Riddle me this Dilemma

What do I take?

Digital Library or Public Library?

This is a lesson in time management

I hate when friends ask me on Facebook if I have the assignment done and you respond with "what assignment?" I really need to get myself a day planner. I didn't know that today was the 22nd until halfway through the day.

God. I can't wait for December. I get a break in December. I'll be broke, but I won't have to work three of my jobs for two weeks. Free vacation.

I miss you Zebra CAKE!

The snack box in the public library break room now stocks Zebra Cakes and Nutty Bars and Star Crunches. I haven't eaten those since 8th grade....maybe 9th. God love nostalgia! and food that's mostly plastic.

Kindle Won't Kill Libraries - The Daily Beast

Don’t throw out that library card just yet. The age-old institutions are holding onto familiar users and gaining new ones by expanding digital collections, seizing readers' newfound appreciation for electronic readers. More than 5,000 public libraries acr

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The explicit books teens read (and the ones we read when we were their�age)

The explicit books teens read (and the ones we read when we were their age)

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I read this today, and I though about how I'm going to be the one with the purchasing power one of these days. I also recently read an article from School Library Journal about self censorship among librarians. That is, librarians who don't order materials on the basis that they do not want to have to fight it later if a parent complains. I understood why some librarians would not want to go through the work of defending their book choices (with principals being so wishy-washy these days) but I remember being able to access all sorts of material when I was WAY too young to be reading it. The most memorable at the moment is from Steven Gould's novel Jumper about a teenage boy. David, who can teleport. He and his girlfriend Millie hook up for the first time, and after the first bout of sex, she asks him "where did you learn that" and he responds "I told you, I read a lot."

Brilliant. Like Han Solo's "I know" to Princess Leia.

I was reading this in 6th grade. I barely knew what sex was (until the hidden porn stash was discovered in the basement).

I won't say I was too young to be reading it. That would cheapen what the book meant to me and how it helped me grow as a human being and an adolescent (did I mention the opening scene is David on the road about to get raped by a trucker.)

So really, if you think something isn't appropriate for a reader, tough shit, because if they can read it and understand it, then they are going to be able to find it on the internet. At least if it's a book, you know they aren't going to stumble into some site with a ladies tig ol bitties hanging out of her dress.

Academic library Exam II

Background: We were given a prompt wherein we were supposed to make decisions about how an imaginary library worked. We could base it off of one already in existence if we wanted to. I chose to base my on Midlands library because that is the one with which I had had more experience.

For starters, I will first describe the library for the what-if question. It is the campus library for a small (about 1000 students) liberal arts college. The library is open 80 hours a week with reference services available 70 hours a week. The main focus of the library’s mission is to serve the campus community, with a secondary mission to help serve the community where the college resides. The library collection contains about 300,000 monographs and is current in over 60 periodicals. The library also subscribes to several online databases and has access to several thousand journals. The library has an annual budget (excluding salaries) of about $700,000. The library is staffed with a director, a reference librarian (both faculty members), a serials librarian, a collections librarian, a part time archivist, and part time reference librarian. Twenty federal work-study students also staff the library. The libraries mission statement is
The library exists to serve the needs of the total College mission. Specifically, the library supports the broadest goals of the College as a liberal arts institution in both resources and services. The library, moreover, assists in the College's mission of providing a nurturing environment for spiritual, intellectual, and personal growth.
What is difficult about the “accountability” of this library is that it already operates on a pretty responsible budget. The college saw decreasing enrollment well before the economy took a dive, so money is fairly tight campus wide. The first order of business if I were the library director would be to begin a cross-training bonanza. All salaried librarians would effectively know how to do most of the duties in the library. Reference would know how to run serials and collections would know some of the duties the director supervises over (mostly cataloging). The other step I would take to streamline the work output would be to begin “promoting” experienced work-study students to different positions within the library. Currently, most students man the circulation desk and shelve books when needed. I would take the more experienced students and begin training them in reference, archiving, basic cataloging, and processing. Another area of training would be to teach the faculty how to access and teach the relevant databases for their field of study. All business professors would know how to search relevant business journals through the online databases AND be able to teach that (with help from the library) to students in the classroom. These steps would help to always keep the library gears turning; even if/when positions or hours need to be cut. This would also fulfill the criteria of increasing library productivity. Since we are involving more people we already pay to alleviate some of the everyday workload, the library runs more efficiently.
This leads to the first cost-cutting move. I would remove the part time reference position, which is paid through the library budget, and replace it with the work-study students, who are paid through federal monies. Yes, someone loses a job, but as far as the structure of the library, little is upset. This frees up twenty paid hours a week that can be cut from the library expenditures. The only troubling thing about cutting positions is that they rarely come back. Traditionally, the part time reference desk position was filled with a local library school student who could work with students on reference questions and still be able to complete homework in the downtime. If the position goes away, it will probably never come back to the library which removes a paraprofessional from the library staff AND takes away easy paid study time for a library student. That being said, it’s still the most financially non-valuable position.
Another move, besides cutting staff, would be to begin charging for some services for community users. Currently, the library offers basic community membership for anyone with a valid drivers license. We do this as a community service and charge nothing. Community patrons are not allowed to check out certain materials, but are allowed access to the internet. One way we could increase library revenue would be to begin charging community patrons for those basic services. The cost would not be anything steep, but it would contribute to the overall revenue of the library. Perhaps a $15 charge for 12 months of access or maybe even break it up for those community patrons who only use the internet and those who want to access the stacks. This step brings in money for services we already render, and if we lose patrons, we aren’t losing any money because they weren’t paying for it in the first place.
These are just a few ways the library can make small steps to increase the productivity of the library and decrease some spending and streamlining the budget overall. These changes would also continue to allow the library to fulfill its stated mission of providing “resources and services” to the college community. These changes improve the visibility of the campus library through the staff and faculty training, increase the number of service employees at the library through the “promoted” work-study students, and increase revenue cutting hours or positions and through charging for community access. These steps also clearly clear all of the hurdles Cohen and March describe as well. 1. The library as a strict set of goals as seen in the mission statement and the library can continue to adhere to it despite the cuts to budget. The library understands its processes. 2. The library understands its processes. The library has been a sustainable, functioning resource on the campus for decades. Change has been gradual, but it has been clear change done with intent and not the kind called “trial-and-error.” 3. The library has a clear purpose. The mission sets the parameters and then operates on objectives based on that mission. The library even defines the ways in which it reaches the objectives. The objectives are also clearly measurable. If the president wanted to see our accomplishments toward the objectives, the library could conclusively prove success. 4. The library has a clear leader. There is no ambiguity about who is in charge of the library. Even with the cross training, the vision and the direction of the library will still be up to the library director. 5. The library judges success based upon the mission and the objectives. Since the library does not create profit for the college and cannot be sustainable if it allowed “promotion based opportunity” it can only be deemed successful if it fulfills the stated objectives tied to the mission. The library fulfills the goals, and therefore is successful.
To conclude, I believe it must be noted that a library cannot continue to function as the first line in the budget cut. The success of the institution often times falls heavy onto the libraries shoulders, especially in larger, research-based institutions. Even for the small liberal arts college, the library serves as the access point for student learning and faculty success. Without the library, the learning community of the college suffers because it loses access to information. With that being said, I also think that there are ways for a small college library to innovate in order to shift with the market and become a more sustainable line item on the college budget. As long as the library can clearly meet and exceed the goals set down in the mission statement, then it can continue to go with business as usual. However, at the moment that service and access begin to suffer as a result of belt tightening, the library will have to either find a way to encourage the college president to continue to support the library or begin to look for other means of sustaining itself.

Marvel Maring interview paper

Reference Librarian Marvel Maring has been working at the UNO Criss Library for the past six years as the department liaison for Art, Theatre, English, the Humanities, and most recently, Communication programs. Let’s stop to process that before we even continue: Ms. Maring has as many seven departments that she interacts with on a weekly basis. Coming from a small liberal arts college, that wouldn’t be such a bad thing, but after seeing just how much traffic comes through the Criss library in one day has made me a believer that Ms. Maring works miracles over and over and over again. I can see, however, that you are not going to take me at my word; and that’s fine by me. Allow me to share with you unequivocal proof that Ms. Marvel Maring is a reference librarian superhero.
To begin, a little background on our super librarian. Marvel Maring is a second career librarian. She originally received an MFA in Chicago and was teaching at Kansas State. She left KU to get masters in book arts from the University of Alabama. Coincidentally, the library science program runs the book art program at Alabama. Maring because a graduate assistant for a library science professor and began working some hours in the library, as well as sharing some classes with MLS students. Maring only had to take an extra semester of classes in order to graduate with a double masters in book art and library science. Of the career path, she had to say, “I didn’t have a guidance counselor telling me I had these skills and I’d like this. I just fell in love with it.”
During the hour-long interview, Ms. Maring was able to explain what she does at the Criss library and some of the challenges and joys of working at the library. One of her main roles at the library is to be a liaison to the English, Humanities, Art, Theatre and Communications departments. This job keeps her pretty busy. She does about 40 BI sessions a semester and usually about 7 face-to-face reference encounters a week. She explained that one of the perks about working with the English department is that there is an inherent relationship with the library early on. Librarian Melissa Caste-Brede helped create a collaboration piece with the freshman composition classes 7 years ago. That has lead to a buy-in by the English department to bring students to the library and to bring librarians to the classrooms. Ms. Maring says one of her favorite activities as a reference librarian is going into the classroom as students are just beginning the topic process for papers or projects. She says that she might not do any direct teaching, but she enjoys the time because it gives her a chance to connect with the students as well as get some baseline ideas for what types of resources the students are going to need.
Since the University of Nebraska-Omaha is a state institution, is has quite a lot of materials. More than this reporter could ever hope to maintain. Ms. Maring’s favorite electronic choice for her students and faculty was a three-way tie of sorts. Her first choice for electronic resources is the MLA International bibliography. It’s the core bibliography reference work for the humanities, her area of expertise. Her close second was a tie between Jstor and Project Muse because of their accessibility and the full text and user-friendly formats. For her communication students (a whole different animal than Art and Humanities students), Ms. Maring had three databases that she especially liked: Linguistics database, Sage full text, and Artstor. She mentions that Artstor is “a visual juggernaut” and “a really powerful and neat database” because it contains material gathered from the Smithsonian Natural History Museum. Ms. Maring’s favorite print resource is the contemporary authors cumulative index. Even though some of the information is digitized in Gale, she thinks the print “is much more accessible and user friendly. Once the students get to see what’s available, they get over the hurdle of working in print.”
Maring showed a deft knowledge of both print and electronic resources, but one of her challenges within the library is dealing with the professors and their hunger for format. She said, “The English department can get a little grumpy about the print versus the digital resource.” She went on the explain that as a bookmaker, she understands the need for the tactile book as object, but that even some of the more persnickety English professors love electronic databases like Jstor with its full text articles and super simple interface. Another challenge she has in the library is the ethical considerations she has toward the community users. As a public institution, the Criss library also serves basic library needs for the public, but Maring noted that she has to remember to prioritize the level of service with regard to the mission of the students and the community patrons. One instance she described was a community user taking an online course and it was his first experience with a computer. He did not know how to log on or open an internet browser or many of the other basic skills needed for an online course. Service is one thing, but holding hands and walking them through the entire process is time consuming, especially when the patron is not a university student or faculty member.
As per the assignment parameters, I found a website with information pertinent to the reference interview. What I found to be most helpful were the notes concerning the reference interview. It gives a breakdown of the steps you need for a reference interview. They are approachability, Responsiveness, Listening/inquiring, finding, and follow-up (http://web.utk.edu/~wrobinso/531_lec_interview.html). Maring had given us a rundown of her steps of a reference interview, and they matched up pretty well, but she ended her list saying, “Reference librarians enjoy the search. We have to remind ourselves that the patron just wants the answer. They might not be as thrilled with the process as we are. Sometimes we might just have to get their email address and start sending them stuff.” What she said made sense. We had been discussing some of her most favorite reference questions, like the changes in country music since 9/11 and comparing religious broadcasters today with those from the 30’s, 40’s and 50’s. She explained how all of the information was fascinating and complex and how she loved going down different avenues of discovery, but then would have to stop and remember that somebody was waiting for her to send them something with substance. The part of the reference service I love is looking for diverse sets of information on a daily basis. I think I too would have to remind myself that I couldn’t be caught up in the search, but instead have to keep the patron in mind.
We closed our discussion with how she deals with changes in the library. She told us that the biggest concern is that libraries are increasingly trying to do more with less money. Her liaison with the communications department is one such move. It was someone else’s responsibility, but when that position was vacated, the responsibilities were split up among the other librarians. While it turned out to be a great match for Maring, others might not have been so lucky.
So to conclude this summary of our conversation, I will again state for the record that Marvel Maring is a reference librarian superhero. She comes to the aid of faculty and students, she serves the community, she finds what cant’ be found and mines the databases for long lost information. She is the Professor Xavier/Reed Richards/Tony Stark of reference, and with a name like Marvel, you can’t really go wrong.

Today in Library school we were rocking reference. Something I learned today was that all subject areas, all topics rely on similar structure for the organizing for organizing data. If you can take a reference question and decide where the information lies, be it a dictionary, almanac, statistical reference, etc. Even if the information is online, the framework is inherently built into the system and you can basically find anything you need. What is interesting about this is how I can now narrow down a search online by thinking in terms of print resources. Strange but cool.