Professional Development

From September to November, I was involved in a self-paced course called “Digital Licensing Online.” The course consisted of 27 lessons that were delivered three times a week via email. The course discussed broad topics like why licensing is important, as well as specific clauses and terms found in licenses. The last several lessons focused on negotiating tips. There was also a course blog where we could interact with other students and the instructor.

One suggestion from the course was to document your library’s context and licensing standards. Lauren C. and I have already begun to do this in the wiki, and we hope to do more before the new Electronic Resources Librarian arrives.

I think this type of instruction was well-suited for my learning style. Each lesson was fairly short, so I could work it into my day fairly easily. The segmented approach also was effective in keeping me engaged in the material. Once we hire our new Electronic Resources Librarian, I hope he or she will be able to take this course or something like it.

Before I talk about the conference, I saw one idea on my vacation that might be worth stealing. This is the public library in Farmington, New Mexico. They have a wall section devoted to TV screens. Some show TV news and others display library events and tips (like how to place a hold).

I saw WorldCat Identities for the first time. It uses WorldCat data to graph activity by and about an author over time.

This conference was also my first encounter with Library Thing’s Unsuggester (Did you like…? Then you will not like…)

Workflow Ideas

• One library created an e-book task force to look at the Tech Services options for dealing with them.
• Another library assigned serials staff to manage e-journals based on publisher. Therefore one staff member became adept at the quirks associated with Blackwell and the next with ScienceDirect and so forth.
• This library also used Gold Rush to evaluate some abstracting databases for overlap.
• Planned Abandonment must be held in tension with New Initiatives. Any process you abandon will adversely affect a few users. The key is to strategically replace it with something new that will benefit many users.

Collaboration Ideas

OCLC revolutionized data sharing for printed books. How can libraries share data related to e-resources? We could share

• E-journal title change and transfer data
• Librarian reviews of databases similar to Amazon reviews of consumer products.
• Troubleshooting information. Internally, we’ve begun documenting how to recognize and solve specific problems. What if that info were in a public wiki? IMHO, that would be more useful than digging through listserv archives.

SerialsSolutions Presentation

One time slot was devoted to vendor presentations. I chose SerialsSolutions and their 360 Counter usage statistics product.

• So far it doesn’t download the stats for you (they are waiting for full SUSHI compliance first)
• It normalizes titles using the SeSo knowledge base
• It assigns (SeSo’s) subjects to journals
• It assigns cost per use (Unclear how much manual input would need to be done for us to realize this.)

Marketing Ideas

I also went to a session on marketing electronic resources. Very little of this presentation had to do with e-resources specifically, but there were plenty of ideas for library marketing in general. A few we might try…

• Branded coffee sleeves (in our new coffee shop?)
• Branded sticky notes inserted in our annual letter to faculty
• They also mentioned linking to your digitized collections from Wikipedia, but Digital Forsyth has already done this.

Concluding Thoughts

Users don’t compare us to other libraries and universities. They compare us to other information providers like Google.

Finally I did a personal e-book experiment on my conference trip. I downloaded a book from Project Gutenberg to my PDA and read it on the subway and during other downtimes. I read the first few paragraphs about ten times before figuring out a good way to move a virtual bookmark. (I cut and pasted the word “BOOKMARK” every time I moved ahead in the book.) I finished the book on my last day. The book was merely OK, but I enjoyed the PDA format enough that I will try it again next time.

My notes from the Charleston Conference:

Two speakers mentioned The World is Flat as a must-read. It’s checked out right now, so I’ll have to tell you later if it’s any good!

I attended two sessions where ProQuest presented the results of their research into student research behavior. In a plenary session, Jane Burke suggested that The Answer for easy library research is a single search box that is combines all formats, such as multisearch and the catalog. While I will definitely advocate for such a box as the default option when we redesign our website, I still think we’ll need tabs for cases when users know they have a format condition. In the 2nd session on this topic, John Law discussed the research further. He did not provide The Answer for building a perfect database discovery utility. Indeed, he indicated that there is no easy way to provide both the quick access that a multisearch format provides AND perfectly categorized information for users who know they have a specific need.

Some marketing info that I gleaned from Mr. Law’s session:

• 95% of the students they studied at least attempted to use the library while doing their research.
• Many students have some brand awareness (e.g. JSTOR, LexisNexis), but they don’t always understand correctly what each brand provides.
• The vast majority of students put the library ahead of Google on quality, but behind Google in ease of use.
• General library messages (e.g. “come here for high quality information”) had more impact than BI classes that emphasize search techniques.
• Links in courseware (Blackboard) might have a high impact since students generally start their research there. (They have to confirm the details of the assignment, if nothing else.)

I have asked Mr. Law for his complete report. Once I get it, I’ll share with Marketing, Team Info, and the Web group.

The second part of the same presentation was by Susan Gibbons from the University of Rochester. I will repeat Lynn’s recommendation to download their book. One immediate takeaway for me was reaching out to parents. Most freshmen contact their parents at some point during the research process. We already do some parent outreach during the annual Campus Info Day, but we should brainstorm ways to do more. Another idea was plasma screens in the coffee shop for people to view while they wait for their lattes. We could probably re-purpose askzakfacts and the Events calendar for this pretty easily.

Here’s my photo contribution. Thankfully my culinary experiences weren’t as exciting as Lynn’s! However I did notice that — from behind — John C. Calhoun looks like a sketchy character. Is he selling watches or what?