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Month: November 2006

The ILS Futures Forum: Catalogs and Discovery of the Future

The ILS Futures Forum: Catalogs and Discovery of the Future

Published by Iris on Saturday, November 11th, 2006


Yesterday librarians from several small institutions in the area gathered to hear Roy Tennant and May Chang (of the University of St. Thomas) talk to us about the future of the catalog and the ILS, and a good time was had by all. The Carleton and St. Olaf librarians were all energized and inspired by what they heard. (And the surroundings couldn’t have been prettier.)

In terms of concepts, I didn’t hear anything that I haven’t heard or read before (thanks to all the amazing bloggers out there working hard to keep me up to date). But Roy was so much fun to listen to, and he spoke with so much enthusiasm and good humor that the whole thing sounded new. For those few of you who want the 4-page version of my notes on Roy’s talk, I’ve put them up here (PDF Word document), but I didn’t want to inflict them on the rest of you.

So what resonated so much? What was it that caused one of the librarians to say, “I was actually, dare I say it, excited,” and that rallied all of us around tagging in the catalog? I think it was a combination of a couple of things. First Roy couched his whole talk in terms of assisting user discovery. Our two libraries have heard a lot recently about workflow redesign because we’ve got a grant to help us do just that. So we’ve been steeped in the rhetoric of “you’ve got to change” and “you’ve got to catch up with those millennials.” What we haven’t heard so much of is what we heard yesterday: “look at all the cool stuff we could do with the metadata you’ve created” and “look at all the cool ways computers can exploit that metadata on behalf of the user.” Roy put the focus squarely on serving the user as the motivation for change rather than on change for the sake of modernization.

Another thing that resonated strongly with our group was the way he placed this change into historical context. First we automated circulation, acquisitions, and cataloging. Then we figured that as long as we had all this stuff computerized, we may as well let the public search through that information, too. Now we’re thinking of ways to create an actual public search interface rather than inflicting our workhorse on an unsuspecting public.

Placed in this context, and delivered with an attitude of “onward and upward” rather than accusations that librarians are digging in their heals, even the most conservative librarians in our group started talking about the possibilities. One person came up with the brilliant idea of finding commonly used tags and reverse-engineering subject headings to match, thus increasing number and usefulness of formal access points. I think tagging would also be a flexible and nimble way to create “scopes” for collections that aren’t actually shelved together.

I’m still not sold on sucking Amazon information and book covers into the catalog (mentioned several times throughout the day). I’m all for images of book covers, but I wish that if you clicked on them you wouldn’t get pulled over to Amazon and into the world of buying rather than borrowing. I wouldn’t baulk at having options show up to interlibrary loan or buy a book that is checked out, and I like having reviews handy… I guess I just want to have my cake and eat it too. Call me a stogy librarian who’s digging in her heals over change… :)

p.s. A big thank you to the chef at the conservatory for making me the best special-order lunch I’ve EVER had. It’s the first time I’ve ended up with better food than everyone else because of my allergy.

p.p.s. Another big thank you to the people who came up with the idea of having an hour-long question-and-answer session with Roy. What a good idea!

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Let It Snow, Let It Snow, Let It Snow (But Not Impact My Travel)

Let It Snow, Let It Snow, Let It Snow (But Not Impact My Travel)

Published by Iris on Friday, November 10th, 2006

I’m headed an hour north for an all-day forum on the future of the catalog and the ILS, and this is what greeted me in the morning. Don’t get me wrong, I find it impossible to resent snow. But at the same time, I really wish this had held off until tomorrow when I was traveling 100 miles on highways jam packed with other drivers who are also remembering how to drive in snow.

Of course, this is Minnesota, so people here live for snow like no people I’ve ever met… but still.

More pictures are here, here, and here (a really blurry one, but hey… there was no light).

[Update: Oooh, now that it’s later and there’s sun, I’ve got better pictures here and here.]

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Particially Recovered

Particially Recovered

Published by Iris on Tuesday, November 7th, 2006


I took the day off, today. It’s my first full day off all fall term, and what a wonderful day it was, too. I spent the morning and early afternoon blogging and reading The Craft of Research in preparation for Thursday’s book discussion on campus (I’m in a book group, sponsored by the Learning and Teaching Center and the Writing Across the Curriculum program, exploring the theme “Writing from Sources”). And for most of that time, my cat curled up in the tent made by a blanket over my legs. This, combined with hot tea and a steady stream of CDs I’ve hardly listened to in the last 3 months (because I haven’t been home much, or I’ve been to preoccupied to turn on music), made for a pretty wonderful morning.

I had to laugh, though, because here I was with my work laptop and my personal laptop fired up, transferring files and generally cleaning up after a whirlwind few weeks. No sane person needs two computers running at home.

In the afternoon I went yarn shopping with my newly mother-fied co-worker so that we could knit fun things for her baby girl. And in the evening I lead choir practice and then took myself out to dinner.

All in all, it was a good day. I need one of these in the middle of every week. Imagine how much interesting stuff I could learn and do with a day away from the office every week!

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Food and Beverage Policy

Food and Beverage Policy

Published by Iris on Tuesday, November 7th, 2006


One item on the library’s new strategic plan (draft PDF here) is to explore the possibility of putting a cafe in our library. Rolled into this point is the assumption that we will be evaluating our current food and beverage policy.

Currently, no food is allowed in the library, and beverages are allowed only if they are in containers with lids that don’t have to come off for you to drink out of them. We even have a huge bowl of water-bottle-like pop-up lids in the entry way so that you can make un-approved containers (like soda bottles) into approved containers. Though I gotta say, sipping soda through a pop-up lid is … odd.

One amusing consequence of this policy is a daily silent feud that goes on around the garbage cans. Nobody knows who put signs on each of them saying that you’re not allowed to throw food wrappers or other food-related garbage into them, but each garbage can has one, and there is a difference of opinion about the value of this type of approach. So every day somebody goes around and turns the signs so that they face the wall. And every day somebody else goes around and turns them back so that everyone can see the signs. It’s one of those mysteries that sits at the back of your head, not important enough to investigate, but interesting all the same.

Anyway, we had our open forum to discuss the drafted strategic plan, and quite a large part of the forum time was taken up over debates about the food and beverage policy. Some students were vehement that they’d prefer to walk to the student union (about 100 yards away) than to introduce aggressive, pest-killing chemicals into the library, burden the custodial staff, and make us face replacing ruined books. Other students talked about the need to be trusted not to put their caramel rolls into reference books, and about how difficult it is to unplug a laptop, pack it and your books up, walk to the student union, come back, unpack everything, plug in the laptop, and continue working. It was fascinating to see students debating amongst themselves about trust and responsibility and how far the library’s should go in either way.

And what does the library think? Well, we have a working group assigned to look into the matter, but they haven’t reported back to us yet. Some librarians are passionate about the need to maintain our policy, while others are in favor of liberalizing it, at least a little.

As usual, I’m conflicted. On the one hand, I can totally see the benefits of keeping fumigation, cleaning, and replacement costs down. We also house three computer labs, and the IT people on campus love it that they don’t have to clean food out of keyboards over here. But on the other hand I have a very hard time enforcing the policy as it is now. This isn’t because I lack the gumption to walk up and make people take their ice cream cones outside. I’ve done that. I’ve also turned away a pizza delivery, suggesting that they eat it in the entry-way and providing napkins.

But I’m also working very, very hard to make the library a welcoming place, and to seem approachable to every student. I remember being a student lugging books and laptops everywhere and spending hours and hours on end in the library. It’s a fact that students are spending longer and longer in the library, and the library is the busiest building on campus. I’d like to keep it that way. It also puts the liaison librarians in a very tricky position to charge them with being everybody’s friend but also to put them on the front lines of enforcing this policy. As a student, if I’d been “caught” eating in the library I’d be too embarrassed to go to that librarian and reveal my ignorance and inadequacy as a researcher. It takes guts to go to the reference desk, and that would have been enough to keep me from making eye contact, let alone approaching the desk.

So for now we’re considering whimsical table tents (along the lines of “Dude, that’s gross” next to a picture of pizza on a book). And we’re still suggesting that people finish their dinners in the entry way rather than at the computers. But I, for one, will be happy when the library comes to a consensus and can put all of our efforts behind a policy that balances trust, responsibility, consequences, and stakeholders’ interests. I’m just glad I’m not on the working group that’s trying to strike this delicate balance.

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