be attending has often been the key factor to the quality of the knowledge transfered. Additionally, I have found that evaluation and closing the feedback loop to be instrumental to improving the effectiveness of not only my teaching style but the reference materials the students retain. I'm looking forward to learning about instructional design in a formal manner, as most of mine has been JIT or on-the-job training.

Starting my PhD -- Instructional Design Class

I am pursuing my PhD in the Information Science department at UNT. I live in Austin and will be in Denton two to three days a week. This year I've left the "real world" and dedicated myself to being a full-time student and Graduate Library Assistant over at the Willis Library. I've been in the "training" and "library" worlds since 1994 and am looking forward to formal instruction in Instructional Design. All of my knowledge has been through trial by fire or those professional development course I've been able to take along the way. I've done everything from Corporate Training, help desk support, IT management, to course development, professional development delivery, conference presentations, and website maintenance.

For those of you who have been following this blog a while, you'll start to see weekly updates from me on Instructional Design topics from my course work. For those of you classmates, you'll see occasional non-class posts from me and posts regularly from my very insightful co-author. I encourage you to enjoy them all.

Happy Reading!

Another job change....

I've been following threads on several lists regarding job changes and how long one should stay in a bad situation. Well, at 19 months in my current position, my last day was yesterday. It is not something I expected to do when I took the job, though in the end it worked out for the better for me.

I accepted the job with great excitement and anticipation. I was returning to Texas and would be able to buy a house and settle in and grow my career. It didn't work out that way. In fact, I walked into a situation that most people couldn't even imagine. I certainly didn't. I've worked for almost 20 years and in several different industries and in some toxic environments. None of them prepared me for the situation I walked into. I wouldn't term it toxic, but it definitely wasn't in my best interest. I bounced back and forth between sticking it out and making the best of it to stay in an area I enjoy or looking for another job and literally starting over again. Fortunately, I don't have anything to hold me back in the moving department, so that was an option.

Then, I saw the job. I knew it would be a great job for me and as a bonus, would allow me to return to Civil Service. So, I applied. And, got the job! There is always the fear of walking into something worse. I worried about that when I took this job and it proved to be true. Actually, my concern was giving up a relatively enjoyable work environment for something that could prove to be worse. So, this time I'm cautiously optimistic and very much looking forward to starting my new job, in Maryland, at the beginning of September.

My advice to those in "bad" jobs. Take a good hard look at the job. What exactly is bad about it? Does it allow for career growth? Do you like your co-workers? Are you challenged? Are you accpeted? Are you supported in trying new ideas or methods? Is your input valued? Do teams work well? What I learned comapring this job with my past jobs, is that any number of these things can be off and it's still not a bad job; there are worse out there, as I found out. However, if it's detrimental to you personally and emotionally, it's probably time to start looking, regardless of how long you have been there. If there is no chance of growth and you're not ready to retire (I've got more than 25 years before I can retire), then it's time to consider looking for another job.

I knew the first day of this last job, yes the first day, that I'd made a mistake. I didn't heed some of the the warning signs I saw when I interviewed and I paid for it. When you interview, remember to evaluate them as they are evaluating you. Look at how they interact with each other. Watch body language. Ask about projects between departments (especially if interviewing at a large university/organization). Ask if the position is new (mine was and it's not necessarily a good thing. Those duties came from somewhere and most likely, someone). My favorite question: "What do you like about working here." Pay careful attention to how this question is answered. Second favorite: "What don't you like about working here?" I've gotten some really honest answers to this question, which I appreciated.

If they offer the job, how do they offer it? Can they tell you the salary and the benefits? Believe it or not, I was offered a job and the library director couldn't tell me the salary; told me to check the announcement, which was a range, then said it would be the first step, which isn't a range or what was implied in the ad. There didn't seem to be much enthusiasm. It was a job I would have enjoyed, however, given the vagueness of the initial offer and after a lot of consideration, I turned it down. Not an easy thing to do, but easier to do when you have a job, even if you desperately need to get out. If you're going to move for a job, make sure your comfortable with the offer and the organization. Listen to your little voice and don't be afraid to turn down a position. I'll reiterate - you're evaluating them as much as they are evaluating you.

No matter how bad your job is, there are worse ones out there. Carefully evaluate the jobs you interview for and keep in mind that the goal isn't simply to leave a bad job, but to find a good one - one that will make you want to get up in the morning and go to work.

del.icio.us updated...

As mentioned in the previous post, one of my biggest complaints about del.icio.us was its very ugly interface. Well, I logged in yesterday to tag an item (it had probably been a couple of weeks) and lo and behold the interface has been updated.

It's a lot less haphazard in appearance, however, the font is a bit tiny, but that's generally because of my work monitor and the screen setting I have to have it on to not have things be blurry. I'm still trying to decide what I think of the new interface, but I will say that it's better than the old. The awful pink and pale pink highlighting is gone. It did take me a while to figure out that the "inbox" is now where I find things tagged for me (I will eventually read the information on the new interface), though the font color still leaves a bit to be desired. In this case, I say there's nothing wrong with black... the shade of blue they use can sometimes be difficult to read.

Overall, though, I'm glad to see it cleaned up.

Social bookmarking....

My library is doing a series of short, lunch-time technology exploration sessions to introduce staff to some of the technologies that are out there, be they Web 2.0 or not. We've covered Firefox extensions, Google Docs, Wiki's, and Social Bookmarking. Actually, I and a co-worker did the Social Bookmarking session today.

For as familiar as most computer users are with bookmarks/favorites, many have never ventured out to the social bookmarking arena. Quite honestly, many wonder why they should. Because I have a work pc and a home pc and have had one blow-up, I started using Yahoo! Bookmarks a couple of years ago. In fact, it expanded to one account for personal links and one for professional. I didn't realize I was participating in social bookmarking for quite some time as Yahoo! feeds your saved bookmarks into a social bookmarking site called Yahoo! My Web. They look a little different, but with the My Web component others can see your saves and tags, like in del.icio.us.

A year or so ago, after reading and hearing oodles about del.icio.us, I decided to check it out. I got to the site and promptly left. What an ugly interface. And, IMHO, somewhat difficult to read. I stuck with Yahoo! My Web. However, in preparation for this session, I again ventured on to del.icio.us and several other social bookmarking sites. While, del.icio.us is still ugly (making me wonder if it's so popular because it was one of the first), it does have a few features I like - your network, subscriptions, and links for you. However, it's not exactly geared for group collaboration, though I'm seeing where libraries are finding work arounds for this. I've found a couple of other sites (I'm sure there are others) that are better for group collaboration and will discuss those here.

Yahoo! My Web is one. In addition to making bookmarks public or private, it provides the ability to share only with contacts (of which you can create different levels), making it easy to collaborate with different groups.

Another is Ma.gnolia. In addition to saving, tagging, and sharing sites, this site offers a few unique features. One is a built-in mail system. Another is the ability to create Groups. Groups can be public (as in UTA Library STEW) where all members can add links; moderated, where the group is public but only designated members can add links; or private. There is also a discussion feature, but I've not tried that one out yet.

Last, but not least, is Jumptags. Jumptags does not offer networks or contacts, but it does offer something called Collections. Collections are created by a member, who can keep the collection Private or make it Public. With either type, there is the ability to invite others to be Contributors to the collection. You can even let invited Contributors invite others to the Collection. Coming soon will be the ability to Subscribe to a Collection.

Yahoo! My Web, Ma.gnolia, and Jumptags all offer much better interfaces. They offer bulk editing, the option to import your del.icio.us bookmarks in addition to importing bookmarks from your browser, and Yahoo! My Web and Ma.gnolia also offer the ability to send a site to someone, much like tagging a site for:somone in del.icio.us.

Just for the record, they all also offer buttons or toolbars for the browser which make tagging sites easy. I will say, there were a couple of problems. One was with Ma.gnolia. It seems that creating an account here is more difficult than it should be and could be a turn off for many. And, trying to install the Jumptags toolbar on IE turned out to be something I couldn't pull off, at least at work. It installed beautifully on Firefox, though.

If you scroll down the left hand side bar you will find My Del.icio.us link roll and My Jumptags. Both are the result of my preparing for today's session. Obviously, I probably won't keep four of these things going, but I see the strengths of each.

If your curious, I'm kewllib2 on all these sites.

Update 5/14/09 - Yahoo! has closed Yahoo! My Web. Sad. However, there bookmarking feature is still available - just no ability to share.

Library Statistics...

I'm in the process of writing an evaluation for my assigned areas based on the usage statistics we recently did (see Evaluating Usage). While I was writing this up, I got off on a semi-tanget to find out if there were any standards for percentages of collections that should circulate. If there are, I couldn't find them.

Among the places I looked was ACRL and their standards for Academic Libraries. They basically aim for comparison with peers rather than setting a number or a goal to aim for, so to speak. And, they suggest ratios. Several of them actually. When applied to a small sub-set such as what I'm looking at, well, it's sad and a little depressing.

Then I came across the Library Statistics Program from the National Center for Education Statistics. Interesting website. I did compare my library with several others. Not sure what to do with it, but it is late on a Monday afternoon. It will come to me.

I still don't know if there is a benchmark I should be aiming for or if it really matters. Maybe what matters is knowing how much is circulating, especially since I'm looking at a very specific set of titles. Unofficially, I've selected 30% for my benchmark. If anyone else is doing anything like this, I'd like to hear from you regarding what your library considers good circulation, i.e. 30%, 40%, 50%.

Evaluating usage....

Gads. I didn't expect it to be this long between posts. However, the job does sometimes take over. The past several weeks I have been working on usage statistics. Bascially, the question is: how well are we doing with regards to what we are ordering? We started last year with FY 2005/06 and this year ran those stats again as well as for FY 2006/07. We run them by department, then I compile overall (or summary) stats for the collection as a whole. I was especially pleased this year because the report was modified to indicate whether a title was recieved on approval or from a firm order. I wasn't able to look at this last year.

The results are interesting. FY 2005/2006 is looking at two years of data. Overall, we have thus far circulated 45% of the materials ordered during that FY. That was up a little over 10% from the first year. For FY 2006/2007 we circulated about 1% less than the previous year, but we also ordered less. The interesting statistic, to me anyway, is that while a small number of titles seem to circulate, a high number of them circulate multiple times. This was almost across the board for all departments.

Approval vs. firm order. How did we fare? Well, in most cases firm orders ciruclated more than the approvals. Interestingly, in several departments where overall firm orders circulated more than approval, the titles with the highest circulation had more approval than firm order. We also saw this in reverse.

I'm not sure what one should hope for. More approvals circulating? More firm orders circulating? Or, maybe 50/50. Anyway, what does one glean from this? Well, several of my funds had approvals circulating more than firm orders. What I took away was that my approval plan was good. No tweaking needed. Perhaps, though, I should tweak my firm orders. I'm still working on a plan for this. Where approvals aren't circulating as much as firm orders, I'm thinking those plans need to be reviewed. It's my understanding that the approval plans haven't been reviewed in several years, so it's time to do that anyway.

For the curious, we ran the initial reports in Voyager and did the analysis in Excel. Fortunately, I'm fascinated by statistics, so it's somewhat of a fun exercise for me.

Typos....

No, not mine. Though, I make them occassionally along with everyone else. I'm in the midst of selecting titles for my assigned disciplines. We're past half way through with our Fiscal Year, so I'm stepping up my efforts. To aid this process, I get electronic slips from a vendor who shall remain nameless. Below is the last part of a description for one of the titles, which it states is from the book jacket. I'm not sure if the typo is their's or the publisher's, but it gave me a good laugh.

"Rather than look at overall conceptual issues, which are already well covered elsewhere, this boob looks at the finer details of implementation in order to identify lessons, ideas and opportunities, both at the planning and design phase, and during implementation and review and evaluation."

Or, maybe it really is referring to the author.

Almost a year in a new job

Rules, Regulations, Laws, Statutes, Codes, Travel Documents, Monthly Statistics, Grants, Purchasing Guidelines, Hiring Processes

Wow... and that's all beyond showing up, doing training, managing a team of six, consulting with libraries, implementing projects, and learning the agency. It has been a whirlwind year. I am hopeful that within the next couple of months we will have hired someone to fill the Library Technology Consultant position. This will allow me to stop doing two jobs and finally settle into the manager role.

I have experienced times when I felt completely clueless and inept. Recently, I have actually had moments when I catch myself talking to someone and realize I sound like I know what I'm doing. It has been quite encouraging. I know I still have a long way to go to be the employee that I want to be, the program director that my boss would like me to be and to be the manager that the team needs me to be.

Someone told me many years ago that when you make a move, whether it's job or location, it takes a good year to get to a point where you feel like you have a clue what you're doing. My revision is that it takes a year to clue and longer to feel comfortable.

Me, an expert??

Well, this past month I had the opportunity to be interviewed by a graduate student. She was taking an instructional technology class and had to interview a consultant. Her field of interest is libraries. So when she googled, she found me.

I found the experience refreshing and revitalizing. I was able to share the experiences I've had in the past being an independent consultant AND what it is like to be attached to an organization. I certainly hope that she not only does well on her assignment but that something I said was helpful.


A link to her project

Video ratings...

Being in an academic library, video ratings are not something I've worried about, especially for documentaries, which I frequently order for my subject area of Business. One of these is Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room. All the reviews on the title are tops. However, in the year I've been here, I've had two complaints from faculty. There are a couple of rather raunchey scences in the film, one which takes place in a strip club, which have been off putting to the faculty members. One faculty member had seen the edited version on PBS and didn't preview it before showing it in class. I guess it was a little uncomfortable. He later requested we order the edited version. There isn't one.

The second complaint came in about a week ago. Because of the first one, I knew what the issue was. The suggestion from reference was perhaps we could put a warning or something on the DVD. Do we do this? It made for an interesting discussion and the best we could come up with was perhaps a note to preview before showing in class. We are taking this under consideration, but in the meantime, I also pointed out that we have two other documentaries on Enron. Any thoughts?

Demos - a good thing....

In the past several years, I've run my fair share of trials for different electronic resource products. Generally, if you're familiar and comfortable with databases and electronic resources, you can get a good feel for the product without a demo. However, with some products, a demo is a very good thing. This was brought home in the past week with demos on two products that afterwards I realized I wouldn't have figured out all they have to offer without the demo. At least not in a two week trial.

I arranged the first demo for me and a couple of other librarians, because we were given the option to add on the module to an existing product when we renewed (through our consortium), but I had never seen it or heard of it. And, honestly, I wasn't getting much information from the brochure sent by our rep. So, we set up a trial. Next thing I know, the Product Manager is offering to do a 20 minute web demo. I figured what the heck and arranged for the business librarians to join me. Incredibly robust product; I doubt we would have realized half of what it can do without the demo. It was about a 20 minute demo, but it was 20 minutes well spent. Very, very nice product.

The second demo was yesterday. Brief and in person. Again, amazing product. We might have gotten a lot of what it has to offer during the trial, but there are things we would have missed. Another 20 minutes well spent.

Now I'm thinking maybe I should do more demos or at least remember that for some products a demo will be needed. In case you're interested, the products demo'd were Mergent Horizon and West's Campus Research.

Filling in someone else's shoes

My colleagues and I, to a lesser extent, having been adjusting to the death of a colleague these past 6 months. Most of my work team had many wonderful years working with her, as a co-worker and then as a manager. She established policies and procedures. She took the state to a new level of federal grant funding. She was well-known and loved around the state.

In August, I stepped into the position she held. While trying to get acclimated, I also attempt to fill the duties of my original position. Those duties have had me out of the office roughly 60% of the time since then. Unfortunately for my staff, my juggling skills have been less than adequate.

It has only been since the beginning of the year that I have felt that I am getting my sea legs. My work world has been a huge learning curve. It has been a struggle to get a time line of reports due, responsibilities expected, and just a standard work flow for the normal paperwork required. There are many standards we have to follow, many agencies we work with, and much political history to learn.

In the midst of all of this, there have been several occasions where "but we used to..." has surfaced, from many different levels - employees, upper management, other departments. I try regularly to listen to that feedback and see where it shows me expectations that I was not aware I had been missing. What has been a challenge is standing up when I am trying to lead in a new or different direction. I am a different person. I have a different management style. I have different ideas. I can't and won't ever be what my predecessor was. But, I strive every day to be the best ME I can be.

Making a Digital Recorder GO....

Our group is working on getting our Instructor Led Classes online. In order to enrichen this effort, we have started recording presentations. These get spliced down to manageable chunks of listening time. Well, last week, we were trying to determine how to record the presenter without having her hold the new digital recorder that was purchased. (It's a nice recorder - Olympus VN-3100PC - and allows quick download to the computer in .wav files.)

We found an older lavaliere microphone system in the tech closet. I pulled it out and said surely this must be able to connect. I took the kit home over the weekend, only to realize that the jacks were not compatible.

As you know, I'm a bit of a tech nerd. Despite that fact, I have not enjoyed or ever been really enthusiastic about going to FRY'S -- the mega mart for all things tech. This morning I reluctantly drove myself up to Fry's before driving 1.5 hours to a class. Within 10 minutes of walking into the store, I explained what I needed (a connector from an old style stereo microphone jack to one that would fit into an Ipod-size device), was led to the product, and was in line to purchase it.

As I write this, the solution is in use by the presenter and within the next coupled days I will be downloading the audio files to my computer.

Thanks Dear Abby...

In the February 2nd (Saturday) Dear Abby column, a reader asks for advice regarding his/her dream of attending college overseas (his/her family apparently thinks this is hilarious). Abby's advice included "Your next step should be to visit your nearest public library and ask the librarian to help you research scholastic scholarships at universities that offer study programs abroad."

I thought it was nice to see someone recommending not only the library, but the librarian as a source of help and information. After all, you can Google anything, but it takes out the one on one help, which in many cases is needed as much as the information sought. So, thanks to Dear Abby.

If digital is the future...

Why am I still ordering so many books? I'm wrapping up the month and looking at my budget to see if I'm where I should be in my spending for this time of year. It made me think back to one of the morning sessions at last year's Charleston Conference. The first morning, well, I didn't think those sessions were nearly as good as the rest of the conference. But, one of the things said by a presenter still sticks out in my mind. He said we're "risking the future if we're not going to a digital library."

I have no problem with going digital, especially with journals, but he didn't really define material types, though I did jot down something about reference. I agree - reference titles are well suited for a digital format. However, in order to go digital, so must the publishers. And, I can tell you, many, many publishers are still turning out ooodles of printed books without electronic (digital) counterparts. I've ordered over 100 titles just in the past week and that doesn't include what has come in on approval.

In going through my slips this past week, I did find one Economics title (2 volumes) that was available through the e-book vendor we recently signed up with (the pricing and usage model is incredibly convoluted, but that's a different post), so since we didn't purchase a collection and have been encouraged to purchase titles from this vendor, I decided to get this set in digital format. Each title was one and half times the cost of the print version. I suspect this is due to the convoluted pricing model of the vendor, but if I were on a tight budget (as I was in my previous position), I would have a decision to make regarding how important it was to have the title electronically or just to have the title. Many titles are low usage by the nature of the work (i.e. more theorteical, very specialized, limited audience). Is it justified to purchase in digital format at higher cost just to be digital or is it more prudent to go with the less expensive of the options? Or, will having it in a digital format increase the usage? It will be interesting to see the usage on this title over time as it falls into what I would call a low usage category.

I would like to experiment with others, but this was the only title in all of the slips I went through (and there were a lot) that was available electronically. So, if I take the presenter literally, I should be moving toward having everything in digital format. But maybe not. Maybe he just meant reference. Or maybe he meant we need digital libraries alongside traditional libraries. Regardless of how he is defining it, what I do know is that publishers are still churning out printed books en masse and for most there is no digital/electonic counterpart. Which means I'm still purchasing printed books for the traditional part of my library.

Comparing Collections....

One of the best sessions I attended in Charleston was presented by three librarians from Charleston College, Michael Phillips, Robert Neville, and Marth Stackel. The session: How Different Are You? Analyzing/Comparing Your Collection with Others: WorldCat Techniques in the Expert Mode. To be honest, I'd never thought of using the Expert Search in WorldCat - that blank box can be scary. Not only did they use it, but they used it to compare their collections in various subject areas with other similar or "goal" institutions.

As noted in previous postings, MPOW was evaluating collection analysis tools (Library Dynamics and WorldCat Collection Analysis). My concern with the expenditure was that we hadn't defined how we were going to use said product once we got it. So, I loved this session. Using the Expert Search mode will help me to get my feet wet and determine exactly how I would want to use such a tool.

After returning from the conference, I wasn't sure where to start with my new found knowledge. Then, opportunity presented itself. We received funding from our county to house a second county law library (in addition to the one at the court house). That funding is being withdrawn (everyone has budget issues). So, our directive was to evaluate what we have versus what we need to support our programs and our faculty and staff. It was decided to evaluate the legal collection as whole once our collection development policy for this area was defined. One of the things we decided to do was compare our legal holdings with those of peer institutions in the state. I narrowed the subject area to LC range KF and identified a couple of peer instituitons with Criminal Justice programs (there are other areas, but I started with this one). I followed the basic formula from the examples given in the Charleston Conference session as these parameters fit my needs, though I will be exploring the other limiters available. The one thing that doesn't seem to work for me is limiting by a year range. If I use or (i.e. 2007 OR 2008), that works, but not 2007-2008. However, once the results are listed, I am able to go in a limit the results further by date, which lets me enter a date range or pick from a date list. The date list also shows the number of titles that match the query for each year, which I like. I found that if I compare to more than two schools, it appears to handle date range differently, but I can't be sure. I've done a couple of different versions of my query and have gotten some strange results, but I'm chalking that up to operator error.

Overall, I'm happy with the search results. I would recommend writing out the query in advance (as the presenters also recommended) due to the time out feature in WorldCat. I'd also recommend creating a personal WorldCat account to save the searches. The one thing you can't do (which WorldCat Collection Analysis does do) is export to Excel. As a matter of fact, the export is tied to a text file (very messy and not delimited) or EndNotes or RefWorks. Basically, citation exporting. I did export to RefWorks and then exported from RefWorks to Excel. Kind of clunky. I also discovered that you must pay attention to what you're exporting in both programs and that RefWorks exports a lot.

If you've been thinking about comparing your collection to others, but haven't yet purchased a collection analysis tool, I heartily recommend giving this a go.

Call for Book Contributors and straggling Survey Participants!!

We are writing a book entitled “Federated Search: A Librarian’s Guide”. We are surveying both library practitioners and the federated search vendors to get a complete picture of what the profession is looking for and what the current / forthcoming options are. This data will be combined with a guide on selecting and implementing a federated search tool. The aim is to illuminate all of the decisions necessary in order to alleviate the pitfalls of the process.

There is still time to give us your feedback through our survey and feel free to pass along this link: https://www.surveymonkey.com/s.aspx? sm=Au1Me4INFknkQbscTVcViw_3d_3d

Additionally, if you are interested in contributing your experience with implementation to the book, please contact me (kewllibrarian01@gmail.com) asap!