Professional Development

Yesterday, a group of us attended the virtual conference Handheld Librarian.It was presented as a combination of PowerPoint presentations with live voice-overs.Attendees had to log into the conference site to watch and listen; attendees could submit questions and comments to the presenters and moderators in real time via IM.The topic of the conference was delivering library services via mobile or handheld devices.

The conference was so well attended that we were unable to log into the opening keynote session for about 30 minutes until they opened a second log-in site.Four hundred seventy-seven individuals or groups attended the morning sessions. Needless to say, the attendees were a self-selecting crowd of tech-loving librarians, many of whom Twittered the conference.Throughout the morning, #hhlib trended in Twitter which means it was among the top 10 topics mentioned.Every few moments, I’d get a refresh reminder telling me I had 75 new tweets on #hhlib.It added an interesting dimension to the conference to watch and hear the presenter while reading attendees reactions on Twitter at the same time.Many tweets lauded speakers comments, others posed questions to the audience, while a few complained about audio quality or disagreed with speaker comments.

Surprisingly, people have continued to Twitter about the conference `today.Presenters’ have been posting their slides on their blogs or web pages and the audio recordings are not available at www.handheldlibrarian.org.

Today, a group of us attended the Handheld Librarian, an online conference about using mobile devices to deliver library services. I’m reporting on the session about Cornell’s experience launching their text reference service.

In August of 2008, Cornell University library launched their text-a-librarian service.Librarians there had recognized that approximately 90% of Americans carry mobile phones and when approached by Mosio, a supplier, and asked to beta test their program, Cornell agreed.The development phase lasted through spring break and included changes, both major and minor, such as revising the software to disassociate the cell phone number from the user to protect user privacy.The development period also included extensive training time for the reference desk staff.In the spring the library had a soft launch so they could work out any issues before driving a lot of traffic to the service.As part of this testing period, they asked members of one class to use the service; 26 texts were received over a 90-day period, most asking circulation and direction-type questions.The library has prepared its own promotional materials and plans a major roll-out this fall. The program that runs the service is from Mosio (www.mosio.com) ; the interface looks simple and easy to use, but comes with an annual subscription price of $1,139 or their basic service. The Cornell librarians have been very happy with the service and expect to see a lot of activity on the new service this coming semester. The slides from this presentation will be available for 6 months if you’d like to view this or other presentations.

Rethink, Redefine, Reinvent: the Research Library in the Digital Age was the theme of this year’s Launch conference. Since so many of us attended this conference, each of will blog one presentation to avoid repetition.

In the afternoon I attended the break-out session “Changing Workforce” which I thought from the title would be about diversity in the workplace.Instead, I heard three presentations about changes in the types of work librarian perform.The first two presentations were about creating digital collections while the third was about evaluating and introducing new technology to the library.All three represented roles for librarians never contemplated by Melvil Dewey.

The first talk was jointly presented by two metadata librarians from the Duke Digital Collection.Rich Murray is the Spanish/Portuguese Cataloguer for whom metadata was added to his responsibilities.The other, Noah Huffman, joined Duke last year as Archivist for Metadata and Encoding with metadata management as a primary responsibility in his job description.They are part of a larger digital collections team that works on a distributed model; there is no digital collections department.

Together, they act in two ways: first, they establish the metadata format for a collection before the digitizing begins.They determine which elements to capture such as types of information to be catalogued and the metadata scheme to be used (Dublin Core, other). Then, they catalog the pieces by entering the appropriate information in the designated fields.

Their work differs from traditional cataloguing in that they establish a metadata template for each collection rather than following an established standard, such as AACR2.Next, they have several different digital metadata schemes on which to model their template, rather than one.Lastly, they apply tags to the images rather than the LC subject headings.Still, there are some similarities to print cataloguing: they use LC to standardize place names and they try to standardize the language in captions and tags. This process applies whether they’re beginning to digitize a new collection or migrating an existing digital collection to a new platform.

John Blyth also works to create digital collections, but he deals with the scanning, processing and saving of items born digital; these may include images, e-mails, documents or other items. He works with the Southern Historical Collection at the Wilson Library at UNC and has processed more than a hundred CDs worth of items.

Chad Haefele is the Reference Librarian for Emerging Technologies at UNC Davis Library; he evaluates new technologies to determine their appropriateness for use in the library.When he deems that they might be useful and are sufficiently well developed to be stable, he introduces them to the library staff through technology classes.In addition, he serves on a campus-wide committee that’s developed a suite of iPhone applications for Duke. One of the most interesting projects on which he has been working is to create a “my library” page for patrons.It resembles an iGoogle page with boxes that include RSS feeds for new books or films in certain subject areas, hours of operation and other items.He’s hoping to add a box that would show the patron’s account of checked out items.

These three presentations highlighted the role of technology in our work as librarians.Computer-based tools allow us to work in new ways, but at a conceptual level the work is remarkably similar to what it was in Dewey’s day.

LAUNC-CH Conference
Cultivating Collaboration Across Learning Communities

Ellen Daugman and Mary Scanlon attended the recent LAUNC-CH conference in Chapel Hill. Here’s our report:

Keynote speaker: Abby Blachly from LibraryThing
Ellen and I attended this year’s LAUNC-CH conference in Chapel Hill; the focus was on collaboration across learning communities and the sessions were designed to present examples of groups that have accomplished this. The keynote speaker was Abby Blachly from the social cataloging site Library Thing. She provided the audience with a brief history of the site, describing how it began as a Classicist’s desire to catalog the Loeb volumes in his personal library. He put it on the web, invited his friends to add their books to it and it took off from there. The site was strongly influenced by librarians and it gathers much of the traditional data that library catalogs do, but with a twist. In a very Web2.0 fashion, it allows users to add new items to the catalog, to modify records, and to add social data such as tags, reviews and even message board conversations to the site. Several times she illustrated the aptness and currency of user-generated content such as tags, which unlike LCSH, reflect the books’ content much more accurately (it took a while, for instance, for “chick lit” to attain the exalted status of subject heading). Tags can also convey the subjective experience of a book, perhaps none more so than “Boring,” or “Unread.” LibraryThing has so many contributors that tag clouds at this site provide a much richer experience than one would find on even Amazon.com. In addition, LibraryThing serves as a social network, offering users a chance to connect with anything from favorite books and shared tags, to nearby libraries, bookstores, programs, and “friends.” Blachly emphasized the “unintentionality” of such Web 2.0 projects, where groups can form purely by happenstance, collaborate without meaning to, and organize without intent. These projects exist by tapping into the “uncredentialed masses” who are inspired to share their knowledge of obscure topics and to serve as ever-vigilant communities. LibraryThing now boasts more than 330,000 members, 800,000 book covers, and 32 million tags; it offers the opportunity to connect with other people based on the books one shares–other people who are, in short, book soulmates. Coincidentally, shortly after the conference, NPR aired a piece on these web sites that permit bibliophiles to indulge in virtual booksharing: in addition to LibraryThing, other options include Goodreads, Shelfari, aNobii and BookJetty.

Collaboration between UNC-CH SLS School and the surrounding county public libraries for teaching computer skills
The second session focused on an interesting collaboration, initiated in 2005, between the UNC School for Library Science and the surrounding county’s public library systems. SLS students are teaching classes in basic computer skills and information literacy in the public libraries. The public libraries identify their patrons’ learning needs and place requests with the Library School, which is then responsible for recruiting, training, and scheduling instructors. The PLs are responsible for promoting the classes and registering students, while the instructor/students prepare all instruction plans and materials. Since classes are offered during the libraries’ closed hours, the participants range from high school students, to senior citizens pressed for email skills to keep in touch with grandchildren–with a broad range of working citizenry in between. Interestingly, these classes are also being used for professional development purposes, to acquire computer skills; for example, the town of Chapel Hill has sent employees to attend relevant sessions. It has also enabled people to apply for jobs online and even to obtain W2s that Walmart and Costco employees could only obtain via the Internet. It’s a completely symbiotic relationship: the PLs are able to offer numerous classes that would otherwise be unavailable due to staffing demands and costs, and the SLS students get valuable teaching experience (not to mention subject matter for numerous MA theses). It works for the simplest of reasons: everyone benefits, and no budget is required. The program has received due recognition: in 2007, the ACRL Instruction Section gave its innovation award to the Community Workshop Program. Now it has targeted a new specific audience, promoting and marketing the classes to the Latino community.

Multi-librarian collaboration to create consumer health website
In this collaborative project, librarians and health educators came together and developed a website, NC Health Info, to provide consumers with health information. It is a local response to an era of truncated 12-minute long doctor visits and statistics indicating that approximately 50% of American adults have searched the Internet for health information. With a grant from the National Institutes of Health, they selected and approved web sites for each of a select group of illnesses and conditions. They also created a provider identification tool whereby consumers could choose a condition or disease and a city and receive a list of specialists that met the criteria. All content is approved by the committee before it’s put on the website. Broad categories include Diseases & Conditions, Mental Health, Treatments & Procedures, Medications, Healthy Living, and Health Care; in addition, there is a Reference section containing links to a handful of health-related websites. In the wake of the LibraryThing presentation, the website looked very rigid and old-fashioned, and the reference tools are a rather paltry lot. Vetting is done by sub-committees which make decisions and approve website content, design, and outreach efforts. There are no opportunities on this site for user-generated content or discussions.

UNC-CH - creating a mini-CH campus in Second Life
UNC-CH has created a miniature version of its campus in SecondLife, the virtual world, in an initiative to co-opt gaming for instructional purposes. It is a fascinating attempt to create an educational space in a virtual environment, and the session was a rapidly paced demonstration of the ongoing efforts to leverage the capabilities of SL in order to create educational surrogates. Inevitably, replicas of iconic structures like the well are there. After spending $800 to purchase an island, it took many, many hours to create the virtual campus. Its uses vary: there’s an exhibit of a digitized photo collection hanging in the virtual version of an original university building; there are virtual classrooms where online classes meet; and library students staff the virtual reference desk. However, since SecondLife is such a text-poor environment the reference librarians mostly answer questions about using SL. While the craftsmanship of the virtual campus was impressive, the efficacity of the virtual reference desk in the current SL environment seems dubious for now.

Role-play games as teaching tools; virtual environments as teaching spaces
The speakers reviewed the history of MMORGs - massively multi-player online role-playing games and their phenomenal growth; one example include World of Warcraft. The speaker discussed his research into the benefits of online games, including: learning in context, improving reading skills ( most of these games have backstories that drive the characters) problem-solving and developing teamwork.