Texas Library Association Conference - March 31 - April 3rd, 2009

Yup, it's that time of year again. At last check, with over 6000 members, TLA is the 2nd biggest library organization in the states. This year promises to be as jam packed as previous years. Aside from the full program of sessions, I thought I would highlight those events that I am intimately involved with this year.

Hot Topics Slam by Texas CE Providers -- This session was designed to provide attendees with 5 mini-training sessions from 5 different library training providers. The topics are as varied as the needs of library staff.

Continuing Education Providers Interest Group Business Meeting -- I am the outgoing chair and this is the last meeting on my watch. We will be looking at the State-wide training calendar and creating a Master Trainer series for Texas libraries to stave off the impending retirement gap.

TLA Gaming Event -- Every year the outgoing president of TLA is afforded a celebration. The President's Party is Wednesday night of conference and is an all-conference (no cost) party. This year we are saying thank you and goodbye to Melody Kelly, the assistant dean at UNT Libraries (and one of my bosses). Part of this event is a whole Gaming Banaza. TLA has partnered with Best Buy to provide console games, big screen tvs, and all the tech support associated with such an event. MY little part in this play is that I'm the Head Game Warden. I've been working to help organize the event most particularly the volunteer group that will be on hand to assist. We have about 28 volunteers at this moment and still recruiting more. In addition to video games we will be having a tabletop games area.

If you're anywhere near Houston the 1st week of April, I welcome you to come check out the conference. Even if you don't do the sessions, the exhibit hall ALWAYS promises to be worth the price of an exhibits only pass.

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.

Weeding

Umm... maybe I should call it deselection. Whatever the term, my library is in the midst of a large weeding project. We had several thousand titles stored in a remote facility in a different part of the state. That facility ran out of room and the books are being returned. All 43,000 of them. The returned items do contain journals as well as monographs.

To start, we pulled a list of the journal titles and made decisions on what to keep or discard before they arrived. My criteria for this was if my holdings were incomplete and complete holdings were available locally, then I withdrew my holdings. However, there are five librarians involved in this project, each with collection development responsibilities for different areas. And, we're all making the withdraw or keep decision differently. It's really rather fascinating to watch.

Then, we get to the monographs. They are in our local remote storage and have come in by size (they were stored by size). So, they are in random order. This means you have to peruse every shelf to see what titles fall in your area. They went to remote storage because they had one or zero circulations. However, upon reviewing many titles, those circulations were since we brought up the ILS. Prior to that, many titles had very high circulation, but due to age or change in instructors or programs or the way classes are taught, that usage has dropped off. Some have been recalled from remote and have a flag on them, so those automatically get kept. That was a fairly easy decision, though I've wanted to discard a few that were recalled, because I know I have more current titles in those areas.

I have collection development responsibilities for areas that have materials that age out, although I think most areas have materials that age out, but it has to be thought out. Each subject area here basically has it's own collection development policy (called an Information Management and Access Plan); there is a general weeding/deselection policy, but it hasn't been updated in awhile. So, again, all five librarians are using different standards/judgement to do their deselecting. For me it goes if: the age of the book (especially if it's a text book) is over five years old; bibliographies (pretty much replaced and outdated by databases); symposium proceedings, pamphlets specific to a particular event or city (unless it's in my state), especially if the condition of the item is bad; biographies, especially if they've never circulated or it's a person not widely known (we received many by donation); dissertations; and statistics and other data that can now be found online. I also look closely at materials related to other countries for fit with programs that are offered by the university. If the fit isn't good, the material goes. Of course, there are exceptions to every rule, as well as some materials that just have to be reveiwed.

We have one more shipment to go. It's time consuming and tedious, but it has given me great insight into not only the process of deselection, but also collection development. Since it's time to be updating my the collection development plans for my areas, what I've learned from doing this project will be incorporated there as well.

On a side note, I did attend the Charleston Conference last month and attended some very good sessions and lively lunches. Once I can get my thoughts together on that, I will be posting on the things that really stood out to me.

NISO Forum

Last week I attended the NISO Forum Understanding the Data Around Us: Gathering and Analyzing Usage Data. This forum came at an appropriate time for me, as many of our databases (as I'm sure is the case at most libraries) renew in January. So, I've spent the past couple of weeks digging for usage statistics and then trying to interpret what I got.

The Forum was basically two well spent days. I won't give a synopsis of every session, but will point out ones I particularly enjoyed and then some of the key pieces of information and thoughts that I walked away with.

For the most part, all sessions were good, but there were a few that I particulalry enjoyed: Usage Data: Seeing the Full Picture by Kevin Cohn, Product Director, Atypon; From What to Why: Electronic Resource usage Data in Collection Development and User Behavior by Karen Coombs, Head of Web Services, Univeristy of Houston Libraries; SUSHI & COUNTER by Oliver Pesch, Chief Strategist, E-Resources, EbSCO Information Services; Why Collect Data? by Colleen Cook, Dean of the Texas A&M University Libraries; Real World Data: Using Usage to Shape Libraries by Virginia Steel, University Librarian, University of California, Santa Cruz; and Electronic Resource Usage Statistics: Defining a Complex Problem by Caryn Anderson, Doctoral Studies Program Manager, GSLIS, Simmons College.

One idea stated by many presenters is that all data is good. The key is knowing what to do with it. There was some overlap between presentations, but the general consensus is that usage data are a good thing. This may sound basic, but apparently there are folks out there who do not think usage data serve a purpose. I like usage stats, so I have to agree with this. I have an undergraduate business degree and business experience; I tend to say if it isn't being used, then don't subscribe to it. However, we live in the real world and while I'd like to live by this adage, sometimes you can't, given the nature of programs offered by the university. I'm not sure if the same would ring true in public libraries. However, usage statistics are being used for a variety of reasons outside of subscription/renewal decisions - weeding/deselection, marketing, editorial decisions by journal editors, just to name a few. An off shoot of this is that everyone approaches usage statistics from a different perspective; the variety of ways to use usage statistics are limitless. In the end though, usage statistics of any kind should help you be better informed about your users.

There is no standard, so to speak, on how to use usage data, however, there is a standard for getting/providing those usage stats. I felt like I'd had my head in the sand when several presenters mentioned the problems with COUNTER. After listening to them, they made some good points. (Several presenters mentioned problems with COUNTER, but Kevin Cohn with Atypon defined them well. Link to the presentations is provided at the end of this post). I agree with what they were saying, but, I have a slightly different perspective. All of those presenters were assuming that usage stats were coming in a COUNTER compliant format. Ah... if that were true. There may be faults with COUNTER, but I deal with a lot of business databases and they are not COUNTER compliant, which makes it quite difficult to compare usage for similar databases, though admitedly many business databases provide unique resources. One database provides usage for their Quick Search, Company Snapshot, General Sources, etc. The only totals they provide for all this are the "What if Total Price," the amount we would have been charged if we didn't subscribe. I don't find that particular piece of information useful. I then had to try and reconcile what I did have to something along the lines of searches and sessions. There was also the assumption that usage statistics were being provided. I have a subscription to one commercial database that does not provide statistics and has no intention of doing so. Their viewpoint - it's the same cost regardless of the number of users. My thought of course, is if no one uses it, why should I subscribe.

Powerpoints for the NISO Forum are available at http://www.niso.org/news/events_workshops/usage07/agenda.html.

Also available is a new Usage Data wiki at http://usagedata.pbwiki.com/. Join the community conversation about developing a usage data decision framework (and other usage data issues). For more information about the usage data conversation, see Caryn Anderson's closing remarks (available on the presentations page).

LITA National Forum 2007 -- Day 1 Sessions

Future of Libraries Discussion

This session posed a few key questions to the group and asked us to think about hte year 2023. We were asked to ponder --
WHAT IF...
-- There were 100,000,000 free full-text books
-- Copyright legistation were completely rewritten to more reasonably reflect real world practices
-- Star Trek-level reference were really available

What I found most interesting was how difficult it was for a room full of librarians to think beyond today's technology. Any mention of information implants or anything close to AI was immediately poo-poo'ed. The conversation focused on how we stay relevant despite a couple of non-librarians in the audience trying to explain that we may not be already.

Topic Mapping

I didn't get to stay long for this one as I had to hit the session below, but I found the intro highly interesting. It is essentially a way to aggregate index information instead of focusing on full-text and create new access points. This is an area I'm going to have to look more indepth at when I get home.


Tagging the Catalog & Keyword in Headings

This session showed two concepts. First it demonstrated how heading data could harvested and allow keyword searching to actually pull a relevant list of subjects back. IE. User does a search for Civil War and instead of getting "no hits", they get back a list of all of the subject headings that include the words Civil and War. Second, it showed the value of allowing users to tag their own items. "Users are no longer passive." This allows an additional access point. Tags allow for "changes as language changes". One unique implementation of this was providing students of a method of finding all items from a specific professor.

LITA National Forum 2007 -- Preparing

I'm at the conference this weekend and preparing for our presentation on Plinkit Sat afternoon. In the meantime, I've also stumbled upon the opportunity to publicize our upcoming book on Federated Searching. We hope to provide a practical guide to reviewing, selecting, and implementing a federated search tool to librarians of all kinds.

There's a Five Minute Madness session which affords people like me to ramble on about projects they are currently working on. I hope to get the word out that we need participants in our survey to make sure that we are addressing all of the concerns of the field.

If you have time, please fill out our survey AND pass it along to your colleagues. Our publishing deadline is January and every response helps!

Before Web/ Library 2.0

This past June at ALA, I was amazed at the number of sessions geared toward Library 2.0. I attended one aimed at it's use in Technical services, basically as collaboration tools (blogged in a previous post). In my previous job, I could/can see uses for such things as a blog and a wiki, however, management was a little wary as nothing like that had been done or considered before. Since there was no share drive or intranet, the more I learn the more I believe these tools could have been used for not only meeting the needs of users, but also for internal collaboration (as was done by the presenters of said ALA session).

In my current place of work, we have share drives, which weren't at previous place of work, making the use of such collaboration tools not as necessary. After all, if a process is in place and working, it shouldn't be changed simply to use a new technology. Unless, that technology could improve the process and/or collaboration. I admit the drive could be better organized, but it's still there and accessible by everyone. However, a share drive doesn't quite encourage collaboration the way a wiki could/would.

The more I think about it though, the more I realize I was using collaborative tools in my previous life and pre web point anything. In my previous life, I held several positions with a software company. One was in their Customer Care department, which when created involved more than working with a phone script. We had to know several different products, their supported platforms, 3rd party products that worked with the software, billing/invoicing processes and procedures, what was coming in future releases, and a host of other things. If we didn't know the answer, we had to know where to go for that answer.

The company used Lotus Notes, which also provided a way to create databases. My main page contained links to the databases I used most frequently. Each product line and almost every department had a database we could go to to find the information we needed or to at least find a contact person. As our group grew, we realized the need for a database for our issues/resolutions and created it - one that could be searched by the entire company and edited by everyone in our group. I should also add that our "team" was spread from coast to coast. We had people in MD, IL, MI, Canada, MA, PA, TX, and CA. The database allowed for collaboration and everyone contributed. Today it would probably be created using a wiki. We dealt with the majority of our customers via phone or e-mail.

Because we were so scattered, we used chat for quick communications. That was actually my first introduction to web chat - I used it for work first and then expanded it to personal friends. So, coming to the library profession and seeing the "innovations" of e-mail and chat reference are really not so new to me - I was doing that six years ago.

I look at all the "innovations" and uses of technology in libraries today and realize that there have always been tools for collaboration. What appears to be innovative probably has been done before -- what's old is new.

ALA... a few good sessions

Well, I'm a little behind on my posts for ALA, but I've been trying to catch up after conference and then the 4th of July. While I'm all into the Web 2.0 applications, I don't really have the opportunity to do much of anything with it. So, while a lot of folks had a lot to choose from, honestly, I struggled to find a couple of sessions that apply to what I do... electronic resources and collection development, heavy on the collection development.

I did find two really good sessions, though. The first session I attended was "We have the data, now what? Putting your collection assessment to work." It was a panel disscussion sponsored by RUSA. Since I had just finished evaluating the effectiveness of our collection development efforts for the previous fiscal year, I was interested to see what this session would offer up. The first speaker was Shirley Baker, Director of Washington University (St. Louis) Library. The really interesting thing I took from her session was the use of what is being digitized by the Google Nine (it was Five when she did it) to help weed your collection, either for permanent removal or removal to off-site storage. Like everyone else, I keep hearing about who's joined the Google digitization effort, but here's a library actually putting that product to their use. These are public domain titles prior to 1923. With the increase in copyright to 75 years, it will be harder and harder to do this, but pre-1923 can be a pretty big chunk for a lot of libraries. Naturally, they used WorldCat Collection Analysis for their comparisons. Now, I don't really care for WCCA (see previous postings), but his was a pretty cool use of a pre-defined group in WCCA.

The second presenter was Karen Neurohr, Assessment Librarian at Oklahoma State University. She did a measurement space study, then actively used what was available electronically in JSTOR to determine what journals could be moved off-site. The third presenter was Betty Gailbraith of Washington State University. They are using journal statistics to make collection development decisions. It sounds basic, but they are incorporating using statistics not generally used - titles cited by faculty and titles that faculty publish in, how did faculty use the title (online or in the library), and is it a core title. Having something in numerical format also helps faculty understand decisions.

Now, in retrospect, the second and third presenters didn't really come up with anything new, but in my previous position, it wasn't something I thought of when determining a game plan for our weeding project. Admittedly, I was working with monographs, but now I wonder what criteria was being used for journals. We moved a set of journals off-site thinking they would never be used only to find out that the Theatre Arts department used the ads in back issues to help with costumes. We wound up bring them back to the library.

The second session I attended was Technical Services 2.0 (guess I did get a 2.0 session in). It was presented by the ALCTS Technology Committee and was also a panel presentation. Matt Barnes pretty much gave an general overview of Web 2.0. Beth P. Camden spoke about Penn Taggs, which is a social bookmarking system for University of Pennsylvania library resources. In addition to uses for the students, library staff have used it to train new staff members. I'm completely fascinated by the use of social bookmarking in the academic setting, so I particularly enjoyed seeing a model in action. Elizabeth Winters spoke about Georgia Tech's use of Web 2.0 technology within the department. They use Wikis's for sharing processes and managing serials, Google applications (spreadsheets) for sharing documents, and instant messaging (IM) for internal communication. In my previous job, we had no share drive. After hearing about their use of Google apps, I had a "duh" moment and wondered why I didn't think about it. I'm a total believer that IM is not only good for reference but for internal communication as well - cut down on some of those e-mails. I first learned to use IM not for personal reason, but in a job setting. I worked for a software company doing in-depth customer support as part of a larger team. None of us where in the same office; in fact we ranged from East to West Coast, literally. We used IM to communicate with other members of the team; we all had "specializations" and it was generally more efficient to pop off a quick IM than to talk on the phone. Later the company purchased an IM system and went company wide with it.

All in all, I enjoyed both sessions and came away with something new.

I was a little disappointed in the vendor fair. It didn't seem to be as alive as it was in New Orleans. Some of the vendors evened seemed like they would rather have been somewhere else. Having said that, I did speak with those I wanted to and got to do a little exploring.