Host institutions

Hi Colleagues

I believe you are all settled in your host institutions. What are the highlights of the events at this time of the year. User education sessions, exams or tests. Our students are busy submitting assigments and test just before they close for Easter vacations. We had a high demand of User education sessions. Bring ideas for us to improve our services. Iam sure we are far behind the Americans. But we will eventually get there.

The big T

I attended a workshop this week on writing your academic portfolio, aimed mainly at professionals on tenure track. The workshop was offered by the authors of the book 'Evaluating Faculty Performance: a practical guide to assessing teaching, research and service' Peter Seldin and Elizabeth Miller. I learnt the following:

• posts are advertised with tenure track, so the decision is made when applying, NOT along the way in the position
• library staff here do not belong to unions at all
• much support is offered at A&M to staff who are on tenure track, i.e. a mentoring system with experienced tenures appointed to assist and advise the protege

All-in-all I think it is a good system that encourages scholarship and good work performance. Have a look at Peter & Elizabeth's book if you can get hold of it.

Aggieland

The Texas State flower blue-bonnet in full flower on open fields all around Texas at the moment - a beautiful spring display! A&M University horticulture students managed to grow them in maroon as well, as maroon is the university colour!

Its been a hectic week to say the least!

Even though I had a bad start with the flight to CollegeStation been cancelled at Dallas Airport, and I had to be re-booked via GeorgeBush Airport, Houston, meaning yet another airport landing & departure.... and I arrived at CollegeStation only at 19h00 on the 19th when you were all happily settled in already, the learning experience here is great. There isn't much happening in CollegeStation other than the university activities - the city is very much like UrbanaChampaign. But people are really friendly here, they start conversations in restaurants and offer advice on places to visit and avoid...... yes that too! Not everything on the Visitor's Planning Guide is recommended of course, depending on which side of the political fence you are.

Accommodation is very ordinary, much like Illinois. But I must tell you I set the alarm off twice with using a hairdryer. Any hot air, leaking gas and smoke can easily be detected in student apartments - this I learnt is due to an international student losing his wife & baby a couple of years back due to a gasleak from the stove. Living with such a hyperactive alarm system therefore makes it worthwhile, I'm not complaining!

University of Washington

Whew!!! What a week and more!! It has been much more than I bargained for. Sorry… have been out of touch. Unlike Janine and her laundry saga, I have been very fortunate to have laundry facilities “on site”. The staff at University of Washington libraries have been very friendly and made me feel at home the minute I walked in. I have been invited to lunch almost every day. It has been meetings, lunches and more meetings. As I walked this morning feeling the crisp air (3 degrees C) it suddenly struck me that this campus is absolutely clean and free of litter. Not sure whether this is because it is spring break but I’ll have to wait until next week to see if there is any difference in this clean environment. It is amazing but people are responsible enough to make sure that recyclable stuff goes into a separate bin, even at food courts people clean up after themselves and make sure you use a pedestrian crossing or a traffic light in order to get across the street.
About University of Washington (UW), I will not be doing any justice if I try to describe it. So therefore feast your eyes on this video clip and eat your heart out!!!http://depts.washington.edu/mediarel/galleries/

Lost one found

Not that I did not want to communicate, but I was blocked due to technical issues. Hope its been solved, Janine used the magic stick! This is really just a test-blog and if it works, I'll be back later today or tomorrow.

Hi to all... hope you're well and giving you're institutions a hard time.

Tenure Track librarianship - Are librarians crossing the floor?

A roundtable discussion at the ACRL conference revealed some of the burning issues that librarians still grapple with:

1. The difficult choice of remaining on the service side of the profession or leaping into scholarship (or doing both).
2. Unlike academics, practising scholar librarians are not given sufficient time to do research.
3. Librarians on the tenure system are paid ten months' salary for twelve months' worth of work.
4. Payscales are based on ranks in the Faculty
5. The criteria or requirements for tenure are often blurred and ambiguous.
6. Performance reviews include scrutiny by external reviewers.

One fact that has clearly come out of this discussion is that the system of tenure is not consistently applied in all University libraries that have elected to follow this path.

Is the goal of faculty status worth the struggle librarians go through? There was a resounding YES!!! to this question posed by the facilitator.Despite all other difficulties, librarians in the US think the Tenure system is a blessing.Many believe that they have to be given the opportunity to choose between staying in the traditional embedded librarianship role or cross over to the scholarly librarianship.

Community Access

In many of the libraries we have visited, community walk-in access to collections is an important consideration.

This has been an interesting feature of services offered not only by libraries in state universities but also those which are private. Guest user policies allow varying degrees of access and might include on-site access only; limited borrowing privileges from the main academic library; and sometimes even access to electronic resources. Hours and days of access might also be clearly specified.

With community access, compliance with vendor licensing restrictions on subscribed e-resources becomes an important issue. Libraries either provide users from the community with access codes which limit access to their subscribed e-resources depending on licensing constraints; or which exclude access to these resources altogether. Sometimes e-resource agreements with vendors are negotiated to include access by the community!

This encourages the development of public access and acknowledges the role of academic libraries in their social communities.

Laundry excitement

We've all arrived in our host library cities/towns and it's been a settling in kind of weekend. Because there hasn't been much work action, I thought I'd tell you a little story about my weekend adventures:

I've arrived to the most incredibly beautiful apartment. It's in a converted tobacco factory and my apartment is brand new. I feel very very privileged.

My first priority on arriving here was to do laundry. I'd just spent a week in a hotel and I'd gone through just about all my clothes. I was ready to start over with some clean ones.

Laundry: simple enough, right?

Wrong.

I remembered hearing on arriving here that you needed a laundry card to do laundry - no coin machines. Ok, I thought: I'll get a card. Mmm, but where? Resourceful me: I found out that I could buy one at a machine in the Business Centre (Center!). And so the sad story begins:

Catch the lift (elevator!) to the ground (first!) floor to get to the Business Centre (Center!).
Get to the door and discover I need a code to get in.
Catch the lift (elevator!) back up to flat (apartment!) to find the code.
Back down to the Business Centre (Center!) to punch in code.
Success! Find laundry card machine.
Attempt to purchase card.
Discover machine all out of cards.
Leave Business Center and enquire at office.
They'll call the laundry machine guy, but there's another machine in the "old cigarette factory". You mean one of the buildings around here that looks like all the other buildings? Yes, that one.
Find 'old cigarette factory' and discover all doors locked. Find an open one and make complete fool of self by asking someone who looks at me like I'm from another planet - no, we don't have a laundry card machine here, lady.
Sigh.
Walk back to apartment to gather strength.
Strength gathered: catch lift (elevator!) back down to office to find out if laundry card machine now fixed.
Didn't I get a card in the other building? It was locked? Here's a key card to get in.
Walk back over to other building. Use key card and enter. Find empty corridors, no people, no signs.
Walk around for a good 5 minutes and eventually locate laundry room.
Success! Purchase card.
Walk back to flat (apartment!) and gather dirty clothes. Excited now.
Go to laundry room.
Chuck clothes in washing machine (washer!).
Insert card.
.............
Nothing.
Sigh.
Realise that card itself costs $5, but have to add value to it to use it.
Catch lift (elevator!) back down to Business Center.
Punch in code. Add value to card.
Back up to laundy room.
WASH CLOTHES.

Entertaining, no? All in all, it cost me R90 and took me most of a day to get clean clothes.

It can only get better from here....

A hefty serving

Thought-provoking fare was dished up at the ACRL conference in Seattle. As a newbie, with little experience of conferences, it was an event which served up many new ideas and ways to improve service in our libraries. It was also an event which provoked many questions. Because of the range of papers, I concentrated my interest on:

- Assessment and evaluation processes for libraries. Attendance of a preconference workshop set the scene by improving my understanding of analytic assessment of information literacy by using a rubric. Further insight was offered by papers on using mystery shoppers to assess library service, using dashboards and scorecards to present assessment data; and selecting the most suitable method from knowledge tests, rubrics and integrated assessment to measure learning. Does your library have an assessment plan or policy?

- Online strategies for improving users access to subject content. The LibGuides research guide management software seems to have made an impact in the library market. Many librarians shared their experiences to capacity audiences. Ease of use, consistent layout, and incorporation of Web2.0 features were some of the aspects shared in papers, posters and Cyber Zed Shed sessions. Take a look at the LibGuides demo version. An alternate is the open source program, Library a la Carte, created by Oregon State University Library. Other online topics investigated whether assessment data is available on library websites; and creating learning objects for multiple users on the go.

Making sense of it all requires some thought and reflection. Opportunities to observe first-hand how these processes work in our host libraries will also enhance understanding and aid digestion!

Done one successfully, so I'll try a few more - all for you, Librarians!

Top from left to right: 1 Artwork in Eastern illinois Library with Alan Lanham, Mandy and Sara. 2 African flavour in Illinois, the Ghana cloth exhibition, with Alan Lanham. 3 Simon, William, Sara and Janine outside the Walmart Shopping Centre on our first Sunday in UrbanaChampaign after a long walk in freezing cold weather. 4 Sarah from Illinois Univ library who took care of us on several accasions, Kathleen Weibel who trained us in Project Management and another of Barbara's guests the first Sunday evening at her house 5 Outside Club Quarters, our hotel in Chicago - the flag on the right indicates our hotel entrance

ACRL Conference

Last week, we attended the ACRL 14th National Conference in Seattle. The programme structure is similar to IFLA's, where you have several sessions running concurrently and you get to tailor your conference experience to suit your interests.

I chose only papers to do with digitisation, Library 2.0 and the Digital Library.

Here are some points of interest I picked up:
The Library catalogue needs to function like Google. Students/staff aren't interested in thinking about what the library has, where it would be and how it might be organized. They want a search box to type in their search terms. University of Nebraska-Lincoln started addressing this by linking to all collections (traditional, digital, unsorted manuscripts…) through their catalogue. They've now progressed to providing one search box on their home page for all library collections.

EVERYONE uses CONTENTdm. Seems to be a standard here. One library has customized the interface to suit their needs, as they say it is weaker than other tools in terms of image display and for teaching uses.

I went to a number of presentations on Twitter for Libraries, Facebook and other social networking sites. Two papers stand out – those from Joseph Murphy of Yale University. He is interested in developing standards of practice for librarians using these tools. Also, staffing and workflow are a consideration. Although these tools are free through the web, they cost in terms of staff time.

A number of librarians have conducted studies of their student populations regarding how they use social networking sites. The need for these studies emerged from the realization that libraries were playing with these services and offering them without really knowing whether their students wanted them. (“If you build it, will they care?”) An overwhelming response to one of the studies regarding how students use Facebook for their academic needs was that they are not interested in getting to know the librarian (eg – through a Facebook Profile), but are very interested in having library applications via a Facebook Page.

I found out about 3 sites which can help with widget-building for our web page: Sprout http://sproutbuilder.com/, Widgetbox and Wix

Two presentations focused on the relationship between the Library and IT staff. The Library built relationships over time with IT staff by frequent face-to-face meetings, collaborative projects and serving on IT search committees. An interesting point was that merging isn’t necessarily the best option and that retaining the culture of each unit is important.

The presentation called “Subject Librarian 2.0” was very useful in terms of getting the ‘big picture’ and finding out what we should be aiming for. We can no longer think of our success in terms of how many resources we have. We now need to think of it in terms of the human element: how successful are our students/faculty? How productive are they? How much progress are they making? This talk also included this inspiring list of the skills we should have:

• Rigor
• Commitment to research and development
• Continuously assessing and evaluating services
• Marketing content and capacities
• Political engagement
• Able to manage projects
• Entrepreneurial spirit
• Deep subject/technical expertise
• Leadership/inspirational
• Clear sense of mission
• Self vision
• Adequate base of knowledge
• Strategic positioning - are you clear about where you're going?
• Commitment to continuous improvement

WOW.

Picsforlibrarians

I've been asked to publish photo's, so herewith go some exciting moments to remember in the Chicago Art Institute- Avenal this was real!

Janie

WIIFM

We hear WIIFM referred to often and in many different contexts.

It has become part of our vocabulary and is constantly in mind. When we listen to speakers and view library facilities here, we ask ourselves “WIIFM?” We have become very aware of WIIFM. It encourages us to sift through useful ideas, innovations and stuff which will benefit our libraries.

So what is WIIFM ? It is the widely used acronym that asks “What’s In It For Me?”

Godzilla 2 - the BIG T and the South African context

No, it is not a Godzilla.It is only librarians changing their spots.

The model for recognition and reward in some US academic libraries goes something like this:

1. Academic librarians are expected to research, teach and publish.
2. Productivity reviews are undertaken after a set number of years, usually by the sixth year.
3. Reviews are done by peers, colleagues and other relevant university committees.
4. A librarian could be due for promotion if their scrutinized work is passed.
5. A promotion means a new title and a salary adjustment.
6. A promotion also means full membership of the Faculty and egalitarian status with other academics.

The tenure system can result in victors and victims, depending on the participant librarian driving it. The BIG T, as it is sometimes called here, is widely published and has not been immune to scholarly critique.

Are there Universities in South Africa that are on this system? Can it work for all universities in South Africa?What about South African academic ibrarians themselves?Can they be receptive to such a system being implemented in their own institutions?

What are library directors thinking and planning?

Do I hear whispers in the deep?

Greening …

Returning to UIUC (University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign) after 3 days in Chicago, it is possible to see the first signs of Spring! The lawns have taken on a tinge of green, the bulbs are shooting with some snowdrops flowering and surprisingly even a bird or two in the trees!
Awareness of green issues is apparent everywhere. The Illinois Neighborly News admonishes us to “reduce, reuse, recycle”. Bins on the campus support recycling of plastics and other materials. Maintenance of grounds and open spaces is also very conscious of the impact of man on the environment.

It is not surprising then that we have encountered greening in the design of library buildings. The Champaign public library uses full length windows to introduce lots of natural light into the building. With efficient glass and sun shading structures on the south and west walls, the internal temperature is controlled which improves energy consumption. The hardwood floors are made from quick growing timber, sensors turn on lights only when needed and many trees have been planted in the parking area.

The library Information Commons at Loyola University also displays an interesting range of very sophisticated green features. This silver LEED certified building boasts a design which halves energy consumption by using a double-skin façade. The windows, dampers, shades and blinds respond to climate data and adjust automatically. Apparently the concrete slab ceilings regulate temperature too. Water from the existing campus facilities is used to heat or cool the building and the green roof absorbs rainwater thus reducing run-off into Lake Michigan. This building “learns” and is constantly improving its efficiency. Even the carpet tiles are made from recycled content!

We are shortly to make our way to the ACRL conference in Seattle which has a green initiative. The ACRL aims to make this their greenest conference ever, by improving their environmental footprint through active recycling and waste reduction strategies.

Gazing into Cloud Gate…

In his presentation at the 2008 Library Academy, Prof Johan Jacobs delighted attendees by expanding their perspective of art and literature with his interesting presentation. His catchy phrase “the subject of the painting is the painting of the subject” sprang to mind yesterday when visiting the Millennium Park in Chicago. Here the colloquially named “The Bean” or more correctly termed “Cloud Gate” is a sculpture which provides huge entertainment value to those who consider the changing kaleidoscopic reflections on its metallic surface. It was the subject matter of many photos where manipulating images and reality was an interesting pastime. These amusements were either at the instigation of those behind the camera or the human subjects themselves. People could be seen grouping and regrouping for greatest effect; and moving into new positions and roles to deliver a whole new image. In many cases an entirely new reality was created.

For me, this seemed to connect with the purpose of our trip to US libraries – to expand our view of the role librarians can play in actively supporting research. At the libraries we have visited, there has been much sharing, discussion and consideration of various ways of achieving this. They have included assuming the role of imbedded librarian; adopting strategies for enhanced faculty liaison; and developing effective programmes for imparting knowledge about library resources/services. The US libraries and institutions visited have provided differing viewpoints with opportunities to reflect on the application of these methods in a variety of environments.

Some common practices have surfaced. They recommend developing strong relationships and partnerships; and effective communication. Also in evidence is an awareness of taking stock on how you are doing. Through regular assessment and evaluation, academic libraries have useful data to hand which can be applied to improve support of their research communities. Some “Cloud Gate” thinking can go a long way here in mapping the future image, role and effectiveness of librarians.

Doing it right

Backseat drivers and grocery shoppers are advised to remember to “Do it right!” For obvious reasons this approach keeps order this side of the Atlantic.

But “doing it right” was also the underlying message of the symposium on New Directions in Digital Humanities Scholarship. The papers presented at this gathering briefly touched on issues of IP, access, standards and preservation, before exploring the importance of users as central to digital initiatives to co-produce and co-design projects. Collaboration and partnerships were big words on the day and seen as important ingredients for developing successful projects. Speakers shared their thoughts and narratives on various digitizing projects. Take a look:

Silk Road Atlas

The Roots of Modern America

The Differences Slavery Made

Lincoln Digitization Project

Map of Early Modern London

Cartography of American Colonization Database

As is the nature of these gatherings, many questions were asked. Of interest was the question of whether mass digitization meets the needs of the Humanities researcher? I had never really considered this and had assumed that Google Books is a great resource for all.

Insights into digitization activity as “providing a playpen for data” revealed the complexities of digital visualization and the representation of historical events by combining GIS, text, sound and photos. Capturing the narrative of history rather than creating a database; and moving beyond archival representation to interpretation were some of the considerations. Through the use of examples from funded projects and student’s work, these were clearly showcased; some were impressive and it was difficult to be critical.

It seems too that the public libraries in Urbana Champaign are “doing it right”. A recent news item reported the popularity of these venues and the high usage of both libraries. This was partly attributed to the economic downturn and how the libraries were viewed as a source of free entertainment. Certainly many people regard these libraries with pride. A visit to the Champaign library proved just how user-focused the services of this library are. In addition, the refurbishment of the library building created a so called ‘green building’ which exhibits many fashionable eco-friendly features.

It seems that it is well not to make too many left turns in future, if we want to “do it right”.

Is your University Librarian a turkey?

As you can see from my title and Avenal's recent post, we're loving the turn of phrase here in the US. We regularly look at each other and say, "that's a great way of putting it!"

We've settled in well and got used to the bus system. Of course, just as we've achieved that, we're off to Chicago today, returning on Saturday evening.

Oh the suffering we endure. :)

Be prepared for lots of photos...

Glossary - Week One

Words and phrases encountered during our first week at the Mortenson Center:

“Elevator speech” – the two minute talk which delivers short, pithy messages at critical moments for maximum impact.
“Learning commons” – a philosophical shift in the delivery of library services. It applies to the undergrad library at UIUC and recognizes that students determine the use of library space and that campus partnerships are important.
“Library fair” – a fun library activity to get the attention of faculty.
“One shot instruction” – teach it all in one session; location is flexible.
“Quick and clean cataloguing” – use of dedicated temporary staff to deal with cataloguing backlogs.
“Scholarly visitors” – that’s us!
“Silos” – everyone needs to move out of them to collaborate or form partnerships. It seems everyone is in one!
“Teaching toss” – informal chat among instructional librarians.

Have we “gotten” it? Eish, our understanding is growing …