Tuesday, September 05, 2006

Virtual Reference: Criticism

The Shifted Librarian just posted her experience with a Virtual Reference service:

What Is a Virtual Librarian?

She links to another librarian's similar experience:

MassAnswers, a 24/7 ref project, answers my question sort of

Having worked for five years as a Virtual Librarian, it made me think back to how I answered questions. What did I do when I was certain that the best answer was in an off-line resource? Because I worked for a statewide consortia, I had access to almost all the databases that each member had in their collections.

I worked from home, so I was far removed from their print resources, but they all had online catalogs from the same ILS. If a question required the use of a print resource, the plan was for a staff member at the library to scan the page(s) required and email them to the student/faculty/staff. I can count on the fingers of one hand how many times this happened.

Most of the questions were answered with online resources. Either the student had difficulties naviagating their library's Web pages or they needed help searching online databases. Only rarely was a print resource required.

This brings to mind the questions: Are students now more proficient at searching online resources? Can we "out Google" Google by using the print resources available to us? Google Scholar is limited by the copyright act...if we make print resources available on demand, are we in violation of the copyright act?

Monday, July 24, 2006

Web 2.0: Blogs & Wikis

Recently two articles have been published that discuss the authority of blogs and wikis. When, if ever, can they be used as reliable information resources?

The Wikipedia article: Schiff, Stacy. "Know it All: Can Wikipedia conquer expertise?" New Yorker July 31, 2006.
Schiff argues that while "Wikipedia is to Britannica as American Idol is to the Juilliard School," it has a wealth of information not available in the traditional encyclopedia. For every three errors in Britannica, there are four in Wikipedia. Pretty good stats for a startup!

The blog article: Zeller, Tom, Jr.
Anne Frank 2006: War Diaries Online. New York Times July 24, 2006.
The blog is the 21st century's personal narrative. This is primary source material. To get a real feel for what is going on in the Middle East today, go to any of the blogs listed in this article and read what is really going on from a first person perspective. Not only will you find text, you will find photos and videos of events as they happen--uncensored!

Saturday, July 22, 2006

Scholarly Publishing Goes Digital

From Inside Higher Ed: "New Model for Scholarly Publishing"

Rice University Press is making a comeback as a digital publisher. Their rationale?

  • no pressure to publish works that will sell enough copies to justify print run
  • junior professors will have an easier time getting published
  • more affordable publishing
  • more streamlined
  • maintain peer-review
These publications will be available for free download on Connexions.

VoIP Phones

Earlier this summer, the IT department installed Cisco IP phones. The library is only the second department on campus to be using these state-of-the-art gadgets. The sound quality is much better than that of VoIP in the old days (3-4 years ago). There is an echo reminiscent of that heard on WATTS line many years ago. There is no latency--guess this is a packet-preferred system.

Some cool features include:
  • Voice mail that is forwarded to e-mail
  • All kinds of rings....most of which can't be used in a library setting...
  • online directory of other IP phones on campus
  • caller ID on campus from other IP phones
  • caller phone listings
  • unanswered call queue

Friday, July 07, 2006

"Generation Deaf"

This article in today's Chronicle of Higher Education was interesting:

Staff at the U of Illinois Urbana were surprised when students in the library failed to react to a tornado siren. They were all listening to iPods and other devices at volumes that exceeded the sound of the siren’s blast…

Are students that disconnected from RL that they are unaware of possible dangers? Should we be sure that our emergency warning systems include a visual alert system--flashing red and blue lights? I'm told our new library has these, but will they be visible to everyone?

Wednesday, June 28, 2006

Librarian Trading Card


Librarian Trading Card, originally uploaded by rfisher2861.

I just had to try this!

Tuesday, June 27, 2006

Internet Down!

The Internet went down yesterday. I reached for the phone to call ITS, but realized that it's an IP phone and THE INTERNET IS DOWN!! I tried calling ITS with my cell, but wasn't able to get through as their phones are also IP...

Fortunately this only lasted for an hour. I sent a student to the ITS department to find out what was going on. They told him that the connection had been down for 4 hours...How could that be?

You don't really know how much you depend on the 'Net until it's down. I had almost forgotten that I could use my computer if I checked the "workstation only" option.

Advice? Stay calm and breathe deeply. Enjoy the silence!

Friday, June 16, 2006

Web 2.0: Info Lit

I'm getting ready to co-present a workshop for adjunct faculty on the info lit implications of the Web 2.0. My main question is: "Is user created content reliable?"

Looking back to the BPC (before personal computers) days, we classified information resources not by format but by the proximity of the creator to the information provided:

  • Primary sources--journals, diaries, letters (all created by the person with first hand experience of the event described)
  • Secondary sources--journal articles, newspaper articles, etc. (information gleaned from primary source)
  • Tertiary sources--encyclopedias, textbooks, library catalogs, survey articles, reading lists, bibliographies, etc. (information gathered from both primary and secondary sources)
Couldn't Blogs and photos on Flickr be considered primary sources? When it is so easy to create content, how do we determine if the creator is indeed knowledgeable/truthful about the topic presented?

Wednesday, February 01, 2006

OPAC Design--It's the People, Stupid!

Library OPACs are technological dinosaurs. They are based on what came before--the card catalog. The card catalog served us well for many years but really wasn't able to make a graceful transition into the digital world.

I remember coaching patrons on the use of the early OPAC--many tried typing their requests as sentences in the search box. I always felt embarrassed explaining that it wasn't that easy and thinking that they really should be able to find information that way. What ever happened to natural language searching? I guess it didn't work that well and was abandoned (have to do some research on this).

Some patrons got so annoyed with the technology that they threatened to toss all the computers out the window. I'll admit that there were days when I felt that way myself.

Should librarians give up on the controlled vocabulary approach? Is keyword searching the best approach? Keyword searching works well when you have a large collection of data to deal with. When the amount of information is limited as it is in an OPAC, controlled vocabulary works well--you will be less likely to miss the good stuff.

Should I try to explain this in my Information Literacy classes? I'm seriously considering this...