Author Archive
Carnival of the Infosciences is in Da Garden!
The carnival tent has been hoisted and is firmly staked in our lovely Library Garden awaiting for an amazing week. We have set up a ferris wheel for your those of you who feel the need to escape for just a little while and watch the world go by from up on high. Let us know what is going on in the biblioblogophere and join in the fun.
Please send your submissions to janieh [at] gmail dot com for edition #38 of the Carnival of the Infosciences .
Props to Pete!
I have just heard a cult classic in the making — Pete Bromberg’s Library Bootcamp Blues. Clever, catchy and certainly good for a few smiles. My favorite verse almost goes without saying 😉
Gettin’ Blogger cred for my service creed
I got Library Garden and plenty of seed
My post’s been hosted, my feeds been fed,
Got something to say that ain’t been said
DOPA is just Dopey
Web 2.0 is being targeted by Congress with legislation that is known as DOPA — the Deleting Online Predators Act. If DOPA gets passed it would ban students from accessing online communities from school or library computers because they receive federal funding. To me it seemed liked CIPA 2.o at first glance, then I did some more reading and realized it could be far more damaging than CIPA and that DOPA is far more insidious.
Andy Carvin posted about DOPA at learning.now yesterday and the ensuing discussion is fantastic and thought-provoking. Andy followed up with a brief blog entry today in which he states:
… what about all the educators and students who’ve used commercial tools like Flickr or Blogger? Have the nascent days of Web 2.0 been nipped in the bud as far as schools and libraries are concerned? Will the promise of online constructivist learning be wiped out with the swish of a presidential pen?
I certainly hope not Andy, but I fear that too many of our lawmakers may not yet have their ticket for the cluetrain. I see a long battle looming in our future.
Leslie Burger is "Oh So 2.0"
I spent some time with Leslie this morning getting her flickr account personalized and organized. This photo is from her recent tour of New Orleans and the Mississippi Coast. She will be uploading many more pictures in the near future and plans to share her travels and adventures as President-elect/President of ALA not only only on her blog but also on her flickr account. How cool is that?
Pssst: Insider Info on Blogger Bash @ ALA Annual
Breaking News: Library Garden has “the scoop” from a reliable source!
ALA President-Elect Leslie Burger will host a gathering for bloggers in her suite at the Hilton on Saturday June 24th after the Scholarship Bash (starting around 10:30 pm and going until midnight). It will be an informal event, great for networking, unwinding and catching up with bibliobloggers both old and new. So why not plan to take in Mary Chapin Carpenter at the official Bash and then head over to the Hilton for the after-bash blogger bash.
More details to be forthcoming, just be sure to mark your calendars. Please rsvp by leaving a comment here on Library Garden if you plan on attending so everyone can see who will be there — and to make sure you get final details (aka precise location) when they are available drop me an email: jhermann at princetonlibrary dot org. Spread the word!
Oh, and if you are wondering how Library Garden got this breaking news… check my blogger profile and you might notice that I have “connections” to LB… and she is my reliable source. I just finished meeting with her and she has asked me to promote and coordinate.
Rocking out on Pandora!
I was working online tonight doing my freelance gig as a VR Librarian on QandANJ and playing my customized Pogues and Tragically Hip radio stations in the background thanks to Pandora — one of my favorite Web 2.o goodies that I recently discovered. I was between questions when it struck me like a lightning bolt that we need an equivalent project and application in the library world. I am serious. We need to find a way to fund or create a “Book Genome Project” that is similar in size and scope to the Music Genome Project that was the impetus behind the creation and launch of Pandora.
Pandora made its public debut about 6 months ago and it was recently named one of the top freebies in PC World’s recent article 101 Fabulous Freebies. For those of you who have not yet discovered Pandora I urge you to go play with it — just be warned that it is addictive. You can also read a fantastic interview about Pandora on Blog that Web or read the Wikipedia entry for more information.
So, back to my lightning bolt — a “Book Genome Project”. I know we have many reader’s advisory tools and even databases such as Ebsco’s NoveList to help our customers select books, but they all seem “Oh So 1.0” when put in a side-by-side comparison with Pandora.
What I like best about Pandora (besides the fact that it always seems to play music that I like based up on one suggestion) is their objective to “capture the essence of music at the fundamental level”. They really seem to be doing it. How? By assigning a variety of attributes to songs that get at the core of what the music is really about and what people might like about that particular song.
Wouldn’t it be great to have a tool that was freely available on the web and simple to use that captured “the essence” of books. I doubt I am the first to have thought of this, but the way I am envisioning might be unique. A Pandora replication for fiction and non-fiction to help connect people to books. It is late at night and I have not had time to think this all the way through… but I believe I am on to something. I would love suggestions on how we could create our own Pandora for the library world.
More to follow on this (after I get some sleep).
Do Away with the Long Forms — Keep it Simple!
It seems to me that many libraries wrote policies and procedures for providing reference by email 5+ years ago and have not revisted them since. I did a quick informal survey of several library web sites and what I found was quite disheartening. I found lots of email policies with rule upon rule right up front that actually seemed to discourage the library customer from using the service. Or I found big long forms that act as a barrier to asking a question quickly. Perhaps back when email was a “new service” for the reference department these rules and forms had a place, but I believe it is time to break down the barriers.
We had a long, clunky form with lots of rules preceding it at my library for many years. Several months ago we had a departmental meeting where we discussed why we were holding on to the rules and form. We could find no good reason. So we did away with the rules and revised the form… and watched our email question statistics rise as a result. Here is our new form, it is quick and easy to use and a step in the right direction.
We still have a page with policies (several of which I do not agree with and would like to see gone and some of which have been added by administration recently), but at least the policy does not clutter up the main page and force the questioner to scroll forever to get to a form or email address.
Take a good look at this one representative example. I could list dozens that are similar to this, but this example is from a public library that won a “National Award for Library Service” (and I have edited out several sentences for the sake of brevity):
E-Mail Reference Service is designed to answer your brief, factual questions. We can also provide suggestions to help you find the answer you need, assist you with search strategies, and help you learn more about the library’s collections and services. Please fill in the form below to request information.
You can ask us to:
*look up dates, names, spellings, definitions, brief biographical or historical information
*locate addresses/phone numbers for businesses, associations and government
*suggest other information sources for your question.
Remember: You can search our Library Catalog, check availability of books and other materials in our collection, renew your checked out items, and place holds. Please note our many Electronic Resources that can be accessed from home by library cardholders.
We will send an e-mail to update you on the status of your request if more than 2 business days are needed to answer your question.
If your question is in-depth, or you need a faster answer, please call us! You can always speak directly to a reference librarian during our open hours by visiting or calling Reference Services Department.
If I came across this as a library customer it is likely I would not ask my questions as it seems like they don’t really want to provide email service. They have put forth so many rules that I would feel uncertain if my questions met the parameters. To make matters worse, this lengthy preamble is followed by an even lengthier form that tries to simulate a reference interview.
Why do so many libraries insist that only “brief factual” questions can be answered via email? To me, it makes more sense to have in-depth questions come in via email so that staff has time to research without the pressure of the person standing in front of them.
The example I gave is doing one thing right, letting patrons know that they will respond in a somewhat timely fashion. I have noticed several libraries that have policies in place that say they will answer in 2-3 working days and not on weekends at all. In our “instant everything” society having a turnaround more than an hour or two is not acceptable. If you are going to provide email reference service, you need to check the inbox continually and reply as soon as possible (even if that reply is just a confirmation that you have received or are working on the question). If a library customer leaves a message on voice mail we never wait 2-3 days to reply to that question. Why do we wait so long to reply to email questions? Do they not deserve the same courtesy as telephone reference questions?
I urge everyone to look at their email reference service (I will be challenging my library to do the same) and see how we can turn this Library 1.0 service in to something that is more user-friendly in a 2.0 World.
On underwear, beanies, and other fashion statements…
Since Pete is planning on a series dealing with topics related to customer experience for his next few posts, I thought I would toss this in to the ring for discussion. File it under “news of the weird” or some such title. The headline certainly caught my eye! I certainly would not want to be a student and have to use this library for my research. It doth seem to me that the library staff at this school has found several great ways to deter use of the library! Way to go!
Librarians ban visible underwear
A Swedish school library is refusing to lend books to pupils if their underwear is showing.
Pupils of Tullbro School in Falkenberg do not have to wear a uniform but librarians are clamping down on some teenage fashions.
Children who wear hipsters which show off their underwear are not allowed to borrow books, reports Hallands Nyheter newspaper.
Wearers of baseball caps and beanies are also banned from using the library.
Source: Anonova
"Levee for Life" Pictures from Princeton
This is such a cool project that is happening just up the street from where I work that I want to give it some more PR.
Leslie Burger, President-Elect of the ALA and the Director at MPOW, wrote about it in great detail earlier this month in her blog. Information on how you can donate books to the cause is found on the Katrina Project page. The before and after pictures of the library in New Orleans will break your heart.
Special Thanks to Bob Keith for taking a walk to campus today to get these pictures for this post.
Opening Day for Webaroo
For those who travel to remote locations or just travel a lot and are never sure when or where they will be able to find a connection a new service being launched today promises a solution for finding information when you can’t get online. Webaroo is a new search service that relies on caching to bring the Internet to mobile devices even when there’s no Internet connection. The ZDNet blog and CNET News both offer up more inforomation on Webaroo — a company that I will definitely be keeping my eye on.
Library Garden 