lyndamk

I’m the Data Services & Government Information Librarian at the University of NC at Greensboro and this is my second go at Library Day in the Life.

Wednesdays are fun for me. I go in late because I work until 7pm. I’m a morning person, so it is nice to spend one morning a week at home. Of course, because I’m a morning person and think better in the morning, I inevitably end up working from home most Wednesday mornings. It is a vicious cycle.

Today should be fun. I have tons of class prep to do, BUT I get to hear George McGovern speak. Oh, can’t wait! Here is the lowdown, guys and gals:

• Started up the mac about 7am and sent out messages to my Emerging Leader group about using Elluminate. We needed to find a collaborative software and I think it will work well.
• Arrived at work about 9:30am and started working on class for tomorrow. I’m doing a session with a poli sigh class called American Political Thought. We will talk about primary sources v. secondary and creating annotations. Should be fun. More on that after Thursday.
• Met with our LexisNexis representative. LN Statistics/Datasets is pretty awesome! Me wants.
• Found my reappointment letter in my mailbox. I am now officially reappointed until I go up for tenure in … oh some such year. Let’s not worry about that now, shall we?!
• Worked pretty much non-stop on class prep for the rest of the afternoon. Of course there are always random interruptions.
• At 3:30 pm went to see George McGovern talk about his book, Abraham Lincoln as part of a series of lectures during the touring exhibit, Forever Free. Although McGovern is certainly not as near and dear to my heart as my parents, he is lion of our times. It was an honor and treat to listen to him talk about Lincoln and writing the book. My library director even gave me a McGovern pin she had been wearing! Apparently he has several bags of them packed away in his garage. Definitely a great way to celebrate reappointment!
• After McGovern had a popcorn break, which is become a habit. Instead of the water cooler, we have a big bag of fresh popcorn and a microwave!
• Worked the desk for 5pm-7pm. Again no huge questions except for several poli sigh students who wanted to compare countries. OH SO CAKE!
• Watching the state of the union. I consider this work because I am a government info lady after all!

More up tomorrow!

And I think it is rabid. We must put it down.

So, that was my monday for round 4 library day in the life. How was yours? I’m the Data Services & Government Information Librarian at UNCG and this is my second go at Library Day in the Life. I can’t say how long I will sustain the LDITL for this go-round, but I’ll give it the old McKellam effort.

Basically here at the highlights:

• 8:30am-9:30 am – Writing time: wrote 400 words on chapter 2. Woohoo for me. Can I go home now?
• 9:30am-10am – No. I can’t go home because I need to prep for a class on Thursday. Here are my 30 minutes to do that.
• 10am-11am – Meeting with our tech guru about our desire for LibGuides.
• 11am-11:45am – Meeting with our OECD representative about OECDiLibrary. After letting her know we may cancel, she let us know about potential discount! Please please please.
• 11:45am-12pm – Ran around the ref dept cheering that we may be able to keep OECD.
• 12pm-1pm – Quick lunch at the desk of our Assistant Dean who is the stand in for our Human Resources librarian on an upcoming search committee.
• 1pm-1:30pm – Tried to listen to a webinar on ICPSR’s changes with Research Connections, but was interrupted (very sweetly) by a staff member needing to use our scanner and a graduate student who is being ignored by Veteran’s Affairs. VA, if you are reading, I hate your right now. Give us the data!
• 1:30pm-2pm – Search committee meeting
• 2pm-2:30pm – Impromptu meeting about LIS alumni association virtual meet and greet. UNCG LIS alumni! Heads up on upcoming post.
• 2:30pm – 3pm – Fretted over that one reference question I can’t make headway on and the VA and how much I hate them.
• 3pm-3:30pm – Meeting of the Agraphia Group, our librarian writing support group. Many tears were shed…not really.
• 3:30pm-4pm – Fretted more and decided to check my voicemail. I chose wisely because I had a request for a class for next week. They are looking at the historical censuses as support for material culture studies of major American cities. Sweeet.
• 4pm – Left for the day as part of the comp for my Saturday class.

Whew. All day I was taking notes on everything. Now I have to decipher what I wrote.

Thanks Monday. I hate you too!

These are notes from LITA’s Top Tech Trends session from ALA midwinter. It was an informative session and lots of fun.

Be warned: These notes are rough!
 
David Walker, Web Services Librarian @ Cal State University System:

• Big trend will be proliferation of discovery systems as a next move beyond federated searching
• Focus on crafting something specific to your library
• Trend of improving discovery systems will address key issues in academic libraries by helping facilitate and mature other trends (eg, being able to find dispersed rss feeds)
• Now it is numbers race (who has most numbers of journals) and the search results are becoming too unfocused (books, articles, and docs, oh my!)

Responses:
Amanda Etches-Johnson: If discovery systems are building on federated searching, we have a problem because fed searching was a disaster. Walker respond that part of the problem is that interfaces were lacking/not enough attention paid.

Amanda Etches-Johnson, User Experience Librarian, McMaster University

• user experience is buzz word, but no one can agree on what that phrase means
• user exp design is about designing anything (tech, architect anything)
• visual design coupled with interaction design (how site makes users feel) –> in library we are just starting to talk about this
• we can’t talk about how our users feel if they can’t find what they are looking for (good we are focusing on interface design)
• because mobile interfaces have to be stripped down to use brings up interface design problems
• users are starting to seek out mobile interfaces both on devices and on regular screens (because of the stripped down aspects)
• what we do for mobile device will impact what we do for web design the next few years
• automated usability testing is becoming interesting — some sites will do this, install on server and do usability testing for you.
• User experience analytics — how do you measure the user experience on your websites? usually conversion rates (clicks to purchases); libraries need to have this conversation more even though hard to measure

Responses:
Jason Griffey – his library has done a lot on usability of the library; how see virtual and physical world usability interacting
Amanda:  literature is on holistic experience and we do need to address the disconnect between use of web tools and what happens when they come into the library/ need design in one space in line with the way design in the other
 
Joe Murphy, Science Librarian, Yale University

• mobile tech will grow (some major mobile techs we’ve already seen)
• changes are coming from user expectations
• we need to be able to do mobile app reference
• sms is oldest of mobile tech and strongest and most flexible; more than a communication tool –> also a research tool
• burden on librarians to transfer traditional skills into new environment
• transfer from ref desk to 140 characters
• physical space of the library is important too but not really for the print but for user experience; library need to be friendly for mobile research (being ok with use of phones in library, cell phone reception, outlets)
• location based gaming (4square) bringing competition into location
• twitter is nothing new (as a standard we need to react to it and figure out more developed ways of using it)
• keeping up with mobile tech is difficult – we need to support each other
• every change does have some tension
• also need to consider skills for supporting mobile tech (rethinking our trad methods)

Responses:
david: what should smaller libraries focus on with mobile tech?
Joe: biggest question for any library because not enough time for exploring; may need trade offs (less time developing collections?); we need to keep our primary user groups happy therefore figure out what is priority; but also need to figure out what the future will hold and prioritize for that); everything we do has costs for staff time– staff who are good at 

Lauren Pressley, Instructional Design Librarian, Wake Forest University

• augmented reality = blending virtual data with the real world
• started in 1960s and has developed as technology has
• example is being able to see twitter updates real time in life (using smartphone camera to take pic of a crowd with their twitter updates above them)
• now have location where maps for smartphones
• real estate maps can pull up houses for sale
• AAA app that gives you data based on location
• yelp is a good example
• she  mentioned horizon report for 2010 – tech with big educational impact
• augmented reality have impact in 2-3 yrs
• get education data by using augmented reality (historical sites–interface with what is there and the data available)
• what can libraries do with that? NC state wolfwalk is an interesting use of this
• imagine being in the stax and having section info coming out through device
• tutorials help user at point of need

Responses:
david: who takes ownership of doing this projects –> LP answered standards would be useful; places with the resources could create way for others to plug in data; this isn’t that far off tho bc apps are being developed
jason: unique stuff is in our archives; when we get to pt with standard need to dive into archives and use as tools for teaching/training
joe: how can libraries leverage for collections; like mags using e stuff to enhance pubs; anything we can do to marketing collections –> David: assist with seeing the full collection at point of need

Jason Griffey, Head of Library Information Technology at University of Tennessee, Chattanooga

• discussed mobile apps
• app store open in middle of 2008 0 first unified store
• jan 2009 apple hit 500 mill apps downloaded; 5 months later 1 bill; 2 months ltr 2 bill; growth pattern has been astronomical
• out of the thousands of apps very few of them have been developed by libraries
• all other mobiles are jumping into the app store game as well as some stranger ones (printers are being released with app stores)
• he predicts that 2010 is year app dies because bringing html 5 and css 3
• html 5 brings things couldn’t do previously–offline storage support; negative audio/video tags; supports canvass –> gets away from flash; allows drag and drop
• will do away with app because HTML 5 is best in the mobile browsers (of the new generation) –> firefox, chrome support too; html 5 will work in a wide variety of things

Responses:
David: glad to see app die; because never repeat yourself; a lot of the mobile apps sit separately from the larger tool (like the catalog – have to create new version of app whenever update catalog); 
Joe: where we thinking as far as aligning resources –> JG: still think going web standards is better solution.

Next they each briefly discussed the reinvention of the book (Rocket e-book versus Kindle: have we evolved much from one to the other)
Jason G: 2 things to consider 1) Copia, at http://www.thecopia.com/) – software platform that reinvents electronic reading experience as a social experience; jointly annotate a bk; will sell devices but also push onto other devices; 2) blio (http://blioreader.com/) content by baker & taylor; non e-reader format; allows for full visual rep of the bk (graphs images); can embedded interactive media into book

Lauren P: ownership issues; reading is still solitary experience; readers will still have a place; issue of ownership is a big prob because can’t transfer ownership to another person; not actually owner of bk–just leasing; for it to be widespread adoption need idea of ownership

Joe: he doesn’t see ereaders having places in libraries; if can’t read on iphone then it is an inconvenience; 

Amanda: embedding media in ebooks; accessibility issues – library wanted to get rid of print in favor of readers and saw uproar by audio/visual impaired comm –> need keep accessibility issues in mind

David: hard to do this because not sure how Google books will turn out; big move to ebooks is necessity for libraries; used to be that finding books was easier and not jstor is easier –> dive into articles even tho not appropriate because they are online; maybe ebooks will bring parity with article use by students –> transform undergrad research; we’ve been overbuying into journals and need to stick back into ebks