One of the activities that I have most enjoyed since coming to Joyner has been the monthly Birthday lunches. I can not take credit for the idea—the University Librarian at Appalachian State, Mary Reichel, came up with the idea, and it worked so well there that I thought I would emulate the practice here.
Each month, usually on the last Wednesday of the month, I ask all of the people who had birthdays during the past month to join me for lunch. Sometimes we go out to a restaurant, but most times it works best to have the food brought into us. Selecting by birthday creates an unusual grouping, often including people who don’t know each other well. This month’s group included David Hursh, Sheri Black, Amy Smith, Ken Harbit, Gloria Bradshaw, Maliha Farhadi, and Hazel Lucas. Of course, our three TRC folks knew each other well, but David and Ken had never met.
As we begin eating, I explain the ground rules—tell the group the date of your birthday, a little about your history at ECU and Joyner, and something about your life and interests. After the round robin in which we all learn a little bit about one another, I ask the hard questions: In your opinion, what is going well at the Library? What is not going so well? What advice do you have for me? This produces some interesting comments and observations. The April participants, like past participants, all seemed to like and enjoy the Birthday lunch and the opportunity to meet and mix with colleagues outside of their service unit. I received a number of positive comments about the open communication that we are experiencing in the Library, although we all agreed that we can never do too much to enhance it—especially sometimes between supervisors and employees.
Some specific suggestions included: public lockers, public book carts, a ramp from the rear employee entrance, and more add money machines near copy machines. I will explore all of these suggestions and report back to the Library. Someone also asked about the availability of laptop computers to replace desktop workstations—again I will try to follow up. As you can see, the Birthday lunches present a wonderful opportunity for me to get to know a little bit more about individuals at the Library—and I hope the participants feel like they get to know me a little bit more.
Monday, April 30, 2007
Wednesday, April 25, 2007
More about CIL & other Musings
At the Computers in Libraries Conference, I listened to a great & almost overwhelming presentation, Trends in Mobile Tools and Applications for Libraries, by Megan Fox from Simmons College. The reference desk may not be dead or dying, but we need to continuously keep up with the trends both in social networking and the gadgets that our Gen Y students and soon to be faculty are using.
Another thing I learned about at the CIL was Libworm, which compiles library RSS feeds. According to the website, Libworm “is intended to be a search engine, a professional development tool, and a current awareness tool for people who work in libraries or care about libraries.” The amount of information being created and posted on the Internet seems almost overwhelming, but this might help you keep up with some of the news. While looking over what was available there, I came across an interesting and thought provoking posting from the “futurist”, Thomas Frey, about the Future of Libraries.
Thinking about the CIL is almost a stream of consciousness experience for me—but before I put behind me, I have to mention one existential moment—watching “The Machine is Us/ing Us.” Even for those of us who are not big YouTube fans, my bet is that this video will blow you away. (Thanks to Beth for providing this link—my note taking skills had failed me and I was unable to pull it up on my own.)
A friend of mine sent me a link to a thoughtful and provocative piece by Scott Carlson entitled “Are Reference Desks Dying out?” in the latest Chronicle of Higher Education. When you hear or read something talking about the death of reference desk or other library services, we all might want to respond as Mark Twain was reputed to have said “News of my demise has been greatly exaggerated. Still you have to wonder where the continuing falling numbers of reference questions will end?
Finally, I just finished and enjoyed Maury York’s review of Book Talk: Essays on Books, Booksellers, Collecting, and Special Collections, which appeared in March 2007 (p. 205) issue of College and Research Libraries.
Another thing I learned about at the CIL was Libworm, which compiles library RSS feeds. According to the website, Libworm “is intended to be a search engine, a professional development tool, and a current awareness tool for people who work in libraries or care about libraries.” The amount of information being created and posted on the Internet seems almost overwhelming, but this might help you keep up with some of the news. While looking over what was available there, I came across an interesting and thought provoking posting from the “futurist”, Thomas Frey, about the Future of Libraries.
Thinking about the CIL is almost a stream of consciousness experience for me—but before I put behind me, I have to mention one existential moment—watching “The Machine is Us/ing Us.” Even for those of us who are not big YouTube fans, my bet is that this video will blow you away. (Thanks to Beth for providing this link—my note taking skills had failed me and I was unable to pull it up on my own.)
A friend of mine sent me a link to a thoughtful and provocative piece by Scott Carlson entitled “Are Reference Desks Dying out?” in the latest Chronicle of Higher Education. When you hear or read something talking about the death of reference desk or other library services, we all might want to respond as Mark Twain was reputed to have said “News of my demise has been greatly exaggerated. Still you have to wonder where the continuing falling numbers of reference questions will end?
Finally, I just finished and enjoyed Maury York’s review of Book Talk: Essays on Books, Booksellers, Collecting, and Special Collections, which appeared in March 2007 (p. 205) issue of College and Research Libraries.
Monday, April 23, 2007
Blogging aint as easy as I thought...
One problem I am definitely finding in blogging is not having access to the Internet—or better said easy access to the Internet. I was not able to get back onto the Internet until today (Monday)—so the nifty reports I planned to make about the Wednesday happenings of the CIL now seem unimportant & certainly untimely.
I still want to mention, so all of our colleagues at Joyner are reminded about the great job that the NC ECHO grant team from Joyner (Linda Teel, Hazel Walker, and Justin Vaughn, along with Emily Gore and Lynn Wagne) did. They made a great & well received presentation at the CIL. I was certainly proud to be sitting in the audience and to hear them talk about the project & for them to demonstrate what a great site it is. http://digital.lib.ecu.edu/historyfiction/
Later in the afternoon, I happened to run into a couple of old acquaintances from my time in DC. Both of them had attended the presentation & were efusive in their praise.
Speaking of praise—let me commend Cynthia Adams for going above & beyond on Wednesday, she drove up from Greenville to Arlington, to join me in a meeting with a longtime ECU & Joyner Library friend—Betty Debman Hunt. Betty is an educator and creator of the Mini Page; her generosity to the University has enabled us to create the Debman Center in the Teaching Resource Center. I had never met Betty before, so it was a great opportunity for me. We have invited her to come to campus next spring & to be a guest speaker at the Annual Summit for school librarians and media center staff.
This past weekend Sue & I spent in Williamsburg at the spring meeting of the ECU Foundation Board. It finally seems that spring has decided to make a re-appearance. I stayed busy with meetings discussing strategic planning for the Foundation, but during the breaks it was great to be outside & absorb the beautiful blue skies, fresh breezes, and spring blossoms. This is the first time that vice chancellors and deans have been invited to the board meeting, and the synergy seemed to be terrific. Mickey Dowdy has bringing a lot of excitement to the Foundation.
It is good to be back in the library—it was a long week away from the library and campus. It was also a troubling one with the horrific events at Virginia Tech. My heart goes out to all of the parents, families and friends of the slain students and teachers. Eileen Hitchingham, the Dean of the Virginia Tech Libraries shared a poem from Nicki Giovanni with her ASERL colleagues. You might want to see and hear it read by the poet on YouTube, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IMsloktqpeQ
Finally, I am hoping that some of our Joyner Library colleagues who attended the CIL will respond to this blog with some of their comments on the conference highlights—and there were a lot of them for me.
I still want to mention, so all of our colleagues at Joyner are reminded about the great job that the NC ECHO grant team from Joyner (Linda Teel, Hazel Walker, and Justin Vaughn, along with Emily Gore and Lynn Wagne) did. They made a great & well received presentation at the CIL. I was certainly proud to be sitting in the audience and to hear them talk about the project & for them to demonstrate what a great site it is. http://digital.lib.ecu.edu/historyfiction/
Later in the afternoon, I happened to run into a couple of old acquaintances from my time in DC. Both of them had attended the presentation & were efusive in their praise.
Speaking of praise—let me commend Cynthia Adams for going above & beyond on Wednesday, she drove up from Greenville to Arlington, to join me in a meeting with a longtime ECU & Joyner Library friend—Betty Debman Hunt. Betty is an educator and creator of the Mini Page; her generosity to the University has enabled us to create the Debman Center in the Teaching Resource Center. I had never met Betty before, so it was a great opportunity for me. We have invited her to come to campus next spring & to be a guest speaker at the Annual Summit for school librarians and media center staff.
This past weekend Sue & I spent in Williamsburg at the spring meeting of the ECU Foundation Board. It finally seems that spring has decided to make a re-appearance. I stayed busy with meetings discussing strategic planning for the Foundation, but during the breaks it was great to be outside & absorb the beautiful blue skies, fresh breezes, and spring blossoms. This is the first time that vice chancellors and deans have been invited to the board meeting, and the synergy seemed to be terrific. Mickey Dowdy has bringing a lot of excitement to the Foundation.
It is good to be back in the library—it was a long week away from the library and campus. It was also a troubling one with the horrific events at Virginia Tech. My heart goes out to all of the parents, families and friends of the slain students and teachers. Eileen Hitchingham, the Dean of the Virginia Tech Libraries shared a poem from Nicki Giovanni with her ASERL colleagues. You might want to see and hear it read by the poet on YouTube, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IMsloktqpeQ
Finally, I am hoping that some of our Joyner Library colleagues who attended the CIL will respond to this blog with some of their comments on the conference highlights—and there were a lot of them for me.
Tuesday, April 17, 2007
CIL Tuesday
Attending the Computers in Libraries Conference here in Arlington has really gotten me reved--there is so much we can and should be doing to incorporated social networking software or Web 2.0 in pushing information to our users. We have 16 folks here from ECU, including six colleagues from Laupus and I think it has been a great learning experience for many of us. Whenever I meet people after a session, the usual reaction is excitement and let's try to move forward with using what we have learned, and I think we will.
The Keynote speaker for Tuesday was Andy Corvin—who is in charge of the Web 2.0 for PBS—his theme was the democratization of the news with the expansion and use of the social networking software. The BBC, PBS, Reuters, et al have begun to let audience make the news, or as Jay Roren says the “People formerly known as the audience.” For more of what Andy has to say see: http://www.andycarvin.com/
Helen Bowers, technology director for PLCMC, has developed for a program called Learning 2.0—a nine week program in which all of the library staff, including the cleaning staff, was encouraged to learn how to use the social networking software like RSS feeds, wikipedia, FLIKR. The had nearly 70% of the staff start the program & more than 42% finish the program. Everyone who finished the program received an MP3 player—the justification was that one of the things that they wanted to teach was how to download audio books onto an MP3 player so that they could demo it to their users. The program is free & available to download and copy, and I am really hoping that we will do this here at Joyner—I can not wait to learn how to use these cool tools. Far & away for me the best session for the day. http://library2.0.alablog.org/blog/_archives/2006/5/30/1993696.html
Another fun packed and interesting session was Sephen M. Cohen’s session on RSS feeds—a library consultant who has really incorporated RSS feeds into his daily life and work. http://www.librarystuff.net/He gave a list of his top favorites tools and sites, including:· Internet Archive· Snapper· Browster· Bugmenot· TinyURL· Libworm· Sitebytes· Missing-Auction· Meebo· OpenCongress· PBwiki· Google Reader· Page2RSS. He also mentioned the University of Oklahoma catalog which has integrated RSS into their catalog—which he thinks is very effective.
I finished the day listening to David King, Digital Branch & Services Manager, Topeka Shawnee county Public Library talk about “Guiding Libraries & Info Pros Through Change.” Nothing earth shattering as far as I was concerned, but it did give you pause once again to think about the changes we are going through here at Joyner. I am more and more convinced that we have chosen the right path with Revisioning.
Attending the Computers in Libraries Conference here in Arlington has really gotten me reved--there is so much we can and should be doing to incorporated social networking software or Web 2.0 in pushing information to our users. We have 16 folks here from ECU, including six colleagues from Laupus and I think it has been a great learning experience for many of us. Whenever I meet people after a session, the usual reaction is excitement and let's try to move forward with using what we have learned, and I think we will.
The Keynote speaker for Tuesday was Andy Corvin—who is in charge of the Web 2.0 for PBS—his theme was the democratization of the news with the expansion and use of the social networking software. The BBC, PBS, Reuters, et al have begun to let audience make the news, or as Jay Roren says the “People formerly known as the audience.” For more of what Andy has to say see: http://www.andycarvin.com/
Helen Bowers, technology director for PLCMC, has developed for a program called Learning 2.0—a nine week program in which all of the library staff, including the cleaning staff, was encouraged to learn how to use the social networking software like RSS feeds, wikipedia, FLIKR. The had nearly 70% of the staff start the program & more than 42% finish the program. Everyone who finished the program received an MP3 player—the justification was that one of the things that they wanted to teach was how to download audio books onto an MP3 player so that they could demo it to their users. The program is free & available to download and copy, and I am really hoping that we will do this here at Joyner—I can not wait to learn how to use these cool tools. Far & away for me the best session for the day. http://library2.0.alablog.org/blog/_archives/2006/5/30/1993696.html
Another fun packed and interesting session was Sephen M. Cohen’s session on RSS feeds—a library consultant who has really incorporated RSS feeds into his daily life and work. http://www.librarystuff.net/He gave a list of his top favorites tools and sites, including:· Internet Archive· Snapper· Browster· Bugmenot· TinyURL· Libworm· Sitebytes· Missing-Auction· Meebo· OpenCongress· PBwiki· Google Reader· Page2RSS. He also mentioned the University of Oklahoma catalog which has integrated RSS into their catalog—which he thinks is very effective.
I finished the day listening to David King, Digital Branch & Services Manager, Topeka Shawnee county Public Library talk about “Guiding Libraries & Info Pros Through Change.” Nothing earth shattering as far as I was concerned, but it did give you pause once again to think about the changes we are going through here at Joyner. I am more and more convinced that we have chosen the right path with Revisioning.
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