Archive for May, 2012

The days are just packed … with data

Published May 30, 2012 conferences Leave a Comment
Tags: ,

IASSIST, the data professionals conference, is coming! It will be a packed week including two days of pre-conference administrative meetings. :)

And here are the sessions I have on my schedule. I’ll add notes/links to presentations as the become available, if you are interested.

Day 1, June 6

Plenary: Creating new types of data from documents and administrative records: a use case from science policy, Julia I. Lane, Senior Managing Economist, American Institutes for Research (AIR)

Session 1: Research Data Management: assessments and planning

  • DataONE: A Glimpse into the Practices of Data Managers, Eleanor J Read, University of Tennessee
  • DMVitals: A Data Management Assessment Recommendations Tool, Sherry Lake, University of Virginia Library
  • Data Management Planning for Secure Services (DMP-SS), Fortunato D Castillo, UCL Institute of Child Health
  • Data in Common(s): Collaborative Models for Robust Data Support, Samantha Guss, New York University

Session 2: Institutional Repositories and Data

Session 3: Pecha Kucha A

Day 2, June 7

Plenary: Managing Federal Research Data, Mike Wash, Chief Information Officer, US National Archive (NARA)

Session 1: Collaboration and Data Support

  • The Power of Collaboration Throughout the Data Life Cycle: Case Studies From OCUL and Beyond, Amber Leahey, Scholars Portal, Ontario Council of University Libraries
  • Johns Hopkins University Data Management Services: Reviewing Our First Year, David S Fearon, Johns Hopkins University
  • Establishing collaborative networks in supporting data, Carol M Perry, University of Guelph
  • Integrating Numeric, Statistical, and Geospatial Data Services for Graduate Students, Maria A Jankowska, UCLA Charles E. Young Research Library

Session 2: Supporting online access to geospatial, micro-, and qualitative data

  • VizLab: A Tool for the Interactive Exploration of Geospatial Election Data on the Web, Adam Schaal, The Center for Socio-Political Data, Sciences Po University,
  • Open source solutions for open microdata: The IHSN Tools, Matthew Welch, The World Bank
  • Implementation of DDI in the National Institute of Statistics and Geography of Mexico, Eric M Rodriguez, National Institute of Statistics and Geography

Session 3: Data Professionals

  • Archives as a market regulator, or how can archives connect supply and demand?, Laurence Horton, GESIS-Leibniz Institute for the Social Sciences
  • Spline and demand: a profession interpolates, Jennifer A Green, University of Michigan Library
  • The State of Education for Data Curation and Librarianship, Susan R Rathbun-Grubb, University of South Carolina, School of Library and Information
  • Data Management Training to Support Faculty Research Needs: Lessons Learned, Ryan Womack, Rutgers University Libraries

Day 3, June 8

Session 1: Data management and curation interest group presents: Managing government data assets

Session 2: Data Stewardship: Increasing the Integrity and Effectiveness of Science and Scholarship

Plenary: Expanding Access to the Agricultural Resource Management Survey: USDA’s Experience with Remote Data Analysis Using the NORC Data Enclave

  • Mary Bohman, Economic Research Service Administrator, USDA Economic Research Service (ERS)
  • Joseph T. Reilly, National Agricultural Statistics Service Acting Administrator, USDA National Agricultural Statistics Service (NASS)
  • Mitch Morehart, Deputy Director for Data and Staff Analysis, USDA Economic Research Service (ERS)

Witches, vampires, daemons, oh my! #cbr4

Published May 27, 2012 reading 3 Comments
Tags: , ,

My twelfth Cannonball Read was A Discovery of Witches by Deborah Harkness. I found it in a random browse through Overdrive and it sounded pretty decent. Hey, I like witches and books. And it is decent. It could have been so much better though.

A Discovery of Witches is about a 30-something academic who represses her witchy abilities because of her parents’ tragic death when she was was seven. She lives in a world populated by four types of creatures who are not really allowed to co-mingle: humans, witches, vampires, and daemons. After meeting a mysterious stranger, hijinks ensue including almost getting killed twice and a possible war between the creatures.

The things I like about this book:

  1. The main character, Diana, starts out strong and intelligent putting Bella and all of her ilk to shame.
  2. The house in which the witches live is the coolest thing ever. It is probably the most clever part of the whole book. I really hope the supposed upcoming movie takes the house seriously because the movie will suck if not.
  3. It has a cat.
  4. Daemons are awesome.
  5. One of the funniest moments involves the cat trying to give a vampire a mouse offering. Good times.

The things I hate about this book:

  1. After discovering the mysterious stranger, Diana turns into a lovesick moron. She becomes dumb. And she does dumb things to move the plot along. I hate when female characters do this!
  2. The mysterious stranger remarks so much about Diana’s bravery that I start to wonder if it is mockery.
  3. The writing can be good and then suddenly it becomes wretched. Here is an example: “When the last of the water left me, I felt scooped out like a pumpkin, and freezing cold, too.” So maybe that’s not the worst of it, but it can get much worse.
  4. GET A FREAKING EDITOR! Why the snausages is this book over 500 pages long? It makes no sense. Edit this baby.
  5. It needs more daemons. I got a fever, and the only prescription is more daemons. And cats.

If you like fantasy, this is a decent summertime read. It has some really slow moments (hence the need for an editor) and certainly is not a high-paced member of the fantasy genre. Keep in mind it is the first of a trilogy (gugh) that has not been published yet (more gughs). It also reads more like a romance fantasy than a mystery fantasy. But I was engaged enough with the story to keep going through 500 pages and I could read it while doing laundry. Hey, reading is what matters!

It is available through the GSO PL’s Overdrive.

just in time for the olympics #cbr4

Published May 27, 2012 reading 1 Comment
Tags: , ,

I’ve had London: The Novel by Edward Rutherfurd sitting on my shelf for many years and the pages had started to yellow. I don’t know why I picked it up, but I remembered that the Olympics were in London after I started reading. Great timing!

London is one of those historical novels that follows a family through the millenia. With a different storyline in each chapter, he traces the paths of several families resident in the city. These works are fun for their historical breadth. London in particular hits the highlights of the city’s history from the first Roman site to the building of the Tower of London to the Great Fire and up to the Blitz. Some of the chapters I enjoyed most were The Whorehouse, Hampton Court, God’s Fire, London’s Fire, and The Suffragette either for the plots or for particular characters.

The difficulty for a book like this must be balancing the “here’s the history” part with “here’s the story”. Rutherfurd does a pretty decent job moving between the historical parts and the characters’ stories. While not perfect, he pulls off these transitions much more effectively than others I’ve read.

I have two problems with this type of novel though. One is that the character development is nonexistent (for the most part). You really don’t have much time with the characters. Plus the focus of the chapter is developing the plot, so sometimes the characters get lost in the mix. Once you start to believe in a character, they are dead and you’ve moved on to the next group. If you read the book knowing this will happen, you are much more likely to enjoy it.

Second, in these types of novels the author often tries hard to connect the generations through some sign that all the generations share. In London it is a shock of white hair and webbed fingers (wtf?!) that passes through the generations of one family. Saylor in Roma used a medallion that was passed down through the generations. In some ways the physical object seems more believable than TWO genetic mutations. I just don’t understand why this is necessary. It adds nothing to the story to see a character suddenly resemble one from many years ago. Rutherfurd tries to interweave this into the different stories to show the connections between the generations, but it never really succeeds in my opinion.

Overall this chronicle of the history of London is a great summertime read if you enjoy history but don’t mind the problems of historical fiction. Keep in mind that it is over 1100 pages long (therefore should count for like 5 CBR4 books!). If you want to read this book in time for the London Olympics, get started now! I have a copy available at Paperback Swap.

Mad research skillz: Workshop on developing undergraduate research

Published May 23, 2012 teaching 1 Comment
Tags: ,

Summer is the prime season for conferences and workshops and last week was the kick-off!

Office of Undergraduate Research Faculty Development Workshop

The Office of Undergraduate Research designed this three day workshop to assist faculty who want to incorporate research into their undergraduate classes. The attendees were teaching faculty from all over the university (sciences to humanities to business). I come from political science where research papers are standard, but some disciplines don’t seem to have the same expectations, especially at the undergraduate level. This workshop helped us create research-based assignments in a thoughtful manner. The most useful part for me was brainstorming how I could get beyond the traditional research paper tacked onto the end of the course.

I attended to develop the assignments in my class, but I think it helped having a library insider in the room. Jenny Dale and Kathy Crowe from the library gave an excellent presentation on library services that sparked later conversations about library support. After the formal presentation, I was able to answer questions about the possibilities for collaboration with the library. Also I was able to see the assignment design process from the beginning stages, which is where the library really needs to be!

My goal for the workshop was pretty straightforward. I want to increase the quality of my student research without increasing the quantity of assignments. The class I teach is 200-level and an introductory course so the assignments need to be appropriate. The most useful tool in the workshop was the LOGIC model. I can’t remember where she got this, but the model includes three questions: What is my objective? What do I do to meet my objective? And what evidence do I use to demonstrate that my students have done that? Translated to assignment creation, we focus on the outcome, the activity to practice the outcome, and then the assessment of their ability. In libraryland we are great at doing the first and third parts. We have our learning objectives and then we are sure to assess them, but I feel like the middle component sometimes isn’t as strategically developed. In this model, we are assured that practice a student has in or out of the classroom relates back to the objective and then they are assessed on that specific objective.

For the workshop the research process was divided into discrete parts so that we could focus on specific objectives. My main objective has been developing my students’ ability to paraphrase and then synthesize their research. So many of my papers are long string of quotes interspersed with the writer’s insights (hopefully). To reach this objective I have several activities in mind:

  • News journals: They choose a news story related to the class, write a summary (which requires paraphrasing) and then respond to the article. I did these for two semesters and several students have said that they liked doing them (it forced them to keep up with the news). I always saw them as separate from the research project, but they are their first paraphrasing activity. Maybe I need to encourage them to tie them into the research paper if appropriate.
  • Image captioning: I use images a lot in my class, but I would like to do an activity each week where I show an image related to the week’s readings and then ask them to create a caption for it on an index card. This is a different skill from the usual and requires the ability to synthesize information. Plus I can use it as a mini-reading quiz.
  • Source comparison and annotation exercise: After a library session in which we talk about sources, they have to compare three sources of information (scholarly, newspaper, and government information) on a particular topic. I like doing this activity, but may need to think through the logistics.
  • Annotated bibliography for paper: Post our second  library session they turn in an annotated bib on their chosen topic with a variety of sources.

I also have some assessments:

  • Paraphrasing on exams: I got this idea from a presentation at the workshop. On their exams you give students quotes from the readings. They then must paraphrase the quote and respond– basically telling you what it means.
  • The paper: Hopefully at this point they will be able to paraphrase. I also do an optional revision process where they get feedback and can improve their grades.
  • An executive summary of the paper: Last semester I did a memo to the President where students needed to concisely and precisely sum up their findings to the President and tell him what he should do. The results were fine, but not great. This year I might do a more creative component for this where students have to do a short persuasive elevator speech with a visual. The visual could be a PowerPoint or an image or even a short video. It would function the same as the memo, but they get to choose the audience they would like to persuade. I’d really like to see some of them do short newscasts, but that’s a lot to ask (and watch with 40 students). The whole point is to sum up (or paraphrase) their own research in a understandable and thoughtful manner.

Well, those are my main ideas. Anything I’m missing? Suggestions welcome!

Checkers and the Rose Mary Stretch #cbr4

Published May 18, 2012 reading Leave a Comment
Tags: ,

I’ve gotten quite behind in my Cannonball Run readings. Hell, I’ve gotten behind in reading period, but I haven’t really enjoyed any of my latest picks. If you have a recommendation, please recommend away.

Watergate: A Novel by Thomas Mallon was definitely a highlight though. I picked it up after reading a review and am glad I did. It is a retelling of the Watergate saga starting from the day after the break-in and following the characters through Nixon’s resignation. Although some accounts and one or two characters are fictional, it is a close retelling of the events. The action progresses through the thoughts and interactions of most of the main characters including Pat Nixon, Richard Nixon, Rose Mary Woods, and more.

As I was reading I kept looking up the events and people referenced, especially the Checkers Speech and the Rose Mary Stretch.  I admittedly know little about the Nixon era. If you only read novels to imagine another world based on the author’s description, this book might not be for you. But I think Mallon does a great job of incorporating small details and breathing life into the characters. For example, after Rose Mary demonstrates to the press how she ‘accidentally’ erased a portion of Nixon’s ubiquitous tapes (leading to the famous picture) she reflects on her unfortunate choice of dress.

Undoubtedly, the best part of the novel are the female characters, Pat Nixon especially. Rose Mary, Pat, and Alice Roosevelt Longworth are the heart of the work. All three are very different women and although you might not agree with their motivations, they are sympathetic characters. Richard Nixon never seems quite as flesh and blood, but that would be much harder for Mallon to pull off.

Watergate: A Novel is well-written and very well-researched. If you like historical novels focused on 20th century events, this is a treat, even if you hate Richard Nixon.

libraryland learning (summer edition)

Published May 13, 2012 conferences , the profession 1 Comment
Tags: , ,

I love talking with my students, faculty, and colleagues, but sometimes I need an infusion of fresh ideas and adventures. That’s why I love summertime. Two major conferences take place in May and June (IASSIST and ALA). Plus everyone reserves the summer months for workshops and off-campus meetings. These may seem like frivolous things to an outsider (or my non-libraryland partner), but I am better able to do and more excited about my job after a fresh infusion of networking and learning.

Take for instance our workshop last week. UNCG’s Liaison Task Force has been asked to look at our liaison duties and develop a possible model for the future. The problem right now is that our workloads have increased dramatically, but we haven’t had an increase in staffing. Same as everywhere, right? Well, we’ve been talking about this issue for a while and haven’t decided anything. Luckily the task force was asked to benchmark with other schools. Rather than just calling up Wake Forest and asking them “Hey, how do you do it?” Steve Cramer called together a joint meeting with the key players from Wake Forest and liaisons from UNCG.

UNCG and WFU Liaison Meeting

The session started off with us brainstorming all of the things we do as liaisons onto sticky notes, and then Roz Tedford and I then grouped them into categories like consultations, faculty outreach, teaching, etc. Next we talked about our workloads with most tasks increasing in work time spent on them.

The category “keeping with the subject area”, which means reading key journals and staying abreast of new research, is an area in decline. Very unfortunate considering we are subject specialists too, in my opinion. I wonder if this is the area to examine in the future: a divide between the liaison (someone who does more outreach tasks or maintains gobi aerts) and subject specialists (someone who can teach upper-level classes and do in-depth consultations). This model wouldn’t be a return to the bibliographer approach; neither the liaison nor the subject specialist would be devoted to just collections. Of course you could have one person be both, but that is more difficult for the bigger departments. I guess the real key is having a flexible system rather than just assuming a one-size-fits-all approach to liaison roles.

The meeting wrapped up with a brainstorming session on what we can do about this issue. In my small group were two tech services librarians who are also liaisons. They expressed discomfort with their expanding duties as liaisons because they felt their primary job duties were suffering. This brought up the tension between specialization and generalization. At UNCG we tend to assume our liaisons are generalists who can move easily between collection work and teaching/patron interactions. It assumes someone with no teaching experience can (and should) teach. Likewise someone with no collections experience can and should do collection duties. The problem I have with that assumption is that it seems to denigrate those tasks. I am not the best collections person, I’m a pretty good teacher. I’ve been doing it for a few years now. Plus (and this is key) I’ve trained and reflected and trained more to get better at it. It is something that I see as being integral to my job so I’ve put extra effort into it. I can’t say the same thing about collections. Does that mean I can’t get better at collections? No, I can train and reflect in that area too. But then we get back to the workload/time issue. When do I get better at a skill I use sparingly? And would putting my time into collections even be useful to the library in the long run, especially if it takes time away from public services (what I do best)?

So, that is where the meeting ended. The conversation will continue this summer, but the important outcome is that we are sharing ideas and thinking through our strengths, our weaknesses, and where we have room for improvement. And that is what summertime should be about!

As I mentioned I have a lot on my plate this summer. Below are the upcoming workshops if you are interested. I will try to blog reflections on each.

May 14-16: Office of Undergraduate Research Workshop on integrating research into undergraduate classes

May 17: Business Librarianship in NC workshop

May 18: NCBIG workshop on assessing library instruction sessions

May 21: NC-LITe meeting (Library Instructional Technology group)

June 1: NCLA Government Resources Section meeting on ASERL and the Census

June 6-8: IASSIST in DC!

June 14: Metrolina Library Instruction Conference

June 22-25: American Library Association annual conference in Anaheim

And then in July I will take vacation. I will not check email. I will sit back and unwind. I promise.

Are we ready for Library 2525?: Lunch with Lauren

Published May 3, 2012 the profession 2 Comments
Tags: ,

This is the final post from my lunchtime conversation with Lauren. She writes about the library of the future much more effectively than I can. Might have something to do with our core competencies and personas! But I want to add a small dilemma. It is something I’ve been thinking about a lot.

I agree firmly with Lauren about the evolving role of librarians from servants to service-providers to collaborators. I see it in the disconnect when I talk with librarians who haven’t moved into a collaborative role. When I talk about my activities, the ones I see as collaborative, I often get a quizzical look and questions about whether that is what librarians are supposed to be doing. For example a few of us have been teaching the introduction to the university courses over the past year. We see this activity as firmly embedded into library practice, especially as these courses are inherently about information literacy. Because of our teaching the library has had been able to give more input into the development of these courses. We are at the decision-making table helping to shape the future instead of reacting to whatever the “real” decision-makers decide.

But here’s my dilemma. We are doing more and more true collaborative work (embedded librarianship, assignment development, curriculum development, developing online journals with faculty) and spending more and more hours on these activities. Collaborative work is taking us away from our traditional service duties especially reference desk work. In the past the value of the reference department has been based on the number of questions we get each hour, each day, and declines in those numbers has led to proclamations that “Reference is Dead“!

What numbers will we use to prove collaboration to skeptics in the future?

This has become a bigger issue at my library because more of our classes are going online and asynchronous only. Two of my core classes that I used to teach each semester are now asynchronous online. Why does this matter? Because I am no longer teaching library instruction sessions for them, and my instruction numbers went down. Does this mean I was any less busy? Heck no. In one class I spent a few hours creating a video tutorial on the OECD.stat geared to their assignment and several more in consultations with the individual students. In the other I had to make my very first “Hi, I’m Lynda” video. (That video may seem old hat to you, but dude it took me forever). These videos were then embedded into the instructional materials in Blackboard and not just sitting on a library website hoping for hits. I felt like I was collaborating with the professor on how we could best integrate the library into the virtual world of these students.

Now, I track numbers of consultations, but in reporting this I only report interactions. I don’t report time spent. We track contact time with students in library instruction sessions, but not how much contact time we spend with the category of “reference desk interactions.” Because I am obsessive I track  the time I spend on each question (both prep and interaction time) and counted all of that up for my tenure presentation this year. I spent over 80 hours in consultations alone. That number is twice what I spent in the library instruction classroom. This does not include any of the work I did on tutorials or otherwise. Tutorials and otherwise don’t exist in the library reporting mechanism.

So, back to my question. As we become collaborators, as we enter more complex relationships, how are we tracking it? What numbers matter most and can best explain how much time we spend collaborating with faculty? If a librarian embeds into a course like Steve Cramer, how does he account for the many hours he spends with those students? What about my political science class? Even if it may seem tangential to my work, it has had a tangible impact on my interactions with political science students (my consultations numbers doubled since I started teaching the class).

Our assessment efforts are a good starting point, but they tend to be based on small samples and are about (as they should be) student learning. They can’t and aren’t meant to demonstrate the breadth of work we are doing throughout the campus. They make the case that students are learning things, but they don’t make the case that a new reference and instruction librarian should replace the one who retired.

Because numbers have been used to prove our lack of worth in the past, what numbers will prove our worth in the future? More importantly if we aren’t tracking those numbers now, what is going to be our library future? Are we even ready for 2525?

Confessions and competencies: Lunch with Lauren

Published May 2, 2012 the profession 5 Comments
Tags: , ,

Confession 1: I like trivial pursuit, but I didn’t become a librarian to be a fount of trivia. That’s what Google is for. Or Duck Duck Go.

Confession 2: Beyond my own personal reading, I don’t really care about the future of the book. I mean, I care, but it is not what gets me out of bed and into the office in the morning.

Confession 3: I am REALLY REALLY bad with details. I may be obsessively neat and good at collecting statistics (at work), but I was horrendous at cataloging. Horrendous. Me talking with a cataloger is like a Croatian trying to understand a Macedonian. They can pick up a few words here and there but most of it just sounds like Greek.

Confession 4: I became a librarian because I like talking with people. I found the research life demoralizing and isolating. I tried talking to my cubicle, but you can imagine how that ended up. When I found out that some librarians spent much of their time yacking I knew it was the life for me. And they teach?! And maybe even teach kids like this?! Oh glory be I’ve come home!

PSC 240 Spring 2012

So, why the confessions? Because a few of us (me, Lauren, and Jenny Dale) have recently become obsessed (a bit) with this idea of core competencies. Jenny and I read about it in the book 168 Hours: You Have More Time Than You Think by Laura Vanderkam, and she borrowed it from the business literature. Coming from the idea of comparative advantage, you have opportunity costs for every task to which you decide to devote your time. Opportunity costs are the things you give up to do something else. The tasks with the lowest opportunity costs are your core competencies. Vanderkam argues that we should spend our time on our core competencies and avoid or delegate whatever is not core to someone with those core competencies. To give an example: in my house I am much better at cleaning things while DM is much better at fixing things (detail oriented to a fault). If we are following our core competencies, we would split our tasks appropriately. It would take me much more time to fix a cabinet than to wait for DM to do it.  From a time management perspective it is more efficient and increases motivation because you enjoy doing things you do well.

The question we’ve had is how to apply this to the library setting. Jenny and I will flesh this out on a micro-level in an upcoming project, but what if we applied this to the macro-level? What if this is how the library organized itself? How would a library that is divided into the core competencies look? What core competencies would it need for it to function?

This then led into a discussion of the major personas in a library: the grand strategy thinker, the patron-centered talker, the instruction-based performer, and the detailed-oriented producer. If we approach library functions from the angle of core competencies and fit, can we manufacture a library where people are more motivated because they are doing the functions they find most fulfilling? Lauren for example is the grand strategy thinker extraordinaire. She is not only able to see the big picture for the library future, she cares about it more. It is what motivators her to  get up and go, to present, to talk with others, to put in those 8 hours every day. How much more effective would the library (or any organization) be if it approached motivation based on core competencies?

Granted we are mirroring the current roles, but if we try to think bigger than what exists, what roles do we see?  What core competencies would be represented in your library of the future?

Goodreads

No data found
Book recommendations, book reviews, quotes, book clubs, book trivia, book lists

Twitter-rific!

Categories

Follow

Get every new post delivered to your Inbox.

Join 39 other followers