Skip to content

Author: Iris

Crazy Thought

Published by Iris on Thursday, May 7th, 2009

Thinking about the things that I like about Google or about library databases in comparison with each other after my last post, I realized that library databases need crazy-easy URLs. I don’t click through 2 or 3 layers of a website to get to Google. I type “goo” into my address bar, which fills in the rest, which takes me to Google. If I could type “MLA” into the address bar and get to even something as complicated as “MLAbib.csa.com,” life would be easier. Sure beats my current option:
http://www.csa.com.ezproxy.carleton.edu/htbin/dbrng.cgi?username=carl&access=[gobbledygook]&db=mla-set-c&adv=1

If I could also set a cookie that would authenticate me from my own home computer, life would be even easier.

Still need to work on the seamless access to full text part of the equation, though.

2 Comments

I Really Wish It Were Easier

Published by Iris on Tuesday, May 5th, 2009

Tipping point: reached.

Up until maybe the middle of last year, it was pretty easy not to worry too much about the problems of doing “real” library research on the free web. “The kids are doing it” was a phrase that simultaneously helped us to worry about the state of information literacy in this web-ified era and to dismiss the problem as one that “the kids” would outgrow, like braces or a lisp or chicken pox, as they became better versed in scholarly research practices.

Well, it’s not just the kids any more, folks. Enough journal publishers have opened up their indexing and abstracts to the free web that it’s now possible (especially in some fields) to actually do “real” library research on the web. And so people are doing just that. This year, our new faculty orientation session brought questions about Google-friendly access right to our door-step in a big way, and part of this rather disorganized thread on FriendFeed brought it up again.

And yes, ideally everyone could use one nice, big, easy search mechanism to do everything from the most broad to the most narrow topic and then get instant access to the full text of whatever they find. Too bad that’s impossible.

Google is more familiar and forgiving, it’s faster, and there’s a lot of good stuff in it (particularly if you’re searching for something that hasn’t had any controlled vocabulary assigned to it, yet). But currently, disciplinary databases do a better job of collocating like items based on something more robust than the author’s choice in vocabulary and PageRank. Currently, disciplinary databases do a better job of allowing scholars to leverage their disciplinary vocabulary and a better job of helping novices stumble upon key vocabulary terms. Currently, disciplinary databases are the only things that can offer relief to my students who say that there are just too many false hits in everything from Google to JSTOR (free text search may be what they’re used to, but they’re often relieved to leave it behind as soon as they’re shown controlled vocabulary).

But all that aside, neither option does the “access to full text” piece of the equation very well. Unless your library subscribes to the publisher versions of pretty much every eJournal out there (an expensive proposition) Google can’t actually help you get to whole swaths of full text, and even then you’d have to be on campus or logged in to your library’s proxy server or something. And even if researchers are in a disciplinary database, they’ll still often have to step outside of that database to get the full text, and while a link resolver is a wonderful thing, it’s still a long way from being a perfect solution to this problem. Either way this lands you at the A-Z list figuring out if we have access to the particular issue of the particular journal you want.

I wish it were easier. I wish access issues didn’t make researchers jump to the conclusion that we’re “hiding” stuff from Google, or that we’re being unnecessarily silo-ish, or that indexing is over-rated, or that you have to do “complex” searches in library databases. I also wish that we could bringing together disciplinary databases in ways that allow easy cross-searching without giving up the time-saving specificity of disciplinary focus and vocabulary.

Right now it feels like we’re balanced precariously on that tipping point with a precipice on each side.

7 Comments
And So They Burned It

And So They Burned It

Published by Iris on Thursday, April 30th, 2009

As I drove in to work this evening the familiar voice of a piano professor here spilled out of the car speakers that generally only bring me voices of people like Steve Inskeep, Michele Norris, Scott Simon and the other body-less NPR friends that follow me through my days. She was explaining that Annea Lockwood composed an avant-garde piece in which a piano is burned. It’s called “Piano Burning” (which strikes me as a not very avant-garde name for such a piece), and tonight they’re performing it on campus.

Arriving on campus, there was the dilapidated piano standing alone in the middle of the Bald Spot, waiting to be burned.


Pianos I’ve known have always lived in warm, homey spaces, or stood in state on a stage. They’ve always felt like they calmly conceal the potential to thrill you tomorrow or next year or when your grandchildren come to visit. They’ve always promised great things for the people who can touch them with care and skill, and for the people those artists know.

This piano, though, is just sitting in the middle of its rectangle of cleared earth in the middle of a wide, blank field, hunched under the gathering clouds, and waiting to be burned. I’ve never seen such a starkly alone piano.

And then they burned it.

4 Comments

It’s Been Quite A Week

Published by Iris on Tuesday, April 28th, 2009

Last Tuesday we hosted one of the periodic meetings of the reference and instruction librarians that work at the five Oberlin Group libraries in Minnesota. At least once a year we have a “Round Robin” session where we basically sit down, eat lunch, and then talk all afternoon about what each of our libraries are doing. We’ll set a theme for the day, but the themes are broad and nobody really cares if the conversation runs off on tangents. I love these days. This time the theme was about “Looking Forward” and included discussions of everything from mobile technologies to budgets. We also learned that we had about a week to decide if we wanted to purchase LibGuides.

That same day, the steering committee for that group of librarians met to begin planning what I’m now thinking of as the Coolest Project Ever: a day-long mini-Immersion just for us. We’ll meet, we’ll learn, we’ll teach each other pieces of the best instruction we know how to do, and we’ll remember again how much we can learn from each other. I can’t wait.

Wednesday was full, and neatly bookended by dentist and doctor appointments.

Thursday was a more-than-12-hour day that started with an un-fun budget meeting and finished with evening reference.

Friday I taught two classes and had two meetings before lunch, picked up Laura Crossett at the airport, made her hang out for a while so I could get a complicated research guide published, and then began the Weekend Of Fun. I have a very small handful of “best friends,” and two of them spent the weekend visiting me. Martha Hardy came down from the cities and joined me and Laura in what she called The Library Camp of Iris’ Living Room. Wonderful.

Monday morning, it was back to the airport and a fond farewell to Laura, followed by probably the hardest class I’ve ever had to teach, followed by a reference shift.

Which brings us to today. Today we got word that we have rooms and everything for MnObe Immersion, and I filled out paperwork that makes our imminent acquisition of LibGuides official! (I think that makes this the fastest library-related non-book acquisition I’ve ever been a part of, by the way.) I also started seeing some of the 60 students I’ve taught in the last 2 work-days, plus some of the students in another class that, yet again, cannot seem to make American Memory work for them. The professor and I have tried so many different ways over the last couple of years to make this particular class understand this particular resource, but for some reason it never seems to work out. I’m flummoxed.

In amongst all of this, in the last few days my cousin gave birth to a baby with Hypoplastic Left Heart Syndrome, a friend of a friend’s husband killed himself, another friend’s father tried in earnest to kill that friend’s brother, and my cousin spent all day today waiting for her baby girl to make it through the surgery that will begin the long process of constructing a functioning heart. I was feeling a little sorry for myself last week because of over-long work days full of too many things to do. Perspective gained. I have it pretty good.

1 Comment