Tag Archives: librarian

Additional thoughts and comments from NASIG 2007

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Below is a smattering of additional thoughts and comments from NASIG 2007:

Karen Schneider‘s paranoia and negativity about things like Google, EPA library closings, survival of small press publishers. Her purpose as a vision speaker was to stimulate debate and thought and I think she succeeded in that. I may not agree with her overall philosophy or approach to these issues but I think it is very healthy to step back and question some of the broader trends in librarianship and ask the hard questions about where they are leading us.

Brainstorming session intended to provide a forum for discussing the problem of reluctance on the part of members to run for office. I wish more people other than “old timers” had spoken up and that there had been more focus on concrete answers to the questions raised by the moderator (Katy Ginanni) and less on generalizations about “trust me, it is really, really good to serve on the Board.”

Dan Chudnov‘s emphasis on the need for simplicity in resource access and discovery. His reliance on iTunes as the standard for judging simplicity has many some flaws even if his general point is well taken. I especially liked his point about trying something out and tweaking it a little. That little tweak may pay off in huge dividends in terms of successful adoption of a new technology. I also think he has a great idea by proposing that libraries insert themselves into the realm of what he terms “service links.” These are available in just about every major media outlet on the web and commonly include links to Technorati, del.icio.us, and other social networking services.

Yet more assumptions about fellow librarians having or sharing the same — liberal — political approach and philosophy. E.g. several negative references to the current (Bush) administration, wearing t-shirt supporting a Democrat’s presidential candidacy, etc. Noticed Dan Chudnov’s reference in his speech to “liberal” vs. “right wing” — perhaps an unconscious but notable inflection of wording.

Importance of networking. I am not a social butterfly at all. In fact, lots of social interaction leaves me exhausted. (By contrast, others like my friend Beverley Geer get their energy from social interaction.) In spite of my natural shyness — some people tell me I come across as aloof — I keep trying to hone my skills and break down the barriers that hold me back from meeting new people. At NASIG this is easier for me to do than in some other situations. I enjoyed sitting next to people at the dine-arounds who were total strangers to me, conversing with them about their work, their interests, and issues of mutual concern. In this way I found out some really interesting details, such as the fact that one longtime NASIG member is an accomplished piano (and flute) player, with two Steinway grands. I learned a lot of interesting facts about the city of Houston from someone else, such as the fact that it had no zoning laws of any kind until relatively recently. Yet another conversation filled me in on what it is like as a foreign national to live in Johannesburg, South Africa (like living in a prison).

Discussion with a librarian from a university in the Southwest about what it’s like to have a non-librarian as library director and the drastic — good — changes brought about so that the library is once more popular with students as a destination.

Several mentions of “work / life balance.”

General recognition (I think) that ERMS are not working out well for many, at least not yet. I likened them to a solution in search of a problem in one open mic comment at a session and described my library’s very recent decision to get out of the vendor-supplied ERMS game altogether. There was some interest in open source solutions.

Responses to OCLC criticism

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A few people including Sarah Houghton-Jan (Librarian in Black) and Carol Ou commented on a recent post I wrote comparing OCLC to Microsoft. Roy Tennant responded to this post on the hangingtogether blog, written by former RLG – now OCLC employees. Roy also responded to Carol Ou’s idea about FRBRizing local library catalog records for free. I thought I’d repost Carol’s original comment here along with Roy’s reply because I think this dialog deserves more attention and thought. Having it in the comments to that post may have effectively squashed the conversation:

Here is a portion of Carol’s original comment:

…One way OCLC could convince me that they’re truly a member organization though, with the best interests of libraries at heart, would be to FRBRize all their member libraries’ individual library catalogs for free. And I don’t mean via WorldCat local, but in analyzing our records per their algorithm and then handing those records back to us to do what we will. After all, the majority of the original bib records were created by individual library catalogers, and our fees certainly helped pay for any R&D. How about it, OCLC?

And here is Roy’s response:

That is an interesting idea, and one that may be worth pursuing if we can determine what, if anything, you would be able to do with these “FRBRized records” once they were produced for you. One of the problems is that our present integrated library systems (ILS) are mostly not set up to deal with such grouped records. We can’t simply hand you a smaller set of records than you gave us, that would be mostly useless. You need to have a system that can take advantage of FRBR relationships. In other words, although you can find out right now which items you have that may be related by using the OCLC xISBN service (see http://worldcat.org/affiliate/webservices/xisbn/app.jsp ), it is really more complicated than that. You may need to have a system that can deal with a grouped display but also allow someone to see the individual items that are part of that group. So although the initial idea is intriguing, I think it requires a bit more thought to be something that we could consider as a service to provide to our members. But I really want to know if this is something you could put to work today in your ILS, so if it is, let me know directly at roy_tennant@oclc.org. Thanks!

How about it, any readers who have an opinion on this proposal?

The "dark side" discussion [Updated]

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The main reason I was able to go to NASIG this year was that Anne McKee, program officer for the Greater Western Library Alliance (apparently known as GWLA, pronounced “Gwilla”), kindly invited me to participate in a panel discussion about alternative library careers for serialists. I jumped at the chance to present with friends and colleagues including Anne, Christine Stamison, Beverley Geer, Mike Markwith, and Bob Schatz. Anne represented consortia (the aformentioned GWLA), Christine brought the perspective of working for a subscription agent (Swets), Beverley with a journal publisher (Sage), Mike had a subscription agent (WT Cox) as well as PAMS1 background (TDNet), Bob represented book vendors (Coutts), and I came with a background working for a ILS vendor (Endeavor Information Systems, Inc., now Ex Libris Group) and in a corporate library.

Each of us limited our remarks to 7-8 minutes at Anne’s request in order to maximize the question and answer time with the audience, which numbered around 150 people. That isn’t much time to both describe our backgrounds, why we made the career decisions that we did, and offer pertinent advice as to what it takes to work in an alternative library career.

If you’ve been in the world of libraries for any length of time you will know quite well that there are persistent stereotypes and divisions between various forms of librarianship. For instance, cataloging people and acquisitions people are always supposedly against each other, public services conflicts with technical services, professional librarians and paraprofessionals, and on and on. One of the deepest rooted of these is the continual reference to the “dark side” — meaning, working in the for profit sector. There are many people in this profession who feel that theirs is a higher, better calling if they work in a public or academic library, i.e. a non profit environment. Often there is a lack of respect shown to those who “dare” to look for better wages and sometimes more challenging work in the business world. (Thus the reference to the “dark side.”)

This session, then, was an opportunity to highlight some of the many positives, and negatives, about working for a vendor and in other alternative situations.

One of the things that came up during everyone’s presentations as well as during the Q&A session afterward, was this issue of the “dark side.” I think the highlight of the entire session was when Eve Davis, who works for EBSCO, stated: “We joke about the divide, yet we seem to be perpetuating that very thing by mentioning it so often. Why don’t we stop using terms like ‘the dark side’ even in jest?”

[Updated June 11, 2007: I realized after I had posted this that my narrative just ended without going into any further detail about the session's content, so what follows is what I meant to write originally.]

Here are some of the impressions or things I especially recall from what other presenters had to say:

  • Several mentions by those on the panel of having a sense of impatience with the status quo. I thought this was interesting and noteworthy. Christine Stamison, for instance, talked about the process of implementing a new serials check-in form via a committee at The University of Chicago Library, and how that discussion took six months to come to a resolution. If I recall, she made some quip about how difficult it was to “turn the Queen Mary around.” I worked with Christine in the same environment and I can attest to the truthfulness of this observation. Sometimes things change too quickly in the for profit world, but it seems like all of the presenters preferred a faster pace of change and fewer meetings.
  • Anne, Christine, Beverley, Mike, and Bob all spoke about the supposed glamour of travel, how it really wasn’t that glamorous after all. Mike illustrated this by mentioning the number of times he warmed his McDonald’s hamburger on top of his hotel room’s TV set. Christine mentioned the fact that this kind of work life can be really lonely, and that you have to have a strong sense of self, that you have to really like who you are. Bob mentioned how much he regrets that travel takes away from time with his family.
  • MLS as union card. Beverley made this point, that in her view, the library degree is nothing more than a union card. That doesn’t mean it has no value (Anne also made this point); on the contrary, it establishes important common ground with clients. All of us agreed that we are librarians first and foremost. Anne mentioned, for example, filling out paperwork for her children’s school where she was asked to state her profession, and that she always answers the question with ‘librarian.’
  • It was funny to learn that Bob’s first job out of library school was at a taco shack of some sort in Oregon (his home state).
  • Support for professional involvement. Everyone on the panel agreed that they receive strong support for professional involvement from their employers. In some cases (and this has been my personal experience), such support is often stronger than what we would have received in an academic or public library. Christine mentioned that she requires everyone who reports to her to become NASIG members and to attend the conference each year.

Some of the points that I tried to make in my portion of the session:

  • Be sure to build a record of accomplishment. Then be willing and able to articulate what you’ve done and how it benefits you in various situations. What I was thinking of here, but failed to say explicitly, was the need for project management skills. That is huge. In every job I’ve ever held, the ability to plan and execute projects has been critical.
  • It’s not all about money. Yes, the grass is almost always greener on the for profit side of the fence. I pointed out that this was a motivating factor for seeking a job on “the dark side” (and I think this is true of the other panelists as well) but that it was far more important for me to have work that is challenging, fulfilling, and where I learn new things every day.
  • It is really important to be a quick study, meaning, be willing to learn and learn quickly. I pointed out that many of the jobs I’ve held were ones for which I had no prior background, but that I was able to succeed in them because of working hard to learn all necessary skills.
  • Have specific career goals in mind. Review them regularly, and understand that they may change over time. The example I gave was the difference in my career made by becoming a husband and father. When I was single, I devoted 95% of my time and energy to my career. Now that I have a family, they take precedence.

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1 PAMS refers to Publication Access Management System, a class of vendor-supplied services that helps libraries manage the e-content to which they provide access.

Spring 2007 issue of LIBRA: LIBrary Reports and Announcements

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The latest issue (Spring 2007) of LIBRA: LIBrary Reports and Announcements, is now available. LIBRA is a publication of The University of Chicago Library. I like to read each issue because that helps me keep informed about what’s going on at the place where I spent my formative years as a librarian. The latest issue mentions Chicago’s plans to emulate NCSU’s Endeca-powered online catalog. It also mentions the promotion to a newly defined position of Systems Librarian for Tod Olson, a longtime staff member at Chicago whose significant other is also a librarian and who recently completed his Master’s from UIUC GSLIS, receiving some noteworthy honors in the process. Congratulations to Tod!

Linda Smith honored

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If ever there was a librarian who deserves all of the honors she gets, it is Dr. Linda Smith, Associate Dean of the Graduate School of Library and Information Science at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. I was very pleased to read that she received yet another award, this one celebrating her pioneering achievement with the LEEP program (see link below). Linda is one of the hardest working and most selfless, service-oriented people I have ever known.

Smith Honored with Off-Campus Teaching Award

Professionalism, or lack thereof

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In the past few weeks there were a lot of emails posted to a closed discussion list for customers who use Endeavor’s Voyager system that expressed various degrees of dissatisfaction with the software and the company. The discussion grew out of the need for customers to vote on enhancements for the next major release of the software. The list of possible enhancements was pared down quite a bit and another mitigating factor was that the enhancement process had been defunct, basically, for the past few years.

A lot of excellent points were made by many of Endeavor’s customers. Among them was the desire for more open, interactive communication between the company and its customers. One suggestion for improving this communication was for the company to publish a blog. There had been some movement on Endeavor’s part to do this last year but for whatever reason, nothing happened.

Basically what people see as problematic with the software, and how it is supported, parallels in many ways what I’ve heard customers of other systems vendors complain about. Customers feel that basic functionalities aren’t there, that development of improvements is slow to non-existent, that there is an increasing sense of lack of return on investment. Sometimes I get a little frustrated with those who complain so much about Voyager because many of them seem to think that Voyager is far worse than other systems when in fact, it isn’t. Not that it is “the best” or perfect; far from it. But there is a bit too much of the “grass is greener on the other side of the fence” type of thinking. For instance, there is a perception that one main competitor, Aleph 500 from Ex Libris, is a much better product. The fact is, it has its particular strengths but it also has a large number of flaws, and Aleph customers find a lot to complain about, too.

I am not saying that we as customers should just be satisfied with the software we have. Rather, I am saying that we should realize that it’s not just one vendor or one product in the library marketplace that is problematic. As far as I can tell, having worked closely with three or four of the major systems vendors’ products, none of them is even close to being excellent at what they are supposed to do. I strongly believe that we need to continue to push for improvements but also understand a broader perspective about library software and the forces at work in the marketplace. Sometimes we as customers get so caught up in our own pet peeves and widgety functionality that we think is so important, that we completely lose sight of the broader landscape in terms of shifts in technology, in market demand, in user needs and expectations, etc.

The worst part of it is that many of the discussions we have with or about the vendors we use only serve to expose a pretty ugly side to our profession. For years on the closed discussion list for Voyager there has been a small handful of librarians who take every opportunity they can to make this discussion list a stage where they express how much they think they know and how much they despise the company and/or its software. I don’t have a problem with people expressing frustrations and venting in face-to-face venues. I also think a lot of what they have to complain about is legitimate and noteworthy. What I have a huge problem with is the lack of professionalism these individuals show in how they approach the problem. I believe that the dialog between library vendors and customers should be mutually respectful with a focus on issues rather than individuals, and with a balanced perspective of give-and-take. Sadly, in some quarters, this is completely lacking and as a result, the behavior and attitudes of a few librarian colleagues taints the whole profession.

Libraries and future students: getting personal

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Now that I have a child who is a freshman in high school, the whole debate about “what future college students will expect from libraries” has become a lot more real to me. For instance, Keegan loves video games; always has. (Unfortunately for him, I hate video games; always have and probably always will. I’ve made a few half-hearted attempts to meet him on his ground when it comes to this passion and have failed miserably.) Fortunately, he has also developed a strong love of reading and books, although he has a built-in antipathy for libraries, preferring instead to browse around at a nearby Borders. Go figure, with a father who is a librarian.

More recently it came to my attention that his school actively uses Turnitin, one of the more popular anti-plagiarism commercial services out there. Keegan is required to submit his papers to this service as part of his class work. I reacted pretty negatively to this news, quite frankly. He couldn’t understand why. He thought of it as no big deal, and generally a “good thing.” I tried to explain my reasons for not liking such a service but I don’t think it really sunk in that much with him.

One more sign of the times as far as Keegan is concerned is that he is allowed, by some teachers at least, to turn in papers from home via the Internet. This allowance in turn means that he is given more time to work on his papers if, e.g., the teacher says it has to be turned in by midnight of a certain day. Michele and I both feel somewhat negatively about this but then I realized, hey, this is exactly what I expect and allow students in my course to do — the only difference is that they are graduate students and are supposed to be more responsible and independent than the typical high school freshman.

I’m not sure what all of this means in terms of libraries and how they should plan to serve the needs of students, but I find it interesting that I get to experience some of these things first-hand.

A well-respected librarian and colleague dies

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The big news in libraryland this week has been the passing away of Fred Kilgour, founder of OCLC. But the bigger news for me, personally, was finding out that an excellent librarian friend and colleague, Kathy Zar, died recently. Kathy was a librarian at The University of Chicago whose career there spanned close to 40 years. Since 1994, she was responsible for the library collections of the Science Division. She was a very gracious and professional person — she had warmth and kindness combined with a sharp acumen. She particularly took interest in mentoring others, and she made young, fresh-faced librarians such as myself feel welcome and appreciated. I spoke with some friends there who told me that she literally stayed on the job up ’til the very end.

Flock beta version released

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Last week (or maybe the week before, I forget), the first public beta release of my favorite web browser, Flock, was released. Naturally I was eager to put it through its paces. I’m glad to say that this is an even better browser than before, with one or two exceptions. In my view Flock has made the social web experience even easier and better because of big improvements in photo website integration (Photobucket and Flickr), blogging capabilities, and RSS.

This isn’t going to be a full blown or scientific review but instead a list of observations, likes and dislikes, etc.:

  • The photo integration is really nice. Now I have the option in the topbar to browse my photos or anyone else’s on a particular topic (tag) if those photos are on Photobucket or Flickr. More than that, I now have the ability to browse these photos in small OR large sizes, and I have easy drag and drop capability to add photos into other applications or a blog entry. For example, just this morning I decided to see what photos folks have posted on Flickr from the American Library Assoication annual conference being held right now in New Orleans. I simply input the tag ‘ala2006′ and was able to quickly call up new and recent photos taken by librarian colleagues. Pretty nice!
  • The blog integration is handled in a better way. Before, I was able to post to my blog from a topbar element. Now, with a simple keystroke (Ctrl+B) I can call up a separate, smaller window and immediately begin blogging. After clicking on the Publish button I am then presented with further choices such as what categories I want to assign and what Technorati tags I want to use. While this whole process took a little getting used to at first (because in the previous iteration, choices for tags and categories were on the main blog posting window) I like this new way of doing things much better.
  • The RSS feed capabilities are nice but they are the weakest feature at this point. I keep getting script errors and/or funky results whenever I try to use the RSS aggregator sidebar. Hopefully this will work itself out soon. When it works, though, the sidebar arrangement and functionality are nice.
  • A big drawback for me for Flock was that there weren’t many native extensions available for it. (You couldn’t just use Firefox extensions, for example, of which there seem to be hundreds.) This is no longer a problem because with this beta release there is now a whole host of extensions available that can be readily used with Flock. I’ve had no problems with the ones I like to use except for FasterFox. It is great now to be able to use the ones I like the most in Firefox.
  • There is a new Conversations topbar plugin available that works much better than the previous Technorati topbar ever did. It’s basically the same as the old Technorati topbar but seemingly reengineered and renamed. I find this a very useful feature when I want to have some sense of what others might be saying about a particular website I’m interested in. When used in combination with the Google Web Comments plugin, I feel like I am able to get a pretty comprehensive sense of the “conversations” that are going on about that website.
  • The del.icio.us integration is also much smoother than before.
  • A really big, important new feature in this beta release is the Quick Search functionality, which integrates several areas into one truly quick search, such as your favorites, your web history, the top five hits from Yahoo!, and a quick way to pick other search engines to search in as well as whatever default search engine you’ve chosen. Again it takes a little getting used to but I am quite impressed with how it works thus far.

I am still surprised that there doesn’t seem to be that much use of or experimentation with this browser among librarian colleagues. Maybe there is stuff going on and I don’t realize it. I’ve used Flock (even the alpha releases) as my default browser for many months now and I have no problem recommending it to anyone. When the students in my course this summer saw me using it and talking about it, some of them decided to try it out, too. One of them found a thorough review on ExtremeTech and posted about it to the class blog.

I also should point out that I use different flavors of Flock. On my Windows laptop from work, I installed Flock on my portable USB drive and it works great. On my PowerBook at home, it also works great.

So…bottom line: If you blog, use photo sharing sites, or just appreciate a functional web browser, try Flock. I think you’ll like it.

Portable browsers

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I’ve known about portable browsers — the ones that can be installed on a USB drive, such as Firefox — for a few years. But I never really thought much about using them myself, that is, until I figured out how useful they are in situations where I do not or cannot have administrator privileges on my PC.

Last week I decided to give the portable version of Firefox a try. Then I also decided to see if someone had come up with a portable version of my favorite browser, Flock. Fortunately, someone has already thought of this. I installed the portable versions of Firefox and Flock on my USB drive and voila, I was freed from the oppressive and limiting strangehold of Internet Explorer! (I’m exaggerating a little of course, but I do hate IE.)

I know that there are limitations to their use but for now, I am really pleased with how the portable versions of these browsers work. Both Firefox and Flock run quite smoothly on my USB drive. I have noticed no degradation of load time or anything like that.

On a slight tangent…I am somewhat surprised that there hasn’t been more discussion among techie librarian folks about Flock. I think it’s a great tool, one that is well suited for the kinds of things that I like to do, such as blogging, photo sharing, sharing of bookmarks, etc. Almost all of these features are available in Firefox, too, but they are more nicely integrated in a single package with Flock. The major limitation I find with Flock is the lack of extensions that I find indispensable, including FlashBlock, TinyURL Creator, Adblock Filter Set Updater, and others.