library+instruction+technology

Every librarian and faculty member should read the CIBER briefing paper Information behaviour of the researcher of the future (2 MB PDF). CIBER conducted this research for the British Library and JISC . The report focuses on information seeking behavior of students born after 1993 (the Google Generation). The paper also ties in research from OCLC's Perceptions studies. You may also want to listen to presentation given and Q&A's when the paper was released on January 16, 2008.

Found via Stephen's Lighthouse. 

Data curation has been a topic cropping up at conferences I have been to this past year. I've heard it mentioned in sessions at ACRL and ALA, mostly by librarians from the big ARLs. 

"Sources at Google have disclosed that the humble domain, http://research.google.com, will soon provide a home for terabytes of open-source scientific datasets. The storage will be free to scientists and access to the data will be free for all."

"The storage would fill a major need for scientists who want to openly share their data, and would allow citizen scientists access to an unprecedented amount of data to explore."

I still have to wonder how this will be monetized. Or, will this project be underwritten by Google's main revenue stream? Guess those institutional repositories will still have some room in them after all.

Read the full story with links to more details at "Google to Host Terabytes of Open-Source Science Data" on Wired Science.

I about spit out a mouthful of coffee as I was reading Lorcan Dempsey's blog this morning. Lorcan highlights the last paragraph of Nicholas Carr's post, Data center porn. Nicholas's post is reporting on Information Week's editor John Foley's visit to Google's new data center in The Dalles, Oregon.

This is what almost caused the spit take…

Patchett [the data center manager] goes on to describe the many community-service projects that Google employees are involved in around The Dalles, from wiring an outdoor stage to lending IT support to the fire department. One activity, though, strikes me as slightly troubling: "Google volunteers also 'weed the shelves' at the library every couple of weeks."

I never knew that working for Google auto-magically makes a person qualified to weed a library's collection. 

I was a bit disappointed last night after reading Steve Lawson's post, Facebook to library apps: drop dead. I had been playing around with some of the apps being developed, hoping to be able to leverage someone else's idea for use locally. It sounded like the "good folks" over at Facebook were back to their old tactic of our way or the highway.

I had been half following some of the discussions on the FacebookAppsForLibraries page. It appears that the "problem" with some of the federated search apps created is that they display on the profile. Web search boxes are in violation of the terms of service to build an app. If things hold, it appears to be okay if search boxes appear on the application page. 

This morning I read Ken Varnum's post, Getting in Their Face[books] and discovered the Librarian app created by Brad Czerniak. I spent about 40 minutes playing around with the widget code sample Brian provided to allow for customized content to appear on the Librarian's application page. I used our space to display search boxes for OhioLINK's Quick Search, our catalog, and the OhioLINK catalog. It is not pretty because of the 200×320 pixel "widget" box size limitations, but it does work. I'm going to play around some more and see if I can get the search boxes to look better.

Brian's app made it very easy to put our most heavily used resources in our students social networking space of choice. 

and so is this post. I have had a copy of David Weinberger's new book, Everything is miscellaneous: the power of the new digital disorder, checked out from my local public library for six weeks. I finally made myself finish it this week. I know that David has something important to say. However, I could hardly get past the use of the card catalog and Dewey as examples of the second order of order that we must overcome in the age of the third order of order to get through the book.

Yeah, I know his point is that our old school ways of applying control over the ones and zeros zipping around on the series of tubes is in the best interest of no one. I agree that users should be able to tag their content and share their knowledge online. I am a user of Flickr, del.icio.us, Wikipedia, and many other digital disorder tools. I do my best to educate our students and faculty about these tools. However, I wish David would have thrown us a bone and commented somewhere in the book that librarians are finally getting on board. Most librarians will agree that our roles have evolved tremendously over the past few years. I know many are still focused on metadata, but that is a necessary evil when you are standing with one foot in the digital world and one foot in the print world. I would hazard to say that a fair number of academic librarians have embraced the new third order of order, okay maybe not everyone . 

David writes, "There's something comforting about the sight of cards spooning in a library card catalog. A world of ideas and knowledge, more than we could ever absorb, is waiting for us, carefully indexed in those neat rows of drawers. And yet the second order masks a complexity that the third order confronts head-on: We don't really know what a book is." (118-119) He continues, "card catalogs have value because of what they leave out. Melvil Dewey himself designed the current standard card in 1877…Because it's not very large, catalogers have to make tough decisions about what information to include." (119) David includes yet another reference to the card catalog used by Brown and Duguid in the Social Life of Information, "you can sometimes tell if a card has been heavily consulted by how dog-eared it is." (119)

Seriously, when was the last time you used a card catalog?  For me it was 1988 and it was my local public library in BFE northwest Ohio.  I would have been much happier to see David pick on the card catalog's progeny, the OPAC. Unfortunately, the OPAC is missing and the closest mention is a comment about the "OCLC database of books" (122) being much like a card catalog. I am at a loss as to why he didn't use the name WorldCat or even do some research to figure out the name and that a free version of it is on the web where users can be kind of social and share reviews of books. 

I know, I know…I need to move past the whole card catalog issue. I am sure that Michael Gorman had a hard time reading this book too, but it may not have passed the "scholarly enough" test to land on his desk. David has an entire chapter titled Social Knowing, where he argues that Wikipedia is better than Britannica and provides many reasons why he has taken this position. I can not say that I agree with him totally on this point either, but anything that ticks off the media identified library standard-bearer can't be too wrong.

Karen Schneider's excellent review is on the TechSource blog and additional reactions are available on the book's companion web site appropriately titled, Everything is Miscellaneous.

Our monograph acquisitions work flow is out of wack. I didn't count how many boxes of books came in this week, but I know we're nearing 100 for the past couple of weeks.

There are multiple issues by having the majority of our books arrive in June and July (besides overloading acquisitions and cataloging). The biggest challenge I see is one of perception. Our students and faculty are on campus September to May. They only see a small number of new books coming in during those months. I'm sure that our students never realize how many tangible books come in over the summer, because they are already processed and shelved by the time they are back on campus in the August.

I have some ideas on how to even out our work flow, but I'm always looking for good ideas that work. Feel free to share what works on your campus by writing a comment (it won't show until I approve it).

I went with my Director to the new library groundbreaking ceremony at Marietta College on Friday. There were a number of speakers including Gov. Strickland. Everyone received a commemorative coin, which is very cool.

The name of the new building was announced by the angel donors. Instead of naming the building after someone, they wanted to name it for all past and future alum. They chose the name Legacy Library.  The first thing I thought of when I heard the name was a flashback to my days at Deloitte. All I did for a couple of years was write proposals to replace legacy systems. Let's hope that the negative connotation of legacy doesn't come back to haunt them in the future.

The Library Director was one of the speakers. I was a bit disappointed that he didn't mention OhioLINK. It was a great opportunity to strengthen the linkage the private colleges have with OhioLINK in some key minds. There were a couple state legislators in attendance, in addition to the governor.

I didn't see anyone else that I recognized in the audience. I'm not sure if every library in Ohio received the invitation or just those that are close. We're only 60 miles away from Marietta. Muskingum and Marietta are in the same athletic league and also in the East Central Colleges consortium.

 I got a chuckle the couple of times that mold and lack of space where mentioned by the speakers. Been there. Done that. Hated it! Hopefully one day we will be able to move out of our Leave it to Beaver building.

I've never been to a Computers in Libraries conference and doubt I ever will. However, I like to follow the content as it appears on the web. If you're interested in what's happening right now in suburban DC, you might want to add these to your feed reader:

• Official conference blog
• Technorati
• Flickr  
• Twitter 

The 2006 ECAR Study of Undergraduate Students and Information Technology is available for your browsing/reading pleasure. Almost all (94%) students surveyed use the library's online resources/web site and most use these resources monthly. (page 44) Students studying in the social sciences and the humanities have the strongest skills using online library resources. (page 51) Almost three quarters (73.9%) of students think that the use of information technology in their courses improves their ability to do research. (page 77) 

Additional factoids on student skill level when using online library resources (page 49-50):

• 1 in 10 students (9.4%) never use or rarely use online library resources
• 46.9% of students use only basic features
• 43.7% of students use advanced features and these students are probably Seniors and studying in the social sciences
• 43.9% of Seniors use the basic features of online library resources compared to 52.8% of Freshmen
• 50% of Seniors use the advanced features of online library resources compared to 36.9% of Freshman

The most revealing, not surprising, and disturbing thing I noticed while browsing the report is the undergraduate student quote appearing directly under the title of Chapter 6, Information Technology and the Student Academic Experience. "I no longer have to go to the library for research and carry books home. Now, I have the world of knowledge at my fingertips."

It's true that academic libraries are spending huge amounts of money to provide access to as much electronic content as possible for student and faculty use. Librarians are all too aware of the real cost of providing this access. Librarians also are quite aware that our students, faculty, administration, and state legislators don't fully grok the costs involved with delivering content to the desktop/laptop.

The more troubling part of the quote is the implied concept of having access to everything at the desktop/laptop. The student does not realize how little content he or she can access. The student will never realize this because he or she has no need to go to the library and interact with a librarian. It's all right there "at my fingertips."

I realize this is conjecture, but based on observation and conversation I'm confident that my speculations are valid. I also suspect that most administrators (outside the library) believe that the "world of knowledge" is readily available on the desktop/laptop and that library budgets are more than adequate to provide access to that "world of knowledge."

Okay, I'm done preaching to the choir. The report contains a lot more information on student usage of technology. So, make sure to take a look at it if you have a chance.

Kate Wenger and I presented on podcasting at the Ohio Library Council's Children's and Young Adult Services Conference held on August 16-17 in Columbus. Our write up for the conference materials:

Many new and innovative technologies have been rapidly embraced by young patrons. One of these new tools that you can use to reach young adults and children is podcasting. Podcasting is the creation and publication of audio to the Web for automatic download via a subscription. You don't need an iPod or a lot of Web development skills to get started. Come to this interactive presentation to learn how you can use podcasting to meet your young patrons where they are! Find out how to create your own podcasts and discover some of the many different ways you can use podcasts to engage young patrons at your library.

We had a full room (forgot to take a picture).  Our hour and fifteen minute presentation covered:

• an overview of podcasting and web feeds,
• why podcast,  
• brainstorming session (where the participants came up with ideas of what they could podcast),
• how to create a podcast,
• what we do at Muskingum,
• listening to and finding podcasts,
• marketing and evaluating your podcast,
• challenges,
• and beyond podcasting.

We created a short podcast during the presentation. A nice young woman volunteered to read a book review for a YA novel and be recorded. We edited the file and uploaded it to the Liberated Syndication account created for the presentation.

We also demonstrated how you don't need to have a computer to record a podcast. Odeo Studio (plus others) allow you to call a number and record your podcast on a voicemail like system. For that demo we had another young woman read a brief piece on the Ohio Web Library.

Once again, there doesn't seem to be a lot of academic libraries podcasting. I recorded the Author Talks held in the library last academic year. That's been the basis for our podcasts. Both Kate and I agree that we don't have the time to create content on a regular basis. We're hoping to leverage additional content opportunities this coming year. One idea is to work with the children's lit class to see if we can do something.

I created a companion wiki for the participants. The seemed to be very appreciative of the wiki when we showed it at the end of the session. A copy of the presentation (both PowerPoint and a PDF version) are available on the wiki. The password to make changes is also listed on the wiki if you are so inclined to add your knowledge.