library+instruction+technology

This was the only invited paper session that I attended. The content was useful. I wish it would have happened a bit earlier in the day. It was given during the last time slot on Saturday and I was mentally wiped out by 4:30. Tracy Mitrano is the Director of IT Policy and of Computer Policy and Law Program at Cornell University. Her talk covered many of the concepts included in information literacy competency standard 5. I found the portion of her discussion on copyright to be the most interesting.

She started by talking about how copyright has not kept pace with technology and how our users want to use and reuse content. The AAP's letter to Cornell about course reserves was discussed along with the development of Cornell Electronic Course Content Copyright Guidelines (PDF). She recommended that we read Digital Learning Challenge: Obstacles to Educational Uses of Copyright Material in the Digital Age from the Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard Law School. A recent public policy report, Intellectual Property And Free Speech In The Online World (PDF), provides an overview of P2P file sharing lawsuits brought by the RIAA and how IHEs are handling the situation.

The remainder of Tracy's talk covered social networking and electronic surveillance (Patriot Act). The social network portion included familiar ground: students putting things on their profiles they shouldn't; criminals using these tools to commit crimes (e.g. pedophiles on Myspace); and politicians over reactions to ban social networking sites. The electronic surveillance section provided a concise review of how we went from the Electronic Communications Privacy Act of 1986 to the USA Patriot Act.  

technorati tag: acrl2007

It's always nice to see a member of the family present at a national conference. Char Booth from Ohio University presented on a video reference service that is currently being prototyped in Athens. Char has posted her presentation on-line. You can also listen (MP3 deep link) to an interview with her courtesy PALINET. 

The reference team installed a web camera and chat software on a computer on an upper floor of the library. The team hoped to be able to help people on the upper floors so they didn't have to make the trek down to the reference desk. Four video chat clients were tested: Trillian Pro, Windows Live Messenger, Skype, and iChat. Skype was chosen as the preferred client. Future plans include adding video IM as an option on their Ask a Librarian page and installing a walk up video IM kiosk in the newly built student center.

I think video virtual reference is a very cool idea. It may be a challenge to implement at a small academic library based on staffing levels. I do think that video IM would be a good tool for consortial work. 

technorati tag: acrl2007

Michelle Jacobs from UC Merced shared her use of a smart phone to provide service to students and faculty. She is able to search the catalog, databases, and answer questions via instant message. Her smart phone is Bluetooth enabled and she purchased an external keyboard to make typing easier. She recommended looking at CNet for smart phone reviews. 

Michelle told us about answering a reference question during the conference using the internet browsing and IM features of her smart phone. This anecdote was rehashed at the beginning of the April 20 Chronicle article (subscribers) describing the reference panel session. 

PALINET has posted an interviewer with Michelle (MP3 deep link).

I'm interested in trying this out, but may wait since EVDO has not been rolled out locally. I do think this makes a lot of sense. I could have used something like this multiple times this semester when I was working with a student in the stacks or visiting with a faculty member outside of the library (and not near a computer).   

technorati tag: acrl2007

Priscilla Finley from the University of Nevada, Las Vegas showed us how to leverage some cool Firefox extensions. She first showed us how to create a search plug-in that allows users to search the OPAC from Firefox's toolbar search box. It's pretty easy to do, since most OPAC predictable URLs. She next talked about Jon Udell's LibraryLookup  bookmarklet generator and using Greasemonkey and Userscripts to get catalog data to appear on web pages where ISBNs are displayed. PALINET has posted an interview with Priscilla (deep link to MP3).

I created a Sherlock search plug-in for Firefox back in October 2005. It doesn't work anymore and I've never updated it. This Zed Shed brought put it back on the to do list. I'm not sure how many of our students or faculty used the plug-in. I know most of the librarians had installed it on their computers.

technorati tag: acrl2007

Rachel Bridgewater from Washington State University shared her experience using Drupal to create a reference department intranet. Prior to the intranet, the department had maintained a 3-ring binder as a procedures manual and communication tool. The amount of content was getting unwieldy and it was difficult to keep communication flowing smoothly on paper, so an electronic alternative was sought.

Rachel decided to use an open source content management system, since there wasn't any budget for a commercial product. The Library and campus IT are a merged entity, so she had easy access to the servers. This is not the case everywhere, so a good working relationship with IT is necessary if they are a separate group.

She chose Drupal because of it's flexibility, but also suggested Joomla and Plone as alternatives.  She suggested that Joomla offered less customization while Plone required more technical skills, specifically Python. Drupal requires Apache, PHP, and MySQL to be installed on the server. Set up is pretty straight forward. Most challenging is unpacking files and configuring for you local server's environment. Drupal's look can be customized through CSS. It comes with a lot of different modules out of the box, but there are a lot more available. It also offers good access control options.

Main benefit for her department was improved communication. Everyone knows where to go to to stay informed and can keep up to date via RSS feeds (e.g. printer on the x floor not working, already reported it.)

The main challenges are staff buy-in/comfort with change, keeping the software updated when new releases come out, and developing a plan to remove old/stale content over time.

Update 4/19: I forgot that PALINET was interviewing individuals giving Cyber Zed Shed presentations. Listen (MP3) to Rachel talk about her experience. 

Library related sites using Drupal: drupalib, TechEssence, L-net, and Northwest Central. 

Rachel suggested the following articles:

McBridge, M. (October 2004) Open Source Weblog & Content Management Systems for the Information Professional. Searcher, 12(9), 24-30.

Douglass, R., Little, M., and Smith, J. (2005). Building online communities with Drupal, phpBB, and WordPress . New York: Springer-Verlag. 

technorati tag: acrl2007

Susan Avery, Meg Burger, and Lisa Janicke Hinchliffe from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign comprised the panel for this session. They shared what they are doing to make the Undergraduate Library at UIUC more relevant to the lives of Millennials. Lisa played a new video that showcases what students can do at the Undergraduate Library. The postings by Shana Fair, Laurie Bridges, Amanda Izenstark, and Amy Harris on the conference blog provide a comprehensive picture of the session's content.

I had higher expectations for this session and was a bit disappointed by the lack of implementable ideas for my own library. I think my disappointment may be related to scalability. Or, maybe my Gen X cynicism is kicking in on what is and is not possible on an anemic materials budget.

Don't get me wrong, they did share great ideas.

"Restructure your space to reflect how millennials use space. Provide more room for collaboration, consolidate service points, provide as much public space as possible, provide for media viewing needs, develop virtual library spaces using blogs, wikis, Second Life, Facebook, or MySpace where they can interact with you. Inbed access to your resources in places they actually use. Look at your collections—don’t just limit yourself to purchasing text. Add e-books, graphic novels, gaming, increase your media collection" (from Shana's post)

Our blog is read, but doesn't receive many comments. Our Library had a Facebook profile, before the purge. A Facebook group for the Library was recently created, we'll see how that goes. We don't have a MySpace profile. We already buy a lot of media (DVDs and CDs) and have access to a lot of electronic content (including streaming+downloadable digital videos) through OhioLINK. We don't collect many graphic novels, but there is potential for use by the undergraduate and graduate education programs.

I'm not sure about buying games, due to previously mentioned anemic materials budget.  Not much can be done about the physical space of our building, other than weed, weed, weed, and weed some more to create more usable space.  I still think a lot of my disappointment goes back to scalability. I can't off-load low use books to another building on campus. I can weed it and rely on OhioLINK, which I already do to some extent. I think I still need to chew on the ideas discussed during this session.

The one idea that I believe is actionable locally is consolidating service points. Our reference desk is maybe 15 feet from our circulation/reserve desk. I started socializing the idea of merging the two over the summer at a staff meeting last week. Have any other small liberal arts college implemented a single service point? Is it working for your students?  Is it working for you?

technorati tag: acrl2007

Katy Silberger and Verne Newton from Marist College shared their experiences implementing Central Search, a product from Serial Solutions. Federated search was implemented as part of a web site redesign. Direct links to discipline specific resources and federated searching is available on the library's front page. Their federated search is dubbed Fox Hunt, after the college's mascot, the red foxes.

A conscious decision was made to include Google and Google Scholar as part of federated search. The single federated search box includes the phrase, “Search library databases and Google at the same time," to get student's attention. Katy shared that during instruction she informs students that Google is not able to index the deep web (like subscription databases). By using Fox Hunt, students have a better chance of finding more relevant sources for their assignments. Usage statistics show a dramatic increase in the number of full text article usage and PDF downloads.  

Image searching was an additional benefit for Marist from their implementation of federated search. The college offers a fashion design/merchandising major. It was often challenging for students to find pictures of fashion for class projects. The Library's solution to this problem was to include the NYPL Digital Gallery, NYPL Picture Collection Online, and American Memory web sites as part of the fashion design/merchandising federated search. Katy indicated that the descriptions in American Memory are very detailed and often include clothing descriptions. 

The conference paper, presentation, and demos of Fox Hunt are available on Marist's web site.  

I was most impressed by their decision to include the image collections in federated search. Image searching is not currently included in OhioLINK's federated search tool. I am not sure if it has been considered, but worth suggesting. Ohio students (and all Ohioans with a public library card) are able to search across multiple art collections within the Digital Media Center. However, it would be nice to include other open digital collections in the OhioLINK federated search tool.

technorati tag: acrl2007

Jeffrey Belliston and Jared Howland from Brigham Young University shared initial results from their research on undergraduates' use of a federated search tool at BYU. I applaud them for making this session interactive. I think they distributed around 100 clickers to the audience prior to the session beginning. We were asked to vote on our opinion of federated search, if we had a tool deployed locally, and what we thought their results might show. It was a great way to get everyone focused at 8 a.m on a Saturday morning. I was sitting with librarians from Maryland and Massachusetts and we shared a clicker. It was fun.

Jeffrey and Jared developed a search problem and had students at three different BYU campuses (Utah, Hawaii, and Idaho) find information using regular A&I databases and BYU's federated search tool. They wanted to know if federated search saved students time and if students preferred federated searching over traditional A&I database searching. Iris has a written a more descriptive post of this session. Jeffrey and Jared indicated that they are writing a paper for publication based on their research and are still analyzing data.

The initial outcomes from their research are what you expect. In general, federated searching saved time (roughly 10% for the students in Utah) and they preferred using federated searching (70%) over traditional A&I databases. The data is different for each campus, which could be related to how the search tool has been customized and implemented locally on each campus. Their research was also focused on one discipline, biology, and other disciplines may experience other results.

Our students and faculty at Muskingum College heavily use OhioLINK's federated search tool (Metalib).  Since August 28, 2006, the beginning of our Fall semester, there have been 10,740 searches executed. Our campus is currently ranked 12th (behind Bowling Green State University, ahead of Ohio University) in usage from August 28. This is attributable to having the federated search box front and center on our web site.

I know some librarians believe we do our students a disservice by providing federated searching. I believe that it is better to give them a "Google like" tool so that they can find quality articles from journals and magazines vs. the questionable content on the open web. This is especially necessary when many of our students wait until the last possible attosecond to start their research and tend to take the path of least resistance to full-text.

What do you think? Is federated search a necessary evil?  Have you had good experiences or bad experiences? Do you teach it during instruction? 

technorati tag: acrl2007

On the surface scholarly communication is not the sexiest of topics. However, I think the topic is very important for all librarians to understand and advocate. The panel was comprised of past participants of the the ACRL/ARL Institute for Scholar Communications: John Ober (CDL), Teresa Fishel (Macalester), Carolyn Mills (UConn), and John Saylor (Cornell). 

Teresa began by sharing her small private college perspective. Her plan of attack was to meet with faculty for one on one conversations. She also developed a "soundbyte" to use when having an informal discussion with faculty members. She gave a 30 minute presentation during a faculty training day. Her overall impressions are that her faculty are aware of the problem and have a better understanding of their options.

John spoke next about some of Cornell's activities. He viewed the environmental scan as key to firmly understanding what is and is not happening at the local level. They determined who was actively publishing, who was producing large data sets that needed to be maintained, and who was serving on editorial boards. The information collected is used to help support decision making and keep the administration informed on what is going on. They discovered that their German studies program was having a difficult time getting monographs published in print. An audience member shared a similar situation at Penn State with their Romance Languages department. Both groups are now publishing this specialized content in their institutional repositories. This lead to discussion about how scholarly communications means different things to different disciplines.

Carolyn from UConn spoke next about their program. UConn has an institutional committee for scholarly communication. She has found that it's hard to educate faculty during large meetings. She suggested that small groups and one on one works best. Subject liaisons are being used as the main point of contact with the academic departments to discuss this topic. Carolyn experienced some hesitation/push back from some of the librarians because they didn't feel comfortable talking about all aspects of scholarly communication, especially the fine points of copyright. She developed PowerPoint slides that the librarians could use with faculty. Educating/outreach to faculty on scholarly communication is being written into new hire job descriptions. Some faculty concerns include: idea theft and citation challenges (how do you cite pre-print). She shared a copy of an author's rights brochure (based on brochure developed by Ohio State) that is being distributed to all faculty. Carolyn also referred us to the Boston Library Consortium's Agreement to Extend Author's Rights. All UConn faculty are encouraged to use this amendment when publishing. 

John spoke briefly about an updated survey of faculty attitude's towards scholarly communication. The data collection is focused on perceptions of nontenured, newly tenured, and tenured faculty. The updated data will be included in their environmental scan and used to craft difference messages to the different groups.

The following topics were discussed during the Q&A time.

Younger Faculty: They grew up with the Internet. They are more collaborative. They are open to change and willing to try new models for publication. There is still the challenge of promotion and tenure requirements that have very prescriptive requirements for publishing. Many felt that this is slowly changing on their campuses.

Purdue: Major challenges are data set management. Many faculty are now indicating that they are going to bypass traditional journals and share findings directly with colleagues. Some departments are encouraging that their faculty only publisher in OA titles. Many younger faculty only want to publish in OA titles. The scholar communication program begins with data generation in original research. 

technorati tag: acrl2007