Boston [NOT a library-related post]

This is a library blog. I typically confine myself to library or library-related issues. And I will have one of those later this week or early next, on our migration to our new automation system and how that is working out.

But this is real life, and sometimes things happen in the world that just make you feel like you have to say SOMETHING. Yesterday's events in Boston are, for me anyway, one of those. I didn't know anyone running there in the Marathon, I have never visited Boston (much to my shame), and I don't know anyone directly impacted by yesterday's events. Except, of course, that they affect ALL of us in one way or another. Maybe it is a sense of felling a little less safe, or wondering who or what group is responsible for this and how far it will drive people to take actions that may or may not make us any safer in any real sense. Maybe it is just a need to try to remember that "the bad guys" are not a majority of the world's populace, no matter how many ways we seem to find (as human beings) to misunderstand each other and do things that cause other people pain and suffering. I saw a lot of news accounts last night, and some of "the usual suspects" pointing fingers at "the usual suspects".

And then, this morning, I saw this Facebook posting from Patton Oswalt [Wikipedia entry here, in case you have never heard of him], which said what I wanted to say so much better than I would have done. WARNING - it DOES contain an f-bomb, just one, right up front. So if you have sensitivities to the use of that word, then don't read any further.



OK?



Still with me? Then I am guessing that either your curiousity is piqued or that you aren't too fussed over a random f-bomb. So here is Patton Oswald's Facebook post from yesterday:

Patton Oswalt · 222,563 like this (as of this AM)

• Boston. Fucking horrible.
  
  I remember, when 9/11 went down, my reaction was, "Well, I've had it with humanity."
  
  But I was wrong. I don't know what's going to be revealed to be behind all of this mayhem. One human insect or a poisonous mass of broken sociopaths.
  
  But here's what I DO know. If it's one person or a HUNDRED people, that number is not even a fraction of a fraction of a fraction of a percent of the population on this planet. You watch the videos of the carnage and there are people running TOWARDS the destruction to help out. (Thanks FAKE Gallery founder and owner Paul Kozlowski for pointing this out to me). This is a giant planet and we're lucky to live on it but there are prices and penalties incurred for the daily miracle of existence. One of them is, every once in awhile, the wiring of a tiny sliver of the species gets snarled and they're pointed towards darkness.
  
  But the vast majority stands against that darkness and, like white blood cells attacking a virus, they dilute and weaken and eventually wash away the evil doers and, more importantly, the damage they wreak. This is beyond religion or creed or nation. We would not be here if humanity were inherently evil. We'd have eaten ourselves alive long ago.
  
  So when you spot violence, or bigotry, or intolerance or fear or just garden-variety misogyny, hatred or ignorance, just look it in the eye and think, "The good outnumber you, and we always will."

Onward, Through the Information Fog?

The Lake Land College Library,  like most academic libraries, has a nice selection of databases that provide access to a lot of information. From peer-reviewed academic journals to popular magazines to newspapers and newsletters, and from high-end subject encyclopedias to resume-writing guides and test-preparation books, we have it.  All told, probably 25,000 periodicals of one stripe or another and another 1250 online book titles. They are there, not quite 24/7/365 (there are always maintenance periods when one service or another is down), and they are accessible from just about anywhere our students, faculty, and staff are (as long as they have an internet connection).

When we offer library instruction, and when we talk to our patrons one-on-one, we do our best to make sure that they know that these resources exist. More to the point, they are there to make sure that our students have plenty of high-quality, legitimate academic sources available to support their research needs. And they are used - at least the statistics that we can access tell us how many full-text articles  are retrieved and how many searches are conducted each month.

Are we satisfied with that? NO. To that end, we will soon be featuring a new service on our website  (truth be told, it is there already, just a little hidden)  that can search across the contents of many - but not all - of our databases at once in much the same way as Google searches the open Internet. The new service, called Summon, is an attempt to make it even easier to access this information while giving our patrons an experience that is more like searching Google. Only instead of millions of results of questionable quality, users can search a far more quality-controlled set of resources. It should be ready for prime time quite soon now.

Yet this is not without its shortcomings. By offering services like Summon, do we do a disservice to our users by not trying to teach them how to use the individual services and databases that make up our electronic resources? We are an academic institution, and teaching - particularly the skills we librarians call information literacy - should be as much a part of a student's education here as their Comp, Speech, or Math classes. Some would argue that our professional responsibility is to avoid "shortcuts" and teach the searching and critical-thinking skills that can be applied across a variety of information sources throughout a person's lifetime. Others will say, not without justification, the oft-quoted adage that "librarians like to search - patrons like to find", and that anything we can do to make our resources more accessible to as many of our users as possible is a GOOD THING.

I don't believe that it needs to be a black and white dichotomy; there is room for both approaches. I believe that students should receive a foundation of knowledge that prepares them to be good searchers and to understand what they are seeing and how to evaluate its appropriateness and quality. I believe that should apply across ALL disciplines. And it is a plain fact that, as a patron's research needs become more specialized, they should understand how to use the major tools in their subject area. Someone writing a paper on bipolar disorder should be searching in Psych Articles, not Bloom's Literary Reference. And someone needing information on automobile repair would be best served by using Automobile Repair Reference Center, not the Oxford English Dictionary. At the same time, given that most students at the freshman and sophomore level are still writing on general topics for many of their classes, and our ultimate goal is to get them to be able to access and utilize the Library's resources, then it becomes more difficult to justify forcing students to jump through OUR particular set of hoops to obtain what they are looking for.  We have 40+ databases, with probably 15 different searching interfaces. Is it reasonable to demand that students learn every one of these to meet their basic information needs? How many is enough, and how many is too much?

So onward we go, moving forward in a new direction. Is it the right direction? Time will tell. The only certainty in the world is that nothing is certain. Just keep swimming...

ANNOUNCEMENT: LIBRARY SERVICES INTERRUPTION

The Lake Land College Library will be switching to a new catalog and automation system in April, and this is going to cause some disruptions to services to students, faculty, and staff. This will affect access to our physical library materials as well as access to materials from other libraries.

When the move to the new system (which will be called SHARE) is complete, we will be able to provide access to over 4 times the number of items presently available through the current catalog (LINC).

This will NOT affect access to all of our online library services (databases, Library web site, etc.) that provide access to over 25,000 full-text journals and over 1,000 reference books.

The timeline for the changeover from LINC to SHARE will be as follows:

March 15:             Holds will be turned off in LINC – patrons will not be able to place requests after the 14th until the new system comes up;

March 22:             ALL unfilled holds in the system will be cancelled, as they can not be migrated over to SHARE - we are recommending that ALL library users check their accounts and print a list of their holds that they will want to request again on or before the 21st;

March 22-April 8: The LINC catalog will be in search-only mode. You will be able to search for items but not to request them in LINC. Shelf status – whether an item is on the shelf or not – may no longer be accurate;
                              
April 1 – April 8: IMPORTANT NOTE: ALL USERS will have to have their library barcode present to check out materials. We will NOT be able to search our old system to look up patron information during this time, so if you do not have your ID with your library barcode, we will not be able to check out to you. We will not be able to add new users to the system at this time either, so if you do not already have a library card, please bring in your ID card and we will get you set up with your own account.

April 9 – SHARE goes live!

We will be trying to accommodate requests for materials from other libraries to the best of our ability during this time. The window from April 1-April 8 will be a real challenge to obtain items as most of our system libraries will be trying to keep as much of their local collections in house during that time as possible.

We apologize for the inconvenience this will cause, and appreciate your patience as we are improving our system to better serve your information needs!

Happy New Year, everyone!

Still on semester break, but I saw a great post on another blog (belatedly) and wanted to give it a shout-out here for my millions - ahem, thousands - ahem, handful - of readers:

Melville House blog

About Melville House

Speaking Truth to Power in the Publishing Industry

My [long-suffering] readers have seen me repeatedly make reference to practices in the publishing industry that have been reported through various press sources, websites, and other blogs. To date, most of these stories have involved the publishing giant Elsevier.

But Elsevier is not the only publisher out there who has some pretty "interesting" pricing and marketing practices. The Chronicle of Higher Education daily has published some good articles about efforts to bring issues with Elsevier to light. Now comes a terrific blog post from Jenica Rogers, Director of Libraries at SUNY - Potsdam that tells of her struggles with the practices of the American Chemical Society and her decision to discontinue her campus' subscriptions to the ACS journal package. It makes for some pretty interesting reading, and I encourage you to go have a look.

So long as groups like ACS, Elsevier, and others who attempt to dictate our purchasing decisions to us through pricing and market manipulation are allowed to do so in relative secrecy, those actions will not be challenged except on an individual basis. I am happy that there are institutions that have the money to afford to be able to not have to think twice about what resources they want to provide. But most of us do not have that luxury. Making difficult decisions about what resources we can and can't afford, measuring cost versus usage, and trying to get the most appropriate resources to support our institutions IS a part of "doing our job" as librarians and managers of information resources. For the most part, those decisions get made individually or locally and only affect one institution. But every now and again, this struggle goes public. Maybe only a handful of people will ever see it. Every attempt at reform and change has to have a beginning.

And so if "going public" is a way to draw attention to the issue that might actually affect this situation for the rest of us, then more power to Jenica Rogers for what she has done. We have nothing to lose but our complacency.

[9/28/12]
P.S. Please also see this quite excellent post on John Dupuis' "Confessions of a Science Librarian" blog on ScienceBlogs for another perspective on the subject, along with some other links he has collected and published.

Student Engagement, Community Colleges, and Libraries

Those of you who work in community colleges are probably familiar with a tool called CCSSE. The CCSSE website features a description of what it is that it is supposed to do, and emphasizes the importance of improving programs and services at community colleges. It also looks at institutional services and practices and student behaviors and their contribution to student learning and retention. These last two things are BIG DEALS for community colleges, and almost all of us are looking for ways that we can measure and assess our contributions. It's a really big deal to me, as I struggle to find meaningful activities that can help assess what my department does to contribute to student learning.

So you'd think that something like CCSSE would be a really good thing to help me do that, right? Um, not so much. Here is a posting to another blog (Michael Stephens' interesting and often challenging site Tame The Web) that sums up my frustrations with CCSSE. I could go into a lot more depth, but it would just be venting.

I commend Troy Swanson's comments to you for your consideration and reflection.

Community College Convert Story

Here's a link to a blog post from an award-winning librarian blog with one of the best titles I have seen yet - a shout-out to one of my family's favorite board games [inthelibrarywiththeleadpipe]

It speaks directly to the assumptions that are often made by those who work at 4-year colleges and universities, which (to no readers' surprise, I trust) often, ahem, not very complimentary.

To the author of the blog post, Kim Leeder: Well-said. Welcome to the Light side of the Force. Cookies better than the dark side have we.