Comments on: Get your head out of your OPAC http://librarygarden.net/2007/01/11/get-your-head-out-of-your-opac-2/ An ongoing conversation among librarians with differing perspectives (public, academic, school, consortial, youth) but one shared goal: ensuring the health and relevance of libraries. [insert your own gardening metaphor here] Sat, 28 Jan 2012 18:36:18 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.com/ By: ghkj http://librarygarden.net/2007/01/11/get-your-head-out-of-your-opac-2/#comment-5523 Wed, 04 Feb 2009 07:59:00 +0000 http://librarygarden.net/2007/01/11/get-your-head-out-of-your-opac-2#comment-5523 I would gold für wow cultivate courage.buy wow gold “Nothing is so mild wow gold cheap and gentle as courage, nothing so cruel and pitiless as cowardice,” syas a wise author. We too often borrow trouble, and anticipate that may never appear.”wow gold kaufen The fear of ill exceeds the ill we fear.” Dangers will arise in any career, but presence of mind will often conquer the worst of them. Be prepared for any fate, and there is no harm to be freared. If I were a boy again, I would look on the cheerful side. life is very much like a mirror:sell wow gold if you smile upon it,maple mesos I smiles back upon you; but if you frown and look doubtful on it,cheap maplestory mesos you will get a similar look in return. Inner sunshine warms not only the heart of the owner,world of warcraft power leveling but of all that come in contact with it. “ who shuts love out ,in turn shall be shut out from love.” If I were a boy again, I would school myself to say no more often.billig wow gold I might cheap mesos write pages maple meso on the importance of learning very early in life to gain that point where a young boy can stand erect, and decline doing an unworthy act because it is unworthy.wow powerleveling If I were a boy again, I would demand of myself more courtesy towards my companions and friends,wow leveling and indeed towards strangers as well.Maple Story Account The smallest courtesies along the rough roads of life are wow powerleveln like the little birds that sing to us all winter long, and make that season of ice and snow more endurable. Finally,maple story powerleveling instead of trying hard to be happy

]]> By: free ps3 http://librarygarden.net/2007/01/11/get-your-head-out-of-your-opac-2/#comment-5443 Thu, 13 Sep 2007 15:31:00 +0000 http://librarygarden.net/2007/01/11/get-your-head-out-of-your-opac-2#comment-5443 Thanks for the nice post!

]]> By: Anonymous http://librarygarden.net/2007/01/11/get-your-head-out-of-your-opac-2/#comment-5322 Tue, 16 Jan 2007 03:41:00 +0000 http://librarygarden.net/2007/01/11/get-your-head-out-of-your-opac-2#comment-5322 I am a recent graduate in Information Management from Australia, and just wanted to say that through monitoring Library Garden and in my study, I have become increasingly interested in Library 2.0 amd library as place.

I think what makes people come into libraries/how we can encourage them in, is not just down to one element. The attitudes of the librarian, the physical outlay of libraries and how resources are presented within them are all important in giving an overall satisfying experience.

I look forward to getting out into the profession and seeing how the idea of Library 2.0 continues to progress over the course of my career.

Just my thoughts and congrats on the blog.
Daniel Giddens

]]> By: Alane http://librarygarden.net/2007/01/11/get-your-head-out-of-your-opac-2/#comment-5321 Mon, 15 Jan 2007 19:51:00 +0000 http://librarygarden.net/2007/01/11/get-your-head-out-of-your-opac-2#comment-5321 Why, I wonder to myself often, do libraries need one system, from one vendor to manage library materials? As I haven’t worked in a library for 10 years, this may be a very naive question, but it seems to me that a discovery system and an inventory control system are fundamentally different sorts of things….but that wasn’t what I stopped by to say.

Seth’s comment about what people say they care about with regard to library operations reminded me that here at OCLC, we have a lot of comments from people about libraries. I have a spreadsheet with over 20,000 comments made by people participating in the survey we report on in The Perceptions of Libraries and Information Resources.

So, I did a very quick and not thorough search through 2 different parts–one in which people are asked to give one piece of advice to their library, and the other in which they are asked about negative associations with the library.

Advice
Catalog – 21
Parking – 29
Fines – 7
Hours – 185

Negative
Catalog – 17
Parking – 42
Fines – 113
Hours – 267

It would seem to be a “no brainer” then than money should be spent to keep the library open more and longer.

]]> By: Sarah http://librarygarden.net/2007/01/11/get-your-head-out-of-your-opac-2/#comment-5318 Sat, 13 Jan 2007 21:15:00 +0000 http://librarygarden.net/2007/01/11/get-your-head-out-of-your-opac-2#comment-5318 Looking aside from your Covey quote (Covey makes me cringe), I do want to say that as the person who handled complaints and comments about our library catalog at the last two libraries I’ve worked at, dozens of users took the time to officially complain about the catalog each month at each library. This isn’t a patron happening to mention having a hard time to the librarian at the reference desk. This is someone taking the time to fill out online or by hand a comment form, and detail the problems encountered. My users at these two libraries definitely did have bad experiences with their catalogs, despite staff trying to run positive interference and offer help.

A bad product is a bad product, and an expensive bad product is particularly offensive. We, like Congress, hold the power of the purse. If we don’t like these products, we shouldn’t buy them. That’s a hard decision for many directors to make, but it’s one more and more are making as projects like Evergreen produce open source solutions to the ILS quandry.

]]> By: Peter Bromberg http://librarygarden.net/2007/01/11/get-your-head-out-of-your-opac-2/#comment-5317 Sat, 13 Jan 2007 13:57:00 +0000 http://librarygarden.net/2007/01/11/get-your-head-out-of-your-opac-2#comment-5317 Hi Rochelle, Thanks for your comments.

Just to be clear I used your
UMT phrase (I get credit for coining the acronym!) playfuly, and with a wink and a nod ;-)

-p

]]> By: Robin http://librarygarden.net/2007/01/11/get-your-head-out-of-your-opac-2/#comment-5316 Sat, 13 Jan 2007 08:31:00 +0000 http://librarygarden.net/2007/01/11/get-your-head-out-of-your-opac-2#comment-5316 It deeply inspires me to read Coveys books, especially: the 7 habits of highly effective people.
You can read my thoughts about it on my blogsite: http://robins-psychology.blogspot.com/ GOD BLESS/ Robin

]]> By: Seth Stephens http://librarygarden.net/2007/01/11/get-your-head-out-of-your-opac-2/#comment-5315 Fri, 12 Jan 2007 17:33:00 +0000 http://librarygarden.net/2007/01/11/get-your-head-out-of-your-opac-2#comment-5315 Peter Drucker says something to the effect of that we only know our organization if we look at it from the outside. I suspect, as has been suggested, that the catalog is not a priority for many library patrons. I find it ironic that many surveys of public library patrons suggest that their top priority are hours that the library are open. When you ask people what they associate with public libraries they usually say books, old gray haired ladies, overdue fines, and hindering rules about using the library. Rather than put these issues at the top of our priority list, we instead focus on catalogs. While the catalog is an important tool, I believe, as Peter has suggested, that the amount attention it recieves in the public library maybe out of balance.

Thus said, I think that when the catalog is the sole source of contact for the patron, the quality of the catalog becomes quite important. I believe that there are growing number public library patrons who are using the services of the library, but never visit the library building. They log on to use the library, (which really means they’re searching the catalog or a database)their experience is shaped by the nature of their interaction with the catalog or database.

I think that librarians need to be cognisant of how people use their libraries and know what factors influences the quality of their experience.

Perhaps I am suggesting that a online catalog that is difficult to use remotely, is the equivalent of being shushed by the Marian the Librarian

]]> By: rochelle http://librarygarden.net/2007/01/11/get-your-head-out-of-your-opac-2/#comment-5314 Fri, 12 Jan 2007 15:25:00 +0000 http://librarygarden.net/2007/01/11/get-your-head-out-of-your-opac-2#comment-5314 While not regretting my comments about uncritical me-tooing (which damn well better make it on to next year’s list of best new words!), I’m wishing I had found a better way to say it. Here’s what I REALLY really meant: In the absence of open discussion, discussions in which people are hesitant to say what they think out of fear of defensive response, pile-on, and ostracism, when everyone is talking about it in IM and email, but no one is saying it outloud, that’s when dominoed happy talk is useless, and counter productive.

]]> By: K.G. Schneider http://librarygarden.net/2007/01/11/get-your-head-out-of-your-opac-2/#comment-5313 Fri, 12 Jan 2007 04:56:00 +0000 http://librarygarden.net/2007/01/11/get-your-head-out-of-your-opac-2#comment-5313 The example I would raise right now is from one of our “outlier” libraries that was established in 2000. I went to visit them to talk about this and that and about our OPAC upgrades. They basically don’t care that much about the OPAC, because they never went through an OPAC phase. They use it but it’s peripheral to their mission. I felt great envy that they didn’t have to redirect huge amounts of resources in that direction.

When I went on a site visit to the organization that runs our ILS, I said that it really was an open question how much we, as a system, should invest in ILS upgrades. Oooh, such a tizzy I caused.

I think we’re on the same page. I think your points are excellent. And one of my jobs is to make sure we don’t pack the ILS so full of our tools that we forget it’s a dead end. I have a real issue with the idea that library services should be focused on how we can get everything into the ILS. The important stuff is increasingly elsewhere, even in our library: journals, ebooks, databases, ETDs, special collections, etc.

There is no really solid answer. From inside the belly of the beast, I will tell you that the ILS, a funky clunky beast, does provide a gateway to important resources. But how much we should invest in it, relative to the rest of our world, is fair game.

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