Category Archives: services

Gould Goes Multi-Media

By IRIS Posted on by

At the very beginning of Fall term here at Carleton, two other librarians and I recorded our first podcast: an audio tour of the library. But then the term hit with such force that we didn’t have time to figure out the technicalities of putting it up on the library’s web site. Turns out, we had to get the college’s web team to turn on a media page type in our CMS and then everything worked great, but it takes a certain amount of futzing to figure out what we aren’t able to do and then ask to have that done. It only took the web team a matter of seconds to fix the problem, but what with one thing and another, it took us until this week to get things figured out.

You can go here to listen to a tour of our library (and follow along on the tour map found in the blue “Related Documents” box). I take you through the bottom two floors (First and Second), so for those of you dying to know what I sound like when I talk… have at it. I kind of hope that’s not what I sound like in real life, but I’m afraid it probably is.

We’ve also loaded our “Library Survival Guide” onto that page, as well as a video we made just before graduation last year. It’s a really big file, but there are some pretty funny bits.

eReserves: Blessing or Curse?

By IRIS Posted on by

Blessing. Definitely a blessing to our users and database vendors, but a blessing with a curse-ish aftertaste.

Everyone is familiar with the blessing part. Users get 24/7 access to their course readings, and database vendors get a more accurate picture of the amount of usage they’re getting for their license fees. (Without eReserves we’d have to print out a copy of an article and put it on paper reserve, where it would be read by a class of students, photocopied by most of them, etc. But there’d only be one hit on the vendor’s server.)

But on our campus eReserves is an easy target for all sorts of campus ills. For example, it’s common knowledge around campus that eReserves is the cause of our horrible printing problem, with reams and reams of paper filing through our printers every day. And I’m sure that classes that depend more and more on journal readings and less on text-book compilations do make for more use of eReserves and more printing. But what nobody seems to realize is that all the requests for electronic access to journals means that more and more of our journal collection is e-only. And even if we have electronic access and print access, guess which one will be used most often? And what do people do with journal articles they find online? They print them to mark up over lunch or a midnight snack.

Not only that, but there’s more and more good, authoritative, quality research available on the free web, and you can bet that students print these pages by the ream. This is especially true because printing is free on our campus, so everything from email to research to homework spills from the two printers in the reference area at the rate of 7.06 pages every minute the library is open. (The the two reference area printers account for more printing than every other printer on campus… combined.)

I’ve also seen more and more students lately who prefer to scan print journal articles slowly, page by page, and then convert the images into PDFs all so that they could print (for free) rather than photocopy (for a fee). In related news, the use of photocopiers in the library has dropped so much in recent years that our printing department is considering removing a few of the copiers from the library entirely.

So the upshot is that printing is a definite problem, but the answer isn’t as simple as, “Well, with the advent of eReserves printing went through the roof….” The information universe is changing, not just one section of it. All of it. eReserves, journal subscription, database licensing, online publishing, assignments and pedagogical approaches to information, everything.

Oh, and eReserves is also not a devious plot to keep professors from ordering text books or paying copyright fees or anything else like that. Moodle can do all that so much more easily. ;)

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Freakishly Personalized

By IRIS Posted on by

We talk a lot about personalization, and about how personalization improves the user’s experiences, and about how personalization makes the user feel appreciated. Well, I’ve just found out that you can take personalization too far. My dad got a birthday card from the dealer that sold him his car several years ago. This is freaky.

It’s funny because we give dealers all sorts of information about ourselves when we apply for loans, but there’s a level of politeness which assumes that the dealer will a) only use the information for the purpose we intended when we handed over that information, and b) pretend not to know the information when they’re in situations outside of that originally intended information exchange.

I remember learning this lesson when working at a small, independent bookstore for several years. We were expected to watch what our regulars bought so that we could recommend books to them that they would like, but we had to pretend not to know that one regular was reading up on divorce after having spent a year or so buying “fix my relationship” books. And we were certainly never to know why that same person later bought the books on managing finances after divorce…

We also collected phone numbers of the customers who signed up for our charity program (buy a book and 1% of the sale goes to a charity of your choice). But we weren’t supposed to “know” their phone numbers even when, after years of ringing up purchases and entering the phone number which served as their account numbers, we could rattle off the names and numbers of several dozen of our regular customers.

There is decency in asking our patrons to provide us directly with information we use for their accounts, or let them know what information we collect about them. But I think there is even greater decency in “forgetting” even readily remembered personal information when we’re interacting with our patrons in contexts outside of the personalized services we provide.

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Bundled Collections

By IRIS Posted on by

A question was implied during my library’s recent exploration of the functions and implications of a catalog that actually works as a discovery system. It came up during the hour-long question and answer period with Roy Tennant (have I mentioned what a good idea it was to set aside that much time for questions?!?) when he made the comment that we should build the search skills of reference librarians into the catalog interface. That’s great, but then what will reference librarians do?

I’ll tell you what we’ll do. We’ll have time to coach students in more than keyword searching, we’ll be able to explore the exploding realm of quality, authoritative information available online, and we’ll be able to develop ways of feeding this rich content to our users when they need it. “Googling” things is great, but as more and more information gets uploaded for public consumption, the relevant hits will become increasingly diluted in a sea of irrelevant hits. This means that we’ll have to teach better search strategies for web search engines, and we’ll have to develop tools that will help our users get to the information they need. We’ll also have to spend more and more time teaching students to distinguish between the useful and the bogus in their result lists.

People are already creating tools to aid in the quest for authoritative information. The first one that springs to mind is, of course, the Librarian’s Internet Index. But on a much smaller scale, librarians are beginning to create rich troves of web-based sources using del.icio.us, Furl, and now Google Custom Search Engine.

I adopted del.icio.us earlier this year and have decided to make mine first and foremost a curricular collection that will be useful to students in my liaison areas as well as to students on our campus in general (you can see my account here). It’s still a growing collection, but it’s a great place for me to “remember” the image repositories I find while helping one student with her research, the web sites I choose for students in a class on globalization, and so on.

But I have high hopes for tools like the Google Custom Search Engine. This is what reference librarians could do with all the “free” time gained from not helping students navigate the catalog. (And I’ll believe in the theory that we’d have free time when I see evidence of it… but that’s another whole topic.) A few other bloggers have noted some of the bundled searches that are being developed already. And now there’s a budding directory of GoogleCSE forms here. I’m also keeping track of any custom search forms that look particularly useful to the library world and adding them to my del.icio.us account. So far, here’s what I’ve found:

I still haven’t ventured into the water myself, but I think it’s only a matter of time before I start creating custom search portals that I know will return authoritative information to my students. I think one of our directives in the coming years will be “go forth and bundle” because without it our poor users will stumble around in an increasingly expansive conglomeration of more-or-less random information.

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The Reference Desk Under Fire

By IRIS Posted on by

Every so often, I hear variations on the theme of “Why sit behind a reference desk? What are you — scared of the students?” I’ve heard everything from wearing uniforms so that we’d be recognizable while we were “out doing our work in the stacks,” to carrying a cell phone, to simply “walking around” and being available. I’ve heard eloquent deconstructions of the barriers we put between ourselves and the students when we sit at a reference desk. And I’ve sensed unspoken assumptions that if we’re “just sitting there” we aren’t actually busy or working.

Now, I completely agree that desks can pose barriers, especially when they’re the podium type that raises the librarian on high and requires timid students to crane their necks just to see us. I am also a huge proponent of making myself not only be available and approachable, but also seem available and approachable. Not only that, but I’ve seen wonderful and creative examples from other institutions who have abandoned their desks altogether.


Why, then, do I steadfastly argue for my desk shift? Because I can’t think of any way to make myself be or seem more available and approachable to my user population. Of course, our particular desk configuration helps. We sit at a very low desk that is no more substantial than any of the work tables in the reference area (and it’s on wheels, though we haven’t moved it in a while). We also have a chair next to us for students to sit in while we work with them. We’re also directly across from both of the public printers for the main floor of the library and right next to the main floor’s computer area (which is in this room and just off the upper right side of my picture).

But simply having a non-scary desk in the highest-traffic area of the busiest building on campus isn’t enough (though it helps). That simply means that we’re visible, not that we’re approachable. Rather, having a predictable place where we can be found at predictable times, making the most efficient use of space in our somewhat unwieldy library, and playing off of the culture of our campus all contribute to my sense that our desk, or something like it, is necessary.

The physical library space needs little elaboration. There is simply very little space for anything other than books on the lower three floors of the library (remember, people enter our library on the fourth floor and work their way down). Not only that, but there’s no predictable traffic pattern on the lower floors, and the discussions that happen at the desk would disrupt the quiet levels on the lower floors. Of course the argument could made (and has, in fact, been made) that we would simply walking around down there, so traffic patterns and, to some extent, noise levels needn’t be an issue. But the fact is that the other librarians and I are rarely called upon to do work that would involve wandering in and out of the stacks. We go there to collect books in preparation for our classes, or with students when we’re in the midst of an appointment or reference interaction. But that’s about it. Then there’s the problem of the computer. Most questions need at least some computer interaction, and the computers in the library are usually all in use by students. It’s far easier to know that while librarians may be wandering around, there’s also one who’s scheduled to be either at the desk or who will be returning to the desk shortly.

No, the strongest argument in favor of the desk as a physical, predictable, and intuitive space lies in customer service. There’s nothing more frustrating than wandering 4 floors without any long sight-lines, looking in and out of stacks, climbing up and down 6 stair cases, just trying to find somebody who can answer a question.

What’s more, the librarians function in an analogous way to professors when we sit at the desk. Just as students can make appointments with their professors but can just drop in during office hours, they can also make appointments with us or simply drop in on our desk hours. Culturally, this meshes well with campus culture and student expectations.

I’ve wondered for over a year now if I’m simply defensive and stuck in the mud when I baulk at challenges to our service model. But I’ve come to the conclusion that there are very good reasons for having a reference desk, as long as that desk is positioned and designed with approachability and usability in mind, and as long as the people sitting at the desk make sure to look up, take their hands away from the keyboard, and smile whenever they’re approached. After all, approachability has at least as much to do with the person as it does with the furniture.

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