My day in libraryland

This is part of the Library Day in the Life Project.

Before I got into work, I dropped off my son (Mr. 9) at his elementary school. Normally, I would read my email as soon as I get into work about 9:00am, but not today. When I was at the
Physical Society Publishers Oversight Committee meeting last week, the hard drive of my laptop crashed. When I got into work today, I decided to wait a little while to use a different PC to get to my email.

Our reference office is getting renovated, so we needed to clear out everything so that new cubicles with doors can be installed. Because I will not be at work for most of this week, I needed to finish the bulk of the move today. For over an hour, I moved many, many boxes, files, folders, books and other material to our reference conference room. At about 10:15, I talked to some people in our systems office to deliver the dead laptop, and to see if they had any advice. I dropped off two books that I needed to return to the circulation desk. I read most of The Case for Books by Darnton, but I didn't get a chance to read this one. From 10:30-11:00am, I hopped on a computer to read my email.

The Director of the DU LIS Program asked me to teach the Science and Technology Reference class (LIS4375) during the Spring Quarter on Tuesday nights instead of during the Summer Quarter. I had to pass that by my better half, and we approved of the change. I should be able to get more students that way. I was also told by a different colleague that I needed to have an updated CV on file. I told her that I could get it done by early February. I am preparing to go to the SLA Leadership Summit on Wednesday morning, so I just don't have time at the moment to update my CV. That will simply have to wait a little bit.

While I was reading my email, another colleague told me that the Dean and Director of the Libraries (my boss, Nancy Allen), wanted to get an update of the Multimodal pilot project. She recommended that a group of the reference librarians meet with the Writing Instructors (the ones who are teaching the multimodal classes) to make sure that our services are working out ok for their students. Eventually, one of the Writing Center staff said that we should wait to meet at the end of the quarter (Mid-March).

I also chair the Scholarly Communications and Open Access (SCOA) task force. We have a meeting tomorrow to try to finish up a draft of a PowerPoint presentation for the Dean and Director, since she will be speaking to the Faculty Senate about scholarly communication issues in February. I let the task force know that the meeting location needed to be changed.

From 11:00am till 1:00pm, I was scheduled in the "Research Help Center". Last year, we split the Reference desk in half. The front "Research Help" desk is staffed by graduate students, and they handle the quick questions. If someone has a more difficult question, the person is referred to the consultation room where the reference librarians can spend more time help the student with their research one-on-one. Today, I had a tough question on a quote concerning Shakespeare. After about 30 minutes of digging, we found that the quote was in this book, page 258.

My shift was done at 1:00pm, but a graduate student (Hi Natalie) asked me to post something to the RMSLA discussion list concerning a resume & interview workshop. So, I stayed on the computer to post that message. From about 1:20-1:40, I had lunch.

I had a Website Redesign Task Force meeting from 2:00-3:30pm. We are preparing for the external launch of the beta version of the new library website (and some new blogs) on February the 9th. After that meeting was done, I registered Mr. 9 for PASS Camp for a week in August.

I also worked on some other email. I found out that my hard drive might be dead dead. (I wonder when the last time I did a full backup was?...) Had some more back-n-forths concerning the multimodal pilot project. I let the SCOA task force know that a chapter from The Case for Books book is online. The chapter on "Open Access" was reprinted from The Crimson. Dr. Darnton presented his thoughts to the faculty at Harvard, and I would like the DU Faculty Senate to hear something along the same lines when Nancy Allen speaks to them in February.

I printed out some information about the SLA Leadership Summit, and I made sure that I had good seats in the plane to and from St. Louis. I thought a little more about how I might talk about the success of the STELLA Unconference to some of the SLA members at the Summit.

At the end of the day, I turned on my FriendFeed channel to see what was being discussed by librarians in and around the LSW group. Mary Carmen really brightened the end of a really long day for me.

Then I drove home.

Library Day in the Life Project

Yup, I signed up for it. Now, I just have to remember to record some/most/all of my day on January 25th. That should be a pretty typical workday for me. What the heck am I talking about? Bobbi Newman is the inspiration...

Draft Intro speech for STELLA

Hi Everyone,

[Should I yell STELLLLLLLLAAAAAAAA?] I don't know.

First, I would like to thank everyone who is here. We have some people who traveled a long distance to get to this unconference. There are people from Maine, NYC, California, Canada, Florida, etc. I would also like to really thank Jill and Jeffra for being co-organizers.

Thanks to the financial sponsors.

As you know, there are a lot of science and engineering librarian groups, but most of them are tied to larger organizations, such as PAM, ST, the Engineering Division (and others) within SLA. Then there is STS within ACRL within ALA. There is the Engineering Libraries Division (ELD) within ASEE. Then there is MLA, and ASIS&T, and some others. There is no single place for science and engineering librarians to hangout. With social software and loose networks of people (such as the LSW here, here and here), librarians can organize without the organization. [Mention Clay Shirky and his book here.]

Don't get me wrong, I really like the SLA (I am the Chair-Elect of the ST Division) and the other organizations with their diverse membership, but I also wish there was an organization that just had science and engineering librarians. Maybe this could be it?

Who has attended an unconference before? Even if you have, this one might be different than the others, and that is ok. Here is some background material. The basic idea was documented (in this PDF) by Kathryn Greenhill and Constance Wiebrands in Australia.

"Unconferences are gatherings of people united by a passion, where the content and structure of the day is driven by the participants. An unconference is often facilitated using the Open Spaces Technology model. This uses the four flow principles:
• Whoever comes are the right people
• Whatever happens is the only thing that could have
• Whenever it starts is the right time
• When it's over, it's over"

Let me repeat. If we end up having 40 or 60 people attending instead of 75 or 80, that is OK. If a session runs late or finishes early, that is OK. If a digital projector explodes, and the Internet is fluky, and you need to improvise in a session, that is OK.

Note: Remember the Law of Two Feet: if you’re in a session that you’re not interested in, feel free to leave and join another session in progress. This is your unconference -- not DU's, not Joe's, Jill's, Jeffra's or Bob's -- make it what you want.

Second, I would like to thank some people who were not able to come. These are the people who gave me the inspirational spark. They are Meredith Farkas [see her column in American Libraries and the stuff on her blog (This post was the bomb for me)], Steve Lawson, Laura Crossett, Joshua Neff, and many others in the LSW. See this presentation for more info. Explain more about what the Library Society of the World is and their policies.

In addition to Here Comes Everybody, Some other good books are from Tara Hunt who wrote The whuffie factor: using the power of social networks to build your business, and Don Tapscott (and Anthony D. Williams) with Wikinomics: how mass collaboration changes everything and Grown up digital: how the net generation is changing your world.

Third. What's up with the name STELLA? Well, a lot of science librarians know the acronym STEM, and if I wanted to start a new library organization, I didn't want the acronym starting with STEML... But, if I dropped the M, then we would have STEL. Hummmmm, how about STELLA, but then what should the second L and the A be? As I was trying to sleep one night in December of 2008, I thought -- "Library Leaders in Action" -- sure, that will make a great Acronym!

Thanks to Stella Ota for letting us to use her first name.

Mini book review -- Love is the Killer App

I just finished reading most of Love is the Killer App. I thought about writing a good long review of the book, but then I figured, there are already 144+ reviews out there on it, why bother. The book came out in 2002, and it seems like it was way ahead of its time. This was written before social networking services came into vogue, and he (the author, Tim Sanders) advocated radical sharing of business ideas and thoughts -- gasp, even with competitors.

I liked his idea of jotting many notes about a book within the book. I don't know if I will do that, but I might jot more notes down in different spots to jog my memory of the gist of the books I read. It seemed strange that he doesn't like magazines or newspaper articles on business topics. Perhaps he is just reading the wrong magazines, journals and newspapers... He likes to hand out lots of hardback books to colleagues as gifts. But, I would guess that more and more people today would prefer gift certificates so they can get an ebook version. It is the thought and the love that counts.

As a librarian, I think I could always share my love and compassion with my coworkers and my patrons a little bit more. Maybe I will make that an unofficial new years resolution.

How I found librarianship

This post is part of the Library Routes Project.

I was never one much for reading books and stuff when I was a kid. My mom and sister were into science fiction. I tried reading some of their sci-fi books (Andre Norton, Lord of the Rings, etc.), but I found the stories to be contrived. When I had to do book reports for school, I found historical and sports-based books more to my liking.

In college, I had to get a job for my work-study so I figured the main library would be a good place to work. In my freshman year, I worked at the circulation desk for $3.50/hour processing and checking out books and reserve materials. I worked there about 8-10 hours/week. (In the next year, I got a raise to $3.55/hour!) I ended up working at the main library for four years during my undergraduate education. We also had a science library with a science librarian, but I never asked her how she came to work in the science library. I wish I would have.

For some strange reason, I remember seeing a flyer (late 1980's) about a library-based workshop at Mankato State University. At the time -- I thought to myself -- "Where the heck is Mankato State University?" and "Huh, I guess people who work as professionals in libraries go to seminars like this."

Anyway, I forgot all about that. I finished my undergraduate degree in 1989 with a BS in Physics. I got a job in optical manufacturing, moved out to the east coast to live with my girlfriend/now-wife, found a job in sales and then got married. I was not all that happy in my clerkish sales position. I searched my soul for a professional position, and I remembered that I liked working in libraries. I also liked programming and computers, and I thought maybe I could use my interests in a library position. In 1992/93, the Internet was starting to get some press, and I thought it would be a good time to jump onto the Internet bandwagon.

In 1993, I started course work at the University of Maryland, College Park. At first, I was thinking I would be a systems librarian. However, I remember reading an article about special librarianship in the sciences, and that just seemed perfect for me. (If only I could remember the article title or source.) I seem to remember that Liz Bryson from CFHT and Ellen Bouton from NRAO were quoted. Thus, I changed my focus from systems to public services pretty quickly. I graduated in 1995 and the rest is history.

What is the future of the book? LRS wants to know your opinion

This survey just came out from the Library Research Service.

Recently, news outlets and blogs have been busy deriding and celebrating the recent ascension of e-readers. The growing popularity of this new format has come with murmurs about the death of paper books and some even surmise that as technology advances libraries will cease to exist!

Taking notice of the chatter, Library Research Service has decided to survey librarians on the matter. This new 60-Second Survey asks your opinions on e-readers and how you think they will transform reading.

• Will e-readers be the demise of the paper book?
• What will libraries circulate?
• What is the future of the book?

Please let them know...

Keeping up with the discussion of #slaname

The vote is finally in -- 61% are in favor of keeping the name SLA. Now, there is lots of discussion concerning the process, the name, HQ, etc. Some of it is at:

• * http://tweetgrid.com/search?q=#slaname (This auto-refreshes when a new tweet comes in with the hashtag. Better than searching twitter.)
• * SLA Blog "SLA Name Will Stay: Alignment of Association to Continue"

Brick and Click Symposium Stuff

Last week, I went to the Brick and Click Symposium. Many months ago, they accepted a paper of mine (Comparing Bananas with Grapes: Ebook Use Data from a Bunch of Vendors), and I traveled there to give a presentation on the topic.

Enough about me. I learned a heck of a lot, and I tweeted a bunch of the sessions. Below are the major things I learned about (or had good demonstrations of) at the symposium.

1. Conduit might be a good service to create a library toolbar, in addition to our LibX installation.
2. Use Jing to create short screencast videos (with audio) to explain how to search particular databases.
3. "Informing Innovation: Tracking Student Interest in Emerging Library Technologies at Ohio University" by Char Booth.
4. One can use a LibGuide page as the base for a conference presentation, such as this.
5. Put in short poll quizes in LibGuides in order to get feedback from the students in real time.
6. View your bit.ly statistics to see who is clicking on the library twitter links or from your blog.
7. Promote your special collections. Put in external or reference links in wikipedia for the relevant encyclopedia entries.
8. If you have any YouTube videos, put them in a scroller on the front of the website.
9. SubjectsPlus could be used as an alternative to LibGuides.
10. A Virtual Librarian in Any Class (Co-presented by Elizabeth Fox and Laura Wight) had links to a bunch of great resources, such as the Stuck in the Social Web Pocket Reference guide.
11. Here is a plug for some of my LSW friends -- @webgoddess, @pigsinspace, @joshuamneff, @mstabbycat, and @roycekitts, @hbraum, @cclibrarian, and @gohomekiki. See the pics here, here and here.

Whole Earth Discipline mini quasi-review

I went to a book signing last week -- Tuesday, October the 20th to be exact. Stewart Brand was in town pushing his new book, Whole Earth Discipline: An Ecopragmatist Manifesto at the Tattered Cover. The presentation was associated with the Rocky Mountain Land Series. (See also their library.) I last saw Stewart Brand speak at the 2003 SLA conference in NYC.

Anyway, the presentation was really good. I learned about some new types of small nuclear reactors that are being developed. The best part of the talk for me was his discussion of the recommended reading list. I am glad that my academic library already has most of these titles, and I plan to buy the two books we don't already have.

SLA Name Change: First Impressions

I am not quite so keen on the proposed name change for SLA. The leadership announced about a week ago that they would like to change the name of the organization to the Association for Strategic Knowledge Professionals. This is all part of a strategic "alignment project". They say "this alignment project will not only help refine our current positioning in the marketplace, but provide a framework for discussing the inherent value in the profession and the Association in a clear, compelling and cohesive voice."

Some other relevant sites are the portal, research from Fleishman Hillard (ppt) and the SLA Name Change Info Center and the name change discussion forums. Many people have left comments on this post.

One of my first thoughts was that while the individual words strategic, knowledge and professional are all well and good, I was not sure if I liked the combination. It could be like throwing filet mignon, gourmet chocolate ice cream, and a nice dijon mustard into a blender. Yes, they are wonderful ingredients, but I am not so sure about the combination. Over the last week, the three word combination is starting to grow on me, a little bit.

However, I was a little perturbed when Stephen Abram wrote: "For those who don't read, discuss and absorb its insights and implications, then they're choosing to remain uninformed and unarmed. They're open to people lying to them that somehow this is against the librarian job title - which is so untrue and silly but apparently some people are easily lead. They're not real information professionals in my view since they're not informed and they're relying on their gut and experience instead of the fuller picture."

To say that librarians (or information professionals or knowledge professionals) who read, discuss and absorb the insights, and STILL disagree with the proposal are not "real information professionals" is ludicrious. That attitude will not win over many votes.

One of the aims of the proposed name change is to make it clearer to the decision makers in our organizations what the association does. I am not sure that the name change makes it any clearer.

The vote is NOT on the acronym, ASKPro. However, SLA leadership and the companies that helped in their research did consider the acronym when proposing the new name. Gloria Zamora noted that "we also eliminated names that did not have good acronyms or shortened versions associated with them." I do not like the acronym all that much for a variety of reasons, but since we are not voting on it, I won't go into any more detail.

I am also not pleased with the fact that only 25% of the survey population were librarians or information professionals. The rest were marketers, C-level execs, HR people, etc. Many of the librarians in SLA are academic librarians. I would guess that the majority of the STM librarians in SLA are academic. Where are the academic leader responders to the survey? They were not represented. As an STM academic librarian, why do I care what a C-level executive thinks of the word "library" or "strategy" or "knowledge" or whatever? Yes, I know that the majority of the members of SLA work in corporate libraries, but it seems like the survey ignored the academic, government and non-profit sectors. [10/20/09 changes. Two of those groups were represented in the naming survey, see slide 8 of the "PowerPoint summary of that research". More discussion is here. However, it is not clear if the survey was of academic and government librarians, or academic and government administrators, or a mix of the two. I also don't like the sentence on slide 9 -- "They are accountable for ensuring businesses have the right information to grow, succeed and benefit the bottom line." I don't work in a "business"; I work in a non-profit educational institution. A LOT of SLA librarians don't work for "businesses". This assumption is just plain wrong. All this talk about the bottom line, competetive advantage, and "having access to the right information for the best business decisions" is not relevant to me.]

Michael Fosmire brought up the point that the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) and the IEEE have no (or little) problems with their acronyms. As long as we have innovative people in the association that can attract more innovative people, then why bother with the name change? Will changing the name of the association really attract more innovative thinkers to become members?

Hilary Davis of NC State (and chair-elect of the ST Division) asked a small sample of people about the proposed name, and 9 out of 10 preferred the "Association for Strategic Knowledge Professionals". However, one of her respondents said it "sounds more cerebral and formal, but I doubt anyone outside the librarian world would realize it had anything to do with libraries or librarians." Thus, does changing the name make it any clearer what we do as information or knowledge professionals?

Right now, I would vote for Information Professionals International if I could, but that train left the station years ago. I am leaning against the Association for Strategic Knowledge Professionals. Who says they are a "strategic knowledge professional"? When I talk to strangers when they ask what I do, I say either librarian or an academic librarian, and they have a sense of what I do.

Yes, I know that the association wants to reach out and attract more members, particularly IT and other information workers, but is this the best way? If it passes, I will deal with it. I will continue to be active in an organization that houses innovative thinkers and knowledge workers. And librarians. And we can also be strategic. But the full phrase -- "strategic knowledge professionals" is a mouthful. Maybe I will get used to it if it passes.