Hi all,

This will be my last session-related post.  I went to several CZS sessions yesterday, but they’ve already been blogged admirably, so I won’t be redundant.  I made a conscious decision not to be be so gung-ho as it was wearing me out!  I was able to cram in a short time at the Pacific Science Center late yesterday afternoon.  I recommend it, especially the Tropical Butterfly House and the naked mole-rats.

Today’s post concerns the Subject Liaison2. 0 presentation.  As an accidental science liaison, I’m curious about ways I can improve my ability to interact with faculty and students of subjects I have not usually taken on (being a Medieval History guy in college, there wasn’t much call for studying Biology).  Strangely, I’ve rediscovered my interest in science (I wanted to be a scientist of some kind when I was in elementary school).  I’ll be live blogging this session.

Mel DeSart of the University of Washington’s Engineering Library kicked off the session.  Very funny use of the track from the Bionic Man - he says were not going to get that type of suggestion - no bionic liaison.  2.0 suggests a big jump or new form, however.  They are going to say where SL librarians are now and what direction we need to be moving in.

Jim Neal, the Vice President for Information Services and University Librarian at Columbia University

• Providing an administrative perspective on subject librarianship.
• SL needs to be considered in the larger context of where Academic libraries are heading.
• Academic librariesare still going to be “fundamental infrastructure” for modern academic institutions:  legacy, infrastructure, repository, portal, etc.
• SLs help us respond to user expectations: content, access, convenience, new capabilities, cost reduction, participation, individual productivity, individual control and organizational productivity.
• Core responsibilities:  selection, acquisition, synthesis, navigation, dissemination, interpretation, understanding, use, application, archiving - all in support of teaching and learning.
• New responsibilities (old ones are not enough):  libraries as consumers, intermediaries and aggregators, publishers, educators, r&d, entrepreneurs, policy advocates. - transcends Information Literacy.
• Expectations for the SL:  commitment to - rigor, r&d, assessment and evaluation, marketing skills, political engagement, project dev and mgmt, entrepreneurial spirit, resource development, leadership, deep subject or technical expertise.  We can only be successful if we build this capacity in our libraries.
• Need clear sense of mission, self vision, base of knowledge, strategic positioning, continuous improvement.
• Feral Professionals (raised by wolves - not necessarily one type of academic degree - not even necessarily MLS ) - Professionals with diverse academic credentials, wide range of new professional assignments, professional roles of support staff and students.
• SL relations to patrons:  servant, stranger, parallel, friend, partner, customer, team - the last three are the ones that need to be developed.
• Subject Librarians must enable: social networking, collective intelligence, permanent beta, authorship revolution, software as service/not product, artificial intelligence/expert systems, library as participation/not information. - not just “find” but “mine” information.  We need a higher level of “professional maturity” to deal with the 2.0 (and, ultimately, 3.0) environment.
• Complexity, ambiguity, flexibility, perpetual assessment, challenges to powers that be, low tolerance for management by cliche, erosion of boundaries and inflexible structures.
• Users want us to be:  authoritative and virtuoso, authenticated and secure, appropriate and pertinent, accessible and virtual and omnipresent, achromatic and advocative, audacious and attentive, assimilative and virtuous.
• Must evaluate our work in terms of “human objectives.”
• Overall, a pretty densely packed presentation - thought provoking and a bit disturbing at the same time.

Karen Williams of the University of Minnesota

• She agrees wholeheartedly with Neal.
• Everything they do supports and advances higher education. Different from public services, which has little relevance outside of the library space.
• How do we make the SL 2.0 model happen?
• Position Description Framework:  scholarly communication, teaching and learning, digital tools, outreach, collection development & management, fund raising, reference services.
• “Nothing is static anymore in our universes.”
• “Teaching and learning” does not refer to “bibliographic instruction” or info literacy - it’s beyond that.  UM wants to move beyond the old “guest lectures” model.
• Scholarly Communication is the focus of her talk.  Very dense slide - she will upload them to the appropriate place for people to read.
• They form “collaboratives” at Minnesota - everyone participates “very broadly.”
• Staff dev and support:  experts, environmental scan, resources & tools, templates, action plans - toolkit created so no one has to start from scratch.
• Recruited advocates from faculty in other departments.
• Launched their Institutional Repository with collections already loaded so there were no empty links.
• A system view:  constituent behaviors, library vision/mission/goals, position descriptions/realistic jobs, individual goals, knowledge/skills/ability, staff education, resources, performance evaluation.
• Have moved away from collection dev activities by using approval plans more heavily to free up liaison time. Also will scale down time spent at ref desk.
• Create a “risktaking” environment; you have to celebrate failures as well as successes.

Kara Whatley, Head, Coles Science Center at New York University 

• She put out a plug for the Science Information Literacy Wiki.
• Draws from: her work at NYU and other sources.
• The Holy Trinity:  Reference, Instruction, Collectin Development
• Reference:  virtual, in-depth consultations, collaborative/team reference (use VR, blogs, etc.), data reference.
• Collection Development:  on-demand purchasing, focus on “medium rare” items, collecting new media, relying more heavily on approval plans.
• Instruction:  course-embedded librarians, effective assessment, instructional design techniques.  Shift our teaching to make sure we are really providing effective instruction.
• Expanding roles:  engagement in knowledge creation, embedded librarianship, technologist, grant writing, communicator/politician.
• New twists on old skills:  mediation (”middleware” - connector between patrons and info); organization of information - tagging and metadata; preservation of info - data, new media; event planning/programming (need to find ways to get people into the library, since the collections are being used mostly virtually).
• Development of new skills:  “Just do it!”; technology competency and training; continuing education opportunities - small conferences, summer institutes for practicing librarians.
• Things to consider changing (either by curtailing or strengthening):  multi-desk reference service, firm ordering as we know it, stronger partnerships with campus IT, sharing common needs across librarians, going mobile.

The session was good, moving from more complex abstract considerations to a more concrete example of how subject librarians work.  In the end, Whatley’s presentation was, perhaps, more useful for a CC librarian, since we need practical, practitioner advice.

I’m back in the CZS for more tech fun.  There has been some interest at our college in finding ways to get students to use reference, and one idea was to have roving reference (as well as office hours outside of the library).  I’m here to check out what Emily Rimland of Penn State has to say about their experience with handheld devices and reference.  You have to hand it to the Nittany Lions.  This is the second innovative session from them I’ve seen today!   The next thing you know, they’ll be bustin’ out the tricorders on us.

Their situation:  giant library, many floors, many users, many service desks - how could technology help in this context?

2007 - considered the iPhone - “sexy,” but it didn’t have a compatible VPN client - long-term contract an issue, too.

Basic Idea: roving staff member with handheld; able to answer ref questions; able to help patron at point of need.

4 devices tested in pilot and testers completed multiple evaluations.  This all was done through collaborating with their IT staff (key component of this). Non-IT staff came up with “use cases,” and the IT department selected the “right devices” for those use cases.  Three of the four devices were already owned by the IT department, which kept down the costs.

Used for roving ref to find physical item, find further info and email to patron, ref outside of library, faculty liaison activities, library instruction in class.

Devices: Fujitsu Lifebook, Sony Vaio UX-490, Nokia N-810, OQO.  No clear winner, but the Lifebook was the closest (similar to laptop). Phone connectivity is important. Some testers found some devices to be too small for efficiency in answering ref questions.  Learned that it is critical to collaborate with IT, that the wireless system needs to be tweaked and other “serendipitous” findings.  They found that the Lifebook is good for other scenarios.

URL:  http://tinyurl.com/psuhandhelddevices .  A white paper is available for download. 

They are currently testing the iPod touch along with/without cell phone.

Good question:  how did they identify the roving ref person?  They did not have any identifying clothing or tags - just educated the staff member on how to approach patrons.

Earlier, I went to the Sony Reader presentationby Anne Behler of Penn State University.  I was curious about the selection of the Sony Reader over the Kindle, which gets all the buzz.  Apparently, at the time, Amazon was not prepared to partner with a university, but Sony jumped at the chance.  The pilot project was pretty limited.  They used the Readersin a limited number of classes, including a Libraries First Year Seminar class, English Composition, and a limited number of available leisure reading units.  In the second semester, they also included uses for disability services.  While the disability services uses “failed miserably,” the leisure reading activities seemed to show promise.  Overall, Behler and co. came to the conclusion that the potential is there, but the technology isn’t quite where it needs to be yet.  Ultimately, they’d like to deliver material that is “device independent,” so students can use whatever they have in their hands at the moment.  I’m quite impressed by the forward thinking approach taken by Penn State.  The fact that they were able to collaborate in a seemingly genuine manner with a corporation like Sony is also heartening.

Good morning.  Like many of you all, I enjoyed Sherman Alexie’s keynote last night.  It was great to finally see him in person.  I was bummed to miss him when he came to Spokane back in the fall. 

I’m going to be blogging the Social Networking Literacy Competencies for Librarians paper in Room 602.  The authors are Joseph Murphy of Yale University Science Librariesand Heather L. Moulaison of Ecole des Sciences de l’information, Rabat and Rutgers.  Joseph Murphy will be presenting.

Murphy’s paper covered these points.

• The paper is focused on online social networking, as opposed to other types of social networking.
• These sites have become “central” for accessing and sharing information.
• We have to develop the skill sets to maintain our role “as information experts” in the Web 2.0 world.
• The skills he proposes are based on the ACRL IL competency standards. They are flexible and applicable across social networking sites.  They are not just relevant for Facebook or Twitter.
• We need to be teaching these to students and patrons as well.  Note: this is very true in my experience with undergraduates.  They might know how to use the technology, but are they thinking critically about these things?

Some skills

• Creating content: contributing content in various formats, creating a library presence - pages, groups, profiles, applications.
• Understanding and articulating the nature and roles of the social networking tools available.
• Evaluating information: need to be able to critically evaluate the content in SN sites.  We should help our patrons gain these skills.  They also need to be critical about how they are creating content, as well.
• Applying info ethically and legally:  need to respect copyright and intellectual property.  Be aware of unique cultural norms of and need for privacy.
• Searching and Navigating: effectively search and browse.  What are the connections and hierarchies in each of the SN sites?  What fields are searchable?  Structures of relationships important.
• Interacting:  tricky for librarians.  How do we interact appropriately with patrons through SN sites?  Which methods are interactive and which aren’t?
• Teaching:  Assist patrons and peers with developing SN skills.
• Providing services - building and managing the library’s presence.  I like this question:  how do we respect the privacy of patrons AND our own privacy?  We need to be ready for vendors selling “facebook” compatible applications for the library, too.

Other points

• “Flexibility is the defining competency.”  We have to be ready for change, be able to visualize what’s around the bend.
• Encourages “hands-on,” a “sense of play.”  We don’t need to be afraid of engaging in these things.  Our associations need to be encouraging and supporting us in learning these skills, which are soon to be “required skills” for doing our job properly.
• Murphy argues that we need to develop the skills to design applications for Facebook.  We cannot rely on IT people to do this.  He invites interested parties to friend him and his co-author on Facebook.

I wonder how students see the Facebook initiatives in Community Colleges and universities.  The LibGuides presentation I went to yesterday suggested that students saw using Facebook as a portal as “unprofessional.”  Also, how do we separate our “personal” lives from our professional lives in a Facebook profile, or do we create both?

Also, do students want to know what we’re up to via Twitter?  Maybe they do, but we need to find this out somehow.

I am attending three straight Cyber Zed Shed presentations, beginning at 3 today.  The first is Learning Information Literacy Online (LILO), followed by BibApp and Podcasts.  I’ll be “live” blogging these three presentations.  These will be my first of this series, which, as Jennifer blogged earlier, will give me the practical know-how that is so useful in the CC world (not that it’s not useful in other settings).

Session 1 (LILO)

I hadn’t realized that one of my fellow bloggers was presenting at CZS, i.e., Margot Hanson (great job, Margot!).  She is demonstrating a project from the University of Hawaii to put IL online. The code came from North Carolina State.  LILO is a systemwide effort throughout the state.  Note to self: how could we set up a collaborative model at the Community Colleges of Spokane for all three parts of our system?

• Interactive: tutorial, research journal; IM chat, email librarians/instructors; videos and links to interactive elements.
• Assessment:  institutional standards, information literacy reports.

Students know what is expected of them - very important.  They also included a local topics section, which can help keep students interested.

Tutorial is comprised of 6 modules, ranging from general to specific.  The students automatically have an account in the system.  The students have a journal, which can be emailed to librarians and their instructor.  This provides an easy, safe way to provide meaningful feedback to students about their progress.  Showed a good, quick video about citing sources - good use of humor.  They posted it on YouTube.

Assessment - follow a cycle. 

1. ACRL standards, university standards
2. LILO content and questions
3. Student responses
4. Score with rubrics
5. Response Data to faculty - trying to get more faculty on board to make it required, whether than voluntary, as it is now.

There is a guest login available.  Interested parties are welcome to login.

I like the tools available, such as links to Bubbl Us, a “fridge magnet” boolean search tool, citation builders, etc.

Session 2 (BibApp)

The presenter is Sarah L. Shreeves of U. of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.  BibApp is billed as “A campus research gateway and expert finder.”  Sounds intriguing, doesn’t it? 

The project is still under development, so it’s still being refined. 

Issues

• talk to faculty about archiving and scholarly comm. issues
• market institutional repositories
• faculty want something that gives access to all publications not just what is available in repo
• often don’t know faculty’s publication history and patterns
• faculty need lists of pubs for easy import into grant apps and other reports
• often do not udnerstand collaborations across campus - hard to get that data.

BibApp is a mashup, pulling data from faculty directory info, publication lists, Sherpa/Romeo archival database (open API), OpenURL resolver, and SWORD (for repository connection).   She showed the 0.7 version.  It looks like an innovative way to pull together the scholarly communications of an institution.  I like the cross-referencing with faculty they’ve collaborated with - reveals patterns of collaboration at the university or college.

Author disambiguation has been built in to BibApp.  Example:  two D. Morgans (one in sciences, one in humanities).  The system can “learn” how to assign the articles to the correct author.  Different types of data can be pulled out of the records.

Currently working on BibApp 1.0.  BibApp 2.0 is also planned for the future (will include tag clouds, collaboration network visualization, etc.).  It will be completely open source (Google code).

Session 3 (Podcasts)

The presenter is Clarence Maybee from Colgate University.  Students in a conflict resolution class (Introduction to Peace and Conflict Studies)had to create podcasts.  These podcasts were loaded into Youtube and can be found there. 

Video excerpts of student reflections are available here.  There are also excerpts from the instructor of the course at the site.

• They were looking to embed technology in classes to enhance pedagogy.  They used a model called Collaboration for Enhanced Learning (CEL), which “pairs librarians with information technologists to work with faculty to embed appropriate technology and information literacy instruction into course curriculum.”
• Students were assessed by the professor and by some of the other students.  They also had to review their own podcast according to 4 standard questions.  The rubric sounds like it was clear.
• Ray Nardelli from Colgate also spoke via Skype to go into the technology side.  He’s the Manager of Digital Media at Colgate. 
• Nardelli credits the collaboration with making the project successful.
• From the tech side - how will the recordings be made, edited, distributed?
• Took one class period to present a workshop to use editing software. They used Audacity, an open source solution.  “The fact that it was open source and could be used both on Macs on on PCs made it a good choice for them, even though there might be better ones out there.
• The workshop took a final edit of a podcast then had the students try to edit the same files into a final production.
• Students need to learn these editing skills to use new media - good hands on approach.  Students can start to appreciate the amount of work and editing needed to make it work.

Now, off to Sherman Alexie!

Unfortunately, the Cyber Zed Shed presentation that I planned on going to at 1:00 (APIs) did not come off.  Therefore, I thought I’d take this time to finish up the blog post I started earlier.

At 10:30, I attended the Reinventing Research Guides session.  This was the first of quite a few sessions related to LibGuides.  Our library has recently adoptedLibGuides, so I was interested in hearing other librarians’ experiences.  My experience with the product has been very positive so far, and I can’t wait to learn more about what we can do with it. 

The session was presented by Ken Liss from Boston College, Emily Frigo and Laura Harris from GVSU and Maura Seele from Georgetown (formerly of GVSU).  The session focused on the history of library research guides, the questions that the literature has raised about them, the implementation of LibGuides and the results of a joint student survey carried out by BC and GVSU.

History of Research Guides

• MIT Pathfinders from the early 1970s. 
• Included instruction instead of just lists of resources.
• Were aimed at beginning researchers.
• Were “syndicated” for use at other libraries through Addison-Wesley

Questions from Literature

• Scope - how broad or narrow should RGs be?
• Guidance - should it guide students to resources or show them how to find their own?
• design/terminology - what do you call them? how should they look? what vocab to use?
• standardization - how standardized or individual should they be?
• workload - how do they impact overall librarian workload
• The missing ingredient:  what do users actually think of them?

Libguides @GVSU and BC

• Librarians at both schools very frustrated with the old ways of doing research guides.
• LibGuides gave them new flexibility and a way to bypass the hierarchy of getting someone else to do it.
• Initially a lot of work to transfer old guides, but the workload decreases over time.
• Struggling to decide what uses are appropriate and which are “seeing every thing as a nail just because you have a hammer.”
• Standardization has been an issue for GVSU.
• Finding they need to make them as specific as possible (not too general or broad).

Student Survey

• Scope: prefer more specific; many students mentioned course and major info; descriptions preferred by 90% of respondents.
• Guidance: students wanted specific help and “how-to” information added; expected “credible” sources; students not much more likely to approach librarians through LibGuides than in person (”library anxiety” not necessarily lessened).
• Design/Terminology: 90% found tabs at the top helpful; 97% at BC liked the term “Research Guides”; 75% of GVSU students liked the term “Library Guides”; 92% @ BC said they found the guides “very easy” or “fairly easy” to find from the main page.
• Promotion: issues of where to link from on website; blackboard and syllabus popular with students; students not so keen on using facebook as a portal to LibGuides (doesn’t seem “professional” to some of them)

Next Steps

• Promotion steps: market to major institutional stakeholders; get links on CMS and syllabi; integrate with instruction sessions; develop more course guides; add more “how-tos.”
• 92%+ said they would use LibGuides guides again.
• The presenters have, kindly, created a LibGuide about their project:  http://libguides.gvsu.edu/acrl09 .  Check it out!

On another note, I ran into a colleague from my days as a grad assistant at the University of Tennessee at the session.  Go Vols!

Hi, everyone.  After last night’s first-time orientation, I decided to go out with my wife for a few sight-seeing adventures.  We went to the Space Needle (our third time), and the view was, as always, beyond my ability to describe it.  Rainier stood majestically to the south, behind Seattle’s elegant skyline.  The snow blanketed Olympics were not too shabby, either.  Afterward, we went to the Market and had a small meal at the 100-year-old Athenian Inn, a place I thoroughly recommend.  Even though it’s in the Market, the crowd didn’t seem very touristy, and it had an “authentic” vibe.  The $2.99 fish ‘n’ chips were very good, especially for the price. 

This morning’s activities have been productive and stimulating.  I went to the Beyond the Basics session, which focused on ways to provide customized research services for Faculty and Students.  Although the focus was on grad students, the session had relevance in a community college setting, as it provided new ways of thinking about what faculty (in any institution) might want from the library.  Here are the four main questions they considered and some of the answers.

1) How can librarians learn more about thier faculty and support their research?

• ask them (and really listen)
• socialize with faculty
• create institutional repositories (not really a CC thing, I suppose)
• be active on task forces and committees
• attend departmental meetings in your liaison area, whenever possible
• interview faculty about their needs

2) What types of new/customized services can librarians develop to support student/faculty research?

• IR (again)
• take services out of the library and to other sites on campus
• create course-specific content in CMS
• use blogging as a way to perform outreach (example: the EdLibReport blog by USF librarian, Susan Ariew - one of the presenters)

3) Given the ubiquity of electronic resources, how important is the library as place for faculty members/students?

• comfort with tech doesn’t necessarily equal skil with tech
• space for students and faculty to get what they need
• collaborative work
• physical interaction with library resources and librarians
• a place of their own for their research and projects (Scholar Commons)

4) What new roles can librarians play to bring library collections and services to the table?

• library as publisher
• IR (related to the publishing concept
• partner with admin and others to get the word out about the library
• conduct specialized workshops: e.g., APA, copyright, Impact Factors

Thanks to the librarians from USF and FSU who put together a very informative session!

Well, I’ve finally made it to the convention center, and I’m sitting in a comfy chair with my laptop and a cup of earl grey from Tully’s.  It’s not as good as my usual favorite brew, Rington’s, but it will do.  In fact, I hope that the replicator technology from Star Trek will become a reality in my lifetime just so I can say, “Computer. Earl Grey. Hot.”  I’d add a dash of non-fat milk, but that’s me.

Anyway, as you can probably tell from my rambling, I’ve been up since 3am.  I caught the 6 am flight out of Spokane, and I must say that Alaska Airlines, as usual, displayed a lot of courtesy and friendliness.  The flight was pretty smooth, too.  As we landed, we were again amazed at the site of Mt. Ranier.  Ranier  is truly one of the majestic sites in the U.S., and my goal in the near future is to spend time exploring Mt. Ranier National Park.  I understand it was traditionally called Tacoma (or Tahoma), the “Mother of Waters.”  I can well believe in its powers.

I’m very impressed with the venue.  The convention center affords distant views of the Sound, and its right in the midst of it all.  It’s so much better than Anaheim, which, frankly, is in the middle of nowhere, unless you like Disney and chain restaurants (not that there’s anything wrong with that, but sometimes you just need some variety). 

Unfortunately, like many a first-timer, I was not on the ball enough to be registered for any of this mornings panels.  I wanted to go to the copyright workshop, but my ignorance of procedure has prevented me.  The pains of being a newbie…

Perhaps ACRL should develop a first-timer orientation that can be delivered electronically well before the conference to help us neophytes.  I’d even volunteer to help in that effort.  What do y’all think?

Hi everyone,

My name is Josh Hogan, and this will be my first time at the ACRL conference.  I attended ALA in Anaheim as a student-to-staff participant and really enjoyed it.  This will be my first conference as a professional librarian, so I’m very excited about this opportunity to learn about our association.

I’ll be coming from the other side of the state of Washington, Spokane, so this won’t be my first time in Seattle, but I’m looking forward to learning more about that wonderful city.  In my short experience there, I’ve found quite a few places that I like.  I’ll second the opinion of others that Pike Place Market is a must-visit place.  In fact, if you don’t visit anything else, you should visit the Market.  I’ve found I can spend whole days there.  While you’re in there, a good place to get a (relatively) inexpensive beer or other beverage is the Sound View Cafe, which isn’t far from the famous fish market area.  The view of Puget Sound, as you’d expect, is wonderful, and you can’t beat $4 or less for a draught beer.  The food isn’t particularly special, but it’s not too bad either.  The breakfasts are huge.

I’m looking forward to meeting you all and sharing my perspective as a first-timer and as a community college librarian.  I’ll see you all soon!