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Category: Libraries and Librarians

Trying Something New

Trying Something New

Published by Iris on Thursday, August 28th, 2008

I spent a few moments today adding a new section to each of my subject research guides. Our CMS doesn’t allow for things like Meebo widgets, or any other embedded stuff like that, so I added the next best thing: a bunch of ways to reach me from within each page.

Here’s what it looks like:

(From my French & Francophone Studies Research Guide)

Frankly, I don’t know why this didn’t occur to me until today, but now that it has, I look forward to seeing if I get any increased traffic. (Of course, the other part of me is asking if I really want increased traffic… but of course, the answer is always yes.)

Point of need research assistance: the holy grail of every research services department.

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Linking to WorldCat in Reference Emails.

Linking to WorldCat in Reference Emails.

Published by Iris on Tuesday, August 26th, 2008


So here’s the thing. Like many reference librarians, I use WorldCat all the time. And like many reference librarians, I use the FirstSearch version a lot for advanced features and more seamless integration with our local collections than WorldCat.org can offer. For instance, I love the “Advanced Options” under “More Like This” that lets me pick and choose which parts of the metadata were relevant to me and do a more advanced search on just those elements. And sure, the FirstSearch display is a little overwhelming, but part of what makes FirstSearch good for professionals is the huge amount of information displayed for each record. We’re used to the display, so it’s not a problem for us, and often I skim through all that information and learn a whole lot about an item in a very short amount of time. Besides, my eyes are trained to take in what I want from that interface and leave the rest. I know where on the page the OCLC number lives, for example, so I only look at it if I want to.

One thing it doesn’t do well, though, is let me link to a specific record. I can’t send a link to a student and say “Here, this is the journal I was telling you about.” I can do this at WorldCat.org, though, and that’s a much better interface for students and faculty anyway. I wish there were a “link to this record” in FirstSearch, or at least a “View this record at WorldCat.org,” but since there isn’t, here’s what I do.

  1. Do all my behind-the-scenes advanced searching in FirstSearch (when appropriate).
  2. Find what I’m looking for.
  3. Do a little happy dance in my chair.
  4. Copy the OCLC number.
  5. Open a new tab and click the bookmark I’ve names “WorldCat Link Base.” This contains the base of WorldCat.org’s permanent URL. http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/
  6. Paste the OCLC number onto the end of that URL and hit enter.
  7. Et Voila! Stable URL to the bibliographic record of whatever-it-is I wanted to send to somebody, complete with a friendly interface.

The trick comes when they’re off campus and don’t have pre-loaded links to our Interlibrary Loan system. I wonder if it’d be possible to go through our proxy server for that. If so, I’ll have to change my link base… Hmm…. things to ponder. And wouldn’t it be nice if I knew javascript and could make a bookmarklet that would do that to OCLC numbers for me, and maybe copy the full stable URL to my clipboard?

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These are a few of my favorite things

Published by Iris on Wednesday, August 20th, 2008

I found myself listing my three favorite e-resources today. Usually I have trouble coming up with my favorite of anything, but these three popped into my head with little effort.

Ulrich’s
I hate trying to figure out where an obscure serial has been indexed, but Ulrich’s makes this easy (most of the time). But even beyond that, I absolutely love it for solving a major problem for my students. For the last two years, I’ve taught this as a cheat sheet of “print sources.” I had the hardest time coming up with an easy way to explain how to tell if what you’ve found online (on the free web or through our bibliographic databases) counts as a “print source” when print vs online is becoming a more and more murky distinction every year, and really makes no sense at all to students (or librarians, really). Students were paralyzed thinking they couldn’t use eJournals because their professors had banned “web sources,” and professors wondered why their students were using out-of-date and only-barely-relevant journal sources in their papers. It was because their poor students had been confining themselves to our print journal collection, which is only a fraction of our total journal collection. So now I get up in front of a class and show them the cheat sheet. If you can find a publication name (and I show them how to hunt one down), look it up in Ulrich’s. If it is listed, it counts as a “print source.” Problem solved.

OED
I love word histories, and this is the most comprehensive dictionary of word histories. Ever. I don’t often have much call to use it in my day-to-day work, but I love it for all those late-night “I wonder when we started using ‘research’ as an intransitive verb” moments I have. It has also solved many a word squabble in my family (which has at least 4 discussions about word usage, etymology, or relationship over the dinner table each week).

MLA International Bibliography
I love this because it’s such a treasure-trove of articles, and (please don’t laugh) because it’s incredibly quirky. I know that we’re supposed to love it when students can use resources on their own. You know… usability and stuff. But this thing is a bear to use well, and I’m pretty comfortable with it, which makes me feel useful. And I love feeling useful.

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"Training" Does Not Equal Teaching or Learning

Published by Iris on Wednesday, August 13th, 2008

I hate being trained. I hate training people. I’m not good at either one. And yet I love teaching and learning, and I’m decently good at both of those. Don’t get me wrong. I recognize the value and often even the necessity of training. I just wish I didn’t have to have any part in it. Ever.

Here’s what I think of when I think of “training.”

  • Massive lists of “things you’ll need to know”
  • Boredom covered under a veneer of note-taking
  • Confused faces and no notion of whether those looks mean “I don’t get it,” or “I hope they think that this face means that I’m paying attention, because I’m not but I don’t want to be rude.”
  • Necessary evil. After all, I want to be able to do what-ever-it-is I’m being trained on.
  • Did I mention the massive lists of things to know? Simply the act of making a longer and longer list does not, in fact, mean that you’re a more thorough trainer.

I’m lucky that I’m not in a job that requires constant training of this sort, or that requires me to inflict it on other innocent people who really haven’t done anything to deserve such treatment. And yes, I can say this even though I do library instruction, and even though I used to conduct instruction sessions as if they were library training sessions, and even though there are bits and pieces of training in any given interaction with a student.

I guess that little by little, my whole approach to and concept of teaching has changed. I’ve thought a lot about the power of story, about solving one key problem rather than all the possible problems, and about the relative luxury of having a safety net for my more minimalist instruction built right into my environment. Unlike many other people, the nature of my job removes the pressure to teach “everything they’ll need to know because this is your one shot and you’d better not leave anything out or they’ll be completely lost.” Thanks in a large part to the Subversive Handout and our consultation model, students come and talk to me about specifics they need to know when they need to know it, or they can come to the reference desk, or they can (and do) email me at all hours of the day or night, or they’ll get some other little tidbit of “stuff they need to know” from another librarian in another class. All in all, I almost never feel like I have to cover all the bases anymore.

Unfortunately, this makes me resent having to participate in training (either giving or receiving) even more than I used to. Massive lists of things to know kill my soul.

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