libraries

E-Valuating E-Reference: Transforming Digital Reference Through Research and Evaluation
Presenters: Marie Radford, Lynn Connaway, Jeffrey Pomerantz, Lorri Mon and Joseph Janes

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The Boston Public Library recently unveiled a new design for their website, as well as a series of print, television and radio ads promoting the library. I took a look at the ads, and I have to say that I like them — especially the print ads, which are cheeky and informal. All of them (well, except perhaps the radio voice over) feature actual BPL librarians. In the TV ads, they’re talking about what they know, how they compare to search engines, and how they do their work — but in a friendly, not-boring-you-to-death kind of way. For example, in one of them the librarian is rattling off some random facts that he knows, and then he says “I know how to clear a room — take me to trivia night.” The TV ads also have a series of line drawings that illustrate what the librarian is saying, which gives them some interest (otherwise, you’d just be watching a talking head). I had seen one of them in July, when I got a super-secret back-room tour of a couple of BPL offices, but I had completely forgotten to try and keep an eye out for the launch of the new site & ads. (Good thing someone sent me the link!)

As for the website, it’s been long enough since I was regularly using the BPL’s website that I can’t really make a good comparison to the previous incarnation. What I can say is that I like the design, and it seems like it is pretty easy to navigate and get to what you’re looking for. The redesign includes a search box in the banner that defaults to searching the library catalog, which I think is a handy feature. Also in the banner is a drop down menu with “How do I find” as the default value — that gives folks an easy way to find some of the most frequently-viewed pages, no matter where they are on the site. (And without cluttering up the navigation in the banner!) Read the rest of this entry »

So, the open house that I’ve been planning to mark the end of construction at my library is on Friday. As in, a couple of days from now. Yikes. I think that everything is under control, but I keep thinking of little things that I need to get done. Like last night, it occurred to me that we’re having a raffle . . . and we have no raffle tickets. I’m getting them tomorrow, so it’s not a crisis, but still. What else will come up? I’m also still getting ideas from my coworkers, which is great except for the part where I’m out of time and energy to add anything to the day. There’s enough happening already. I’m trying to stop adding things in order to free up brain space to think up the things that I need to take care of for the stuff that’s already happening.

The open house is for the campus communities that we serve, but is also open to the public (much like we are at pretty much any time, except finals and for some phases of the construction). I’m hoping that some local librarians will stop by as well - we sent an announcement out over the MD Library Association listserv, so we’ll see what happens. I have blanketed the campuses with the information as best I can (and yet today we still got a complaint from someone who said she hadn’t seen anything–can’t win ‘em all). We’re going to have snacks, of course, including both a sheet cake and a bunch of mini cupcakes (that was really a compromise between me & the director). The press is coming — we’ll have someone from the Catholic Review, and possibly a reporter from the Chronicle and one from the Sun. (I could link but you could Google, so we’re even.)

Anyway, for the curious, here’s what’s happening at the open house: Read the rest of this entry »

If you’re reading blogs right now, you probably have 15 minutes to watch “Fairfield Beach,” a choose your own adventure video from the Fairfield University Library. This got sent around today by the associate director (though it’s dated ‘07, and probably got sent around some listservs while I was stressing my way through the last semester of library school). We’ve been having some conversations about it here and there today at my library, and I want to know what other people think of it.

One of the things we were wondering was what the purpose of the video was. There was lots of speculation and I finally did the unthinkable and IM’d a librarian at Fairfield and asked. Gasp! (Vacation day tomorrow = extra sarcastic this afternoon, apparently.) They use it at the beginning of instruction sessions for their Freshman composition classes, to get the students a little more engaged in the topic. The video sets the scene for the library as a friendly, helpful, non-intimidating place (something I definitely could have used as an undergrad), and throws in enough cues to library instruction topics that the librarian can use the video to springboard into teaching those topics.

I couldn’t help but think about our equivalent Freshman literature instruction classes, and how difficult (impossible?) I find it to get even a couple of the students to really engage in the lesson. Anything that can entertain the students enough to get them to pay attention would be helpful, and this strikes me as just the kind of thing that would do it.

People generally assume that librarians know how to find stuff, especially in their own libraries. But that is not always the case. Witness the past 20 minutes of my life.

I took a call from a professor who needed a copy of an article he wrote. Not available electronically, but he says we have it here. I pull up the record in the catalog and verify that we should have the volume in question. Read the rest of this entry »

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about the multigenerational workplace as it applies to libaries. Partially because my supervisor and I are looking into the possibility of proposing some sort of session on the topic for next year’s Maryland Library Association conference, and partially because, well, it comes up nearly every day at work in one way or another. On our staff of 34, only three of us (that I know of) are 30 and under. From what I can tell, there aren’t that many people who hit the age range between us and our parents’ generation (and several people here have kids who are in their mid/late 20s), so there’s not as much of a buffer.

With some people the 20/30+ year age difference is not an issue; with other people there have been some weird interactions, and sometimes I can’t help but wonder if some of these things wouldn’t have happened if I were older. It’s not as prevalent as it was my first few weeks, but things still come up. For example, at a couple of recent meetings I was introduced as “our Millennial.” I understand that the term is being used to indicate a young, tech-savvy person, but from most of what I’ve read, Millennials are the people right behind me — today’s middle-schoolers up through college students (ish). Lumping me in with them — even if it’s just a shorthand to describe me — doesn’t really help me break down some of these age-related issues. Those of us born in, say, roughly 1978 - 1984, don’t neatly fit into the Gen X or Millenial categories, and there really wasn’t anything (I think) that Gen Y could coalesce around. I think sometimes in getting so caught up in “the generation gap” we forget that people don’t neatly fit into these boxes. I have plenty of friends also born in 1980, and you couldn’t use “Millennial” as a descriptor for all of them, because not all of them are (or even want to be) that tech-savvy. So to me, that means there must be a better shorthand to indicate “young, tech-savvy person.” Like maybe just saying “she’s quite tech-savvy” and letting the fact that I look young speak for itself. Hehe. Read the rest of this entry »

The Smithsonian has joined Flickr Commons, the project that’s aiming to expose more of the amazing photographs locked away in our cultural institutions. Take a look! Photos from Library of Congress, the Powerhouse Museum, and the Brooklyn Museum are also up on the Commons — all are linked from the main page.

Interesting things are already starting to happen with this project — one person has recreated a photo they spotted on the Commons, and according to Roy Tennant, some of the data being added to the LoC’s photos on is making it back into their records. To me, that’s the best part of this whole thing — that they are able to collect new information about these items, and that they’re using it.

Example: This post to the library blog, which is the first of a series of 6 of so on that theme (broadly) that I’ll post over the next few weeks. Hopefully people other than librarians will find this amusing as well. (Or at least less boring than the usual stuff.)

This is a neat little video from the Arlington Heights Memorial Library in Arlington Heights, IL, passed on to me by Ellen. It gives you a taste of what happens in tech services, the “behind the scenes” department of the library. Six minutes long, but it has a neat little hook and it’s not a talking head.

It looks like they have a series of library videos - I think this kind of thing, when done with an eye towards being informal and entertaining, can be a great PR tool. To me, nothing says “this is a friendly place to go” like people who not only take the time to explain what they do and demystify a confusing place, but who do so in an accessible way that really lets the library’s sense of humor and personality shine.

So, I just listened to a free online webinar through OPAL — Online Marketing for Libraries, by Sarah Houghon-Jan, the Librarian in Black. (Here’s a link to the archive page this is listed on. I can’t figure out if there’s a way to link directly to the entry without just linking to the files, not that I tried very hard. Yes, the files are already posted. OPAL is fast.)

This was really cool. I’ve never heard Sarah speak before, and I thought it was a great presentation — and that’s saying a lot since I couldn’t see her, and we were stuck just looking at PowerPoints (though it was a good PP, as these things go!). The gist of it is that she covers a ton of ways, many free, that you can build your online presence aside from your library website. This includes things like blogging and social networking sites. But she also had a ton of great tips: making Wikipedia page for your library, or adding a link to your library from appropriate pages on Wikipedia (like a city or college entry, for example). Where do you come up in search engine results? Do all the various domains your users might type in to get to you point to your website? Are you listed in places like Google Maps and Library Thing Local? What about websites listing free WiFi hotspots? (Well, if your WiFi is free and not password-protected.) Read the rest of this entry »