:32 Librarian

HTH?

2007-06-11T20:21:00.000-05:00

How the heck did this thing end up lavender??? What was I thinking?

Tinkering with the Template

2007-03-24T16:40:00.000-05:00

My new template looks a little sorry at the moment. I have hopes of getting back in to tinker with it sometime soon. My CSS skillz are in pretty bad shape.

Five Non-Librarian Blogs I Read

2007-03-24T15:21:00.000-05:00

I never get "meme-tagged," but I'm going to just camp on to this one because I think a) it's interesting and b) it's easy.

So, here are five non-librarian blogs I read:

1. 43 Folders : I don't care if Merlin Mann is a Mac-aholic, I love his blog and all its accoutrements. This is honestly the only podcast I always listen to. 43F introduced me to GTD productivity and to the idea of getting over my personal suck, of which I have several, unfortunately.

2. The Chief Happiness Officer : reminds me that how work gets done is as important as if it gets done.

3. Slow Leadership : I'm the turtle, reinventing reference is the mountain. It's a slow, slow process.

4. Engadget : look at all the shiny things!

5. I Will Teach You To Be Rich : I have several personal finance sites that I read, but Ramit Sethi--of PBWiki fame--usually has the best links. A close tie is Get Rich Slowly. I don't have any intention of being either an entrepreneur or rich, but I'm also not planning on being elbow-deep in debt for the rest of my life. These two bloggers seem to have the right idea.

So, the blogs I read also seem to be a little peek into my mind: be productive, be the best manager I can be, keep up with the toys, and don't be poor. I will admit: while I clean out my library-related posts about once a week, I go through my "fun" blogs almost every day. I live and breathe library work, but I'm a human being, and keeping in touch with my personal needs helps keep me balanced.

All library and no fun make Whitney a dull girl.

The Grump Who Stole Libraries

2006-12-26T15:55:00.000-06:00

Go now and read "The Grump Who Stole Libraries," by Andrew Pace.

Of course, now that I'm firmly enrooted in reference, I assumed that when the Grin...I mean, the Grump...took away the computers, the librarians would actually look things up in books, and I was disappointed to realize that wasn't exactly the point. I then realized that Pace is talking about the OPAC, in which case it is funny just as is.

I'm working on Toastmaster's speech #2, and this one is going to be about the future of reference. I'm excited, and hope to get to work on it as soon as I'm done with the January schedule. Also, for anyone who was there at speech #1, I promise not to cry at the end of this one.

If you had asked me a year ago, is it in your career plans to be a reference department manager, I would have laughed. I DID laugh when it was suggested to me. Reference is DEAD, man! But here I am, and it's good--even when I've got five weeks of schedule staring me in the face.

Reference services, creatively imagined, is the place where people and information meet. It can happen in a kaleidescope of ways, in physical and cyber space. It happens over thick reference books or quick, quirky chick lit titles. It happens in person, and it happens on the phone. It happens in ways both serious and fun. Reference is dead! Long live reference!

Time Keeps On Ticking, Ticking, Ticking, Into the Future

2006-11-26T16:39:00.000-06:00

November 14 is a bit past, but I am just now getting around to updating the name of the blog. Thirty-two is by no means old, but I can definitely tell that I am moving into a different demographic.

What Does Web 2.0 Taste Like?

2006-11-13T13:45:00.000-06:00

So, I'm reconsidering the whole likelihood-of-first-heart-attack-before-age-50 thing, and thinking that I've gotta start eating healthy. Really. Soon. Via a wandering path, I discovered The Daily Plate, which is a pretty robustly featured online food diary.

However, I think it's both appealling and appalling that you can share your food lists and your food diary with others. Do I really want to hook up with someone who has also eaten a Wendy's Mandarin Chicken Salad today? Would we be some kind of soul mates or just conincidental strangers? Maybe there is some kind of support group development there, but I...just...don't...know.

One thing that I do think we could do more of at my library is to serve as a focal point for actual people making actual, physical connections. Why not have a long-term weight loss program going on here? Why not OA meetings, AA meetings, business plan development groups, and on, and on? I know that we are almost maxed out on programming, but one thing that Web 2.0 tools do is enable a sustained interaction as well as one-time-hookups. Our programs are one-time-hookups in many ways, when we could be working to build relationships.

Back in the Blog of Things?

2006-09-29T11:38:00.000-05:00

I haven't posted in what seems like forever, but I have been adding comments to other people's blogs; it finally occurred to me to just use the TrackBack feature, post my comments here, and "light two candles with one match."

So, here's the first comment-cum-post, on TScott's post referencing a Krafty post about change management.

I have gotten the chance recently to both encounter the kind of barriers TScott, Krafty (and Michael Stephens before them) describe, and to be perceived as the barrier myself. The simple fact is that everyone has a logical reason for their behavior. Now, that reason may not be a good reason, but it is on some level important to them.

The key to success in navigating the barriers desribed is to a)uncover the reason behind the barrier and b)address the reason itself insead of the barrier, which is just a symptom. Bashing the barrier will only make your head hurt.

Now of course, my reasons for being a barrier are all good, and noble, and have nothing at all to do with my ego or other personal issues. Ha ha. But, for example, my staff is having some serious issues with a new scheduling system I've created. Unfortunately, their repeatedly saying, "We don't like this" doesn't provide me any incentive to change it. My job isn't to make my staff happy; my job is to successfully create a structure that allows flexibility for change and adaptation. I've told them, if you can provide alternatives that still meet this underlying need (successfully create a structure that allows flexibility for change and adaptation), then I'm all ears. Otherwise, I'll continue to be an annoying "barrier" saying, "This is the way it's going to be."

Where's the barrier in your life? Is this person or group acting as a barrier "on purpose," or because they "don't get it"? Or, is there something else going on there? Look for the "something else," and see if you barrier doesn't become a little more manageable.

My Big News

2006-05-08T12:54:00.000-05:00

Well, there have been no posts recently because I've been unable to think of anything other than my big news: I was interviewing for and have been offered the Information Services Manager position at the Johnson County Public Library. I am, as one of our delightful assistant librarians puts it, "out of my body with excitement." My last day here will be June 2, which seems a long, long ways off. I'm sure it will come soon enough.

"Every new beginning comes from some other beginning's end, yeah."
(Closing Time, by Semisonic, a little blast from the late 90's, boy, I love that song.)

Today's Horoscope

2006-04-07T08:02:00.000-05:00

This one is for me, but it could be for you, too--

The term 'creative type' doesn't even begin to do you justice, you know. You are more of an 'incredibly productive super generative creative type.' You take every bit of raw material the world throws at you -- paints, paper, digital tools, happiness, pastels, sadness, tragedy, comedy, mud, clay, rock -- and you make it sing. This is a real gift -- don't forget to be grateful for it.

What a beautiful thought. Go forth and make your raw material SING!

It's Raining Thesauri, Hallelujah!

2006-03-24T10:12:00.000-06:00

(Today's title with apologies to The Weather Girls. Also, try not to think about thousands of copies of the LCSH falling from the sky.)

All of a sudden, I am dealing with not one, not two, but three major classification/indexing/thesaurus questions.

The first is a revival of a project that has been dead for almost a year, as the SOM is finally ready to start indexing their materials for the new curriculum. I'm putting the final polish on what I suppose you could consider a baby thesaurus based on the USMLE subcategories. The next step is getting enough stuff actually indexed to determine if it works or not.

The second is a project with the hospital to write a thesaurus to form the backend of their content management system for their website. I'm having quite the time wrapping my mind around this, but I am learning a LOT. This project absolutely feel out of the sky and into my lap, and I am so thankful. Oh, yes, Lord, let me read ANSI/NISO standards on thesaurus development. That's the KIND OF NERD I AM. I'm also enthused about this because I'm hoping to port it out to another project that needs a consumer health information thesaurus (shh!).

The third item is in the same vein although of a different type, as I am perplexed about the proposed changes to MEDLINE subheadings. On first blush, I would have to say I agree that 83 subheadings is too many. However, I am tending to agree with real reference librarians like Cindy Schmidt that the choices made for removal are not necessarily obvious or useful.

What I want to see, and what I have requested from NLM, is data supporting their proposal. I'm sure they've looked at the same questions I've been looking at: how much is enough? What kind of search is happening, and how can we best facilitate that? I'm hoping to get some good, solid answers to these questions, as I certainly hope the decision process was not, well, we need to get rid of some subheadings and these seem the most likely candidates. Some hard data will go a long way towards informing my decision.

So, it really is raining thesauri, and my nerdy, nerdy soul is all set to get soaking wet!

The Library of Babel

2006-03-21T14:04:00.000-06:00

I'm awash in thoughts of indexing, and searching, and finding today. In a very-random-Vannevar-Bush-kind-of-way I came across a reference to The Library of Babel, and in a very Google-uber-alles-kind-of-way I followed the first link to the first reference to discover the tale.

I have a sneaking suspicion that in an alternate universe, I teach cataloging. I use this story to illustrate a number of my points about the organization of information. The students give me bad reviews because I don't talk enough about authority control.

"We also know of another superstition of that time: that of the Man of the Book. On some shelf in some hexagon (men reasoned) there must exist a book which is the formula and perfect compendium of all the rest: some librarian has gone through it and he is analogous to a god."

Learning a New Language

2006-03-14T10:18:00.000-06:00

I've always had an interest in programming. When I was with the RML, I started learning PHP as part of my job duties and found it fascinating, but I didn't get very far as it required time and quiet--both practically nonexistant when working with the RML.

However, I'm thinking again about the benefits of knowing a language, probably because I really am tipping over into insanity. I personally would like to do some of my own mucking in our DSpace instance, although this will be mostly handled by our Internet Development department, so Java seems a good answer. XML and XSL are everywhere these days, so that seems to be a good possibility, too. PHP and MySQL seem so darn handy, and they pretty much run the web these days, so that's always a good option.

The key to learning a language is then regularly using it so you don't forget it. Which would I be most likely to use? Probably XML because it's an area of lack in our otherwise fantastic Internet Development department. I got a great suggestion for Visual Basic as well, and that seems like a great idea for a manager but maybe less useful for a repo rat.

Part of me also says, you know, this really isn't necessary and I could focus on more concrete things. Is this a "moneymaker"? Or a distraction from things I don't want to do?

My Pirate Name

2006-03-13T13:37:00.000-06:00

Thanks to InfoCommuner for this bit of humor. Arr, call me Annie, matey.

My pirate name is:

Captain Anne Vane

Even though there's no legal rank on a pirate ship, everyone recognizes you're the one in charge. You tend to blend into the background occaisionally, but that's okay, because it's much easier to sneak up on people and disembowel them that way. Arr!

Get your own pirate name from fidius.org.

T Scott "Bridges the Gap"

2006-03-08T14:16:00.000-06:00

T Scott has an thoughtful post about an upcoming talk he will be giving to the good people of Elsevier.

I applaud the effort, and as T Scott points out, I appreciate the efforts of Elsevier to recognize that librarians are one of their core market groups. It makes sense for them to play nice with us.

However, as I am REPEATEDLY told, I am young, and headstrong, and naive (gentle reader, you may or may not have caught these threads in my blogging, ha ha).

I believe, I think, I feel in my 31-year-old-anything-is-possible bones that the time of publishers as we know them is passing, just like I believe, I think, and I feel that the time of libraries as we know them is passing. Our fates are intertwined (like Gollum and the Ring, but that may not be a positive metaphor).

Information wants to be free. Institutional repositories, run by librarians, can help make this happen. NIH can make this happen. The whole Open Access movement can make this happen.

I am not saying that it will happen tomorrow, primarily because many of the researchers and most of the librarians of today are Baby Boomers. They grew up and made their places in the world based on the old model. Today's smart PhD students want to get into PLoS or PLoM, and they want their articles in DSpace so they're findable in Google Scholar. Flexible librarians are making this possible.

At some point, the entire process will reach critical mass and the world as we know it will be gone.

Now, as we walk away from high journal prices, we also to some extent walk away from the peer review structure, the permanent record of research, and in many cases, the concept of "authority" as we know it. This is scary, and problematic, but the fact is that peer review is flawed in a variety of ways and authority can be conferred through other means.

To come back to T Scott: I wish him well. I'm sure he'll speak fairly and eloquently about the issues that face publishers and librarians alike. In my dream world, Scott speaks and the Elsevier folk look at each other and say, wow, we can do so much more together than we can apart. A new day dawns where we all work together to face the new reality, and we usher it in on golden wings instead of fighting it--and each other--all the way.

Reading the Headlines: Insights from 20 Minutes of Blog Skimming

2006-03-03T12:49:00.000-06:00

I've streamlined my daily activities to some extent and now only actually READ a few blogs each day (a few being less than 10, depending on who has posted). That means when I have a slow time on the desk or a half hour set aside for "professional reading," I'm essentially skimming a couple hundred headlines and summaries, primarily from library science and technology blogs.

Today, this is what I see (I'm not saying any of this is deep or new, just that it literally JUMPS off of the screen at you after a bit):

The digitally-induced identity crisis for libraries and librarians is deepening. Best quote (lost the source, sorry): "The librarian's new role is to help people build their own libraries." I absolutely love this idea.
I perceive a growing divide between the blogging librarians and what I consider "the rest of the profession." Among bloggers, knowing a programming or scripting language is like music catalogers knowing at least one foreign language, but to expect or even suggest that this should be a standard for librarianship is a pretty big leap. How's your Italian? How's your PHP coding? Can you do the funny voices for storytime? Can you do all three? No? What kind of librarian are you???
Rules are always an issue. Schools won't let kids access MySpace accounts. DRM makes videos useless. Censorship continues. Check-out times are too short. The need to focus on the service and forget about unnecessary restrictions popped out again and again.

So, that's the zeitgeist according to Whitney. Distilled down even further, it's obvious that these aren't new ideas at all:

First item above: save the time of the reader.
Second item above: respect diversity.
Third item above: service with a smile.

A Lovely Online Memorial

2006-02-28T09:53:00.000-06:00

http://www.erinsunshine.com

This is a lovely memorial site for a woman I don't know; I work with her brother-in-law and although we work well together, we don't work closely. "Erin Sunshine" was just 29 and died suddenly. This online memorial shows how many ripples a life can have; and now there's another ripple, because I've shared it with you.

Erin's family has kept her passing so positive; I think it's an inspiration to face life rather than an acknowledgement of death. They're having a party tomorrow, not a memorial. How lovely.

My dad wants a lot of beer and a New Orleans-style band at his party; I want Pachabel's Canon and lots of chocolate. No matter what, party is the operative word.

My thoughts are with Mike, his wife, and their family.

That Moneymaker-Shakin' Thing Again

2006-02-27T14:35:00.000-06:00

From User Education Resources for Librarians, a pointer to a terrific item on working smarter, not harder.

The juiciest part (as far as I'm concerned):
The 80/20 rule says that 80 percent of your results come from just 20 percent of your efforts. Companies find most profits come from a few customers. And you'll find most of your output comes from a few of your tasks. So what? Well, look at the math. If you double the time you spend on real-output-producing activities and stop doing the others, you'll double your output and spend 60 percent less time! If you started with a ten-hour workday, you'll get twice as much done, working just four hours.

This is not just limited to profit-making ventures; 80 percent of the benefits of what libraries do comes from just 20 percent of our efforts. The trick is figuring out which activities are REALLY those 20 percent and focusing on those.

Consuming Podcasts

2006-02-27T10:12:00.000-06:00

OK, here's what I've learned about listening to podcasts so far: Apparently my podcast attention span is about 15 minutes. During my listening times, I was perfectly pleased with the shorter items but then found that I'd get to a longer broadcast and skip out at about the fifteen minute mark.

I don't have this problem with audiobooks; I have even extended my walk a couple of times so I could hear a little more. However, the podcasts I'm subscribed to are all entertainment, and so I think the issue is that if it's not entertaining, I can always skip to the next item to see if it's better. And frankly, if I run out of content while I'm walking, I can take the darn earphones out and listen to the birds, or the cars, or whatever's around me. That's more entertaining than an hour of blather. It's a pretty high standard for a poor podcast to live up to!

If you listen to podcasts, what's your favorite feed? I'm open to suggestions.

Podcasting, the Diffusion of Innovation, and the Miracle of the Global Web

2006-02-23T11:06:00.000-06:00

I've had my little red MP3 player for some time now, and I can honestly say it has served its purpose well. Audio recording and playback is clean, crisp, and easy, which is the real reason I bought it. And, as I thought when I purchased, the built-in FM receiver really is about all I need as far as music goes. I've also listened to an audiobook, and I even used the device as a portable hard drive one day when I was in a pinch. I can definitely say I've gotten $59 of value out of owning it.

Of course, the obvious thing to do with an MP3 player is to listen to podcasts, and I have yet to do so. My main excuse has been that the learning curve is too steep for the eventual gain. I haven't felt that the time expended to get it working would be worth the value of the content available. There's definitely a lesson here about the balance between innovation adoption and percieved benefit. There has to be a benefit somewhere for most users to make the effort, and I am no different. I may adopt a little earlier than many people, but I'm not one of those folks who gets a new toy just because it's new and it's fun to be first. I'm most definitely second wave.

I have now reached the tipping point with podcasting; I'm in need of more mobile content, and there seems to be some decent stuff out there. So, the hurdle then becomes finding a easy way to work with a non-iPod player. A quick look at the Wikipedia and I found PodCatcher on a Stick, a stunningly neat little piece of software out of Bauhaus-University Weimar in Germany. Germany!

This little miracle completely installs on the MP3 player itself, so I can update my feeds at work or at home. I just plug my player in, open the directory, and start. There's even some configuration I can do to get it to work on its own but I don't think I need to go that far. It just boggles my mind that someone in Germany has so neatly and cleanly solved my little problem; that I can find and access the solution; and that it's free!

I picked out some feeds (from Odeo, home of the 43Folders podcasts), added them to my PCOAS, and poof! Mobile audio! Of course, my paltry 256 MB of space filled up fast, but it should be enough to get me through a few strolls around the block.

OK, and I have to admit--I don't adopt just for the sake of adoption, but I do get a buzz off of this kind of thing. I'll let you know how it works on an ongoing basis.

Scenario Planning: A Postscript

2006-02-15T15:38:00.000-06:00

I've been thinking about my scenarios and how to apply them. Personally, I think it's glaringly obvious that the way to survive all three scenarios is to embrace the concept of transferable skills. Even in the worst case scenario, those with "transferable skills" survive (and I wasn't thinking of my ability to answer a phone with nine lines, although that has come in handy a number of times).

What this makes me think is that I need to learn some programming, and sooner rather than later. There's a great post on Caveat Lector about why librarians don't code and some good reasons why they should. According to this item, I would technically count already as I can "code" MARC 21, but I'm really thinking PHP/MySQL may be the answer.

However, I absolutely do not think that transferable skills have to be technology skills. In the worst case scenario (library closes), maybe a reference manager could move to managing the help desk or hospital information, or into something like alumni relations. In the middle-of-the-road scenario (variation but no major change), this same reference manager could be looking at integrating a BI class into every introductory course taught on his or her campus. In the best case scenario (radical change), a free-thinking reference manager could be finding ways to move reference away from the desk. Roving through the cafeteria? It might work!

Finally, and any of you who read the scenarios probably realize this, but these came out to be more about scenarios for me than for libraries on the whole. To that end, it was a tremendously useful process. I don't know that I will ever be the director (here or anywhere), but I do know that I've pitched a new version of "federated" searching that pretty much exactly mirrors that in the best case scenario, and I think our users are going to LOVE it. It's what they have been asking for since I began asking them what they want. It will be long, hard work, but hopefully I'll be raising a glass to the "new catalog" in 2007 as well.

WDT

Scenario Planning: The End Result

2006-02-09T12:29:00.000-06:00

My last scenario almost wrote itself as the philosophy that underlies my visions became clear:

Worst case: librarians rigidly hold on to old models (pre-Y2K models) and die as more nimble competitors do a better job at doing our job.
Middle case: librarians do much what they have since their inception, holding onto traditional values but molding them to meet patron needs and other new challenges.
Best case: librarians let go of all preconceptions and free themselves to do whatever is necessary to survive and thrive.

Now, just because I've tagged it as "best case," I definitely see some downsides to the best case scenario. Some of the staff in that scenario are uncomfortable with the changes being made, and that would need to be addressed. In addition, there is little attention paid to the archival function of libraries, which remains important even in a digital age. I'm sure there are other things missing as well.

However, I think the underlying idea of freeing ourselves to do what needs to be done would also allow us to answer complex questions like that of preservation. It's almost an open-source or organic model of librarianship; if we're free to think, free to follow our thoughts, and free to grow, I think we'll also be free to succeed.

WDT

Ups and Downs, but Mostly the Same

2006-02-09T12:25:00.000-06:00

(This is the "middle of the road" scenario.)

It had been another long day in another long week, but it was over, and Jim was on his way to dinner with some of his good friends from other libraries.

When he arrived, one of his friends was already there and waiting. They exchanged pleasantries while the waitress took their drink order.

“So, who’s going to be here tonight?” Jim asked.

“Well, Jane’s on reference, Tom’s teaching, and Celia is home with a sick kid, so it just leaves you, me, and Amy,” his friend replied.

As if on cue, Amy walked in. They waved her over and as she joined them she said, “So few? I don’t think there’s been just three of us for years.”

Jim thought back. Yes, they had been getting together like this for almost five years now, and they almost always had five or six people. The quarterly gatherings were important enough to people that they usually cleared their schedules. Somehow, some quality book geek time with other librarians seemed to serve a purpose.

“Jane’s on reference?” asked Jim. “I thought they had turfed off evening hours to the parapros in her building.”

Amy answered. “Oh, yeah, they had, but they have a new director who is really back-to-basics and wants a librarian on the desk whenever they’re open.”

Jim and his other friend goggled. “Wow. Aren’t they open until 1AM? I wouldn’t want that shift. What else are they doing?”

“Well, Tom’s email said he wouldn’t be here tonight because he’s teaching, and he and Jane are in the same library. Jane was telling me it’s one of their new goals for each librarian to teach at least three bibliographic instruction classes this fall. It’s internal outreach. Aren’t you guys doing that?”

Jim’s friend snorted. “We aren’t doing much of anything like that. We moved all of our BI online a couple of years ago. We found that the number of people who access the modules is about equal to the number of people we were teaching in person, and we only have to update them once a year.”

She continued, “We are running a new collection use analysis, though, and it’s showing some really interesting trends. We’re trying to break up a couple of journal packages and just by the really high-impact titles.”

“Hey, that sounds neat,” said Jim. “Are you hoping to save money?”

“Actually, no,” his friend replied. “We’re just trying to streamline our interface and only give people what they really want. Any cost savings would be a bonus.”

“What a concept,” said Amy. “Actually buying less to improve access. Hmm.”

“Actually, that’s not so unreasonable,” said Jim. “When I was in the public library, there was a rule that weeding your collection would improve circulation, and it really worked. I don’t see why it wouldn’t happen the same way online.”

Amy and the other librarian nodded. “Weren’t you in the public library, like, 10 years ago?” Jim’s friend asked. “We were young when you were a public librarian.”

Jim laughed, but then sobered as he thought about it. “Oh, boy, you are right. Time flies. You know, that’s one of the things about this profession that just boggles my mind. It seems like we do the same things over and over; we just tweak this or alter that. The basic concept remains the same.”

Amy nodded. “That’s one of the things that I like about librarianship, though. There’s a sort of consistency and constancy about us. We collect things, we organize things, and we provide access to things. It’s been that way for thousands of years, and it will be that way for thousands of years more.”

“I agree,” Jim’s friend said. “There have been a lot of changes, but the fundamental mission remains the same. Whether you’re my library trimming titles or Jane’s library adding librarians, we’re both trying to improve access. The end result is the same, but the how is just window dressing.”

The waitress arrived to take their order and interrupted the flow of conversation. Jim sat back and thought. He loved these dinners, because he always came out of them so energized and firmer in the belief that librarians are good people doing good work. There were challenges in his library—there were challenges everywhere—but the fundamental mission was always the same. Amy and the other librarian started chatting about the latest bugs in the latest iteration of federated searching, and Jim just listened to them and smiled.

Scenario Planning: The Best Case Scenario

2006-02-08T15:55:00.000-06:00

First, let me say that what you consider the best case scenario and what I consider the best case scenario may be totally different things. However, this is my answer to the assumptions that I posted some time ago. Here are my conclusions and the assumptions they are based upon:

We must meet patrons where they are instead of trying to force them into a place we want them to be.
1. Patron preference for digital over print will continue to increase
5. Patrons are going to be increasingly less willing to come to the library for materials
6. Patrons are going to be increasingly less willing to wait or pay for ILL
7. Patrons are going to be increasingly less willing to learn separate database interfaces
8. As more information becomes available, the idea of “good enough” information will completely overtake the search for “the best” or “all available” information

Budget limitations (always present even if budgets are not flat or decreasing) will force us to abandon traditional programs and to increase reliance on paraprofessionals in order to meet patron demands.
2. More materials will be freely available online although considerable content will still be within paid access “walled gardens”
3. Prices for print and paid-access “walled gardens” will continue to increase at a rate faster than inflation
4. Budgets will increase at a rate less than that of inflation causing ongoing shortfalls each year

I welcome comments and thank those of you who have already commented on the process.

Death and Transfiguration

2006-02-08T12:23:00.000-06:00

“Get me another beer!” said the director to the waitress. The library staff with her laughed as the waitress retuned and poured.

“Speech!” yelled one of the librarians. “Oh, Lord, no,” said another.

“Well, I do think the occasion deserves a few words,” said the director, “and since this is only beer number two, this is probably the time.”

She looked around the table. “I have to tell you; five years ago this was not the vision I had for the library. I saw more librarians, doing more teaching, with instruction being our focus. I knew that traditional services were on their way out—circulation, interlibrary loan, and reference—and I honestly thought that bibliographic instruction was the answer.”

“In fact, we were midway though the original course correction when the wave hit, weren’t we?” she asked.

“Oh, yes,” said one of the librarians who had been through it. “We staffed the reference desk with paraprofessionals in 2004, and we changed interlibrary loan to copyright compliance around then, too.”

The director nodded. “Then, we spent a lot of 2005 and almost all of 2006 trying to integrate with the teaching mission. And when we were done, we weren’t much further along than we had been. We were busier,” she continued, “and that was good—better than the downward slide we had seen before we got ourselves out there. But it was certainly a struggle.”

“What made the difference?” asked one of the several assistant librarians sitting at the table. “What was the change?”

The director took a swig of her beer. “It was a lot of things, but frankly, I can pinpoint the day the change happened, at least for me. I was coming back from yet another meeting where I was there ‘in hopes’ of something coming up that we could work on, when I realized that I could do great things for the library if I could get out of being a librarian.”

“She means, ‘If I could move into management,’” an old friend on the staff said. The group laughed.

“That’s right; I wasn’t the director at the time. But that wasn’t the issue,” the director said.

“And you are a librarian,” said the AL. You’re one of the biggest library geeks I know!”

The director laughed. “In 2006, being a librarian meant working with faculty, working with the schools, meeting with students. We were expending a tremendous amount of energy and reaching only a fraction of our patrons. On the way back from that meeting, I realized, if I could get out of being a librarian, I could get into projects that had major impact.”

“Like the new catalog,” one of the staff threw in. “That went live in mid-2007.”

“That’s right,” agreed the director. “One of the first things I did after my epiphany was suggest that we devote as much money and staff to our electronic presence as we did to our physical facilities. Of course, my old boss laughed, but the idea started to take hold. We abandoned federated searching as a dead end and instead hired a systems librarian who integrated an open source ILS, a DSpace install, and our open source course management system into one big digital library database.”

The programmer chimed in, “And then we got that huge NLM grant to make it work with PubMed! Usage went through the roof! It’s been a huge success.” There were murmurs of agreement, as they were actaully out celebrating their most recent award for the project.

“The annual stakeholder analysis has been a big deal,” said the librarian responsible for assessment. “Every year, we base our planning on that analysis. It’s like we’re in a constant state of change.”

There were some uncomfortable looks around the table. The director just laughed. “Yes, we added and then killed virtual reference; we did a reconfiguration on the ground floor even though we just completed a remodel in 2005; we’ve tried and abandoned a lot of things. Why stick with something just because? If we’re not really serving the patrons, who cares? The annual analysis has also shown that patron satisfaction is increasing every year. We went from about 75% to almost 90% satisfaction rates, and this year’s goal is 93. It’s a sea change.”

The assistant librarian piped up again. “I still don’t see how you ‘got out of being a librarian.’”

The director smiled. “In 2006, there were really two kinds of librarians: the kind who waited for patrons to come, and the kind who went out and essentially drummed up business. I got out of doing the traditional ‘stuff’ that librarians do and was able to actually make a meaningful difference. I wasn’t sitting at the desk or sitting in faculty meetings; I was working; I was thinking. I was able to do great things for the library by not being a librarian.”

The AL still looked confused. “But, we do those things. We teach classes and do tours and all that stuff. We have three people on the desk these days, and one roving around upstairs. That’s more than there were.”

The director caught the eye of one of the other librarians and winked. “Yes, you do those things. That’s hugely different from 2005, where librarians were still intimately involved in those activities. We made a policy to hire competent paraprofessionals and new MLS holders to do that kind of work. Librarian work. The librarians plan it, design it, and oversee it, and you do it. It doesn’t mean the work isn’t important, or that what the librarians are doing now is somehow more important than that day-to-day patron touch. It’s just different.”

“You made the librarians management and made the paras librarians,” one outspoken staffer said. “You essentially killed the librarians.”

The director winced. “That’s an apt analogy, although I would argue that the librarians as they were would have died with or without my help. We transformed the librarians and transformed the library. And the numbers don't lie; it's been a huge success.”

After a bit of silence, she said, “Death and transfiguration. It awaits us all. Now, my beer is empty and this conversation has gotten entirely too heavy. We're here to celebrate! Jamie, what’s the news with your two-year-old?”

Scenario Planning: Update

2006-02-07T14:14:00.000-06:00

I'm working on my best-case scenario, and I don't have time to finish it today, but it hinges on the following thunderbolt that nearly knocked me over on my way back from a meeting:

If I could get out of being a librarian, I could do great things for the library.

More on this later, but I didn't want to lose the thought.

WDT

Go Give Yourself a Hug. Right Now.

2006-02-06T13:27:00.000-06:00

I have about 50 "deep thoughts" floating around, but none of them are ready for prime time, so today's a day for a fluffy post:

Take a moment, and think about something you really want to do, but for some reason feel you "can't". What is it? Do you want to go outside? Do you want to just read the comics and your friends in your feed aggregator but feel compelled to review the "real" content, too? Do you want to bend a rule to help a patron instead of making him or her jump through another hoop? Do you want to have lunch with someone you adore and whom you do not see nearly enough?

What we're looking for is one little gift that you can give yourself right now. Don't wait. Just do it. Don't feel guilty about it. I personally give you permission to do this one thing and to enjoy doing it.

I've talked with a lot of librarians, and many of us are very other-oriented. We are in a service industry, you know, so that's not surprising. What I want is for you to think about YOU, and give yourself a little gift--a hug, as it were.

Frankly, I've done all five of the above today and these small things have helped me tackle several other incredibly unpleasant tasks with more grace than usual (meaning some instead of none). By giving to myself, I've got just a little more to give to others.

Best wishes,

WDT

"Searching" vs. "Finding"

2006-01-31T19:12:00.000-06:00

So, it turns out that the class script I posted yesterday wasn't ANYTHING like what my faculty person wanted; fortunately, he called me at about 11AM today to clarify and I think I was able to give them something useful.

I always learn something when I teach, and what I learned is an idea that may not be groundbreaking for you, but which stopped me in my tracks when it occurred to me. I'm talking about the difference between "searching" and "finding."

Searching is what librarians are REALLY good at: we build strategies, use thesauri, cross databases, and generally think of every way we possibly can to get at information. The mechanics of searching are complex: using the Clipboard in PubMed is one of the mechanics of searching, and there are a lot of little technical minutiae just like that.

However, the mechanics of searching actually have very little to do with finding (and this was the Ah-ha! for me). Finding is getting to some piece of information that will actually meet your information need. It has absolutely nothing to do with the process of looking for what you eventually find. Good searching can help you find, and bad searching can keep you from finding, but searching is not and never will be finding.

What this means is that I'm REALLY TEMPTED to stop showing the MeSH browser in PubMed. I'm REALLY TEMPTED to tell people that for most searching, a keyword and limits and the "related articles" link will find them something useful. I'm REALLY TEMPTED to start talking about finding instead of spending all my time on searching.

Librarians in general and medical librarians especially scream at this sort of thinking. If there's a life on the line, by golly, you better be running the most robust search you can. Yes, of course you should. But, how many hospitals live without librarians these days? And WHAT CLINICIAN CAN ACTUALLY DO A DECENT SEARCH? I mean, really? I would rather have a half-assed search find something in PubMed than have a clinican with no access to a librarian stumbling around in Ovid (or worse).

I say, Amen! to NCBI for figuring out that finding is what we're trying to do, and making it as easy as possible to find something. Why aren't all library systems like this? Why don't they all map an incredibly sophisticated and robust taxonomy to an even more sophisticatedmetathesaurus?

Of course sophisticated systems that make finding possible without a lot of searching crap takes out the obvious need for a librarian, which might be a wee bit of a snicker, but otherwise it is pure genius. And frankly, once our obvious reasons for existence are gone, we can start looking for real ways to make a difference.

Outcomes Research in Health Care Script

2006-01-27T15:38:00.000-06:00

In case anyone has ever wondered what I talk to the Health Policy department about, here's the script of a class I'm giving on Tuesday. At least, I hope this is the script. I'm not really clear on what exactly my faculty wants and I've asked four times. I'm frankly a little afraid to ask him again.

*******
Outcomes Research in Health
January 31, 2006
One hour (45 minutes)

Introduction
• Introduce self
• Just talking about resources, not search fundamentals; happy to do one-on-one for assistance with actually doing a search
• Launch browser
• Click through to library
• Use links on web site to activate proxy server (doesn’t work from the VA)

PubMed
• Open PubMed
• PubMed is really the place to start all heathcare research
• Can use OVID, too, but PubMed has some special features for this area
• Can run a regular search and narrow down, absolutely
o Use MESH and subheadings to really get into things
o Can limit to practice guidelines
o Nice tutorials linked from the sidebar
o Pneumonia[MAJR] AND “outcome assessment (health care)”[mesh]
• Open Special Queries page
• Special Queries page provides a goldmine of goodies

Clinical Queries
• Find clinical trials, systematic reviews
• Access to clinical information
• Pneumonia[MAJR], clinical prediction guides and narrow
• Narrow vs. broad

Health Services Research Queries
• Articles related to quality or costs (see handout for specifics)
• Pneumonia[MAJR], outcomes assessment and narrow
• Narrow vs. broad
• Surprisingly little overlap with the “outcome assessment” Mesh search above

“HealthStar” Subset Search
• HealthStar used to be a separate NLM database for administrative information
• In regular PubMed search box, enter: jsubseth AND economics
• Then “and” in whatever major topic desired
• This can be like using a flamethrower to light a match but can be useful
• jsubseth AND economics AND pneumonia

Books of Possible Interest
• Under the “Books” link on far right in PubMed interface
• Health Services/Technology Assessment Text (HSTAT)Show this one
• Health, United States, 2004

Cochrane
• Serious EBP resource
• Link on library databases page
• Open Cochrane
• Searching is a little less clear
• Click on advanced search, use the Mesh search
• Pneumonia
• Show what comes up in the different areas

Ebsco Health Business Fulltext Elite (if time)
• Very heavily administrative
• Link on library databases page
• Open EHBFTE
• Use subjects “outcome assessment (medical care)” or “medical care—quality control”

The Last Refuge of the Damned

2006-01-26T13:26:00.000-06:00

Why did I do the worst case scenario first? I don't know, but it came to me almost fully formed.

I would really appreciate comments on these; remember, this is the first of three and it is supposed to represent the worst case scenario. Did I miss anything? Is there some way the future could be even more bleak?

The Last Refuge of the Damned
“I never thought I would say this,” the director began, “but we are in a dangerous situation. We’ve done everything we possibly could to make the building and our services appealing to our end users, but usage continues to decline. On this year’s student survey, only one in five students had even visited the library this year.”

There were grim looks between the librarians around the table. They all knew what had happened over the last ten years: the library renovation, the move to provide outreach and department- or school-specific services, the push to expand the idea of what a library was and could do—nothing had stopped the slide in usage that had begun in the late 90’s. At best, they could say that all of their work had merely postponed the inevitable.

“Ubiquitous computing killed us,” said one of the librarians. “Once enough information really was easily available anytime and anywhere, people just didn’t need a library anymore.”

“I agree,” said another. “I think it was the Tablet PC rollout in 2006. “Once those kids got those machines in their hands, we never saw them again.”

“I don’t know that it was just the machines,” said the first. “The fact that there is so much out there that really is free on the Internet these days just makes what we have to offer less appealing.”

Several people replied at once: “But, the stuff on the Internet is crap!”

“You know that, and I know that,” said the director, “but our patrons don’t know and don’t care. The end result is the same.” She sent a stern look around the table. “We could also look at ourselves and say we didn’t look enough to patron needs, that we stuck with the traditional model of librarianship too long, and then it was too late to really do anything.”

One staffer piped up, “You could also blame administration for never fully funding us and for treating us like second-class citizens for the last 15 years!”

The director ignored this and turned on the overhead projector. The librarians saw the lines of an organizational chart appear. As what the document represented became clear in their minds, faces paled with fear or turned red with anger.

“What is this?!?” demanded one of the staff.

“This is the new reality,” said the director. “The remnants of the print collection are being moved to offsite storage. One clerical position will be retained to maintain the print collection and to fill whatever limited requests come in for access. Copyright compliance will be integrated into Teaching and Learning Technologies. I’ve talked with their director and she doesn’t anticipate needing more than two people for this.”

“Where’s reference?” asked the head of public services in a small voice.

The director looked over the top of her glasses. “There won’t be any more reference,” she said. “Once the print collection is gone, the building will be turned over to the schools for testing and study space.”

General groaning followed this announcement. “Even if the collection is all electronic, they’ll still need people to buy it and organize it,” someone commented. “Where are those people?”

The director looked around. “An Elsevier rep was at the last management meeting. With all of the financial savings from eliminating the library, the institution will be making the ConsultSuite available. They’re touting it as a ‘true virtual library’ and saying it will more than adequately meet the needs of faculty, students, and staff. All of you will be employed until the end of the fiscal year and then your positions will be eliminated. Those of you with applicable skills will have preference given if you apply for positions elsewhere in Information Resources.”

Silence followed this pronouncement. “I don’t see your name on here,” one of the librarians said to the director. “What are you going to do?”

“I’m retiring,” the director said, taking off her glasses and rubbing the bridge of her nose. “Enough is enough.”

Scenario Planning

2006-01-26T13:18:00.000-06:00

SLIM's theory-based curriculum has been berated by a number of people, and their online classes have gotten a lot of guff as well, but one of the best classes I took was an online management course on scenario planning. The basic concept is that you gather information, look at it, and come up with a best case, worst case, and middle of the road scenario. Then, you undertake activities that fit into all three scenarios. That way, everything you do will be "right," regardless of what actually happens--which is of course completely unpredictable.

I'm elbow-deep in the future of libraries right now, what with journal club (x2), the changes happening at our insitution, and the general buzz in libraryland, so I decided to do a little scenario scripting as I begin to make recommendations for the future of digital resources here.

Here are some of my basic assumptions, and I'll post my first completed scenario in a minute.

1. Patron preference for digital over print will continue to increase
2. More materials will be freely available online although considerable content will still be within paid access “walled gardens”
3. Prices for print and paid-access “walled gardens” will continue to increase at a rate faster than inflation
4. Budgets will increase at a rate less than that of inflation causing ongoing shortfalls each year
5. Patrons are going to be increasingly less willing to come to the library for materials
6. Patrons are going to be increasingly less willing to wait or pay for ILL
7. Patrons are going to be increasingly less willing to learn separate database interfaces
8. As more information becomes available, the idea of “good enough” information will completely overtake the search for “the best” or “all available” information

Lazy Post

2006-01-23T15:49:00.000-06:00

If Queequeg can do it, I can do it, too.

1. Name three things you can't live without:
Beatrice, sunlight, text

2. If you could hang out for a night with any fictional character, who would it be?
I have absolutely no answer for this! I just don't know!

3. As a kid, what did you want to be when you grow up?
Meteorologist, professional musician (string bass)

4. Right now what do you want to be when you grow up?
The big boss lady

5. What song always makes you cry?
"Stones in the Road" by Mary Chapin Carpenter

6. What's the best advice you've ever been given?
The way to manage your to-do list is not to do more but to manage the expectations behind the list.

7. Are you a good liar?
Absolutely not--my face shows everything

8. What still surprises you about your life?
I'm a suburbanite mommy librarian and generally happy being just that

9. What quality can make you instantly connect to someone?
Eye sparkle

10. What turns you off right away?
An "I deserve it" attitude

11. What's really difficult for you?
Managing the expectations behind the list (see #6)

12. What do you wish you'd done differently?
I wish I had demanded my parents buy me a bass for high school graduation

13. Desert island picks?
Swiss army knife and a semi full of sunscreen

14. Favorite spot at home?
Kitchen table--I just love to sit there

15. What emotion motivates too many of your actions?
Fear (see #6, yet again)

16. Favorite kind of extreme weather?
Wind without storms--it's a Kansas thing, and maybe a southern/western Kansas thing at that

17. Do you have any recurring dreams?
I have nightmares about tornadoes

18. Psychic or shrink?
Shrink

19. Vintage or modern?
Modern

20. Do you ever scream?
Not usually, although I yell more than I'd like

21. What are you most afraid of?
My to-do list (again, see #6)

The Clean Inbox: An Update

2006-01-12T09:24:00.000-06:00

So, I dumped my entire inbox into a folder for "later" a few days ago and started over with a clean slate. I'm pleased to say that I have maintained the serenity of the clean inbox, now having just four messages which all require action this morning (that is, they should be gone by noon). I highly recommend this, as it's so easy to go ahead and tidy the inbox when there's only 10 to 30 messages instead of 100+.

Most interesting about this process has been watching the things that I let sit and thinking about why I let them turn into e-clutter. There was email about a project I can't make any headway on; there's guilt and annoyance attached to those. I decided to file them without even trying to take action, because there's nothing I can do and just looking at the the email upset me. I know what's next on that project and there's no reason to beat myself up about it.

Two that I held onto were negative responses to something I had done; when I really looked at it, I was holding onto them because I wanted there to be some way to go back in time or argue with the senders and change their content. That's not very likely, is it? I was keeping the email to remind myself to try something different next time. Yuck. Into the trash with those.

I read somewhere that there's always a really good reason we keep things beyond their use or time of intent, and I have realized that in this case, I'm not keeping email--I'm keeping feelings, and a lot of negative feelings at that! That's just not useful.

Maybe with this understanding I can make the change in my inbox permanent. My new mantra is that email is email; reply to it, act on it, file it, or trash it. A clean inbox is a happy inbox.

Now, I wonder if I can start going through my email backfiles five messages at a time?

WDT

Well, Maybe YOU'LL Be Interested In It

2006-01-11T13:42:00.000-06:00

So, I says to myself I says, why not start a blog of all the stuff you see that might be interesting to the department you serve? Usually I email juicy tidbits to individuals, and I've gotten positive response, so blogging it seemed like a good idea. SEEMED.

I set it up (over at http://hpmmeta.blogspot.com, if you happen to want to look) and sent out an email announcing its construction. I get three responses, all, shall I say, underwhelming. I'm not sure if it's the medium, the message, or both.

Oh, well. I'm going to keep it up for a while because it's a useful exercise for me to ground myself in their area. And, if you're interested in the things that interest the people who teach the people who will evenutally be hospital CEOs (and thus, looking to cut your little budget), by all means, take a look and let me know what you think.

Ring-a-ring o' EBooks

2006-01-10T11:00:00.000-06:00

Trixie LOVES "Ring-a-ring of roses", and for some reason the froufrala we are having about ebooks right now makes me think of the rhyme. Perhaps it's because we're all holding hands, running around and around in circles, and we occasionally all fall down. It's not as much fun doing it metaphorically at work as it is doing it in real life with my beautiful girl, though.

Here's the deal: the School of Medicine wants ebooks for their new curriculum. Fantastic! The library is helping them select useful materials. Fantastic! Many of the faculty love AccessMedicine, which I shepharded through as a purchase last year for another purpose but which is proving quite popular. Excellente!

Then, why do we all keep "falling down"? It's a combination of communication problems, varying definitions of what an ebook is or can be, and a total lack of understanding of the how the process of collecting and aquiring of library materials works. These people have no idea that we're extensively experienced in looking at a resouce and dtermining the quality of both the information and the interface, and so we are having to constantly reinterject ourselves into probelm conversations where WE ALREADY KNOW THE ANSWERS, if someone would just bother to ask us.

Many people have decried the fact that librarianship has a serious Rodney Dangerfield aspect--"we just can't get no respect." I don't have any new insight into the phenomenon, I can just say that it's darned annoying to see it in action.

WDT

The Clean Slate

2006-01-09T17:06:00.000-06:00

Today I did something that would have been unthinkable for me a short while ago: I categorically dumped all of the email sitting in my inbox into a folder to think about "later," and I unchecked the "keep new" boxes on the hundreds of items I was keeping new in Bloglines. So, I now have a shiny clean inbox and a shiny clean feed reader. It's scary, and I'm consumed with guilt for some reason, but I feel lighter somehow.

The simple fact is that I hoard electronic clutter. Emails, documents, news items, web pages--it doesn't take up any space, right? I might need it someday, right?? It's just too cool to let go, right???

Wrong. At some point the material ceases to be useful and just sucks up my time and energy. I would never consider keeping this kind of clutter in the real world (I'm a regular shredder of paper material), so why do I keep it in the virtual world, especially when the virtual world is where I spend almost all of my work time?

The question now is if I can keep the inbox and the feed reader clean. We'll see.

WDT

Take a Look at TechDirt

2005-12-14T10:55:00.000-06:00

If you want to get a feel for what's going on in technology beyond the limited world of librariana, I would suggest adding TechDirt to your feed list. Since TechDirt already has about a million readers, you may know of it already, but if not, take a look.

Self-described as "easily digestible tech news," TechDirt consists of well-written items covering a wide range of technology-related topics, done in an engaging and often amusing personal voice. I find it's a quick, easy way to get quality info from outside my little box.

WDT

Long Time, No Post...

2005-12-13T11:57:00.000-06:00

...and there's so much out there to talk about, I feel like I'm falling down on my blogging job.

However, I'm trying to cut myself some slack, as I have an absolute inability to keep any thought in my head for the requisite 31 seconds these days. So, go check out LISNews for all the libsci chatter that's fit to blog, and don't miss T. Scott's "Librarian 5.0" for your "yes, of course, THAT'S what I should be doing" fix, and check back sometime later for deep thoughts from me.

WDT

My Mental Snapshot

2005-11-29T08:54:00.000-06:00

Not very librarian-y today; sorry about that.

1. Once two competing cognitions are held simultaneously, the individual can be said to be in a state of "cognitive dissonance"...Instantly, this conflicting cognition creates an imbalance between itself and the original cognition. This conflicted state of mind will, necessarily, seek to attain psychological consonance, i.e. a balance between competing cognitions.

2. CHICAGO (Reuters) - Fatter rear ends are causing many drug injections to miss their mark, requiring longer needles to reach buttock muscle, researchers said on Monday. (http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20051129/od_nm/buttocks_dc).

WDT

LiveBlogging, Lame-o Style

2005-11-18T12:18:00.000-06:00

Cool people blog live from conferences like Internet Librarian; here's my live blog from room 1040 Dykes Library, viewing the College of DuPage webcast happening right now.

First, I have to say that BCR gets major kudos for making these teleconferences available via the web for their members. Our cost for hosting this interesting event: absolutely nothing. There are four of us sacked out in our little cozy nook, getting updated and continuing education the easy way. If you don't usually make the time for the DuPage bradcasts, this is a great way to go about it.

Second, the quality is greatly improved this year over last, although that may be just because it is the Stephen Bell show this time and not a panel.

Finally, these shows are often aimed at the lowest common denominator and sometimes I come away saying, golly, I didn't get anything new out of that. Today's show is a nice mix of the basic and not-so-basic, and I've gotten a lot of good things for the module of my information resouces class that will be focusing on Google and web searching.

The next show isn't until February 3, but it looks like a showstopper ("three ways the library profession is broken and four ways to fix it"). If you're in BCR territory, register now with them; anyone else, you can pay up at the DuPage site.

WDT

CV vs. Resume

2005-11-17T13:50:00.000-06:00

I've been asked for a copy of my CV, and fortunately I have one available that is only about (ahem) a year behind, so I can update it and whip it out without too much fuss. I am once again kicking myself for not keeping all this in a database that could then be used to populate the document, but that's not what this post is about.

I don't like submitting a CV, because it's so--so--sparse, I guess, compared to my resume. My resume is full of job activities and action verbs, and I feel like it is an authentic representation of my work life. The CV makes me feel inadequate, with its emphasis and teaching, publishing, and presentations. I feel like a lot of what is there is padding (small articles, presentations at local conferences, etc.).

My resume is substance; my CV is air. I don't like that.

But then again, one thing that my CV highlights about me that my resume almost totally misses is my commitment to sharing in the library field. Sure, I did a lot of my presentations under the roof of the NNLM, but I've been a private citizen for a year now, and a third of my CV content is from 2005. I present (and am trying to publish more) for the same reason I blog: I have all these thoughts up here, and it helps me clarify and understand to share them with someone else. It is a huge added bonus that maybe hearing my thoughts can help someone else think on their own.

So, maybe my CV is more substantive than my resume after all; from this perspective, the resume is about what I do while the CV is about who I am, and there is nothing airy about that.

The Luckiest Library Patron

2005-11-15T12:58:00.000-06:00

I am IMMENSELY fortunate to have the good luck and good sense to live in Johnson County, Kansas, home to what absolutely has to be one of the best public libraries in the country. Many people scoff at the suburbs, and folks on the Missouri side howl at our tax rates (although the property taxes in Cass County, MO, and Johnson County, KS, aren't really that different), but money CAN buy happiness when it comes to public library services.

I was reminded of my good fortune yet again when I was reading Tim Roger's blog and marvelling that such a great mind is working for !me! the taxpayer. Tim wants a library environment where !I! have a say, and where !I! can connect and communicate with other patrons. He wants to take !my! library the next step, and I'm so lucky to get to come along.

Right there with him is Erica Reynolds, who I am certain will make sure that !I! have access to !my! library wherever and whenever I happen to be. I'm the luckiest library patron!

The amount of my taxes that go to JCL is WAY too small. Even with my regular donations in the form of fines, it's not enough. We're there once a week, if not more, and we use literally thousands of dollars of resources every year.

Not all libraries can be Johnson County, but all librarians should strive to be like Tim and Erica: tuned into the needs of their communities and the possibilities that buildings, web sites, and people can provide.

WDT

Happy Birthday to Me!

2005-11-14T10:45:00.000-06:00

Updates:
Vegas=great, even for a square like me. Recommended for all persons over the age of 21.

Tablet=toast. Apparently the hard drive went all soft on me. Estimated return date unknown.

Birthday=happy. Happy day to Krafty as well.

Blog name change=coming up after this post is done.

Finally, a little bit on why I consider myself to be Gen X but not Next Gen. I think the easiest way to do this is in a list:

(Warning to any NextGens who might read me: you will most likely find this offensive. Broad generalizations are often offensive but can be useful. Apologies in advance.)

Gen X (me): Be underemployed for a while but consistently work up into positions with decent duties and pay.
NextGen (not me): Be underemployed for a long time while refusing to move, waiting for the "perfect" job, and complaining loudly about the lack of MLS jobs.

Gen X (me): Embrace self-directed learning, using the degree as a springboard.
NextGen (not me): Demand "more" from MLS programs, including "real reference" but dear Lord, not "real catalgoing."

Gen X (me): Desire to remake the library and the library world into a more flexible, open environment. Understand that to do this, you often must move into management.
NextGen (not me): Complain loudly about problems in the profession while saying, "I never plan to be a manager."

Gen X (me): As we are used to being ignored (between the Boomers and the Millenials), develop an understanding that everyone has something to contribute, even the crazy woman who's been in tech services longer than I've been alive.
NextGen (not me): Complain (more!) about not being "heard" without having the decency to hear others.
TRUTH IN LENDING STATEMENT: This is something I believe and strive for but do not always achieve. I'm working on it.

There's more, but I think that's enough. New MLSes: avoid the excesses of NextGenness by seeing opportunity everywhere. Talk less while seeing and hearing more. And don't ever, EVER, tell someone you want to work in a medical library "because I have a lot of medical problems myself."

WDT

Tablet DOA

2005-11-08T10:50:00.000-06:00

For those of you interested in my tablet PC doings, I thought I would share the news that for the moment it is DOA. It will start booting into Windows and then will go no further. I'm turning it in to for a visit to the Tablet Witch Doctor and hopefully it will come back good as new.

Fortunately, my counterpart in charge of this project warned me that these things were buggy, so I set GoBinder to do a daily backup onto the included 1GB secure digital card and saved everything else to our network drive. I won't lose anything except my preferences in FireFox, thank goodness.

I did drop the tablet the other day; it bounced nicely. I don't know if this is related or not, but it seems like the problems would have showed up sooner if they were actually caused by the incident. We'll see.

WDT

Sparse Posting This Week

2005-11-07T14:12:00.000-06:00

Today: trying to get myself organized and prioritized
Tomorrow: nonstop meetings, final preparations
Wednesday-Friday: LAS VEGAS!

I am NOT taking my tablet and I WILL NOT be checking email for forty-eight glorious hours. I do plan to have as much fun as a light-drinking, non-smoking, limited-interest-in-gambling, limited funds, married person can have, which apparently is QUITE A LOT!

WDT

Another Tablet Update

2005-11-03T14:17:00.000-06:00

Although I am not young enough that I learned to type and write at the same time, I am young enough that by the time I entered college, I was doing all of my intellectual work on the computer, so it has been YEARS since I have really done any substantial work by hand.

However, I have found that there are a number of things that I am more interested in writing now that I have the tablet and GoBinder. For example, I am mapping out the information resources in health policy and management class that I will be teaching next summer (if we can sucker enough students into it--I mean, convince enough students to participate), and I could be typing up an outline in Word (or OpenOfficeText), but I'm not. Instead, I'm hand-scribbling notes in GoBinder.

Cutting and pasting is possible but impractical in GoBinder, and so there are literally scribbles on my notes. Why would I choose this replica of a relic (handwritten notes) over the clean, clear typed format that I've known and loved for the vast majority of my intellectual life?

I think it has something to do with the creative nature of this particular work. Each session outline is evolving as I think through it, and changes in one session create changes in another. I had six notes pages open, and was able to pop through them in a very non-linear fashion, adding and subtracting, commenting and annotating as I went. Typing up an outline in MSWord would be a very dry substitute, and actually, I would probably print it out and write all over it anyway.

I will have to type up the outline when it's time to share, and I may get aggravated when I have 18 notes pages at the end instead of the six I am working with now, but for the moment it seems like a real perk to the machine.

Piled Higher and Deeper

2005-11-02T15:36:00.000-06:00

If you're interested, here's the current version of my statement of research interests for my PhD application. What do you think? Useful to the profession? Silly? Full of typos?

WDT
**************
Statement of Research Interests and Career Goals
Whitney E. Davison-Turley
November 2005

How do libraries measure their impact? How do we measure and express our value? This question is becoming more important as libraries of all types face increasing resource competition, and simply reporting statistics like the number of children at story time, total annual circulation, or number of database hits does not at all represent what it is modern libraries do for and mean to the groups we serve.

I want to focus my research on ways in which we can make our impact more clear, drawing on quantitative and qualitative strategies from librarianship and the social sciences as well as business, health care, and education. In my current position at an academic medical center, the question may involve providing mobile information resources for students. Do the students who use the resources get better grades on rotations or do better on their exams? Can we determine long-term if this makes them better doctors? And the next important question: if there is some difference, is the involvement of a librarian at all important? Similar questions can be asked of almost any library service provided at any library. What is the true, endpoint impact of what we do?

I hope through my research to explore assessment and evaluation of this kind of endpoint impact, and to develop processes that librarians of all kinds can use. We experience our value in the smile of a child at story time, as a thank you from a student, or as an acknowledgment in a research article; how can we encode that value into quantifiable statements of “this is how I improved the world today and this is why it is important”?

Completing a PhD will allow me to pursue three career goals: first, it will provide the credential I need for promotion as I eventually hope to become a library director, and a PhD is a requirement for advancement to that level. However, the PhD will also allow me to teach; some of my most rewarding professional experiences have been teaching other librarians, and I want to find a way to integrate teaching into my professional life even as I plan to move up in library management. Finally, pursing a PhD will provide me with the rationale and the support structure to produce research which I sincerely hope will be of value to the profession. I have seen repeated need for this kind of assessment data and evaluation planing across library types, and I have a strong desire to contribute in this area.

More 43 Folders-Inspired Stuff

2005-11-02T13:34:00.000-06:00

Do you want to "work," or do you want to actually get work done?

Techno-distraction kills my ability to get work done. There are a number of possible cluprits: IM, email, Yahoo! Music (totally worth the $30 for the "chill" station), Bloglines, Google Desktop, and any number of other toys and gizmos. They all pose such glorious distraction possibilities, and they all seem legitimate. Oh, I'll ask So-and-So a question--I'll look this up--I'll just check this one feed----

I do a lot of work in this environment; I'm wired (or have been rewired) to scan a lot of datastreams as part of my information gathering process. But, if I actually want to get something done, I have to unplug. I can think a thought in half the time, and its usually a clearer, more pointed thought, too.

For what it's worth, I'm checking out now. If you need me for the next 90 minutes, call me on the phone. :)

WDT

The Ten-Minute To-Do

2005-11-01T13:22:00.000-06:00

Another good tip from the 43 Folders people: make every item on your to-do list an actual ACTION item, and make it something that can be completed in a reasonable chunk of time (I've decided that for me, this is about 10 minutes).

This tidbit of advice goes against everything I learned in the Franklin Planner Cult Indoctrination, uh, I mean, Productivity Class, I went to waaaay back in 1996. Their point was, don't waste time putting anything on your to-do list than can be done in less time than it takes to write it down.

The problem is that an item like, "Get started with *&@#(#& journal clubs so you don't look like such a slacker compared to Michelle," is simply too complex. It seems like a to-do, but it is actually a project statement with about a jillion little to-dos packed inside it.

However, broken down into tiny chunks, that to-do looks like this:

1. Collect emails into one folder
2. Call Keisha re: phone bridge
3. Make a list of club participants
4. Contact phone club participants
5. Contact chat club participants
6. Etc

These are tasks I can actually manage in the time I have: before a meeting starts, while waiting on hold, or whenever. Larger tasks (e.g., map out first module of Health Policy and Management biblio class) get scheduled for a time I'm at my desk and unencumbered for an hour or longer.

The key difference between this and the Franklin philosophy is that the Franklin folks have you evaluate your tasks by priority and then allot them accordingly. The unfortunate fact is that everything's gotta be done, important or not. So, for me, it seems to work to break it down into atom-sized peices and just do whatever fits in the time slot I have in front of me. At least I get the positive feeling of checking small things off instead of having large items drag along with me for days or weeks.

Queequeg has declared my idea of a KCMetro Librarians' Binge to be square but appealing. If you're a reader and want to come, post a comment and I'll be sure you're on the list. Not like it's an exclusive or anything, but just so's you'll know when it's happening.

WDT

Side Note: Get OpenOffice2. Now.

2005-10-27T12:42:00.000-05:00

Don't delay, just go download it, and enjoy. Even if you only do it for the integrated print to PDF function.

Channelling My Inner Patron

2005-10-27T12:14:00.000-05:00

I'm getting in touch with my inner patron today. Patrons don't experience things the way we do: classification is a joke (especially LC or NLM--at least Dewey makes some kind of visual sense); databases and the citations they contain are obscure; IT restrictions keep them from doing the things they need or want to do. Libraries are full of barriers and hoops, and librarians aren't always the gentle guides they need to be.

I want to print a 48"x36" document across multiple 8.5"x11" sheets (tiled printing). I've done it a million times before, as it is a cheap way to print large documents which you then trim and glue together. The results are of decent quality, especially for a 30-minute non-competitive poster presentation for which you are essentially filler because no one else signed up. Plus, I get to cut and paste for a while, which is remarkably fun and soothing.

An aside: this is both the volunteer gene and my procrastination tendency (mentioned previously) getting to me at once. The issue here is that I got myself into this, so there's no one to address to alleviate the anxiety and get over the procrastination. I guess I'll have to have a stern chat with myself. I'll do it later.

I have tried every workaround I can think of to get this to come out. The issue appears to be a setting on the color printer that when the memory buffer gets full, it just stops printing. Yes, I could call the IT staff, just like a patron could ask a librarian, but it just seems like it should work. No offense to our IT staff, but they are hard to find, always "busy," and always question what it is I want or what I am doing. Just like we do when a patron asks a question, right? And just like a patron, I am definitely trending towards taking the easy way out (I'll print out handouts and take a projector and shine my poster up on a wall) instead of asking for help.

I sincerely hope the next time a patron comes up to me with one of "those" questions, I can draw on this experience and look at them with soft eyes.

WDT

The Kind of Geek I Am

2005-10-26T15:41:00.000-05:00

Just a quick note I thought this audience would appreciate: I have lost the entire day playing with my tablet and GoBinder. It's work-related, so it's a legitimate use of time, but I just have to smile--give me a toy and give me a new way to organize information and I can disappear for hours.

I feel very fortunate that the things I get to do are also the things I like to do; I get paid to get into the "flow" state where task and focus become one. Lucky me.

Ongoing Quest for True Personal Information Management

2005-10-26T12:10:00.000-05:00

One potential HUGE perk of the tablet: it came with access to GoBinder, which seems on the surface to do a lot of the things I want my personal information management product to do. It's a matter of finding the time to really get it working, but it appears I actually could have tasks, notes, project plans, documents, etc., etc., all in one place and all searchable. Hmm. My counterpart here is more interested in OneNote because it has better audio and video integration, but I haven't had a chance to look at it yet. I need more darned time!

Guilt item: what do I do with my recent $70 purchase of Franklin swag if I really get into GoBinder? Put 11 months of planner out on EBay?

Also, I have no idea where I stumbled across the reference, but for time management/personal planning/"life hacks," I am completely onboard with the 43 Folders folk. In my original perusal of their content, I really liked Patching Your Personal Suck.

The best part: "You can’t just turn it on and instantly be the thing you wish you were. It takes reflection, thought, iteration, and a personal commitment to facing the stuff at which you suck. And we all suck at something. You totally suck at something, and it secretly drives you nuts every goddamned day."

There's a lot of stuff I suck at, but one of the worst is that I put off doing things that I somehow feel pressured into doing; not stuff that I don't want to do, because there's a lot of that, and I generally just deal and get it done. But, if there's a project or a task that I feel I've been somehow coerced or cornered into, I will delay and delay and delay.

Somewhere else on 43 Folders they talked about dealing with the anxieties that keep you from getting stuff done, and I guess the anxiety here would be "dealing directly with the person who annoyed me by dumping crap on me instead of being a passive-aggressive procrastinator."

Now, THAT'S a task worthy of the GoBinder task list.

WDT

A Quick Tablet Update

2005-10-25T12:00:00.000-05:00

Good things:
1. Very high coolness factor
2. Note taking is easier than I thought it would be
3. Darn speedy machine, with darn speedy wireless
4. If left on chair, makes an excellent seat warmer in cool weather

Not-so-good things:
1. Too heavy with additional battery (regular battery life seems to be about 5 hours)
2. Lopsided with additional battery
3. Tablet-specific features are not intuitive and I just don't have the time right now to explore things in depth

To make it my main machine, I need a port replicator which is not forthcoming from any budget stream I can see. This makes it difficult to really be at one with my tablet.

I like the concept of the tablet, but what I want is all of the same functionality in a package the size of a paperback. That would be TRUE portability; get a port replicator and even something tiny could be a main machine.

I can say that a tablet with ubiquitous wireless access eliminates any need for a PDA. I'm willing to lug the extra weight to get full PC functionality.

WDT

Revisiting My Past Life

2005-10-21T09:46:00.000-05:00

Many of you know that I play string bass; from the time I picked it up in 5th grade until I was about 19, my one and only desire was to be a musician. As I was pretty darn good, this was an excellent possibility, but life intervened and here I am beating out my librarian blog instead. We never know what path we'll take.

However, music has been on my mind recently, and I finally took a deep breath and took my bass out of its case after almost two years of not playing. The news was not so good; the fingerboard and saddle have loosened, I have two seams open, and the neck warped a little bit. Mercifully, a local shop is going to be able to fix her up for me for a lot less than I thought.

The question then becomes, if I'm going to pay (to have it fixed), am I going to play? I've got to find a new group, make it a priority, yadda, yadda, yadda, and I just don't know if this time I'll be able to get over the ghosts of the past and just enjoy the experience of making music, at whatever level that might be.

I'm just not sure I can do that. We'll see.

WDT

My Kingdom for an AccessMedicine Class Script

2005-10-11T14:03:00.000-05:00

So, I'm in the middle of AccessMedicine Promotion Month, and I realize that if I'm supposedly teaching an "AccessMedicine Power Hour" on Friday, by golly, I probably ought to do more than stand up there and say, "Um, this is, like, um, AccessMedicine, or something."

This is where I begin to pine for a single source of librarian education resources. I know someone else out there has already done this; I'm sure their class script would be just fine for my needs. Why do each and every one of us have to continually reinvent the wheel? Gaah!

I guess I'll send a message out to MEDLIB-L and see if anyone is willing to pony up what they've got. And education librarians, I'm looking in your direction with narrowed eyes. Surely there's got to be a better way.

Lessons Learned from _The Nightmare Before Christmas_

2005-10-10T14:38:00.000-05:00

My husband and I love the movie The Nightmare before Christmas, and we watch it every year around this time. The plot is a little thin, but the details in the film are just fantastic. There are gags nesting within other gags, like Russian dolls, and they are smart, funny little jokes, too. Overall, it's just a jewel of a film.

Usually I like the movie because Jack (The Pumpkin King) realizes that happiness can't be found in work, and instead is available in the arms of a good woman. A fine message about priorities, in my opinion.

However, this year I took away something else: stray from your core service, or your core message, at your own peril.

You see, Jack and the denizens of Halloween Town decide to take over Christmas, with monstrous results (kids get severed heads instead of presents, the toys attack the recipients, etc.). Jack nearly dies and realizes that he should stick with what he and his fellow flok in Halloween Town are best at: scaring the daylights out of people.

I think the message is important for libraries: there's a lot we can be doing in this day and age, and there's a very real push away from core library services as we struggle to "redefine" ourselves. I'm as pro-progess as the next person (maybe too much so for some), but I think Jack teaches a valuable lesson. A Pumpkin King is a Pumpkin King, not Santa Claus. A library is a library, with exceptional skills in acquiring, organizing, and disseminating information. We're not (usually) instructional design experts or (again, usually) hard-core IT people, or a million other things.

This isn't coming out the way I wanted it to; I guess I need to think on it some more. If libraries are equivilent to the Pumpkin King, then what is the Santa Claus we're trying to become? I can't quite put my finger on that part of the analogy. Still, doing what you are good at and building a team of experts to cover the areas where you're not so hot is always a good idea.

Tablet. Woah.

2005-10-07T15:18:00.000-05:00

I've been given a tablet PC as part of my work for the Office of Medical Education. Bob and I have been harping about how the machines are too big for practical, long-term, one-arm use, but now that I have one in my hands... I can see a lot of potential. The main issue is that they ARE too heavy with the addon battery and regular battery life alone is only abou tthree hours.

I'm going to try to use it as my main machine for a while and see what I can see with it.

Oh, ya, it's a HP Compaq tc4200.

WDT

30sec Forever?

2005-10-04T15:09:00.000-05:00

There's some sort of karma thing going on here--the name of my blog has come up three times in three different conversations over the last few days. I always intended to change it each year on my birthday, which would then make it the :31 Second Librarian this year, the :32 Second Librarian in 2006, etc., etc. The URL wouldn't change, as I used my screen name (whitneydt) instead of the name of the blog in the location as I was anticipating this little artifice.

So far, the votes are three for three against changing the name annually. Although I realize that the :31 Second Librarian just doesn't have quite the same ring as 30sec, I think it both recognizes the passage of time in a small way and encompasses my desire that someday I really will have an extra second, or an extra 30 seconds when I'm sixty, or an extra sixty seconds when I'm 90. There's some kind of hope tied up in the name change, and I'm unwilling to give that up.

Also, I promised when I got started that I would write about why my age is such an important descriptor for me right now--I'll make that my birthday post.

WDT

Bloggin' Bennies

2005-10-03T14:47:00.000-05:00

So, if a blog gets written in the forest, and no one reads it, was it really ever written at all?

When I talk about blogs and blogging, someone invariably asks, why write it if only a handful of people are going to read it? The past week has brought out a couple of excellent reasons:

1. Writing helps clarify content in your own mind. Why are you posting that link? Do you really think that most medical librarians deserve to lose their jobs? Once it's posted, it's out there for everyone to see, and that's a powerful incentive to be sure what you are writing really makes sense.

This benefit of blogging came up while Teri Hartman and I were writing an article on blogging for the Plains to Peaks Post.

2. Someone you don't know might come up to you at a conference and say, "YOU'RE WHITNEY [insert your name here]! My friend and I LOVE your blog." This actually happened to me, and I was just pleased as punch.

3. You might find out that people you do know and like read your blog. Turnabout is fair play, and here are links to Tim Rogers and Erica Reynolds. You may even find readers you don't know very well but like anyway are reading what you write.

Carve a little community out of your corner of cyberspace, and start a blog. Send me the link, and I promise I'll read.

WDT

PS--I'm not into Moby Dick like Erica is, but my favorite tale of all time, of any length, is Bartleby the Scrivener. It doesn't matter how much noise we make; is it a "difference that makes a difference, or a silence like that of the tomb?"

"Volunteer Gene" Causes Trouble

2005-09-29T12:05:00.000-05:00

A while back, as yet another "opportunity to contribute" presented itself, I asked Erica Reynolds over at the Johnson County Library "Why do we volunteer for this stuff?"

Her reply was classic--something along the lines of: "It's the volunteer gene--once it served some necessary purpose but now it just causes problems."

I know a lot of people who have problems with rampant volunteer genes. These aren't the good people who volunteer their time for good causes--although they may also have some variant of the gene. No, I'm concerned about those who just can't seem to say no to requests for speakers, participants, authors, committee members, etc., etc.

That rampant volunteer gene can be the source of great personal and professional satisfaction and pride, or it can choke the life out of its happy host.

Fortunately, there's a simple cure: learn to say no. Easier said than done, I know. Good luck with that.

Meanwhile, I've got a "task force" report to finish, a poster to create, an article to write, and a research project to get moving on. Do as I say, not as I do. :P

WDT

WAY Funnier than a Pew Internet Life Press Release

2005-09-27T13:03:00.000-05:00

This very funny (if a little racy) story from the BBC really highlights the fact that a majority of people do not know or care about blogs or blogging. The same thing seems to be true in the US, as a Pew Report from May indicated that 9% of Americans have a blog and 25% read blogs.

So, if you're reading this, CONGRATS! You are in the top quartile of techno-forward folks in the US, and ahead of 9 out of 10 Brits.

Feel the Love

2005-09-21T10:09:00.000-05:00

I've been at the MCMLA Annual Meeting in Salt Lake City, and it was a really excellent time. The meeting had everything: beautiful location, wonderful people, and great conversations.

I can extensively trash talk MLA, but the chapter is a wonderful thing, and I understand that without the umbrella organization, the chapters would not be as vital as they are. So, MLA, thanks for this one amazingly wonderful thing.

What makes MCMLA a special event is not the location and not the speakers, but the participants themselves. This group includes major academic medical library directors, hospital librarians in blazers and sensible shoes, movin' and shakin' outreach librarians, library science students, and every other stripe and type of librarian you might hope to find.

The tie that binds them together is a committment to library services and a forward-facing optimism that medical librarians are and will continue to be important as long as we work hard and stay relevant. I'm often a hard, hard cynic, and it is refreshing to drink of this optimism for a few days.

WDT

My Taxpayer Dollars at Work

2005-09-13T12:21:00.000-05:00

I admit that even though I've been on the guvmint dole for years, I sometimes question the real value of some government services.

Please don't send letter bombs, but even things like DOCLINE sometimes perplex me--why are the taxpayers paying for a separate ILL system for health sciences libraries? Why can't we (medical libraries and the base that supports us)fork out our $$ to OCLC like every other library in existence? Aren't there rules about government competing with private enterprise? And, please don't tell me that if we got rid of DOCLINE, we'd have to get rid of PubMed, too, because there's a viable public interest in maintaining PubMed. DOCLINE seems to be a holdover from a former age.

Ahh, but I digress from my intended topic.

While trying to determine the nutrient value of a baked potato, I wandered across the My Food Pyramid Tracker. Now, this is a nifty little tool! Enter a little personal information, what you've eaten, and your exercise, and get evaluations and recommendations six ways from Sunday. Since I'm under a mandate from my physican to get my cholesterol and blood pressure down (or she'll medicate me--at the age of 30--"Holy cow!" is all I can say to that), this seems like a fantastic little tool. It's an especially neat use of the data that the USDA already collects.

After a few minutes, though, I realized the planning and programming time that must have gone into this. How much is the My Food Pyramid Tracker costing the American public?

My next thought, though, was of the societal costs of diabetes, and I imagine that whatever the costs of the My Food Pyramid Tracker, it's TINY in comparison. If you've got the money and can pay for Weight Watchers or the WebMD online weight loss or other fee-based services, then you can access these kinds of resources. Why shouldn't they be available to everyone? Isn't there a vaible public interest in that, too?

Of course, we could get into all kinds of questions about the digital divide and the actual usefulness of online government information for the audiences intended to benefit from it. Those are important questions to ask, and it is a place where libraries, especially public libraries, can really make a tangible difference through computer access.

I also envision some kind of collaborative program between a hospital library and their diabetes care department. What an intriguing way to put this resource--and our tax dollars--to work, right where it matters.

BTW--for today, the food intake's pretty good. But it's only lunchtime, so who knows?

Copyright or Copywrong?

2005-09-12T12:54:00.000-05:00

So, I've got my new toy and I am REALLY happy with it. As the Best Buy boys said, it is easy to use. And, as I thought, it's too small, but that's OK for now. I COULD load up a bigger player with hundreds of hours of material, but I'd never get through it all. It's better that I keep my playlist small.

The device's "killer app" for me is playing audiobooks, but I'm a poor librarian and just can't afford Audible's prices. I tried downloading one of the machine-read audiobooks from Gutenberg but couldn't get into the flow of the text with the synthesized voice.

So, what did I do? I turned to my local public library and checked out a book on CD. I took it home, popped it into the PC, and a few minutes later had a complete book in MP3 form. Fantastico! I went for a walk and was having such a good time I didn't want to stop.

However, this fun and easy excercise in new-millenium media enjoyment has run me right up against the limits of copyright law. Technically, making a copy of the audiobook is illegal. Of course, I intend to delete it when I'm done, only listen to it once, etc., etc., and so I don't think the MP3 police are going to come get me, but engaging in the activity has brought to life some of the same kinds of issues that surround music downloads (requires Quicktime to view).

Should I be paying for this? Why should I pay for something I can get in another format from the library? I'm using the material as it was intended: I am a single user listening for my own enjoyment. Only the device is different. Should I have to drop $20 a title at Audible just because my library doesn't have a way to circ MP3s?

There's a big difference between my single use of an audiobook and the theft that is open-file sharing, but I've developed some empathy for downloaders. Instead of locking down the content, can't the content developers develop some other revenue models? Publishers of all sorts are crying that the sky is falling instead of seeing this vast sea of digipeople as a market. There's got to be a way to make it work that doesn't turn book nerds like me and hip kiddos into criminals.

Impulse = 1, Self-control = 0

2005-09-08T09:04:00.000-05:00

So, I didn't buy a Nano, but I did go out and buy myself a digital music player last night. Bill took Trixie with him to flag rehearsal (which she LOVED, by the way--that girl is crazy about her daddy's band), and I had a little time to myself. "Self," I said, "just stop by Best Buy and take a look around. You won't buy anything!"

Yeah, right. Less than 20 minutes later, I left with a Sandisk 256MB Digital Audio Player.

Mike, if you're reading this, stop laughing at me. Really, stop.

I know that 256MB is small (only between four and eight hours of audio). I know I paid too much by purchasing from Best Buy. I know, 'cuz the two adorable little teenagers at Best Buy told me so, that "this is a great player if you need something that's easy to use," which literally translates into, "it's the least cool thing we sell, but you probably can't handle anything really cool." I know that I should have done my research before I went out.

But I also know that I wanted to record audio, which eliminates the iPod from contention (in true Apple style, it requires a $42 add-on to record into your iPod). As I mentioned in my Nano post, I'm not really that choosy about my music, so a built-in FM receiver, which this player has, was appealing. And truly, four to eight hours of audio will be enough for me. I can load it up once or twice a week, and that will carry me through any mobile audio moments I might have.

One thing I can say: this little baby IS easy to use. I had a music clip on the player in about 30 seconds, and a Gutenberg audiobook on a few moments later. There aren't a lot of buttons, and their purpose is clear.

Overall, I'm really pleased with my little purchase. I've wanted a digital audio player for a long time, and sometimes you just have to give yourself a gift (and not give yourself too much grief about it).

WDT

Mine, mine, mine!

2005-09-07T16:39:00.000-05:00

I've been trying to resist the urge to buy an iPod or another MP3 player, even though they just keep getting smaller and cooler.

But now, there's the iPod Nano, and I want it. Want, like Pigeon wants his hot dog.

I'm sure I'll talk myself out of it, though; I am a completely non-choosy music listener and am generally happy with the radio or whatever Yahoo! is streaming at my desk, so I can't justify it in terms of musical snobbery. I'm trying to tell myself that I'll download podcasts and audiobooks which will provide motivation to get out and walk, but I am a terrible liar, even to myself.

Frankly, what I ought to do is save about 50% and buy a used iPod off of someone who forks out for a Nano. But where's the fun in that?

WDT

Let's Not Argue About Compassion

2005-09-06T12:21:00.000-05:00

I've been out of the blogging loop for a couple of days, and I just don't have it in me to continue my MLA-related rant right now. I promise, I'll come back to it, and I might even be able to be calm and rational for having let it sit.

The question I want to pose today is one highlighted on LITA-L and elsewhere, I assume, because it's a pretty obvious question (I apologize for not being able to link to the post itself, but the archives of LITA-L are closed).

If you are donating time, money, or supplies to the hurricane relief effort, is it OK to support just one aspect of that effort (i.e., libraries)? Should your money go to the Red Cross or Salvation Army to help save and rebuild lives right this minute, or is it ethical to target your assistance to a narrow and possibly tangential cause?

I think in the best of all worlds, you do both. Chip in to the immediate relief fund(s), and then do what you can in your area of interest. If you can't do both, I hope you don't spend too much time worrying about what's right, and I hope no one criticizes the decision you make (like the person who commented on LITA-L that we should be focusing on survivors and not thinking about libraries right now).

Millions will respond to the calls from the Red Cross; far fewer will respond to the calls for donations to rebuild and restock libraries, particularly in a few months when the crisis has passed and "donor fatigue" has set in. Do what feels right to you, but do something, and let's not argue about compassion.

This Post Didn't Start Out as an Anti-MLA Rant

2005-08-31T09:43:00.000-05:00

Click here, and read T. Scott P.'s "issue of strategic focus for MLA", for in the first paragraph, he has captured the essence of what medical librarians face in our very near future.

The best line, in my opinion:
"Libraries are important; but librarians make the essential difference, and the library walls should no longer hold us back."

I was even enthused with the first sentence of the next paragraph:
"MLA has a key role to play in helping us imagine the multitude of new ways in which we can become indispensable to our organizations."

But then:
"By defining the community in which we engage with each other, by providing the continuing education avenues in which we learn new skills and develop our talents, and by presenting the dynamic image of 21st century librarians to the public, MLA is an invaluable asset in helping each one of us become more effective every day."

I say, in the dulcet tones of a tantruming toddler, "No, no, NO, NO, NO!.

No, MLA does a terrible and exclusionary job of definging the community in which we engage with each other. It's too expensive, too small, and too focused on MLS librarians.

No, MLA's continuing education is often between two and five years behind what even ALA is putting out, which is two to five years behind what librarians really need.

And double-no, continuing education and credentialling are not going to save us!

Arrgh! I've got to go to a meeting, and I may not get back to this today. I wanted to do a quick post about the sentence I liked, to emphasize and agree with, "It's not the library, it's the librarians." However, I can't agree with the same-old, same-old coming out of MLA. The association has not been able to effectively manage the problems of the professions with these methods in the past--how can they be effective means of managing it for the future?

WDT

Logic Models Are Just So... Logical

2005-08-29T14:51:00.000-05:00

I keep a little mental list of things I've learned at work, both positive and negative, that were of lasting value. I learned all about copiers, printers, Excel, and mail merges. I learned that your employess respect you more if you are usually the last to leave on Friday instead of the first. I learned computer-based MARC-21 cataloging from one of the most personable catalogers you will ever meet, and as a corollary I learned the truth of the statement "Garbage in, garbage out."

From the RML, I learned about logic models (among other things), and I just can't get over how useful they are for planning any kind of project. What I really want to know about my work is what kind of impact it's making, and it you work the logic model system in its logical way, you can easily assess your impact or lack thereof.

Logic models are a valuable way to think about your work, and it's one more reason I am so happy I had my time with the RML.

WDT

OMG! Google Sidebar!

2005-08-26T13:14:00.000-05:00

I've seen glwoing mentions in the biblioblogosphere of the new Google Desktop, which includes the Google Sidebar, but I hadn't gotten around to putting it on my machine. I just didn't want to be another Google-Me-Too kind of person, because I know what Google does with all that data. I know they track my every move. I was trying to resist giving them even more access to my habits.

This morning, I went to talk to a faculty member in the department I serve who had just installed it, and when I saw it, I said, "I was wrong. I gotta have that."

So, now it's installed, and I have to give it up to Google--Google Sidebar is one of the most exciting things I personally have seen in a while. It comes with little boxes that do news, web clips, a "scratch pad" for typing little notes, a photo viewer, "quick view" links to the last web and PC documents you have viewed, weather, stocks, more, and more! It's like My Yahoo, but up where you can see it, and with the extra bonus of desktop documents included.

I'm a little dismayed by the real estate it takes up, but with the search box and the "Quick View," I can clean up the toolbars in my browser and gain some screen zone that way. It auto installs to the right side of the screen but I've moved it to the left; it's less annoying for me that way.

I'm even a little amused by the "smart search" capabilities--I was looking for recipes for a minute this morning and it subscribed me to the Allrecipes Dinner RSS feed. I clicked on a couple of links to "praise" it.

On My Yahoo! I get my horoscope, and that's the only thing I can see that's missing from my Sidebar. I suppose if I could find a decent horoscope with an RSS feed I could add it that way.

I guess might as well drink the Kool-Aid and move from Yahoo! Mail to GMail, too. I've had that Yahoo! account since 1997, and I've been reluctant to give it up. But, but, but--the Sidebar will index my Gmail, too! How can I pass on that?!?

On a totally different topic, today was the first time I have had to use PubMed's Help on the Bookshelf since they moved it, and I am NOT impressed. I always loved the context-sensitive assistance you got when you clicked on the "Help" link in the left toolbar, so having to leave my search and drill down through a "book" really seemed like a step back. Maybe I just need to work with it more. Maybe I need to download it and have Google Desktop index it for me. Hmm.

Best wishes to all for a wondrous weekend.

WDT

The Krafty Librarian

2005-08-25T12:26:00.000-05:00

The Krafty Librarian

Krafty asks, "What is a Librarian's Responsibility?" and it's an interesting enough post for the both of us today.

Back in the public library day, we had a smiliar conversation over whether or not to buy a book about pig hormone injections for autism. It had been mentioned several times by national media and we had a number of requests for it, but it really made me nervous. We bought it, and a bucketload of quality autism books as well. The questionable book circed a few times and then fell apart, so we withdrew it with no fanfare and no subsequent patron requests, and the quality books lived on. Seemed like a good way to meet stated patron needs while making sure good information ended up on the shelf.

A Place to Call Our Own

2005-08-24T15:39:00.000-05:00

This is a minor thing, really it is, but I am pleased to no end: in all of the mess with the library remodel, we were able to carve out a former study room/office to be a small, classy, cosy place to meet with each other, with faculty, or with students. It's all set now, except for a few decorative touches that I have volunteered to add (amazingly, Karen only rolled her eyes a little bit).

I have found that as we get out more and talk more with people, there are a lot of opportunities that are too big for an office but too small for a conference room. I think space really affects interaction, and a more intimate space will hopefully encourage close interaction (and if any of you are smirking over having "intimate" and "close interaction" together in a sentence, I say get yer mind out o' the gutter).

Now, if only we could get the librarians the new office furniture that's been promised...

WDT

12.5 Hours is Way Too Long

2005-08-23T11:59:00.000-05:00

On a good day, I really love my work, and on a bad day, I don't hate it, so I guess I am pretty well-placed and well-adjusted as a librarian. However, yesterday I was here from 9AM to 8:30PM because I was A) on call and thus required to be in-house from 9AM to 5PM and B) scheduled to do an orientation for Health Policy and Management Students at 8PM.

Even counting blog-writing time (20 minutes), dinner (50 minutes), and Oh-My-Goodness-I-Can't-Believe-I'm-Still-Here Insaniquariam activities (30 minutes), it was still a long, long day. I had pep, energy and verve to get me through, but it is all stunningly absent this morning. So, I'm going to take a little comp time and go home to read and relax.

Oh, man, and the nerd quotient of THAT is sky-high: the librarian is going to take some time off to READ. Ha ha!

If you're interested, I'm reading a trashy but somehow compelling fantasy series by an author named Sara Douglass. I found the series by wandering randomly through the scifi/fantasy at Central Resource and picked up the second book because of it's title. I started the first one and decided to continue on.

Ahh, it should be a lovely afternoon. And I promise, I'll have my pep back for tomorrow.

Cheapskate = Luddite

2005-08-22T13:54:00.000-05:00

Siobhan sent me an article this morning on how to monitor your eBay auction using your cell phone or PDA, and my first thought was, "Wow, that's really neat!"

My next thought was that, especially with my return to a paper planner, I am so 1995. I had an emergency phone while travelling to Emporia for my Master's, but didn't get another until we put Trixie in daycare in early 2004. Even then, I bought a TracFone so I wouldn't have to pay a monthly service charge. It's cheap, it's convenient, and I don't use it for anything other than making the occasional phone call.

And, even though I've got a wireless PDA, it mostly stays in the cradle. This is because it won't do what I want it to do: sync with my calendar, instant message, and...work as a cell phone.

The obvious answer to this is to get either a really high-end cell phone or a combo device. However, I am waaaaaaay too cheap for this ever to happen. Not only am I not interested in spending $300+ for a device, but I am also not interested in a monthly contract for service.

This little incident has gotten me thinking about how the lack of money keeps us from pursing change in our lives, both personal and professional, technological and otherwise. How many opportunties do libraries pass up because there is not enough staff, or enough funding? Would access to these opportunities make the libraries the vital centers they want to be? Would my overbooked, constantly-juggled life be easier to manage with the right tools? Would a Treo make the difference for me between staying afloat and really reaching my goals? If you could have the money you needed to make a change in your life, what would it be?

Most libraries will never know, and I'll never know. We simply can't afford the investment needed to innovate.

Love...order...progress

2005-08-18T11:32:00.000-05:00

Love our principle,
Order our foundation,
Progress our goal.
--Auguste Comte

The switch back to the Franklin Planner is already paying off--this is today's "inspirational" quote at the top of the notes page.

I initially glanced at it and moved on, but then I was arrested by its resonance and decided to both post it in my office and write about it.

I don't think Monsieur Comte was thinking about libraries, but he was thinking about "alturism" or "the moral obligations of individuals to serve others and place their interests above one's own" (quoted from the Wikipedia article linked above). What are (most) libraries if not an embodiment of alturistic feeling?

Love our principle
"Hey, instead of buying all these books and locking them up in rich people's houses or rich institutions, let's put 'em out on shelves where anyone can walk in and look at them! And then, let's form giant sharing arrangements where almost anything can be gotten by almost anyone for almost no charge!"

Order our foundation
Oh, and let's get 'em all organized so you can find them, too. AND, let's all use the same or very similar systems so users can wander into any library anywhere and get the gist of how things are put together.

Can you argue that order is NOT our foundation? We collect, we organize, and we disseminate. If you don't catalog it, or index it, or tag it, or whatever you wanna call it, you can't find it, making collecting moot and disseminating impossible.

Progress our goal
Why do we do what we do? Certainly not for the huge personal financial gains. I actually just had a very interesting conversation with my boss about measuring the actual impact of library services (or in our case, library improvements). If progress is the goal, how do you measure that? It's a sticky question that I'm willing to put aside for the moment, just to feel good about the possibility of progress. I'll take it on faith that the world is a better place because we all troop in each day and do the best we can at what we do.

WDT

Back on the LIS PhD Wagon

2005-08-17T13:25:00.000-05:00

I wrote about the PhD question a bit back in June, and I'm back on the wagon again.

I think the rejection from UNT's distance program was actually a good thing, because it has forced me to seriously think about myself and what I might want out of a PhD. If accepted into UNT's program, I was planning to explore technology, and language, and search, and all that good stuff.

I could probably still do that in another PhD program; I think my qualifications for doctoral work are pretty good and that I could get in somewhere.

However, a number of spatio-temporal problems arise. To be a little less Trekky, I am severely limited by location and time, and this reduces my options substantially.

But the fact is, the more I think about it, the more genuine hope and optimism I feel. One thing that the local option can offer is faculty who are interested in the varying aspects of information access, technological and otherwise. The organization of information might take me down some intellectually stimulating paths, but thinking about access might be more ultimately satisfying.

If I truly believe that knowledge is power, then I think my studies should follow that path.

I also have to face a fact about myself: without access to the people we serve, my days are just empty. I can do the metadata thing for a couple of days, or weeks, but then at some point I have to get out to the desk or to a faculty meeting and get energized. If I am going to wade through a dissertation, I had best be sure that what truly energizes me--people--should be the focus.

I have plenty of time to get my materials together, and then I guess I'll know next spring whether or not it's going to happen.

Back to the Franklin

2005-08-16T12:33:00.000-05:00

An organizational update: the wiki never really got off the ground; my current PDA won't sync with my Groupwise calendar without some major effort, so there's really no reason to carry it around; both Google Desktop and Grokker have fallen short of my perennial organizational dream (although I can see some use for Grokker a few versions from now).

So, I am once again drowning in sheets from notepads and other miscellaneous slips of paper, and I think I have only one choice: go back to my Franklin Planner.

I know I made a mistake when I bought a new system last fall and chose a compact binder instead of the "classic" size I carried from 1997 to 2003. I just wanted something that would fit in a large purse (instead of, say, a totally-librarian-tote-bag), but the compact size is too small to handle what I throw at it. Heck, the daily to-do list only has 26 spaces!

I've got to say, though, that I return to the Franklin semi-willingly. For one thing, it's a book, a lovely, red, leather-bound book, and there's something calming and comforting about the physicality of the object. You can play games on your PDA, but you can't use it as a wubby.

WDT

How to Make an Effective Decision

2005-08-15T10:39:00.000-05:00

I've been thinking a lot about decision-making recently, both at home and at work. I tend to be the kind of person who takes concrete data, looks at it, assimilates it, and then adds that into my intuitive feeling about a situation to come to a decision.

When I was in marketing, we developed a data collection system to determine how many suckers were falling for our sales pitches. It proved that we were more than earning our keep, and that negative messages ("Bad guys are gonna getcha!") sold more security-system add ons than positive messages ("A fire system calls the fire department even if you can't!").

When I was in the public library, it was the rubric I developed to assign collection development money based on population, circulation, branch status designation, and independent streams of income (e.g., the Geneology branch had their own funds from the historical societies). It was easy to say, "So-and-so Branch gets more money because of these thirty-three cogent reasons."

When I was with the RML, we used a rigorous planning process based on the Kellogg Foundation Logic Model Guide. Although this process wasn't as heavily numbers-oriented as my previous two examples, it nonetheless provided a structured framework to determine progress towards a goal or goals. Those goals were tied into overarching visions or impact statements, and so it was pretty easy to see how the day-to-day work fed into the success of our venture.

Right now, none of my activities seem to have this same kind of accountability. To beat what might be a dead horse by now, how can I know what activities have a true impact if there's no way to measure it? I can serve my little sliver of the patron pie, but is that really improving the library's status? The question of whether I deserve to keep my job becomes moot if the decision is made that the library itself can be redefined into something that doesn't need librarians.

I don't necessarily see this happening, but I really feel the lack of a mission, the lack of a unified goal. If we're not working towards something, are we working ourselves out of employment?

The Worst Jobs in History

2005-08-11T14:55:00.000-05:00

This is either from the Librarian's Index to the Internet or from the Library Link of the Day (sorry, I can't remember which), and it's hilarious.

Worst Jobs in History

The quiz is particularly humorous. It all makes a day on the desk seem a lot less odious.

WDT

It All Comes Down to Priorities

2005-08-11T12:23:00.000-05:00

I was just having a little chat with myself about my lack of time and its impact on my work and life when I had a flash of insight:

I DO IT, TOO!

My last post just castigated those librarians who spend too much time on the little things and not enough on the tasks and projects that REALLY matter to their constituents, and I am living the example today.

What I want to be doing is working on an easy way to collect and disseminate all of the information I come across for the folks in Health Policy and Management. I'm thinking blog, but I don't have access to WordPress or a similar product here at work, so I've got to use Blogger or Bloglines or ratty old email or something. I'm just not happy with my results so far.

However, we have two newish online resources at the library that need to be promoted, and so I limited myself to 30 minutes of playing with my bloggy HPM ideas, and then I swore I would move on to creating a flyer for AccessMedicine.

And that's when it hit me: my bloggy HPM ideas are mine and mine alone. No one else here can provide that service to this constituent group. We've got a couple of fantastic Assistant Librarians who can do the darned flyer for AccessMedicine.

So, I obviously need to take a hard look in the mirror and a hard look at my to-do list. How can I use my unique skills in my set amount of time to make the most impact? Or, to use my own vernacular, what's the most useful way to shake my moneymaker?

WDT

Why (Many) Medical Librarians Deserve to Lose Their Jobs

2005-08-10T10:19:00.000-05:00

Wow--I can't believe I just typed in that title, and I can't believe I'm actually going to go ahead and write this post. However, this topic has been rattling around in my head for a while, and I think it's time to let it out.

If this post makes you angry, I want you to think about why, and I want you to tell me why. Challenge me, and let's start a conversation.

Why (Many) Medical Librarians Deserve to Lose Their Jobs
I come from a public library background, and although I did an internship in a really terrific medical library while in library school, I always thought public libraries would be my home. Public libraries have a mission, a built-in purpose, that I found and find most appealing. Public libraries through their very existence encourage literacy, provide access, and enhance engagement.

Medical libraries, on the other hand, have a mission that seems on the surface to be just as clear and vital, but which in reality is muddled and indistinct. Where else can information truly save lives? Any medical librarian can rattle off a couple of stories about the time they provided just-in-time information to help if not save a patient. Medical information improves outcomes, eases fear, and empowers the consumers of an often-confusing health care product.

The problem is this: because of the way most medical librarians work, the number of times their work truly makes an impact are few and far between. What does the average hospital librarian spend most of her/his time doing? Much of the day is spent on circulation, processing materials (checking in journals, etc.), and processing interlibrary loans, both incoming and outgoing. This is clerical work that takes time away from activities that truly make an impact. Any librarian spending most of their time on clerical work deserves to lose their job and be replaced by a clerk. Modern healthcare cannot support an expense that cannot be justified.

"But wait," you say. "I'm a solo librarian! What else can I do? Materials have to be processed and the work has to get done!"

You get volunteers to cover your clerical work. You find ways to minimize the clerical work. You think outside the box and do whatever you have to do to get the daily clerical work down to less than 25% of your job. You implement self-serve checkout so you're no longer tied to the desk.

And then, you get out there and start shakin' your moneymaker. Medical librarians have skills, they have talents, they have gifts that make them invaluable to any healthcare organization. Who else knows that the MEDLINE search interface in MDConsult sucks? Who else knows that 30 seconds with a Jablonski's or even a Merck Manual can be better than a 20-minute Internet search? Who else truly understands what makes a piece of information a quality piece of information? Who else knows that PubMed citations end in the 1950's?

In most facilities, the medical librarian is the only one who really knows these things, and the medical librarian is the only one who really knows why these things are important. But if the librarian is trapped (willingly or unwillingly) in a room or behind a desk, s/he can't be out sharing this information with the people who need to know it. If you're trapped, you can't be making the impact that can save that pateint, and save you.

The fact is that it's not just medical librarians who face this problem: even public libraries have to justify their existence, academic librarians struggle to remain relevant in a Google world, and I can't even imagine what it must be like for corporate librarians. However, I think the nature of medical librarianship particularly encourages the kind of passivity that makes us so vulnerable. Someday, they might need us to help save somebody, so they have to keep us, right?

Not right. Not anymore.

Do you deserve to lose your job?

WDT

Absolute Overload

2005-08-08T15:53:00.000-05:00

The problem with vacations is that you must always at some point come back; even if you are somehow permanently on vacation, at some point it ceases to be a "vacation" and starts being your "life."

It's been a beautiful five weeks for me. Even coming in on a few Mondays and Tuesdays, it essentially feels like I've been out of here since July 1. The time spent in Tiny Tot Gymnastics, looking at the "twucks" at 135th and Metcalf, and the trips to the pool have just been magical. Trixie's past that baby stage and well into toddlerdom, and more than a few people have said to me, "Oh, that's too bad--don't you just want them to stay babies forever?"

I loved Trix at three months, and six months, and nine months, but now she sees so much more, understands so much more, and really "gets it." Watching the light come on for her has been a privilege. Of course I want/wanted her to stay a baby forever; I want her to stay exactly the way she is each and every day, and at the same time, I can't wait to see the woman she grows into.

I can't stop time, though, and so it seems to me to be better to conjugate my feelings and say, I loved her yesterday, I love her today, and I will love her tomorrow.

I've got a lot of libraryland thoughts stored up, and some updates on previous posts, so there should be a lot of content through August.

WDT

Amazon and Usability

2005-07-25T09:40:00.000-05:00

I read Jakob Nielsen's Alertbox every week. Interface usability is an important concept for librarians, and generally we tend to clutter our interfaces with too many options, put in the wrong place.

I like to think of general usability principles like ADA compliance rules--making things ADA compliant makes them more accessible to non-disabled people as well. Making an online resource usable for the most inexperienced user aids everyone. So, the weekly reminders from Nielsen to keep things clean and user-focused are refreshing.

Another bonus for reading Nielsen is that the concepts translate into the tangible world as well (check out The Design of Everyday Things for a great read on real-world usability. I'll never look at a door the same way again).

This week's Alertbox article describes how Amazon.com is no longer the gold standard for ecommerce sites, and I absolutely have to agree. There is SO MUCH happening at Amazon that it can be tough to just find a book and buy it. My number one annoyance is that once you have logged in as an Amazon user, there is no clear way to log out. I hate that!

I had a Barnes and Noble gift certificate and was amazed at how easy it was to find and order what I wanted compared to a recent visit to Amazon. An order from Alibris, the online used book retailer, was even more elegant and enjoyable.

That said, Nielsen says that there's still a lot going right for Amazon, and I agree: Amazon is still my first choice for buying books (and toys, from their affiliation with Toys 'R' Us) online. Their selection and service just can't be beat.

However, Amazon represents a lesson that librarians should take to heart--in trying to be all things to all people, Amazon is pushing the envelope and by doing so pushing some (very profitable) users away. Why not pare our services--online and analog--down to the core of what we do, instead of trying to be all things to all people? Why not make ourselves really essential in a few areas where no one else--IT, education, whoever--can compete with us?

I'd appreciate comments on this; I think there's a real trend towards continual expansion of library services, and I seem to be pointing the opposite direction. We collect, organize, and disseminate information--should we really be doing anything else?

WDT

Getting a Job: Is There a Motherhood Penalty?

2005-07-18T13:38:00.000-05:00

Bloglines user whitneydt (wdavison-turley@kumc.edu) has sent this item to you, with the following personal message:

Oh, my -- the blood boils just reading the headline and synopsis. Forwarded from ResourceShelf via Bloglines.

ResourceShelf's DocuTicker
Docuticker is a daily update of new reports from government agencies, ngo's, think tanks, and other groups. DocuTicker is compiled by the librarians who bring you ResourceShelf.com.

Getting a Job: Is There a Motherhood Penalty?

By Shirl

Mothers--Employment Descrimination
Source: Cornell University, Department of Sociology (Shelley J. Correll, Stephan Bernard)
Getting a Job: Is There a Motherhood Penalty? (PDF; 149 KB)
"Relative to other kinds of applicants, mothers were rated as less competent, less committed, less suitable for hire, promotion, and management training, and deserving of lower salaries. Mothers were also held to higher performance and punctuality standards. Men were not penalized for being a parent, and in fact, appeared to benefit from having children on some measures. We discuss the implications of these findings for the theory presented and for enduring patterns of gender inequality in paid work."

Refresh, Recharge

2005-07-12T11:09:00.000-05:00

Let me tell you, I could get used to this schedule. As I'm only in on Monday and Tuesdays for a few weeks, today is Friday for me! Hooray!

Actually, I'm just not cut out to be a homemaker or a stay-at-home parent, as much as I admire and respect those who choose that path. My daughter is beautiful, and amazing, and I could spend every second of my day gazing at her, but that's not good for her or for me.

I do daydream of being able to bake for a living--I love making beautiful and tasty goodies, and Trix loves to "help"--but I don't know that I would be really happy with that. Despite years of work, I ultimately couldn't see myself making my life as a musician because I couldn't commit my existence to something so ephemeral, as much enjoyment as it would have brought me (and in theory, the audiences). Baking has that same element of frivolity.

What being away and taking a break provides me with is the space to find some perspective on what I choose to do, on being a librarian. Every day that I come in here, something I do ties into my fundamental belief that knowledge is power. Even though some days the link seems tenuous at best, it's always there. What could be better than that?

Focused Like A Lazer

2005-07-01T07:58:00.000-05:00

OK, well, maybe not. It's the Friday before my month of semi-freedom and I am just bouncing off the walls! Gotta get a little work done before I skitter out for a month in the sun.

Best wishes to all.

WDT

The Krafty Librarian

2005-06-30T15:20:00.000-05:00

The Krafty Librarian comments on the recent announcement of $21 million in IMLS projects to recruit new librarians.

I have been waiting for people to get back from ALA and start screaming about this, especially those NextGens who keep talking about the complete lack of entry-level library jobs.

The point that the NextGens, and that Krafty herself, miss is this: the grants are intended to "offset a current shortage of school library media specialists, library school faculty, and librarians working in underserved communities, as well a looming shortage of library directors and other senior librarians who are expected to retire in the next 20 years."

Read that again: school media specialists. Library school faculty. Librarians working in underserved communities. Library directors and senior librarians. Not, I repeat NOT entry-level librarians working in already oversaturated markets, or medical librarians who only want to work in a quiet hospital library where their main job is to check in journals and process interlibrary loans (clerical work, by the way, but that's a rant for another day).

We can't find school librarians willing to work in western Kansas, or in the inner cities. There aren't enough libsci PhDs who want to teach, or enough who want to be directors. We can't get black or Hispanic folks to become librarians. So, the fact is, there is a shortage in library science--a shortage of tough, dedicated people willing to make the hard choices to get ahead in their chosen field.

I feel little empathy for those who go into library school and expect to come out on the other side with an automatic ticket to a cushy professional job in an academic library. I know several very sucessful, very young librarians. We all took the same path:

Entered library school with little experience.
Worked at technology jobs while in school.
Interned while in school.
Worked at a small, rural library for almost no money to gain experience.
Moved at least once to advance career.
Moved into administration early.
Found "dream job" with decent pay and good benefits after being out of school between 24 and 36 months.

One of the main complaints is that library schools need to tell applicants the truth about the job market. I agree. I think every interview should have a disclaimer: if you want to be a french literature bibliographer at an ACRL library, you will have to WORK to get there. You will probably have to MOVE to get there. It may take YEARS. If, on the other hand, you have a commitment to the concept that knowledge is power and a willingness to implement that concept wherever you may be, you will be successful and happy in librarianship, no matter where you are.

ViaVideo, My Foot

2005-06-29T11:36:00.000-05:00

I love videoconferencing. I think it improves communication over phone or email and provides a way for people to get together no matter where they are.

However, I have to live with the contrary thoughts: I love videoconferencing, AND it is an absolute pain to do it 99% of the time.

Today I have a meeting to join where I thought I could just pop on our Polycom Camera, which ordinarily works like a dream. However, after almost four hours of tinkering, it looks like I'm going to have to mooch Karen's QuickCam and use it instead. It turns out that the conferencing system we'll be using doesn't like my Polycom camera. Arg!

If it's not the camera, it's the firewall, or the lack of RAM on the PC, or something. Whenever I do video, I'm so enthused about the promise and then so annoyed at the process of getting it to work.

I just want to wail, "Why can't we all just get along?"

Do You Blog? Take the MIT Blogger Survey

2005-06-28T08:21:00.000-05:00

I did, and it was very interesting. I will be excited to see their results!

Summer Vacation

2005-06-27T10:02:00.000-05:00

I'm pleased to say that there's just five more working days until my summer vacation. I usually take the first week of July off each year (Bill and I were married on the 4th, and it's nice to be off around our anniversary), but this year I am taking Wed-Thursday-Friday each week for the rest of the month as well. We're only sending Trixie to daycare two days a week this summer, and so it's my turn to soak up some Trixie sun. Bill's had all the fun during June; as marching band ramps up, I get to take over.

The point is, posting will probably be a little sparse through the month, unless you want to read things like, "Went to the pool today. Splash! SPLASH! SPLASH! Had much fun. Night-night."

"Information is Becoming a Conversation"

2005-06-24T11:45:00.000-05:00

Karen Schneider is one of the speakers at the perennial "Top Technology Trends" panel sponsored by LITA at the ALA Annual Meeting. This year, the top trendy people are posting their comments on the LITA blog, and Karen's post is outstanding.

A clip:

"Information is becoming a conversation. Information is no longer asynchronous received wisdom disseminated in formal publications to a passive and largely unexamining community. Instead, increasingly, information is increasingly synchronous."

What does this mean? It means that there's no longer a single record of authority; there's a path or trail of community-created authority.

Taken together with The Krafty Librarian's post on outstanding impact factors of open-access journals, we can begin to see where the concept of "synchonous information" leads. Open, freely available information becomes available for comment, and people WILL comment on it.

Unfortunately, impact factors don't and can't measure how many times an article has ben emailed, posted to a discussion list, blogged about, or otherwise commented on. I imagine if this added feature were available, open access titles would blow anything under subscription away.

Librarians are heavily invested in the concept of a single record of authority. There are good sources, and there are bad sources, and we decide which are which, don't we? In the synchronous information world that Karen Schneider posits, the river of information will just flow around us if we try to be any kind of barricade or block.

No News Today!

2005-06-22T09:46:00.000-05:00

WDT

Soft Money Gives Life an Edge

2005-06-20T11:26:00.000-05:00

Since coming to KUMC in 2002, I have been funded entirely by grant money, and I've found that it's a way I like to live. The RML funds were almost like hard dollars; it's a five-year project with virtual guarantee of renewal, but I still found that the flexibility of grant funding (and the possibility of increases at contract renewal time) made me a little more entrepreneurial.

Now that am no longer with the RML, my salary comes from the Office of Medical Education and from a grant funding digital library development. The digital library money is available through July '06, so I've got to find some replacement for that along the way, and although the MedEd money is a little firmer, they could still choose to pull it at any point.

In a conversation this morning, Karen (my boss) said something to the effect of, "I'd like to get you onto hard dollars for next year," but I don't know if that's something I want. Soft money gives life a bit of an edge and makes service (see my last post) a survival tactic. What I really prefer to do is to be the innovator and then create space for someone to come along and replace me. If my plan works, in twelve to 24 months, we should be able to have two new people, or half of two new people, to work with OME and to do metadata management. That would leave me free to do...whatever it is I'll be doing.

Soft money essentially guarantees that I won't be doing the same thing in two years, because my funding will drive my focus. It's a little scary, but exciting and--frankly--a relief. I have a short attention span, and I'd rather change the job I have in order to stay interested and engaged instead of just changing jobs when things get stale. I've been here for 3.5 years, but my job has changed three times (Kansas and Technology Liaison, Technology Liaison only, Digital Projects Specialist).

What could be next?

WDT

"[A]n idea, a vision--a something that inspires the MLS/MLIS masses to greatness"

2005-06-17T13:30:00.000-05:00

The Lipstick Librarian has a rare rant posted about the current and ongoing state of librarianship. The profession is stuck in never-ending "minutiae" and "[w]e talk endlessly amongst ourselves about the details--in short, focusing on the information trees while missing the forest. Maybe we're just plain too tired and overwhelmed to come up with the Grand Unified Theory of Librarianship."

I think the Lipstick Librarian is completely correct in her assessment of the profession and completely incorrect in her proposed solution. Librarianship is stuck on a spinning rodent exercise wheel of keeping up with a changing patron base, changing technologies, and journal prices. We do a lot of communal hand-wringing when what we need to be doing is creating change.

However, TLL's call for "an idea, a vision--a something that inspires the MLS/MLIS masses to greatness," and specifically suggesting the need for a single savior to lead us from the wilderness is, in my opinion, far off the mark, for two reasons.

First, we're, um, librarians. A lot of the commentary of the type that TLL is doing seems to me to contain a fundamental desire for respect and validation, a kind of societal acknowledgement that the work we do is as important as that of doctors, or lawyers, or computer programmers.

The work we do is important, but the sad fact is that very little of the essential work that goes on in the world gets the societal respect and validation that it deserves. It's not fair, and it's not right, but that's the way it is. And for whatever reason--because it is a feminized field, because we're all such geeks, or because we really are going to be obsolete in 20 years--it's unlikely that librarianship is going to get the respect and validation that TLL seems to want.

We must be able to validate ourselves--we have to acknowledge to ourselves personally and to society as a whole that what we do is imporatant. Perhaps it's not 'important' in a "we're-action-heroines-on-TV" kind of way, but it's important to the people we serve.

Which leads me to my second point. No Dewey, no Bill Gates, no Steve Jobs, and no Whitney Davison-Turley is going to be able to single-handedly lead librarianship out of this perceived crisis. A cheesy movie with a good message, Bruce Almighty tells the viewer to "Be the Miracle." If we're important to the people we serve, truly important to them, then what we do becomes important. We begin to get (limited) monetary compensation, and the more vital validation that everyone so desperately needs. One by one, we transform ourselves and the profession. We become the miracle.

"Coolness," embodied in a single visionary, won't save librarianship. Service, embedded into each and every one of us, will.

Go forth, Librarian, and humble yourself. Seek to serve, and you will lead.

Oh, and ask for more money while you're at it.

WDT

Including My Address in a Blog Post

2005-06-16T10:45:00.000-05:00

My husband Bill reads my blog, which makes me very happy. Yesterday, he commented that it probably wasn't safe to have a link to the Google map of our address right there for everyone to click.

I actually considered this before I made the link, but decided to go ahead and do it because there's so much one can find out about a person just from a simple Google search (especially with a name like mine--there's only one "Whitney Davison-Turley" who comes up).

On reflection, though, I think Bill is right. Yes, anyone can find my address easily enough, and then check out my house on the satellite image, but at least any wannbe stalkers should have to make the extra effort.

Cleaning House

2005-06-15T11:33:00.000-05:00

OK, so I'm not actually cleaning my house, I'm cleaning up my online-information-gathering house. Since I recently tidied up my feeds in Bloglines, I decided I also needed to clean out the 40+ items that I had marked "new" just because I didn't want to lose them.

Once upon a time, I had a process where I looked at something in Bloglines and if I wanted to keep it, I Furled it for futher reference. After the hard drive on my laptop died a while back, I never managed to get my Furl button reinstalled and so things have just been backing up on me in Bloglines--a ton of online-info-clutter.

So, I just cleaned it all out. I moved it all into Furl. Now, I didn't tag anything there, but tidying my Furl archive is way less vital because it's keyword searchable. That's something for a slow Firday afternoon, but getting that backlog of Bloglines items swept away feels like absolute freedom.

WDT

Feed me!

2005-06-14T13:12:00.000-05:00

After just whining about not having anything to talk about, I now have blog post topics backing up on me.

First, and as promised, here's my weeded list of feeds. I'm not going to say who got cut; I only managed to delete about five entries from my list. They were good blogs, but they did a lot of pointing to other blogs and saying "me, too." I just don't have the time for that.

Also, I'm not saying my list is in any way exhaustive or authoritative or anything. That's the great thing about getting your news via RSS--it's what you want, when you want it! I highly recommend developing a mix that meets your needs.

Drumroll, please!

************************
:30 Librarian (vanity made me add this, so I'd have at least one Bloglines subscriber, although now I have a whopping total of three)

Amazon.com (Updates me when books by a particular author become available)

BHIC (Bringing Health Information to the Community, Siobhan Champ-Blackwell-the-Mover-and-Shaker's blog)

EdTechPost (Content management system news)

The Informatics Review (Health Policy and Management journal)

Medical Informatics Insider (More information for HPM)

ResourceShelf's DocuTicker (Very high-traffic, covers a lot of social issues good for HPM)

Free Range Librarian (I would call this the librarian's ur-blog)

A Library Writer's Blog (Publishing and presenting opportunities to help fluff my CV)

blogwithoutalibrary.net (Usually unique content)

C&I Updates (Walt Crawford's alerting service, although I almost never get to read Cites & Insights these days)

Catalogablog (All the news on metadata and AACR that you could ever want)

The Days & Nights of the Lipstick Librarian! (She's just sassy, so I read her)

The Handheld Librarian (PDA schtuff for the library set)

Hospital library advocacy (Needs no explanation, not a lot of posts)

The Krafty Librarian (Techno-hospital librarian who posts great material)

librarian.net (Quality librarian blog)

LibrarianInBlack (Count on the LiB to comment on all the important library news/drivel of the day)

ResourceShelf (Professional reading updates)

The Shifted Librarian (Quality librarian blog)

TechnoBiblio (Yet another quality librarian blog)

User Education Resources for Librarians (Teri Hartman's edu-biblio blog, unique entries)

AL Online News (American Libraries news)

Librarians' Index to the Internet (Great links)

Library Link of the Day (Great links as well)

LISNews.com (All the biblio news that's fit to blog)

Open Access News (All the open access news that's fit to blog, plus some)

Pew Internet and American Life Project: Front Page (What are those Pew people studying now?)

ResearchBuzz (The #1 source for news about search and our friend Google)

Techdirt ("Easily digestible technology news")

Wired News ('Cuz I never get to read the mag)

LIS PhD discussion

2005-06-13T15:02:00.000-05:00

A short item: a link to this discussion came up in my feeds (sorry, no attribution as I clicked and moved on).

A very interesting discussion on the lack of online LIS PhD programs; many of you know that I was not accepted to the UNT "distance-independent" program (it is intended for public librarians and school media specialists, after all), and I've been trying to decide what to do ever since. So, the Library Juice discussion is of great interest.

The Burden of Blogging

2005-06-13T13:53:00.000-05:00

The burden of blogging is posting, even though it only takes a minute. Thursday I was out of the office most of the day, and when I was here I was running around like a chicken with my head cut off. I spent Friday morning in a "Medical Education Retreat" before I took the afternoon off to spend with Bill and Trix.

Today I am back into chicken-with-head-cut-off mode, but hope to have something intelligent to say tomorrow.

BTW--If you are a MCMLA member and haven't yet sent in your ballot, vote Whitney!

Bloglines bugaboo

2005-06-08T10:08:00.000-05:00

I use Bloglines to track a variety of RSS feeds, mostly because I like being able to get to my feed list from any Internet-enabled device I happen to have at my disposal.

However, I've noticed recently that a lot of my feeds are not updating as they should, so I am unsubscribing and resubscribing and that seems to help. I guess there's more than one way to spend a semi-slow reference shift.

One possible cause of this is that some of my feeds have moved to RSS2, but this doesn't seem to be a consistent issue (?). Hmm.

I am having some trouble balancing my feeds; there's a lot of techno-biblio stuff out there, and much of it is good, but a lot of it is really redundant, too. I'm also tracking some content management/teaching and learning technology blogs and a few feeds that relate more or less to Health Policy and Management, and it is just getting a little out of hand. I think the answer is to pick my top 10 techno-biblio feeds and let the rest go. I'll post what I keep when I get a chance.