LIBRARY ACTIVITY IN SECOND LIFE

The American Library Association has given the ALA/Information Today Library of the Future Award to the international collaborative group of librarians working on the Alliance Second Life Library. ”Since opening its virtual doors in April 2006, the Alliance Second Life Library (http://alliancelibraries.info/secondlife.htm) ... has expanded its presence to include locations on Info Islands I&II, HealthInfo Island, The Caledon (19th century) Branch Library, Cybrary City Islands, and the Teen Second Life ‘Eye4YouAlliance,’ where engaging activities and interactions occur in a collaborative, social/learning space.”

The Graduate School of Library and Information Science at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign [and my alma mater] is offering a class on Second Life librarianship starting this May (http://www.lis.uiuc.edu/programs/cpd/Second_Life.html, already sold out) and the School of Library & Information Science at San José State University has developed a product called Sloodle (http://www.sloodle.com/) which combines the open-source virtual learning system Moodle (http://moodle.org/) with Second Life, opening up new possibilities for distance education.

NEW STATE LAW BLOGS

Law Blog Metrics, a collaborative blawg that is part of the Law Professor Blogs Network, has a new list of blogs dealing with law at the state level. California, Florida, Illinois, Indiana, Kentucky, Maryland, Michigan, New York, Pennsylvania, Tennessee, Virginia, and DC are included in this list.

URL:

This post: http://3lepiphany.typepad.com/3l_epiphany/

2007/04/new_state_law_b.html

Law Blog Metrics: http://3lepiphany.typepad.com/

Law Professor Blogs Network: http://www.lawprofessorblogs.com/

A DAY IN THE LIFE OF A LIBRARIAN--NEW BOOK

Here's information on a new book that you may want to read. One of the 95 authors who contributed to the book is ME.

Shontz, Priscilla K. and Richard A. Murray, editors. A Day in the Life: Career Options in Library and Information Science. Libraries Unlimited, 2007. 464 pages. ISBN 1591583640.

Table of contents, excerpts, contributor information, and more at http://www.liscareer.com/dil.htm.

Many people, not just those new to the field of library and information science, are curious about their career options. The editors of LIScareer.com have assembled 95 authors, each of whom describes a "typical" workday or work routine, sharing joys, sorrows, and annoyances in refreshingly candid fashion. In the process, they offer those interested in finding a similar job exposure to useful skills and advice across a wide variety of traditional and nontraditional jobs. In addition to public, academic, school, and special libraries, consortia, associations, LIS programs, vendors, publishing, consulting, and other non-library fields are also covered. This is a perfect guide for library and information science students, prospective information professionals, new librarians-or anyone considering a career change.

I (ME?!) AM GOING TO BE ON A SIRSIDYNIX INSTITUTE

I am very pleased—and amazed—that Stephen Abram has invited me to do a SirsiDynix Institute webcast with him. He and Jonathan Lorig and I had a great time doing the book, Out Front with Stephen Abram: A Guide for Information Leaders. (It is a collection of Stephen’s writings and presentations.) Stephen and I both blog (and love doing it). So, Stephen thought we’d answer all those questions we get about how we write, blog and communicate and share some of our experiences. Here’s all the information. (BTW—it’s free!!)

Writing for the Library Profession

Date : 10 July 2007, 11:00-noon, Eastern Time

You can register (remember, it’s free) at http://www.sirsidynixinstitute.com/seminar_page.php?sid=90

Do you want to inform and influence your colleagues? Do you have a story to tell? Have you done something innovative that delighted your users? We don’t have a paucity of ideas and innovation in Libraryland, we do have a problem with diffusion. We need to share our ideas and experiences more. From blog postings, to periodical and newsletter articles to website content and even to books library staff are increasingly being asked to write. With the dynamic and rapid change happening in our sector, we have an increasing obligation to share our knowledge and experiences. It’s an exciting time to be in libraries.

This SirsiDynix Institute brings together two library leaders, authors, bloggers and journalists to share their secrets and tips. Both share the experience of putting together this year’s bestselling Out Front with Stephen Abram. Judith Siess’s latest book is The New OPL Sourcebook: A Guide for Solo and Small Libraries . Their blogs are among the most popular—his is Stephen’s Lighthouse. Both share their knowledge, insights and opinions openly. Want to know some of the secrets? With all of the great innovations happening around the world in libraries, we have to start sharing more. If we don’t take our candles out from under the basket, who will?

Stephen’s Bio (short version)

Stephen Abram, VP Innovation, SirsiDynix, Chief Strategist, The SirsiDynix Institute. a leading international librarian and lighthouse thinker in the North American library community, leverages his extensive experience in library technology and trend forecasting, new product conceptualization, and market development to ensure that SirsiDynix products and services continue to be the most innovative in the library market and meet the needs of library directors, library staff members, and library users. Abram works on strategic projects in all areas to advance our vision. Abram has more than 25 years in libraries as a practicing librarian and in the information industry. His most recent role was as vice president of corporate development for Micromedia ProQuest. Abram’s other roles include publisher for Thomson Carswell and director of Information Resources for the Hay Group. He is a frequent keynote speaker on issues that affect libraries, their communities, and librarians. In addition, Abram was named by Library Journal in 2002 as one of the key people who are influencing the future of libraries and librarianship.

URLs:

Out Front with Stephen Abram: http://www.alastore.ala.org/SiteSolution.taf?_sn=catalog2
&_pn=product_detail&_op=2238
Stephen’s Lighthouse: http://stephenslighthouse.sirsidynix.com/

Register for the Institute: http://www.sirsidynixinstitute.com/seminar_page.php?sid=90

UK LAW LIBRARIAN BLOG

lo-fi librarian is from a newly qualified law librarian in the UK. He or she doesn’t give any more information about him/herself, but the blog has very good stuff on it. Check it out.

URL: http://www.lo-fi-librarian.co.uk/

DRIVING DIRECTIONS AND WEATHER FORECASTS ALL IN ONE

“Trippish is a free service that gives you driving directions with weather forecasts along the route. Trippish not only tells you what the weather is likely to be during your drive, but also allows you to determine the best time to leave based on current forecasts. This product has been developed by Cyberferia and is released in the US by UrbaTron LLC.”

URL: http://trippish.com/

THE FUTURE OF SPECIAL LIBRARIES BY GUY ST. CLAIR

Guy St. Clair, the father of the OPL movement, has issued a report on a summit on the future of special libraries. The summit was held on 30 March 2007, with some of SLA’s most eminent leaders participating. St. Clair facilitated the session. He is kindly making it available to us at no cost. I consider this must reading for all of us.

URLs:

The report: http://www.smr-knowledge.com/articles/
SMR_SLA_Summit_Report_4-15-07.pdf

SMR International (St. Clair’s firm): http://www.smr-knowledge.com

RSS DESCRIBED IN PLAIN ENGLISH

Lee LeFever [CommonCraft, Seattle, Washington] has created a fabulous video that quickly and clearly explains RSS and what it can do for the user. He also has posted a printed version of much of the same information, but the video is better. This would be a good training tool.

URLs:
video: http://blip.tv/file/205570/
text: http://www.commoncraft.com/archives/000528.html

SOURCES OF FREE NEWS AND JOURNAL ARTICLE (with a few for a fee)

http://news.google.com
http://news.yahoo.com
http://www.magportal.com
http://www.news.com (from C|Net}
http://www.smartbrief.com
http://www.newsisfree.com (newspapers, international in scope)
http://www.doaj.org, (Directory of Open Access Journals, “categorized, searchable links to free, full text, quality controlled scientific and scholarly journals”)
http://www.highbeam.com (not free, but very inexpensive for what you get)
http://findarticles.com

Free RSS news feeds are available at: http://w.moreover.com/site/products/ind/rss_feeds.html

Gale Thompson offers AccessMyLibrary (http://www.accessmylibrary.com), which “gives you free [full-text] access to millions of articles from top publications available at your library.” They will even send a plain text version of the article to your email address.

The resources below come from Gary Price of ask.com.
NewspaperARCHIVE, (http://newspaperarchive.com/), a fee-based service with millions of articles, offers their “special collections” with tens of thousands of articles for free (http://newspaperarchive.com/SpecialCollections.aspx). These are the same articles (full text and full image) that you have to pay for elsewhere. If you are a K-12 school library or a public library, nearly the entire database is available for free (see http://access.newspaperarchive.com/
SiteLoading.aspx?from=default.aspx) for details.

Time magazine offers a free archive back to 1923, http://www.time.com/time/, with a nice selection of options to focus results.

Topix is primarily a web-based news site, but does a good job of making sure “older links” are still available. They now offer case sensitive searching and useful interactive graphs to see trends and go directly to older material. For example, look for the graph at the top of this search results page (http://www.topix.com/search/article?q=%22
Los+Angeles+International+Airport%22).

Remember that many libraries in the U.S., Canada, Australia, and elsewhere offer free access to numerous full text article databases for personal use, but this is usually for card holders only. Access from any web computer. For example, http://www.sfpl.org/sfplonline/dbcategories.htm or http://www.cpl.org/databases-links.asp. Remember every library offers different resources.

DIGG.COM INFLUENCED MEDICAL WEB SITES

BioWizard
http://www.biowizard.com/

“BioWizard users submit relevant, timely research articles they have found to be useful and interesting to the site. Search over 16 million peer-reviewed biomedical articles through our PubMed search page and submit your favorite research articles. When you search for articles, you'll notice a ‘promote it’ button next to every article. If you see an article you like, click ‘promote it’ and assign the article a category on the left frame of the screen. The articles you submit are then read by the rest of the community, who vote up articles they feel are deserving of recognition. All submitted papers are placed in one of three sections:
* Featured Articles: Articles that have received enough votes to be deemed of interest to everyone.
* Top Ranked: Articles that have received the most votes.
* New Submissions: Articles recently submitted by our users.
“In addition to finding the best literature in your field, you can get field-specific news, search for lab products, and read the blogs of prominent scientific minds.”

Dissect Medicine
http://www.dissectmedicine.com/

“Dissect Medicine is a collaborative medical news website, which indexes and ranks international medical news. It spans general interest articles to basic research. users submit news items for review with tags and keywords. These are then ranked by the user group. This ensures that only the most relevant and influential articles will make it as a current headline story. It was inspired by digg.com, a technology news website that employs non-hierarchical editorial control. Dissect Medicine builds on this concept by adding extra features and functionality for the specific needs of the medical community. The site is a joint initiative of Macmillan Medical Communications and Nature Clinical Practice.”

Medinews
http://www.medinews.co.uk/

Medinews was originally based on a Spanish website, http://meneame.net/, a web application that” allows you to submit an article that will be reviewed by all and will be promoted, based on popularity, to the main page. When a user submits a news article it will be placed in the ‘unpublished’ area until it gains sufficient votes to be promoted to the main page.” It was also influenced by digg.com.

onexamination.com
http://www.onexamination.com/site/default.asp

Onexamination “provides a growing number of postgraduate and undergraduate revision courses online that are designed to reflect the latest styles and questions in each exam. Its core is a highly efficient question marking and analysis engine that has helped more than 50,000 doctors, in over 100 countries revise for their examinations. The website has analysed over 20 million question responses helping focus learners on the areas they need to improve to pass their exams. Many doctors have passed their exams using the website without the need for expensive and time-consuming residential courses.
"This site is run by Medelect Limited, a UK Technology company founded by four doctors in January 2000 to expand on the success of an MRCP revision website that had been online since 19996." There is a team of specialist editors and authors creating original content. The Company has received support from Cardiff University, Wales College of Medicine, the Cardiff City Council, the Welsh Development Agency, and various pharmaceutical companies.

Journal Review
http://www.journalreview.org/

“JournalReview.org is an online forum dedicated to the medical literature. One can utilize our website to perform a complete PubMed query, read and rate articles, as well as participate in discussion of current and past articles. The forum is open to all fields and should help to stimulate critical discussion. Through this venue, we hope users may gain a better understanding of medical literature and practice evidence-based-medicine.”

“This site was envisioned and created by a small group of four individuals. The founders and programmers behind JournalReview.org realize the important roll that this site can play in the shaping of medical practice, research, and health care policy and have provided personal funds to make this site possible.”

LOOKING FOR A JOB IN NEW YORK STATE?

Library Careers NY is a new website from the New York State Library, the New York State Education Department through the Making It REAL! project, funded by the Federal Institute of Museum and Library Services.

There are four sections:
The Careers section has information about different types of library careers; the Education section has information on library school programs, distance learning and scholarships; the Jobs section has job listings, help with resume preparation and interviewing tips; and the Career Growth section "will help you make your library career take off."

URL: http://www.librarycareersny.org/

OPEN MEDICINE DEBUTS

Open Medicine launched 18 April 2007. “This new open access journal represents a milestone in the independence and academic freedom of medical research publishing.”

James Maskalyk [University of Toronto, Ontario, Canada and Médecins San Frontières, Abyei, Sudan] wrote an editorial, “Why Open Medicine?” for the first issue. Here is just a bit of it.

"Medical knowledge should be public and free from undeclared influence. When possible, it should be free for those who apply it. Since people's lives depend on it, that knowledge must be filtered several times before it is ready to use. Studies need to be peer reviewed, to have their statistics analyzed, their content edited, then copy edited, then published quickly for as wide an audience as possible. The prospect of having a high-quality source of information that held true to these principles but was also free and globally accessible was impossible to imagine 20 years ago. Paper and postage are simply too expensive. The landscape is different today. An ideal medical journal — a truly open one—is not only within our sight, it is within our reach.

“Open Medicine is a new general medical journal. It will be paperless and available without charge or any other barrier to access online. We will publish peer-reviewed science and analysis as well as clinical articles. We will provide a forum for informed and inclusive debates on medicine and its application. Open Medicine will be independent of any commercial publisher or association ownership.

“Open Medicine, although launched in Canada, is an international endeavour. Its strength will be a connected global community of interested, committed health workers. Like the country that birthed it, it will remain open, inclusive, and independent but its eyes, like those of its readers, will be on the world. We hope that you share our excitement about the future and being part of it."

URL: http://www.openmedicine.ca/

BLAWG (Legal Blog) DIRECTORIES

Australian Law Blogs: mostly IP related, but there are others, URL: http://www.djacobson.com/australian_law_blogs/

InfoLaw: mostly UK, but some from Ireland, by type of law, directories, job blawgs, newsfeeds, URL: http://www.infolaw.co.uk/lawfinder/browse_type.asp?typ=Blogs

BlawgSearch: lists the most popular, by categories, recent posts, etc. URL: http://blawgsearch.justia.com/

Law Library Blogs and Blogs by Law Librarians or Law Library Associations, from the University of Wisconsin Law Library, includes 113 blogs with sponsoring library or association, very current, URL: http://library.law.wisc.edu/wisblawg/blogslistpublic.htm

Blawg.com newly updated, lists in same categories as BlawgSearch, URL:http://www.blawg.com

Observatory of the Legal Blogosphere: from Portugal, links to law-related blogs in many languages and from many countries, URL: http://www.estig.ipbeja.pt/%7Eobsblogjur/homepageeng.html

Juriblogs: directory of French-language blawgs, URL: http://juriblogs.juridiconline.com/

Blogs juridiques: list on international law portal, Droit, URL: http://droit.francophonie.org/df-web/listeRessources.do?categoryId=89

Thanks to Michel-Adrien Sheppard (Library Boy, Supreme Court of Canada) for this information. (http://micheladrien.blogspot.com/2007/04/australian-blawg-directory.html)

GOOD IDEAS FOR BETTER REFERENCE SERVICE

Warren Cheetham and Mei Lin Gray of the Thruingowa Library Service (Queensland, Australia) presented a paper at Information Online Australia on their use of a wireless tablet PC at the reference desk. It is a great idea—they sit next to the customer at a table, not face-to-face over a reference desk.

Also in the article were the Thuringowa Library Services’ Customer Service Standards. They include:
We will:
Allow you time to enter the library and orientate yourself before we approach you.
Make eye contact, smile, and use open body language.
Tell you our name.
Not ask you if you need help, but simply state that we are here to help you.
Be interested and curious about your requests.
Acknowledge you, even when helping someone else.
Break off conversations with other library staff, and attend to you first.
Leave you to browse and search by yourself. If you are looking lost of puzzled, we will offer our assistance.

When seated at the Information Desk, we will:
Be aware of you approaching and greet you first.
Turn in our seat to face you, not our computer screen.
Have a clean, uncluttered Information Desk.
Be ready to help you first and not be busy with other library work.

We will also:
Provide a range of written guides to help you find information.
Explain how we are conducting a search for your, so that you may also learn how to search.
Ask you, as you leave, if you found the information you were looking for, and if there is anything further we can help with.
Commit to staffing the Information Desk during advertised hours.

URL: for the entire article:
http://www.information-online.com.au/docs/Presentations/cheetham.pdf

TWO REPORTS YOU MIGHT WANT TO READ

1.
Technology Competencies and Training for Libraries, by Sarah Houghton-Jan [San Mateo County (California) Public Library] is the latest in the Library Technology Reports series from ALA TechSource. The Table of Contents and a section of the report are available on the TechSource site.

URL: http://www.techsource.ala.org


2.
Is Education 1.0 Ready for Web 2.0 Students? Is a fascinating article by John Thompson [Buffalo (New York) State College]. The answer is, predictably, no—but it’s interesting to read his comments. Originally published in Innovate 3(4), April/May 2007.

URL: http://www.innovateonline.info/index.php?view=article&id=393

THE PRESIDENT OF A HEALTH INSURANCE COMPANY IS BLOGGING

If you are in the healthcare industry or at least are interested in it, then you have to read this blog. It is by Charlie Baker, President and CEO, Harvard Pilgrim. Yes, the blog is self-serving and promotional, but Baker also plans for some posts to be informative and/or provocative.

URL: http://letstalkhealthcare.org/

LIST OF LIBRARY-RELATED WEBSITES

libSite.org describes itself as “a recommendation for library-related websites.” It comes from Leo Kline, a Chicago librarian. It “features a blog, a wiki, RSS feeds and email alerts…users can rate sites and add them to a ‘favorites’ page.” It will work only if people contribute to it, of course.

But do we really need another website/wiki for library sites? There are so many I can’t keep track of them all, and I certainly can’t contribute items to all of them. I wish we could all cooperate and have just one or two of these community sites—but I guess that’s wishful thinking, so check this one out.

URL: http://libsite.org/

A VIDEO YOU MUST SEE

“Pay Attention,” from the Jordan (Utah) School District, is a wonderful explanation of why you should use technology to work with the next generation of learners, librarians, and customers. Watch it!!

URL: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aEFKfXiCbLw

A WONDERFUL EXAMPLE OF USE OF TECHNOLOGY IN SCHOOLS

The Jordan School District, the largest in the state of Utah, seems to have completely integrated technology into their teaching. They have a website that provides teachers with technology information and tools. There is also a weekly podcast. This is a site well worth checking out.

URL: http://t4.jordandistrict.org/t4/

VISUAL ATLAS FOR THE EYES

“RedAtlas.org is a highly interconnected, visual atlas of ophthalmic diseases.” “The images are available in medium and high resolutions for use in lectures and presentations” You can browse by disease or clinical findings and there is also a quiz section. There is no search function (yet). The site is supported by grants and The Wilmer and Doheny Eye Institutes.

URL: http://redatlas.org

FUN AND ON-POINT VIDEO ON POWERPOINT

There’s a super video on how NOT to use PowerPoint. You must look at it—if not for its instructional value then as pure entertainment.

URL: http://lawprofessors.typepad.com/law_librarian_blog/2007/04/friday_fun_how_.html

GREAT IDEA--CHECK OUT A LIVING BOOK!

Mount Barker's living library
by Ian Hildebrand [Mount Barker Community Library, South Australia, Australia], inCite 28(4):19, April 2007.

“On Australia Day 2007 the Mount Barker Community Library invited residents to borrow a Living Book from South Australia’s first Living Library. The aims of a Living Library are to bring people into contact with someone they might not meet or associate with in their ordinary day-to-day-life, to break down barriers and dissolve stereotypes.

“Readers of the Living Library could check out a Living Book for a half-hour chat, and ask questions about that person’s life. Some of the ‘Books’ in the Living Library were people representing groups frequently confronted with prejudices and stereotypes. Others were South Australians with interesting life stories to share. Living book titles at the Mount Barker Living Library included old people; hippies; a human rights activist; a human zoo participant and animal rights activist; an indigenous woman; a Jewish couple, a Muslim, a Catholic nun, a Chilean refugee, a Vietnam war orphan and a witch.

“All books got a good reading with at least seven loans per title. Best sellers were the Muslim (29 loans); indigenous woman (19 loans); witch (18 loans) refugee (15 loans) and Vietnamese war orphan (13 loans). In total, the 16 Living Books received 152 loans from 58 registered readers during the five-hour duration of the Living Library.

“Lismore [New South Wales] was the first Australian library I know of to hold [a Living Library event] (November 2006). Bayside in Victoria have on planned for Library Week this year (Mount Barker’s second one will also be held during Library Week 2007). A Living Library was held at the Malmo [Sweden] festival in 2005 and they have been operating at youth festivals in Denmark since 2000."

What a great idea! A corporate library could let customers “check out” a vice-president for a chat; a hospital could “circulate” top administrators; a law firm could do the same for partners. You get the idea.

INTERNATIONAL INDIGENOUS LIBRARIANS FORUM

I just found out about the International Indigenous Librarians Forum. "In 1997, the Maori Library Workers Network [New Zealand] proposed to the American Indian Library Association (AILA) and the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Library Information and Resource Network (ATSILIRN) [Australia] a gathering of indigenous library workers from around the world."

"Forums are held every two years in a different country"--this year's is in Brisbane, Queensland, Australia 4-7 June. You can get more information at their website or in the April issue (v. 28, no. 4) of inCite, the journal of the Australian Library and Information Association, page 15 (quotes from that article) . Sounds like a very worthwhile group.

URL: http://www.5iilf.org/

GOOD STUFF FOR LAW LIBRARIANS...

The April 2007 issue of AALL Spectrum, the journal of the American Association of Law Libraries, has some especially good articles. (v. 11, no. 6)

Nevers, Shawn G., Promote Your Electronic Resources: Hot to get more bang for your e-resource buck (Practicing Law Librarianship column), pp. 4-5, 16.
Long, Ann Walsh, All Press is Good Press: Promote the profession by writing articles for your local bar, pp. 6-7, 25.
Lynn-Nelson, Gayle, The Next Generation of Learners: Training issues law librarians face in the 21st century, pp. 8-11.

All three articles are available for download. You should read them!

URL: http://www.aallnet.org/products/pub_sp0704.asp

NEW HOSPITAL 2.0 BLOG

Health LIS 2.0 is a new blog from Australia. There are some good posts there. Check it out.

URL: http://hlis.wordpress.com/

THE BEST OF THE WEB...EN FRANCAIS

The Ottawa (Ontario, Canada) Public Library "invites you to try out La Bibliotheque de reference virtuelle (BRV)...a French language portal" to online resources in French, chosen by librarians.

I don't speak French, so I can't assess the site, but it looks really good and useful.

URL: http://www.bibliovirtuelle.ca/

CREATE PERSONALIZED STICKY NOTES FOR YOUR LIBRARY

I was reading my March-April issue of Congregational Libraries Today, the journal of the Church and Synagogue Library Association, and came across this great idea for making your own sticky notes. It comes from their president, Maryann Barth [New Port Richey, Florida]. (This isn’t the first good idea I got from this organization—consider joining just for the magazine. Membership is just US$35 for a personal membership. A real bargain.

To make the notes, create the text on your computer, then print them on colored paper, four to a sheet. Pale colors (pink, yellow, green, or blue) work best. After printing, cut the paper in quarters. When you need to use the note, just wipe a glue stick across the top. (You could probably print them on 3-M’s PostIt© 8-1/2x11 paper, but this way you can use them as regular notes if they don’t need to be sticky.)

She suggests printing the name of your library, address, location, phone number, and hours. I would add your name, email, and website. Also, your logo and/or motto. You can request a free Word template by email from libraries@distantwind.com (a graphics company—I haven’t tried this). Barth ends her article, “These notes get a lot of attention. Enjoy your creativity and get your message out!” Amen.

URL: Church & Synagogue Library Association: http://cslainfo.org/membership.html

NEED A PRICE?

CostHelper.com can help you “find out what price other people are paying” and lets you “share your shopping experiences with others” The categories are: babies and children, cars, computers and the Internet, consumer electronics, games and entertainment, health and personal care, home and garden, personal finance, small business, travel, and weddings. I looked for “camcorder.” (I’m getting one for our river trip from Amsterdam to Vienna next year.) It gave me typical costs for low, medium, and high-end models, what should be included, and suggestions for shopping at Amazon, Wal-mart, Costco, and Best Buy. Not too bad for a free site.

URL: http://www.costhelper.com

GAMING IN THE SOLO LIBRARY

Lisa Redlinski asked the following on the Solo electronic list (SLA-DSOL).”There’s a big ruckus about gaming in public and academic libraries, but what about special libraries? Are any of you collecting or providing games to patrons?”

Here is my response. For those of others, check the list.

I think we should be thinking about turning the website and the catalog into a “game” or at least make using it fun and in a format that the MIllennials are used to. Then they might actually USE it!

I talked to the librarian in an architectural firm who had architects with their own private desk collections. She was wondering how she could give access to these to the younger associates. This would be applicable to a law firm, engineering company, consulting firm, etc., too.

How about making a virtual reality model of the firm? Each principal’s/partner’s office would have an avatar of the principal, a list of his/her books, and a way to ask questions either in real time or by leaving a written (electronic) message. If the technology got good enough, a person could ask the avatar a question and, because the principal had loaded it with enough information, the avatar could answer it or refer the person to a book or another person. This way, the principal would not be bothered in real life--only virtually.

I’m not a gamer, but I can see how this would be advantageous to everyone. Anyone “game” enough to try it?

CONFERENCES IN THE AGE OF ONLINE SOCIAL NETWORKS

Alex Reid [State University of New York (Cortland)] really got me to thinking when I read this post on his blog, Digital digs: an archaeology of the future. Should we continue to have people “read” a paper at a conference? The Writing Program Administration electronic list discussed this issue and decided that “it depends—”on the subject matter, on who is doing the presenting, the length of the presentation, etc. For example, you can easily spend over US$1000 to go to a conference, where you might present your paper to less than 25 people. He asks, “why should I spend a grand out of my own pocket to tell a dozen people what is on my mind? That’s what a blog is for.

Yes, I know that the real purpose of conferences is networking—getting to meet people—and to do the organization’s business in committees. However, could we put all the presentations on the web as text or PowerPoint (using SlideShare or even YouTube) and allow for comments? We could even set up a forum for questions and discussion. Or even do a virtual conference in a synchronous online space like Second Life. (Some people are already doing virtual conferences, but not for the big meeting.

What would we gain? Presentations could be as long as they wanted to be. There could be an accessible record of presentations that would be easy to reference. One could extend the conversation coming out of a presentation and easily make connections between presentations. He even suggests that “the quality of the presentations might improve overall as they would lose their ephemeral quality.” Not only would you save the travel time to and from conferences, but you would not have to sit through a poor presentation or one that turned out to be something other than what you thought it would be. Time at the actual conference could be saved for featured speakers, although these could be podcast or vidcast on a secure website, again making it unnecessary to travel.

Disadvantages: The organization would lose its main (or one of its main) sources of revenue—the annual conference. But this could easily be made up by charging a nominal fee to access a presentation or speech. Those on small budgets—like most of us—could afford to hear more presentations since they would not be paying hotel and air costs. The sum of many smaller payments could equal the few larger conference fees—and many more people would receive the information and participate in the organization.

It sounds like a win-win to me. What do you think?

URL: http://alexreid.typepad.com/digital_digs/2007/03/conferences_in_.html

ANNOUNCING A “SOCIAL EXPERIMENT”

Ivan Chew announces the Singapore Social Media Directory (really, a wiki) to make it easy to find blogs by people or groups in Singapore. There are two main sections: listings by individual and by groups. Entries are listed in alphabetical order. There is also provision for up to twenty phrases or keywords—to facilitate searching by subject. Of course, the directory is searchable.

Chew calls this a “Social Experiment” because the wiki will be opened for anyone to edit. You don’t eve need to be a registered member. He adds, “It’s worth trying out the idea. The cost of failure isn’t that high. The world won’t end if this experiment crashes and burns. No one will die of embarrassment if nobody responds to this. So let the Social Experiment begin!”

URLs:
Announcement: http://ramblinglibrarian.blogspot.com/2007/03/
experiment-announcing-singapore-social.html
Wiki: http://sgsocialmediadir.wikispaces.com/

LEGAL QUESTIONS/ANSWERS DATABASE

"The A-Z Knowledgebase is a collection of handy references and hard to find answers to a diverse assortment of legal research questions. Originally a private resource created and maintained by the B.C. Courthouse Library Society to help staff answer users' questions, the A-Z continues to grow as we add new items and update older ones. The A-Z is not a comprehensive resource. Instead, it is an eclectic mix of research tips and information designed to help our users find answers to their questions. Some items link to online resources. Other items provide catalogue references and information on books and resources in B.C. Courthouse libraries and other library collections."

URL: http://www.bccls.bc.ca/cms/index.cfm?group_id=70002

COLLEGE BASKETBALL ARCHIVES

NewspaperARCHIVE now has over free 50,000 full-text, full-image “historic” articles about college basketball, for those for whom March Madness is in full swing. Search is a bit slow, but it is a unique resource.

URL: http://collegebasketballarchive.com/Home.aspx

CANADIAN COCHRANE CENTER

They have reloaded their web site and presentations from the 5th Canadian Cochrane Symposium are now posted.

URL: http://www.ccnc.cochrane.org/en/index.html

IT BOOKS TO DOWNLOAD

“This site was created as a service to those who are learning programming and might not have the resources available to purchase books.” The site also has links to blogs, free e-books, free engineering books, OPACs in India, selected quotations, and website designing basics. From Akhila Matrix, an Indian company.

URL: http://www.akhilamatrix.com/computer_science.htm

QUICK REFERENCE “ROLODEX”

The Evanston (Illinois) Public Library has a website, Reference Rolodex, which has answers to many quick reference questions, such as “what are the ‘gry’ words in the English language?” This could replace your own card file or just make for fascinating reading for trivia junkies like me.

URL: http://ref.epl.org/browsecardonly.php

BLOGS ON PHARMACY AND THE PHARMACEUTICAL INDUSTRY

I ran across the following recently.

Drug Channels, “expert viewpoints by Dr. Adam J. Fein [Pembroke Consulting, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania] on the latest pharmaceutical industry trends affecting manufacturers, wholesalers, pharmacies, PBMs, and payers,” http://www.drugchannels.net/

Life on the Pharm, “navigating the labyrinth of regulatory compliance in the pharmaceutical industry,” by a housewife who is an “avid reader of medical literature”—for what it’s worth, http://life-on-the-pharm.blogspot.com

The Pharm Blogosphere, “a blog about blogging about the pharmaceutical industry,” by John Mack, publisher of Pharma Marketing News. Has a great list of blogs about the industry. http://pharmablogosphere.blogspot.com

UPDATED VERSION OF TOXSEEK

“ToxSeek is an NLM [National Libraries of Medicine, USA] metasearch engine and clustering tool that enables the simultaneous searching of many different toxicology and environmental health information databases and Web sites.” There’s a new spell checker, automatic inclusion of MeSH medical subject headings, environmental health e-maps, refined search strategies for the Consumer Product Safety Commission and Centers for Disease Control site, and the addition of World Health Organization.

URL: http://toxseek.nlm.nih.gov/toxseek/

BEAUTIFUL DRAWINGS OF LIBRARY READERS

“Enjoyment in Libraries with the Candid Pencil of David Friedman, 1962-1972, St. Louis, Missouri” is a collection of drawings of readers in St. Louis libraries. From the Finkelstein Memorial Library, Spring Valley, New York.

URL: http://finkelsteinlibrary.org/Friedman_Drawings/index.html

NEW WEBSITE FOR BAILLI

The British and Irish Legal Information Institute, BAILLI (Bailey, as in Old Bailey—cute), has launched a new website. It has “British and Irish case law and legislation, European Union case law, Law Commission reports, and other law-related British and Irish material.”

URL: http://www.bailii.org/

GOVERNMENT DOCUMENTS BLOG

Kevin McClure [Chicago-Kent College of Law, Illinois] manages The Gov Docs Guy blog “highlighting newsworthy government documents.” Good stuff.

URL: http://govdocsblog.kentlaw.edu/wordpress

WHY IT IS IMPORTANT FOR LIBRARY SCHOOL STUDENTS TO LEARN TO WORK IN TEAMS

David E. McBee [Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, Washington, DC] wrote on his blog, Library Buzz, “In library school I had a professor, Neal Kaske, who was then head of the Engineering Library. He asked us why library students were always asked to work on team projects—was it just to annoy us? He pointed out that in the sciences [and business, too] there were always teams working together on projects. Each person has a specialty though there is often some overlap. People would conduct their research as a part of the team effort. Now, most library students come from a liberal arts background where folks tend to study and research on their own. So, part of library school is designed to teach us how to work as part of team.” This may become less important in the future, since the upcoming generations have been working in teams since grade school.

URL: http://dmcbee.weblts.com/?p=81

CHICAGO POLICE ARE NOW BLOGGING

Checkerboard Chat: Of the Police, By the Police, For the Police, the Chicago Police Department Weblog is fascinating. You know the technology has gone mainstream when our men in blue have adopted it.

URL: http://cpdweblog.typepad.com/

WIKI FOR RADIOLOGY

Radiopaedia.org aims “to develop an online text where information is up to date and relevant to the needs of radiology staff.” It seems to be a good start.

URL: http://www.radiopaedia.org

THE KID HAS THE RIGHT IDEA….

“One precocious first-grader, Elias Khoury, warned his classmates: ‘The computer is mostly mind-numbing. If you waste time on the computer, you won’t find any good books.” In Of the Places You’ll Go, Is the Library Still One of Them? by Jeff Zaslow, The Wall Street Journal online, 15 March 2007.

URL: http://www.careerjournal.com/columnists/movingon/20070320
-movingon.html

SIMPLE, QUICK, BUT EFFECTIVE NEW PUBMED SEARCH ENGINE

ReleMed is so simple that it couldn’t be any good, right? Wrong. It provides the same results as a PubMed search, but faster and easier, plus it arranges them by relevance. Other neat features are planned, including links to the full-text. Try it.

URL: http://www.relemed.com

GOOD BIBLIOGRAPHY ON EBL

Andrew Booth and Anne Brice have written a good report on evidence-based librarianship, titled Prediction is Difficult, Especially the Future: A Progress Report, Evidence Based Library and Information Practice 2(1), 14 March 2007. The bibliography is especially complete.

URL: http://ejournals.library.ualberta.ca/index.php/EBLIP/article/view/99/242

WHAT IS WEB 2.0? JISC’S REPORT

The Joint Information Systems Committee of the UK commissioned a report “to “investigate the substance behind the hyperbole surrounding Web 2.0” (Karna O’Dea, ALIA information sharing officer). The result is Paul Anderson’s What is Web 2.0? Ideas, technologies and implications for education. It looks to be a very significant report. To quote from the Executive Summary, “Web 2.0 is more than a set of ‘cool’ and new technologies and services…. It has, at its heart, a set of at least six powerful ideas that are changing the way some people interact.”

URL: http://www.jisc.ac.uk/media/documents/techwatch/tsw0701b.pdf

ORG CHARTS ONLINE—NICE IDEA, BUT NOT READY FOR PRIME TIME

CogMap: The Org Chart Wiki has a great idea, but the execution is shaky. They promise organization charts for companies around the world. There are about a dozen posted, but the only companies I’d heard of are Microsoft, Google, Yahoo! and “United States of America.” They are not complete and there is little detail. Also, it seems anyone can edit them, so who knows how reliable the information is. But they are an interesting read, especially the USA one.

URL: http://www.cogmap.com

BLOGGING POLICIES FOR LAWYERS

Blogging Policies and Best Practices for Lawyers and Law Firms, by Edward Poll [LawBiz© Management, Venice, California] has some very good advice and can help you and your law firm establish your own policies. On CBA Practice Link (California Bar Association), which has links to other resources on blogging for lawyers.

URL: http://www.cba.org/CBA/PracticeLink/TAYP/blogpolicies.aspx

DATABASES FOR SPANISH-SPEAKING JURISDICTIONS

About databases from Globalex, from Dennis Kim-Prieto [Rutgers School of Law, Newark, New Jersey].

URL: http://www.nyulawglobal.org/globalex/Databases_
Spanish-Speaking_Jurisdictions.htm

TIPS FOR TECHNOLOGY CHANGE

1. Research technologies not only before you adopt them, but also while you’re using them.
2. Don’t get emotionally attached to a particular technology.
3. Continuously research competing technologies to the ones you are using now.
4. Don’t build yourself into a corner.

Lucas McDonnell [PricewaterhouseCoopers, Canada], unCommon Knowledge, 4 January 2007, quoted in Becoming a Technology Agnostic, David Lee King, 21 March 2007

URL: http://www.lucasmcdonnell.com/increase-knowledge-innovation-
and-manage-technology-change/

NEW BOOK FOR MEDICAL LIBRARIANS...AND OTHERS

Using Benchmarking, Needs Assessment, Quality Improvement, Outcome Measurement, and Library Standards: A How-To-Do-It Manual by Rosalind Farnam Dudden, Neal-Schuman and Medical Library Association, 2007, ISBN 1-55570-604-5, book and CD-ROM.

Order by April 30, 2007, and receive $15 off! (cannot be combined with other offers)
Special Price: $70.00, plus $9.25 shipping and handling.

After April 30:
MLA member: $76.50 plus $9.25 shipping and handling
Nonmembers: $85.00 plus $9.25 shipping and handling

Evaluation tools are an essential part of improving service and proving the library’s value. This easy-to-understand how-to outlines the use of five of the most important and popular methods of evaluation:
• Needs assessments
• Performance improvements
• Benchmarking
• Library standards
• Outcome measures
Each chapter includes step-by-step guidance for defining goals, staffing the project, developing a timeline, collecting data, analyzing findings, and sharing results. The five different methods are illustrated with real-world examples, showing what libraries evaluated and how findings helped change their organization. Invaluable managerial tools including checklists, forms, worksheets, and more — all reproducible from the CD-ROM — help you implement the methods easily and affectively. Managers in all types of libraries will find this an informative and practical resource for improving their organization.

URL: Order at: http://www.neal-schuman.com/db/0/590.html

BLOGOVERSITY: NON-LIBRARY BLOGS I FOLLOW

Rachel Singer Gordon started this--on her blog, The Liminal Librarian. Here's my contribution.

Beloit College News,my alma mater (undergrad)
http://www.beloit.edu/

Bozo Urbana, weird stuff going on in Champaign-Urbana, Illinois, my home town and where we're going to retire in a few years
http://bozourbana.org/

little blog on the prairie, like Bozo Urbana, but more interesting and better written
http://lbotp.wordpress.com/

News & Events from the University of Illinois Alumni Association, my other alma mater (library school) plus I am president of the Cleveland Illini Club,

Fighting Illini news (U of I athletic association), useful for Illini Club newsletters
http://fightingillini.com/

Illinois News Bureau--Research
http://www.news.uiuc.edu

Running a Library, blog from a hospital CEO--fascinating!
http://runningahospital.blogspot.com

WSJ.com: Health Blog, just because,
http://blogs.wsj.com/health/

NEW BLOG--BY A HOSPITAL CEO

Running a Hospital is a new blog by Paul Levy, President and CEO of Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston, Massachusetts. I just started following it, but it looks fascinating and provides a viewpoint not often seen in the blogosphere--management. I wonder if the Beth Israel librarian is blogging?

URL: http://runningahospital.blogspot.com/

PROQUEST'S SUPPORT FOR ADVOCACY

ProQuest has unveiled several tools for library advocacy. The one that's most relevant is the Library Marketing Kit, with a how-to-guide, customizable flier and press release, and a digital "ad." Neat stuff!

URL: http://www.il.proquest.com/division/libraryadvocacy.shtml

DID YOU KNOW?

MEDLIB-L readers send about 12,000,000 (million) messages per year!
A-maze-ing!

TWO WAYS TO KEEP TRACK OF THE U.S. GOVERNMENT

Open Congress
http://www.opencongress.org/
“Open Congress brings together official government data with news and blog coverage to give you the real story behind each bill.” Categories: bills, senators, representatives, committees, industries, issues, and blog. Also can follow bills, including most viewed bills. From the Sunlight Foundation and PPF, both dedicated to getting the “real” story from Congress.

VA Watchdog
http://vawatchdog.org/
This time the site is “keeping an eye on the VA (Veterans’ Administration) because somebody has to!” There are news flashes, Congressional committee watches, VA press releases, links and tips to help veterans, podcasts and videos. It may be a bit biased against the VA, but is a good source of information anyway.

EXERCISE HELP

Do you need some help with doing your exercises right? The Training Station shows animated diagrams of over 100 exercises—when you click on the diagram it actually shows you how to perform it. There are also workouts designed for beginners to advanced, all available as eBooks or CDs as well. It's from a commercial source, but useful nonetheless.

URL: http://thetrainingstationinc.com

ONLINE ANATOMY AND MEDICAL ILLUSTRATION RESOURCES

David Rothman posted this list of resources on his blog, davidrothman.net (http://davidrothman.net/2007/03/15/online-anatomy-and-medical-
illustration-resources/) . Thanks, David.

The Visible Human
http://www.nlm.nih.gov/research/visible/visible_human.html
This site aims to create complete, anatomically detailed, three-dimensional representations of the normal male and female human bodies. Acquisition of transverse CT, MR and cryosection images of representative male and female cadavers has been completed.

NetAnatomy.com
http://www.netanatomy.com/
Created by physicians and Ph.D.s at George Washington University and the American University of Beirut, NetAnatomy contains sections on radiographic, cross-sectional, and gross anatomy designed to teach human anatomy to students of the health professions, including undergraduate medical, health sciences, and nursing students.

WebAnatomy
http://msjensen.education.umn.edu/webanatomy/
A collection of study aids for entry-level anatomy and physiology students,” from the University of Minnesota.

Instant Anatomy
http://www.instantanatomy.net/
A website with illustrations of the Human Body to aid the learning of Human Anatomy with diagrams, podcasts and revision questions. Created by Robert Whitaker, retired pediatric urological surgeon who teaches clinically applied topographical anatomy at Cambridge University.

Human Anatomy Online
http://www.innerbody.com/htm/body.html
Animations, graphics, and descriptive links on a “fun, interactive, and an ideal reference site for students or those who just want to know more about the medical descriptions used by doctors and nurses.” From myhealthscore.com.

Anatomy Atlases
http://anatomyatlases.org/
“A digital library of anatomy information curated by Ronald A. Bergman, Ph.D.,” a retired professor formerly at the University of Iowa. Includes: Atlas of Human Anatomy, Atlas of Human Anatomy in Cross Section, Atlas of Microscopic Anatomy: A Functional Approach, Anatomy of First Aid: A Case Study Approach, Illustrated Encyclopedia of Human Anatomic Variation, and Lessons from a Bone Box (even has videos).

AMA Atlas of the Body
http://www.ama-assn.org/ama/pub/category/7140.html
Straighforward diagrams from the American Medical Association.

Dream Anatomy
http://www.nlm.nih.gov/exhibition/dreamanatomy/
History of anatomical illustration. Interesting, but hard to tell how useful it might be.

Medical Animation Library
http://pennhealth.com/health_info/animationplayer/
From the University of Pennsylvania. Requires Flash and Quicktime.

Street Anatomy
http://streetanatomy.blogspot.com/
A blog about medical illustration (“medical visualization: past, present, and future”) from Vanessa Ruiz, a graduate student in Biomedical Visualization at the University of Illinois at Chicago.

HOSPITAL LIBRARIANS' WIKI

The Hospital Libraries Section of the Medical Library Association has created a wiki called MLA-HLS. It is new and doesn't have too much on it yet, but shows a lot of promise.

I put up a couple of pages in Evidence-Based Medicine. Look them up. Add something if you have resources to share. Wikis are only as good as the material on them and that material needs to come from all of us.

URL: http://mla-hls.wikispaces.com

STATEMENT OF CORE COMPETENCIES--LIBRARY SCHOOL VERSION

Statement of Core Competencies
San Jose State University (California) School of Library and Information Science
http://slisweb.sjsu.edu/slis/competencies.htm
Each graduate of the Master of Library and Information Science program is able to...

1. articulate the ethics, values and foundational principles of library and information professionals and their role in the promotion of intellectual freedom;
2. compare the environments and organizational settings in which library and information professionals practice;
3. recognize the social, cultural and economic dimensions of information use;
4. apply the fundamental principles of planning, management and marketing/advocacy;
5. design, query and evaluate information retrieval systems;
6. use the basic concepts and principles related to the creation, evaluation, selection, acquisition, preservation and organization of specific items or collections of information;
7. understand the system of standards and methods used to control and create information structures and apply basic principles involved in the organization and representation of knowledge;
8. demonstrate proficiency in the use of current information and communication technologies, and other related technologies, as they affect the resources and uses of libraries and other types of information providing entities;
9. use service concepts, principles and techniques that facilitate information access, relevance, and accuracy for individuals or groups of users;
10. describe the fundamental concepts of information-seeking behaviors;
11. design training programs based on appropriate learning principles and theories;
12. understand the nature of research, research methods and research findings; retrieve, evaluate and synthesize scholarly and professional literature for informed decision-making by specific client groups;
13. demonstrate oral and written communication skills necessary for group work, collaborations and professional level presentations;
14. evaluate programs and services on specified criteria; and
15. contribute to the cultural, economic, educational and social well-being of our communities.

These are really great. Now if all library grads could demonstrate all these competencies.
Question: How do they test for them?

US NEWS DESCRIPTION OF LIBRARIANS

Librarian: Executive Summary
by Marty Nemko, USNews.com, Money & Business, 18 December 2006, http://www.usnews.com/usnews/biztech/articles/061218/
18librarian.summary.htm

Forget about that image of librarian as a mousy bookworm. Librarians these days must be high-tech information sleuths, helping researchers plumb the oceans of information available in books and digital records. It’s an underrated career. Most librarians love helping patrons dig up information and, in the process, learning new things. Librarians may also go on shopping sprees, deciding which books and online resources to buy. They even get to put on performances, like children’s puppet shows, and run other programs, like book discussion groups for elders. On top of it all, librarians’ work hours are reasonable, and the work environment, needless to say, is placid.

Median Salary: $49,708

Other Resources:
Department of Labor profile, http://www.bls.gov/oco/ocos068.htm
American Library Association
Special Libraries Association
[Ms. OPL says, what about MLA, AALL, etc.?]
Shontz, Priscilla, The Librarian’s Career Guidebook, Methuen, NJ: Scarecrow, 2004, ISBN-10: 0810850346, ISBN-13: 978-0810850347, US$45.00
Kane, Laura Townsend, Straight from the Stacks: A First Hand Guide to Careers in Library and Information Science, Chicago: American Library Association, 2003, ISBN-10: 0838908659, ISBN-13: 978-0838908655, US$34.00

Related Content:
Brandon, Emily, Librarian: James Billington Sees a Bright Future Beyond Books, USNews.com, 18 December 2006, http://www.usnews.com/usnews/biztech/articles/061218/

18librarian.expert.htm
Nemko, Marty, Librarian: A Day in the Life, USNews.com, 18 December 2006, http://www.usnews.com/usnews/biztech/articles/061218/

18librarian.life.htm
(text of the article)

You work in a small municipal library, where you have to do a little of everything. You start your day by leafing through catalogs from online database publishers and book reviews in Library Journal to decide which titles to add to your collection. Next, it’s out to the reference desk, where visitors regularly ask how to find something. Sometimes it’s esoteric; often it’s the bathroom. Later, you teach a class: an advanced lesson in Googling.
Next, it’s back to the reference desk, but you’re soon interrupted by a group of boisterous kids, so you have to turn into schoolmarm: “You’ll have to be quiet, or I’ll have to ask you to leave.”
You end your day reading about “automated librarianship”: data storage systems that let the public get needed resources without the help of a live librarian. Tomorrow, you decide, you’ll start writing a grant proposal to develop a computer kiosk that will help patrons find health information.
Smart Specialty: Special Librarian.
All sorts of organizations need librarians, not just universities and local governments. They work for law firms, prisons, corporations, and nonprofit agencies. In fact, special librarianship is the field’s fastest-growing job market. Unlike public and university jobs, which require night and weekend hours, these jobs are mostly 9 to 5.

SAVE TIME WITH WEB 2.0 TOOLS

Aaron Schmidt [North Plains Public Library, North Plains, Oregon, USA] writes in a post on his blog, Walking Paper, that he is a very busy reference librarian in a small public library. He uses Web 2.0 tools to same time. You don’t have to be in a public library to follow his example.

The library’s website was created with WordPress; the library tour is powered by PictoBrowser and Flickr; and the librarians use Google Spreadsheet “to organize the collaboration of multiple employees that are infrequently in the same room.”

He concludes, “I hope this mini case study of a time strapped library helps expose the ‘I don’t have time for social software’ excuse to be just that: an excuse for not wanting to expand and learn.”

URLs:
Complete post: http://www.walkingpaper.org/402
NPPL website: http://nplibrary.org/
Library tour: http://nplibrary.org/tour-the-library/
WordPress: http://www.wordpress.com
PictoBrowser: http://www.db798.com/work/
Flickr: http://www.flickr.com
Google Spreadsheet: http://docs.google.com

SUBJECT GUIDES TO WEB SOURCES IN THE UK

Booklets (in pdf format) with selected and annotated web sites (mostly in the UK) are available from Intute. Intute exists to help students, teachers, researchers and librarians make sense of the Web by providing access to the very best Internet resources for education and research. The service is created by a network of UK universities and partners. Subject specialists select and evaluate the websites in our database and write high quality descriptions of the resources. The database contains 115948 records. It is funded by JISC (the Joint Information Systems Committee) with support from the Economic and Social Research Council and the Arts and Humanities Research Council. It was formerly known as the RDN (Resource Discovery Network).

Subjects:
Science and Engineering: Chemistry, computing, environmental engineering, and physics
Arts and Humanities: archaeology, fashion and beauty, religion and theology, and visual arts
Social Sciences: business and tourism, law, social research, and social welfare
Health and Life Sciences: agriculture, food and forestry, animal health, healthcare and medicine, and physiotherapy and orthopaedics

Sample contents
Law: general law, legal information gateways, educational materials, organizations; UK law, EU law, other jurisdictions, international law, law by subject area.
Healthcare and medicine: online education and teaching materials, factual databases, bibliographic information, electronic journals, books and full-text documents, news and discussion, patient information, clinical resources, professional organisations

URL: http://www.intute.ac.uk/

ATTN: RECENT OR SOON-TO-BE RETIREES

If you are a solo and have retired recently or plan to do so in the next couple of years, please get in touch with me. I have an opportunity for you. You can email me at jsiess@ibi-opl.com.

DO YOU HAVE BOOKS YOU DON'T NEED?

Better World Books will take library discards and donations and use them to fund literacy initiatives locally, nationally, and around the world. They sell the books and donate some of the sales to non-profit literacy partners. And it costs you nothing. But, they will not take books from collections that have been "picked over" (offered to employees or the public). If they can't sell the books, they recycle them. The four major partners are: Books for Africa, Room to Read, National Center for Family Literacy, and World Education and Development Fund. They've given out over US$1.3 million since they started in 1994.

URL: http://betterworldbooks.com/

15 WAYS TO PROMOTE EFFECTIVE USE OF ONLINE RESOURCES

This article is the result of a study commissioned by Elsevier in 2002. It appears on their free librarian-outreach website, LibraryConnect. Here are some of the 15 tips.

“On the library homepage, offer links to digital resources and subject-specific content.” “Offer searchable lists of online resources and providers.” “List library staff titles and names with telephone numbers and email addresses.” AMEN! “Avoid generic email alerts to a wide audience in favor of tailored email messages.”

URL: http://libraryconnect.elsevier.com/lcp/0102/lcp010201.html

MARKETING ELECTRONIC RESOURCES

A sad truth: “While we don’t charge monetarily for our services, the user incurs costs in terms of time and effort. For many users, libraries are simply not worth it.” “We’re no longer the only game in town.” “We know that many of our users are keen to have electronic access, but often they’re not aware that the library has the information that they need.”

To market effectively, “ define your market, decide what to promote, target an audience, decide on the venue and media, construct and appropriate message, [and] evaluate your efforts.”

Wisniewski, Jeff and Darlene Fichter, Electronic resources won’t sell themselves: marketing tips, Online 31(1):54-57, January/February 2007.

THE ENDANGERED JOY OF SERENDIPITY

William McKeen wrote eloquently on this subject in the St. Petersburg Times, 26 March 2006. Here is just a few quotes to give you the flavor of the article.

He requires students in his journalism class at the University of Florida (where he is chair of the department) to subscribe to the New York Times. When telling a student that no, he cannot just read it online, he said, “Because then you would only find what you’re looking for.”

“Serendipity is a historian’s best friend and the biggest part of the rush that is the daily magic of discovery.” “When you know what you want—or think you do—you lose the adventure of discovery, of finding something for yourself.” “We must allow ourselves to be surprised. We must relearn how to be human, to start again as we did as children—learning through awkward and bungling discovery.” At the end of your life, do you want to look back and say, “I could have missed this.”

URL: http://www.sptimes.com/2006/03/26/Perspective/The_endangered_joy_of.shtml

MERGING THE REFERENCE AND CIRCULATION DESK

The Engineering Library at Cornell University, Ithaca, New York, combined the reference and circulation desks. The main goals of the merge were: “provide a ‘one stop’ shopping environment for [their] users, extend at least basic reference services to all hours of library operation, respond to on-site service trends, provide an efficient and flexible staffing solution, [and] use the limited space more efficiently.” The paper presents a literature review and a description of the process and rationale. But I think that the most useful part of the paper is at the end—the two appendices that presents the perspective of the reference and circulation professionals’s perspectives on the process and outcome.

Powell, Jill, et al., Integrating an Engineering Library’s Public Services Desk: Multiple Perspectives, Issues in Science and Technology Leadership Winter 2007, http://www.istl.org/07-winter/article2.html

RESPONDING TO CHANGING USERS

The latest issue of the Journal of the European Association for Health Information and Libraries has as its theme The Changing of the User Environment. There were two articles that I thought were especially good. Here is a bit of each.

Guus Van den Brekel [University Medical Center Groningen, The Netherlands]: “The awareness of our quality resources and ways to find them, is no longer present, or being pushed aside, even swept away by the simplicity of searches via Google and others. How did (we let) this happen?” A combination of the ease of searching Google and PubMed, sticking to traditional library systems too long, and the new attitudes of the net-generation and gamers. “How can we change this?” Move from being product-oriented to user oriented. “Shift from ‘This is what we offer to you. Come and get it if you want to use it!’ to ‘You choose the services you need, when and where you need them.’” Get out of the library. Over the long-term, rebuild library systems “with open standards focused on modular web-based services.”

Tuulevi Ovaska [Kuopio University Library, Finland]: Divides users into three groups: “1. those who want to be totally served, 2. those who want to do things themselves but need assistance, and 3. those who are able to do everything they need for themselves.” “How should we, and how can we, provide the services for each group in such a way that we do not give less than they require but also not more than they need, or , what is more important, wish from us.” Group 1: perceives the quality of service to be equal to the speed of delivery, is becoming smaller. Group 2: must do more than provide access and written instructions, especially if English is not their native language; need hands-on training; problem is lack of time—both for users and staff. Group 3: “It is enough to inform them about the new services and resources available….”

References:
Ovaska, Tuulevi, Coping with different user habits and the changing user environment, Journal of the European Association for Health Information and Libraries 3(1):17-18, 2007.
Van den Brekel, Guus, Into the user environment now! how users have changed and how libraries can adjust, Journal of the European Association for Health Information and Libraries 3(1):8-16, 2007.

INFORMATION LITERACY RESOURCES

I ran across the Information Literacy Website today. Here you will find a LOT of good information.
There is a link to the LIS-INFOLITERACY electronic list and its archives.
This is also the home of the brand-new Journal of Information Literacy, "an international, peer-reviewed, academic journal that aims to investigate Information Literacy (IL) within a wide range of settings." The first issue has two refereed articles: An evaluation of an information literacy training initiative at the University of Dar es Salaam and Using online collaborative learning to enhance information literacy delivery in a Level 1 module: an evaluation. There are also five "articles from practice" (one on online information literacy learning for nurses) and three book reviews.

URLs:
Information Literacy Website, http://www.informationliteracy.org.uk/
Journal of Information Literacy, http://www.informationliteracy.org.uk/JIL.aspx
LIS-INFOLITERACY electronic list, http://www.jiscmail.ac.uk/lists/LIS-INFOLITERACY.html

DATABASE OF FREE OFFICE 2.0 APPLICATIONS

The Office 2.0 Applications database has been developed by Ismael Chang Ghalimi [Intalio, Palo Alto, California], a writer on IT transformation. It is a great source of free online software.

The database includes the following (number of applications): 27 bookmark, 3 calculator, 13 calendar, 1 clipboard, 3 command prompt, 5 contact, 17 CRM, 9 database, 16 desktop, 1 desktop management, 10 development tool, 8 document manager, 7 drawing tool, 10 email, 9 expense tracker, 3 fax, 7 feed processor, 10 feed reader, 15 file manager, 8 file senders, 1 file server, 7 form designer, 14 group manager, 16 IM, 4 mind map, 6 music player, 21 notepad, 8 operating system, 6 outliner, 7 personal organizer, 7 photo editing, 10 photo manager, 7 polls, 17 presentation, 3 printer, 16 project, 2 scanner, 2 scheduler, 1 sound mixer,11 spreadsheet, 21 task manager, 9 time tracking, 11 utilities, 9 video editing, 9 voice mail, 3 web conferencing, 14 web publishing, 4 weblog, 10 word processor

URL: http://itredux.com/office-20/database/

NEW FORUM FOR OPLS IN AUSTRALIA (and soon, elsewhere)

Denise Cadman, coordinator of the Queensland OPAL (One-Person Australian Librarians) group (part of ALIA, the Australian Library and Information Association), has created a new facility for the OPALs community, The OPALs Forum. The forum will give you the possibility to share your knowledge and get support from OPALs in Australia and abroad. OPALs in Australia have the opportunity to be the "early adopters" for this new initiative. Based on your participation and feedback, this facility could be extended to library OPALs globally. Please note that the forum is for OPALs only and you are required to register with your real name and an email address that can be used to identify you as an OPAL.

The forum will be a learning experience for all of us—this is ther first use of this forum software.

If anything doesn’t work as you think it should, or you would like to see additional features enabled in the forum software please post in a new thread.

To register for the OPAL Forum, go to http://forums.softlinkint.com
Once registered, access the OPAL Forum at http://forums.softlinkint.com/forumdisplay.php?f=10
If you need help to register, go to http://forums.softlinkint.com/video/registration.wmv to download the registration video.

I hope you will enjoy using the OPAL Forum!

NURSELINKUP: MYSPACE FOR NURSES?

David Rothman has an interesting post, NurseLinkUp: My Space for Nurses, on his blog. He raises two questions for medical librarians.

Should medical librararies and librarians be establishing accounts in social networking sites such as NurseLinkUp, Sermo, Healtheva, Facebook, MySpace, or even Second Life? If so, what should we do there? How will our actions differ from those of academic and public library folk?

Will these sites even allow medical libraries or librarians to have accounts, or will these sites behave as Facebook did and remove their entries? (Saying that it was for “individuals,” not “faceless entities” like libraries.)

URLs:
http://davidrothman.net/2007/03/05/nurselinkup-myspace-for-nurses/
NurseLinkUp, http://www.nurselinkup.com
Sermo, http://www.sermo.com
Healtheva, http://www.healtheva.com
Facebook, http://www.facebook.com
MySpace, http://www.myspace.com
Second Life, http://secondlife.com

WHY PEOPLE TRUST INTERNET HEALTH INFORMATION

Envision Solutions has published a new survey, Diving Deeper Into Online Health Search: Examining Why People Trust Internet Content & The Impact of User-Generated Media. There are some frightening findings here. Read it at http://www.envisionsolutionsnow.com/healthsearch.html

LAW LIBRARIAN NEWS FOR NEW ZEALAND

Law Librarian NewzDigest provides news from around the world on library issues, knowledge management, and records management. Its sources are GoogleNews, Yahoo! News, vendors, and a couple of blogs, Law Librarian Blog and BeSpacific. It's from PinHawk and there is a two-week free trial available. PinHawk also has other services: Law Firm NewzDigest, Securities NewzDigest, Corporate Legal NewzDigest, Court Opinions NewzDigest, Law Firm Press NewzDigest, and Banking NewzDigest. It's worth a try...

URL: http://www.pinhawk.com