Professional Development

As a current LIS student taking Library Administration and Management, I thought it would be beneficial to attend the afternoon session Managing Multiple Generations in the Workplace. Lynn Unsworth, of Capital Associated Industries, Inc. (based in Raleigh, NC) lead the workshop “Four Generations Working Together”, which identified the varying characteristics among the diverse pool of professionals in today’s work environment.

Unsworth highlighted the following work styles and values of each generation:

Traditionalists (born between 1925-1942)

• Loyalty
• Dedication, hard work
• Respectful of rules and authority
• Conservative
• value tradition

Baby Boomers (born between 1943-1960)

• Work is a priority
• Optimistic
• Competitive
• Value meaning
• Strong professional networks

Generation X (born between 1961-1981)

• Self-Reliance
• Desire flexibility
• Skpticism
• Technology
• Informal
• Value balance of work and life

Generation Y (born between 1982-2002)

• Fast paced (multitasking/multimedia)
• Tenacity/Directness
• Entrepreneurial
• Global diversity
• Technologically savvy
• Value fun

In order to merge these varying characteristics, values, and work ethics to create a productive and positive work environment, Unsworth proposed taking “The M.E.E.T. Approach.” The MEET Approach will help with the multigeneralional workforce but improving teamwork, productivity, and customer satisfaction through communications, conflict resolution, and problem solving.

M-Make time to discuss (Do you have a minute? Can we talk for a few minutes in private?)

E-Explore difference (This is important because…The way I look at this is…)
E-Encourage respect (I’ve had a similar experience…I really appreciate the way you…)

T-Take responsibility (How about we agree to…I’ll try to…I’m glad we talked.)

Finally, since much of this session brought my class readings to light, the two most important statements I took away from this session were

• the way others perceive us is often different from the way we perceive ourselves
• Organizations must turn diversity into a strength and become fluid and flexible to meet marketplace demands

This year’s President’s Endowment Dinner was held at the Lake Hickory Country Club and sponsored by Solinet and Webfeat. All funds raised from the dinner admission goes to the NCLA Endowment fund in efforts to fund future NCLA events and conferences. As a guest at the Webfeat table I was able to discuss the functionality and capabilities of the federated search engine among fellow library professionals. We also had an opportunity to discuss opportunities for improvement for current functionality and possible upgrade features for future versions of Webfeat.

The evening’s main event was a musical cabaret by EbzB Productions entitled WAR BONDS: The Songs and Letters of World War II. The two-hour production incorporated popular tunes from the late 1930s to mid 1940s, including Don’t Sit Under the Apple Tree, Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy, I’ll Be Seeing You, and As Time Goes By. In between musical numbers (and an appearance from Marlene Dietrich), the performers read actual letters from U. S. servicemen, women, Churchill, and Roosevelt. The letters, along with the deeper meanings of the song lyrics, highlighted the intensity of society and the world at that time. As a student of History, I was greatly appreciative for the opportunity to experience this event.

WAR BONDS has recently finished taping their production to air on UNC-TV and a scaled-down version will be included in a forthcoming documentary by Ken Burns entitled THE WAR. The UNC-TV version is set to air this coming December (but word at the conference said it may be in January 2008).

Saturday was day 2 of the ASIS&T pre-conferences for me. Friday morning contained an interesting overview of DSpace and Saturday was a workshop on Classification Research. Presentations in the morning discussed tagging, building of communities through user-based categorization, and systems that support knowledge creation/SenseMaking.

The discussions that grew out of the presentations focused on the relationship of tagging systems to classification/categorization structures and there were some interesting examples presented including LibraryThing and PennTags. . .

Internet being somewhat hard to come by at this conference, I took a few notes off line over the last few days & have summarized them for posting.

The ASIS&T confernce kicked off sunday afternoon with a full slate of sessions. I attended a session that presented work on informaiton/service management systems. In this session Michael Buckland commented on the commonly used definitions of ‘reference work’ and made the point that in many publications (including ALA) reference work is defined more in the context of what the librarian does rather than what a user does. His research is looking at methods for providing contextual information/links in online reference resoruces.

The evening session was a presentaiton on the used of facebook and second life in collaborative environements and looked specifically at the implications for leadership & professional communities. There were some very intersting comments made, including a study of active LIS organizations in these environments and some of the useful activities that can be conducted in these online communities. As could be expected Facebook was seen as a low-barrier, high-return tool for basic community building while second life was seen as a higher investment but also higher functionality tool that could enable online communities to replicate the sorts of teask and reltaionships that can exist in teh physcial work.

Tuesday morning was an interesting set of talks on wiki and blog use in different environemnts including collaborative bokwriting, classroom, etc. It was interesting to hear many of the experiences that we have ssn in our use of the wikis reflected in the reserach presentations.

The opening keynote session focused on the impact of disruptive technologies in the information world. Some of the more interesting examples demosntrated how the addtion of a pit of *pop* results in a significant differentiation of a product in the marketplace. In general, the presentation focused on the power of disruptive technologies on a field and looked at examples where this had happened before (coffee, flying, diapers) and how the market responded (differentiation of products with a focus on service/experience, new collaboration/competition relationships, innovation).

In the afternoon I saw a poster by Yin Zhang and Athena Salaba that presented the results of an user-based evaluation of FRBR catalogs.  Their results indicated that users found FRBR catalogs easier to use for work/expression discovery but did had a difficult time figuring out how they would get access to a specific item from their library (catalogs tested were from OCLC -FictioFinder, Worldcat. . .).

I spent the day Thursday, October 18th, at NCLA in Hickory, NC. I attended a couple of sessions, walked through the exhibit hall and looked at some of the different poster sessions, stopped by the conference store to say hello to Carolyn and Steve, and saw a lot of people that I haven’t seen in a long time. On top of that I was apart of a presentation by the Master Trainers of North Carolina at the end of the day, so it was a full day!

One session I attended was titled Telling Our Story Using New Technology. The session was held by the State Library, specifically by Michelle Czaikowski, a friend from my Master Trainer days. She discussed Web 2.0 technologies, the pros and cons, and even built her presentation using a couple of technologies: empressr and del.icio.us.

What I continue to realize is that because there is so much to Web 2.0 there is never enough time to talk about it all. Really, you could talk for days on everything that there is out there. It also continues to amaze me how much there is still to come and how many things are out there that you may have never heard of. So many doors opening…

In the afternoon I ran into some of my ZSR co-workers. Carolyn and Cristina had a terrific poster session entitled Utilizing ILL Deflection to Improve Workflow. People were swarming around their poster, it was almost impossible to get a picture of them!

Clifford, the Big Red Dog, also made an appearance at NCLA, which led to some great photo opportunities.

At the very end of the day, as I mentioned above, I got the privilege to present along with my Master Trainer class on what we have to offer the rest of the libraries in the state of North Carolina. This was a great session, and I hope that the rest of the state knows we are here and more than willing to help with any training needs anyone might have.

You can see some of the pictures of the day at my Flickr site.

And now, back to work!

Is Library 1.0 Ready for Web 2.0: Library 2.0 ca 2007
Technology and Trends Roundtable
Robert H. McDonald, UC San Diego, Director Strategic Data Alliances Supercomputer Center

Met another Twitter friend! He’s the presenter. This is fun!

• Hired by Supercomputer Center because a large part of that is working with cultural heritage centers like libraries to see how they can work together.
• Web 2.0: What, Why, How
  • Showed a O’Reilly and Web 2.0 video
  • Web 2.0 = the network is the platform
  • Look at the fringe, that’s where the future is (apple, voip, snowboarding, etc. came from people invested in fringe hobbies.)
  • Recommended conferences for libraries: Code4Lib, Access Canada, ER&L, Cross discipline conferences (O’Reilly Emerging Technologies Conferences, BloggerCon) Some of these post video or audio of events.
    • This is where new ideas come from.
    • Niche groups form to deal with these problems and disband when problem is solved.
  • Moving from web site to web service. Unstructured information to structured information.
  • Push methodology/web 2.0
  • Social Software is “many to many”
    • Demoed Twitter, Dopplr, discussed last.fm’s acquisition by CBS, and del.icio.us’s acquisition by Yahoo!
    • LibraryThing is a social books site, but offers a service to libraries, too.
  • Mashups, APIs, and web services
  • Network as glue: How fast is your connection? Do your services cross commercial interests?
• Library 1.0: How to get to 2.0
  • Physical space vs. virtual place, push vs. pull, ubiquitous vs. non-ubiquitous
  • Must put what users want at their fingertips.
    • Save the time of the user and librarian.
    • Showed this.
  • Disconnects with 2.0
    • Personalization-we’re worried about privacy, but our users are expecting customized services like recommendations or next gen library finders
    • Socialization-tagging, blogging, IMing
    • Integration-Open Source Software (LAMP, AJAX, RUBY)
    • Technology Support-Public Computing Platform, Wireless 802.11x, 700mhz and 900 mhz Wireless Spectrum
  • OPAC/Chinese: we’ve taken bad models and exported them.
• Moving to Web 2.0
  • 2.0 inspiration, 2.0 management, 2.0 integration
  • You have to be ready to experiment, and if the experiment doesn’t work out, you have to be able to walk away
  • Web 3.0: Eric Schmidt video
  • Infrastructure is changing, and how we tie things together is changing
  • What kind of bandwidth you have
• Final thoughts:
  • Must read Small Pieces Loosely Joined (I second this!!!)
  • Think about mashups and remixing of web services (next gen catalog, worldcat local, endeca, pines)

Great session! A lot of fun!!

• Poet Mark Smith-Soto spoke and read poetry.
• Various NCLA folks talked about the state of NCLA.
• Attendance at this conference is over 1000.
• A number of awards were announced.

GladysAnn Wells, director and state librarian of the Arizona State Library, Archives and Public Records

• Full text will be included in conference edition of (I think) Tar Heel Libraries.
• Ask who hears your stories.
• The experiences people have had will shape how they hear your stories.
• In the beginning we used technology to do faster what we were already doing.  Didn’t change way we did things.
• Just in time model: leasing what we need
  • Painful realization: we cannot preserve or guarantee content if we don’t own it
• Just for you model: can’t be all things to all people, downside of just renting
  • But our communities don’t always know what they need
• Just because model: bought material based on professional judgment before need was clear, just because that’s what we’re supposed to do
• Just why time period is now.
  • People keep asking why we need libraries.
  • We need to be helpful part of vibrant virtual communities yet earn our respected, physical place at the table
  • We need to be listening to the stories of people who don’t like libraries.
• Telling our story, and how we tell it is important.
• Libraries need host systems more than host systems need libraries.
• Important to inspire others to advocate for us.
• Study your context and host system.
• Study your policy makers and resource allocators.
• Build your connections before you need them.  “Think of your connections as a savings account.”
• Find partners to share the load and give your story broader appeal.
• We have to be flexible.

Trust, the Glue of Effective Libraries
Community and Junior College Libraries
Crystal Baird (Associate Dean, Library and Planning Services, Davidson County Community College)

I’m attending this session because a lot of Library 2.0 is about trust: libraries trusting their users (to leave comments in the catalog, to tag, to write on a graffiti wall, etc) and users trusting libraries (to be transparent).  Hopefully this will be relevant!

• Discussed what is trust and trusting and untrusting environments
• Recommended The Speed of Trust and Truth, Trust, and the Bottom Line
• The angle of this presentation is about trust between coworkers… users are brought in as “how would they feel if they come into an environment where staff are untrusting of each other?”
• Leadership behaviors that foster trust: transparency, honesty/integrity, competence and follow through
• Leadership behaviors the erode trust: indirectness/inability to say no, little white lies, taking credit for someone else’s work

So, not really exactly what I was expecting it to be, but still an interesting session!

Using Technology to Enhance Instruction
College and University Section - Bibliographic Instruction Group
Angela Whitehurst (ECU), Lisa Williams (UNC-W), and Angela Bardeen (UNC-Ch)

Angela Bardeen on Facebook

• Discussed “Friends Wheel” where you can see the physical network of your friends
  • 
• Letting students advertise for you
• Shows you who is in what group, can contact president of subject-area clubs through facebook (since they use it more than email)
• Join groups and get notices of when meetings are, etc.
• Can solicit feedback through facebook
• Facebook is number one place to share photos online, by adding library photos you share pictures and fit in with Facebook culture
• Using Facebook to create events and advertise that way
• Using Facebook paid advertising
• Discussed new Facebook application
  • Librarians are trying to create search applications, but they tend to not fit into the culture of facebook. You might be the only one using them.
  • Some are promoting directly on the library home page
  • Might want to consider which fit in to the culture of Facebook
  • One person is developing an application that has a map of the library and students can say “when I’m in the library you can find me in…” and pick a spot on the map. This fits the culture and advertises the library.
• DO: try to think like Facebook, try new things, weigh pros and cons
• DON’T: waste a lot of time, take offense, or “poke” the kids

Angela Whitehurst on Creating Online Tutorials with Camtasia

• Introduced screencasting
• Software: Camtasia, Captivate, Qarbon Viewlet Builder, Robodemo, BB Flashback, Wink
• Started with the questions they got most often at the reference desk
• Stored on “How Do I?” page, but will have an online tutorials page
• Reasons: multimedia appeal for undergrads, 24 hour instruction for distance ed students, method to answer reference questions
• This is similar to the project we’re working on for the toolkit
• Planning: plan first, create in scenes/segments, narration, proofreading and editing, production
• They’re keeping their tutorials on YouTube. I would add that it’s important to think of online video culture when creating video… how do you make the tutorial look and sound like what students are used to seeing?
• Issues to consider: formats, file size (for distance students who might not have broadband), where to upload, adding toc affects screen size

Lisa Williams on Hot Potatoes

• Software to create exercises
• Multiple-choice, short answer, jumble sentence, fill in blank, etc
• Free for not for profits, but have to make pages available to everyone
• Demo-ed crossword puzzle software
• The Masher allows integration of other files

Yesterday I went to the “Yes, You Can Be a Leader!” program.  The program was designed to share information about the NCLA Leadership Institute.  The presentation was really short.  The idea for the program was to create an environment for past participants to meet potential participants and tell them about their experience.  I had a nice chat with Kathy Winslow of NC Wesleyan.  She was a participant in the first Institute and said that it was an incredibly helpful experience.  I also met one of my twitter buddies… in real life!