Rick Anderson's 5 Sacred Cows of Librarianship

Rick Anderson spoke to the Kentucky Library Association at their Spring Conference. His PowerPoint Presentation, Five Sacred Cows of Librarianship: Why They No Longer Matter, and Why Two of Them Never Did, was recently posted to their blog after many requests for it.
Why am I posting it here?
Good question!

This presentation may be of great interest to those who are very interested in the subjects of collection development, reference services and information literacy. He took on the topic of ownership vs. access when it comes to our collections, how we manage our collections and how reference is not a scalable service. By scalable, he means that we can not handle an real increase in demand for this service.

I don't know if I agree with Rick just yet, but he makes a strong case. Read over his powerpoint and feel free to make your comments about what you read and how you feel about this topic.

Fall 2009 Meeting: Weeding the Reference Collection

Date: Friday, October 2
Time: 2:00 - 4:00pm
Location: D'Alzon Library at Assumption College

Topic: Margaret Cardello from CMRLS will be speaking to us about weeding the Reference collection. We are all asking the same questions about our Reference collection:

• How do we decide what to weed from our collections?
• Do we remove them or move them to another collection?
• What electronic collections and e-books are available?
  
• Should we add books to the collection after a big weeding projects?

Margaret will help us gain a better understanding of these issues and more.

Please RSVP to Sara by Wednesday, September 30th.

Directions to Assumption College
Campus Map
Parking:
No Permits are needed to park. If you look for #4 on the campus map you will see the lot where there is free guest parking on the upper deck. There are also a few spots in a dirt lot next to the library.

Notes from 3/6 ARC Meeting at Mount Wachusett Community College: Next Generation Research Guides

Attendees: Christine Drew, Jeannette Lundgren, Tina McAndrew, Pamela McKay, Corinne Smith, Sara Marks, Heidi McCann, Louise Collins, Ellen Madigan Pratt, Jess Mynes, Nancy Boucher, Dale Labonte

Sara Marks, Instruction Services Librarian discussed Fitchburg State Library's use of libguides.

Their library web site has many links, not search boxes, and few staff could edit the web site. Libguides provides them with an easy way to create web-based research guides, course research pages, and many staff can edit them. Sara teaches from a libguide when doing library instruction session.

Features they use include: tabs for organizing their libguides pages, polls, embedded YouTube videos, meebo chat, options for end users to rate links and leave comments. Sara look at the usage statistics & their citation page receives a lot of hits. A great feature is the link checker.

Sara created a short video for faculty on how to post libguides links within their Blackboard course site. She is also working on updating many screencasts which she plans to post into YouTube and post within libguides. Caveat Emptor: IE browser has trouble displaying embedded videos wthin libguides, she demonstrated using Firefox.

Sara also creates a libguide for programs, speakers and events they have at their library, which can include linkes to books, a biography of the speaker, and a calendar.

FSC Archives staff are using it to post some information, photos on their special collections, including a page on Robert Cormier, the author.

Heidi McCann, Reference and Instructional Services Librarian, shared information on their libguides implementation at Mount Wachusett Community College

Heidi serves as webmaster for the library and despite initial aversion to libguides, wanted to give staff more control. They paid extra for their custom URL (subjectguides).

She does not teach using libguides, but creates a guide to send to the faculty to distribute to their students after the library instruction session. The libguide serves as a summary for the students.

Faculty are enthused about libguides & impressed with it - so watch out, you don't want to become only a "libguides creator."

Libguides has great tech support but there are some minor annoyances she's found including:
-pop up not default for links
- privacy settings and google indexing or no indexing not easy to figure out, but tech support helped with this.

There's a lot of potential they haven't yet converted all guides since they just got access to it last year

Alternatives to libguides

• open source software created by Oregon State: Library a la carte - must have good relation with your IT department or control of your web site
• Microsoft Sharepoint - required university login at most schools
• Blogs or wikis (see BizWiki at Ohio State )
• Improving library web site and/or use of Content Management System (CMS) such as drupal
• Google sites - if you don't have control over your library site
• Blackboard or course management system: create guides within course shell

ARC Business

Leadership 2009-2010
- Sara Marks will be Chair
- Ellen Madigan Pratt will be secretary

Ideas for future meetings
- k-12 librarians, teachers & how they teach information literacy
- use of federated search in teaching information literacy
- future of the reference collection & weeding (talk with CMRLS staff for speaker ideas since they have a workshop on this topic)

June 12, 2008: Meeting Notes

The Library's Role in First Year (FY) Experience and Orientation

Attendees

Christine Drew (WPI), Callie Curran Morrell (Assumption), Pam McKay (Worc. State), Patty Porcaro (Holy Cross) Barbara Merolli (HC), Eileen Cravedi (HC), John Coelho (HC), Gudrun Krueger (HC), Alice Barron (Anna Maria), Laura Robinson Hanlan (WPI), Michele Reich (WPI), Carole Myles (Assumption), Jim Douglas (Nichols), Matthew Haggard (Nichols), Donna Sibley (Becker), Jeanette Lundgren (Becker), Dale LaBonte (QCC).

Meeting Notes

To focus the discussion, the group defined First Year Orientation as a short-term program prior to the start of classes. First Year Experience was defined as larger and more sustained program, and might include a First Year Seminar (a for-credit course designed for First Year students).

Most attendees do run some type of library orientation programs for all students, and most of these activities are integrated within the college’s own efforts, rather than being run independently by the library. Most attendees’ colleges also run First Year Experience (FYE) programs and in most programs, the Library plays some type of role.

Examples:

At Becker, there is a FY seminar where students learn “what they need to know on campus” from different departments. The library gets to teach one week’s worth of classes for each section and covers the OPAC, databases, citation, plagiarism, starting points for research, and has different activities for students. They do about 20-22 sessions total.

QCC librarians get one session to talk about the library as part of a FY course. They also often get one in a Career Development course.

WPI does a lot of optional activities during orientation, including tours and handing out prizes, but they don’t necessarily reach every student. This year they are thinking of throwing a first-year party. By next year, all FY students will be in enrolled in a FY research seminar and the librarians hope it will result in students getting more uniform instruction in their freshman year. This FY program has its own Assessment Coordinator, and a few questions on the assessment survey focus on the library, so it is hoped that they can get some useful data.

At Worc. State, there is a FY seminar for which students choose a subject-based class and the Library often gives a BI session to them, based on the discretion of the professors.

Nichols gives a library tour and basic instruction to the FY Professional Development Seminars (about 22). Small groups also complete an activity-based, self-paced tutorial, available at http://www.nichols.edu/library/instructionalservices/PDS1/index.html. Jim Douglas is willing to share the library handouts given to students and parents during orientation if group members are interested.

Holy Cross will be introducing a new FYE this fall, with students living and taking a seminar in one of five possible clusters. Each cluster has its own librarian and it is hoped that as the program takes shape, each librarian will be able to play a significant role in their cluster. In the past they've done a treasure hunt during orientation and Eileen Cravedi is willing to share their treasure hunt worksheet to group members who are interested.

Assumption is also piloting a new FYE program this fall in which a group of self-selecting students will live together and take “paired” classes (currently 3 pairs offered), which will emphasize connections between different subjects. Library instruction is not mandated, but through outreach to the participating faculty the library staff is hopeful that they can offer IL instruction to these new classes.

Please see post below (6/12/08) for further reading and resources on this topic.

Next meeting: January 8th

Getting the Library Message Out: Facebook, mySpace, and Creative Ideas

Date/Time: Tuesday, January 8th 2:30-4:30pm
Location: WPI Gordon Library, Anderson Lab A

We'll be sharing information about the use of social networking sites and other creative ideas to promote the library's services, resources, and instruction.

WPI Directions: http://www.wpi.edu/About/Visitors/directions.html
Campus Map: http://www.wpi.edu/About/Visitors/campusmap.html
Parking in the Boynton Street Lot behind the library is recommended, and will not be a problem as WPI is on Winter Break.
Please RSVP to Christine (http://www.blogger.com/cdrew@wpi.edu 508-831-6163)
No parking pass needed.

If you would like to attend this via web conference, contact Christine by 1/7 @ 5pm.

Resources & Additional Readings

• Landis, Cliff. (2007 Dec). "Social Networking Sites: Getting to Know our Users." C&RL News 68(11).
• Library Success Wiki: Social Networking Software
• Groups in Facebook: Classroom Instruction in Facebook
• EDUCAUSE 7 Things You Should Know about Facebook (pdf)
• Horizon Report 2007 (pdf) by New Media Consortium & EDUCAUSE - includes infomation on trends to watch such as User Generated Content and Social Networking and implications for educators
• OCLC Sharing, Privacy and Trust in Our Networked World