Why Libraries Rock

I'm reviving this blog (however briefly) to join the LFPL Blogathon! As you may have heard, the Louisville Free Public Library in Louisville, KY, suffered major damage from the more than FOUR FEET of flood water in their building in July. The water was a result of a flash flood. Steve Lawson, of the Library Society of the World kicked off a PayPal drive to raise $5,000 for the library foundation by tomorrow, Sept 1. Then a blog-a-thon was created by Andy Woodworth to push the fund drive over the edge. So, go, give, and support a library in trouble.

Why should I support a library, you ask? Because Libraries Rock! (c'mon, you had to see that coming, with the title and all). Libraries rock because they are a haven. Public libraries, especially, allow anyone to come in and learn. Read, discover, learn, talk, get online - all of that takes place at your local public library. Storytimes for small kids, book groups for bigger kids (aka grownups), teen programs (gaming! comic books!), computer lessons for seniors (and others), a warm dry place in the winter, a cool one in the summer. All that is your local public library. Librarians and staff who will help you find almost anything, whether they agree with your views or not.

In these times of economic stress, the library can be so many things to people. You can use the library to find a job, "rent" a movie, check out books on tape for that commute or vacation trip, improve your skills in *whatever* to fix your house, your job, your marriage, your life. Whatever you want to do, chances are you can find out how to get started at the library.

Lets not forget academic libraries, special libraries and school libraries! They rock too! Academic libraries are full of people who want to help students succeed. All the academic librarians I know are passionate about helping students learn and improve the skills they need to do top-notch research so that they can be successful, both in academia and whatever they endeavor to do in the future.

Special libraries....the forgotten few. Tucked away in hospitals and corporate headquarters, these librarians and library staff have to continually prove they're worth the money the company spends on them. They support research and development, patient education, physician education, and so many other things.

School librarians....we all hear about how education funding is cut and school librarians (or school media specialists, if you will) get cut. These are the people who teach your children not how to read, but how to *love* reading. How to do research. How to use a computer. How to avoid bad information on the internet. All the most basic skills that students need to be successful adults in this information heavy world we live in. They toil tirelessly in schools, loving the kids and working for them.

In short, libraries rock. Hard. They support all walks of life, from Kindergarten on into the corporate office. They help you find what you need, and maybe even what you didn't even know you wanted! They provide the community with a place to gather and a place to find inexpensive entertainment. They're, in my unbiased (yeah, right) position, one of the best values you can get for your tax dollar. Even if you don't support Louisville Free Public Library with a donation, I hope you support your own local public library by stopping by. Get a library card! It's free! You'd probably be amazed at what you can find there.

The Librarian Digital Divide

I was thinking yesterday about the digital divide. According to Wikipedia, the digital divide

refers to the gap between people with effective access to digital and information technology and those with very limited or no access at all. It includes the imbalances in physical access to technology as well as the imbalances in resources and skills needed to effectively participate as a digital citizen. In other words, it is the unequal access by some members of society to information and communication technology, and the unequal acquisition of related skills. The term is closely related to the knowledge divide as the lack of technology causes lack of useful information and knowledge. The digital divide may be classified based on gender, income, and race groups, and by locations.

I realized that the digital divide applies to librarians as well as library patrons. School librarians (those in K-12 institutions) usually have very strict filters installed that prevent them from accessing various social networking and Web 2.o sites. Many public librarians also have filters (of varying strengths) that block access. Public librarians, however, often have the capability of overriding the filters to access certain sites. Academic librarians generally have no filters at all. This spectrum of access causes a disconnect (even more so than existed previously) between school, public and academic librarians.

As an academic librarian who is working on an outreach program to our local school librarians, I am faced with this spectrum regularly. Even if the school librarians would like to learn about and use social networking and Web 2.0 tools in their schools, they are not allowed to. So they must learn about them on their own time, and in their own homes. This hardly seems fair, since the school librarians I know already go above and beyond for their students. I'm not sure what, if anything, can be done about this, but with the growing push towards making libraries more user-friendly and present on social networks, this is going to be a bigger dilemma.

This digital divide is also preventing school librarians from being able to network and access professional resources that are not available through traditional channels. One of my most valuable professional networks is composed entirely of people that I have met almost exclusively online. Since starting that network, I have met some of them in person, but many of the librarians around the country that I talk to every day, I've never met in person. But these are the people that are my water cooler buddies at work. By not allowing school librarians access to these kinds of networks at their workplace, we are severely hampering their ability to grow and become even better librarians.

Another Day in the Life

It's been a few months since I've done this, so I thought I'd share. I've had what I would consider a typically random day for me also, so here goes....

8-8:30am

• chat with coworkers in the ILL office

9-9:30am

• check email for overnight emails
  
• prepare email address list for the local roundtable I am chair of

9:30-9:45am

• compose email chairing a virtual business meeting/election for the roundtable, ensuring we are following both Robert's Rules and our bylaws
  

9:45-10am

• cleared off desk
• keeping an eye on email for the virtual business meeting

10-11am

• cleaned up emails
• took care of missing payment for online resource
• tallied votes for virtual meeting
• sorted catalogs for Education collection development

11am-12pm

• cleared bulletin board of snowflake display
• put up spring & alphabet book display
• organized display materials
• emailed website suggestion to colleagues
• rebooted my computer to fix mouse issue

12-1pm

• attempted to find downloaded file for student that was saved in unfindable location
• lunch!

2-3pm

• poked on Envisionware to try to change guest pass settings
• helped student find primary sources for her Education paper
• started gathering titles for an updated professional collection for library faculty
  

3-4:30

• showed Education students how to do collection development
• tallied votes for roundtable meeting
• ran invoices to acquisitions
• contacted photographers about my wedding
• wrote this blog post!

As you can see, there is a wide variety of activities during my day, and not all of them are directly related to my job title :)

TLA 2009 Conference

The Tennessee Library Association 2009 Conference is rapidly approaching!! Since I use my Google Calendar for everything, I made a calendar with all the conference sessions and events on it. I thought others might find it useful as well, so I made it public! Please feel free to add it to your own calendar and link to it at will!

http://tinyurl.com/nfhs9

Award-winning!

Hey, look! I've won something! You can win too! Just hop on over to the Shovers and Makers website and write yourself up (in the good way, of course!)

Day in the life....

Last time the Library Day in the Life went around, I skipped it. I was feeling unproductive at work and didn't want to share how much time I thought I was spending online in my social networks. This time, however, I am keeping my one New Year's Resolution of doing more work at work, so here's my typical day (I hope...we'll see if anything blows up on me today...)

I am an Electronic Resources and Education Librarian at a small liberal arts school in Nashville, TN. I usually have too much on my plate, so it'll be interesting for me to see how much I have to do during the day.

6:20am - the alarm goes off, playing NPR. I hit snooze.

6:35 - time to get up and walk the dog and do the morning routine

7:40 - grab a Diet Coke and it's off to work!

8:00 - try to find a parking place somewhere near the library...Our campus is just like any other- parking is at a premium.

8:05 - make it into the library, and make my way upstairs to my office.

8:10 - eat breakfast (oatmeal) while checking email and checking in on Twitter,FriendFeed, and Facebook. Read a variety of links from Twitter/FriendFeed that look interesting (this morning? see my Delicious links to see what I thought was useful)

8:40 - start going through work emails to see what needs to be done today and what has to be responded to.

9:00-9:30- email inbox is cleaned up, with all remaining emails functioning as today's "To Do" list.

9:30-10:00 - check links on the library website, update links to new database subscriptions, provided requested usage statistics to subject liaison, email about updating links on our proxy server

10:00-10:30 - send information to various liaisons about their subscriptions, and about a subject guide on the library's website we are collaborating on; updated more links on the library website, passed on database renewal information to the appropriate parties

10:30-11:00 - walked across campus to pick up the toner cartridge for my printer, stopped for a snack on the way back (yogurt!), and returned to the office for still more emails, chatted with a colleague about a problem we've been having with our print release station, updated the problem log for said print release station

11:00-11:30 - prepped renewal invoices for director's signature, checked in on Twitter and FriendFeed and discovered my Twitter feed has been taken over by LITA-related tweets.

11:30-12:00 - updated the case file for our ongoing print release station problems, looked into a possible problem with our 360 Link

12:00-12:30

12:30-1:30 - Lunch! Time to escape the building for a bit, even if it is frigid outside.

1:30-2:00 - play catch up after lunch - check emails, fax renewals to publishers, update another subject guide on the library's website

2:00-2:30 - troubleshoot print release station, answer more emails,

2:30-4:00 - move donated Education books out of a study room so that the students can begin using it again

4:00-4:30 - back to the office to answer emails before going home for the day!

Is it really Google?

Tennessee has a purchasing consortium called Tenn-Share, and every year, Tenn-Share hosts a "DataFest". The DataFest is a day-long gathering of librarians from around the state, and from all types of librarians. Various database vendors are invited to show off their products, and it's always an interesting day. This year, several of the vendors contacted me to meet with me personally before the DataFest, which is fine. But in those meetings and at the DataFest itself, I heard vendors say things about how Google has caused everyone to want that single search box on the screen. And it hit me that I'm not sure that's entirely true. I think what Google has done is made searching easy. And *that's* what people want.

Google wasn't the one who made people want easy searching, but it was probably the catalyst that made people realize that's what they wanted. Previously, to find good, reliable information you had to know a librarian who could search DIALOG for you. Then came the internet and online databases. Wow! All that information! But you still couldn't find what you were looking for. So back to the library for the librarian who could search the database. Vendors didn't feel pressure to make their interfaces more user-friendly because patrons weren't actually using them. Librarians, with their specialized training, were. With the further advent of the internet and online databases, more and more patrons can get to more and more databases from *outside* the library. This means there is no friendly neighborhood librarian to help them out when they get stuck. So the librarians get more comments about how people can't find anything, which are passed on to the vendors. And voila! Vendors are talking about how people want Google-like interfaces for their databases.

Well, of course they do! Patrons don't want to search! They want to *find* the information they are looking for and move on. Librarians are the ones who enjoy the hunt (and not even all of them do). So it's not really Google's fault that people want thing simpler and more user friendly. It just so happens that Google *is* simple and user friendly. And really good at giving people what they want. It's the competition from Google for information sources that has caused the vendors to play catch-up with all the web services that have been around for a while.

Database interfaces are now morphing into simpler, more easily understood things. And they're offering RSS feeds and email and exporting features that people are (hopefully) making good use of! Grandted, for some of those features, you still may want a librarian's help, but patrons are less intimidated by the initial screen.

I'm happy to see the 2.0 versions of search interfaces from database vendors. My questions is.....when is the ILS going to follow? I know there are these new "discovery tools" that are supposed to "lay on top of" the existing ILS. And they're nice. But they really don't solve the underlying problems of many ILSs. Searching is still difficult, LCSH are still weird, and there aren't as many interactive features that would be very helpful for some people.

I guess maybe the ILSs will catch up with "web 2.0" when "web 3.0" hits :)