clifflandis.net

Cliff May 9th, 2008

Greetings,

I am writing this email to complain about the horrible user services that are provided by Elsevier.

This morning I was trying to confirm full-text access to the American Journal of Obstetrics and Gynecology for my library’s users.  When I contacted customer support, I was told that access is only provided via a username and password (and not by IP ranges).

This means that when users at my library access AJOG via our full-text index or the publisher’s website, they are confronted with a request for a username and password.  I have no way to provide the user with that information from the time they begin their research to the time they get to the username/password prompt.  So not only are they not given the username and password, they are also not informed of the correct person to contact at our library to get this information, and in fact will most likely give up their research at this point.

This is a shameful display of disregard for your own customers–the library’s users.  You are making it difficult for your customers to access the very resources you provide.  I strongly suggest working collaboratively with libraries and other vendors to provide your customers (again, the library’s users, not the libraries or librarians!) with the best experience possible, including quick and easy access to resources.

I expect a swift reply, and hopefully, a user-centered solution in the very near future.

Thanks,

Cliff

• User-Centric Service , reviews
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Cliff May 1st, 2008

Is this the way your library works?

• randomness
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Cliff April 30th, 2008

The best experiences you’ll ever have are the ones where you’re completely aware, if only for a moment. Look up. Look around. Look within. Be aware of it all.

The meme: Post a picture from a source like FlickrCC or Flickr Creative Commons or make/take your own that captures what YOU are most passionate about for kids to learn about…and give your picture a short title.

• meme
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Cliff April 30th, 2008

• Pandora - Create and refine your own radio stations.  Excellent for discovering new music.
• Midomi - Search by humming or singing into your microphone.
• Musicovery - Choose music based on time period, genre and mood.
• MuxTape - Create mp3 mixtapes.
• Project Playlist - Search for individual mp3s and create your own playlist.
• Mixwit - More mixtapes.
• MySong - Sing in a melody and get instant accompaniment.

Music worth trying, but NSFW:

• The Upper Crust - Fop Rock’s leading men.
• Nerdcore - Hardcore music for hardcore nerds.
• Asylum Street Spankers - Great music and a rockin’ live show! Try “Beer” and “My Baby in the CIA”.
• Tom Lehrer - Classic. I’m always surprised at how few folks know about him.

• randomness , technology
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Cliff April 30th, 2008

I had an awesome time presenting at the Connecticut Library Association conference on Monday. I presented It’s All About the User–I’m taking a clue from Michael’s Hyperlinked Library and serializing the presentation.

It was extremely well received (packed house!) and I got some great questions at the end.  A big “thank you” to everyone for being kind and receptive–even when I spilled coffee all over the presentation table!

After the presentation I attended Lee Rainie’s session on Web 2.0, and learned a lot from his presentation on Pew’s data results.  At one point someone brought up Twitter, and sure enough, I raised my cell phone, having just posted on the talk.  It was a great session, and Lee was entertaining, warm and insightful–his anecdotes lent a real-world awareness to statistics that often feel  far-removed for many librarians.

Presentations over, I had a working dinner over the phone and then headed to the Spa for a haircut and a massage–a rare treat!  I crashed early since I was up at 3am to fly back the next morning.

Now it’s back to daily library work and catching up on emails!

• presentations
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Cliff April 24th, 2008

I was honored to be able to speak to the first class of PINNACLE, the year-long training program for Georgia’s up-and-coming library leaders. It was a great crowd of mentors and mentees, and I got to meet some amazing librarians. Over lunch we traded Reference Desk horror stories (a favorite past time of librarians), and was able to learn more about the PINNACLE program.  So a big “Thank You!” to the PINNACLE organizers for inviting me!

I was lucky to get there, because the sign for the library is at ground level behind the parking spaces, which means that if any cars are parked along the street you can’t see the sign. So there I was, trying to find the library, peering into the windows looking to see if there were stacks of books (since there were no blue-and-white library signs along any of the roads). I guess you can find the library, as long as you’re the only one hoping to use it! And of course, inside was a hand-crafted “no cell phones” sign–the paper cell phone’s display has the word “NO” on it!

After the event, I wandered to a local art shop to peruse the beach scenes, and I was amused to find that one artist paints the copyright symbol next to his name when he’s signing the paintings. I knew better than to take a picture, but I just got a kick out of it.  I’m not really sure that painting the symbol protects him more than if he just signs his work, but then again, I’m not aware of how someone could break his copyright–I mean, if they’re going to go to the trouble of mass-producing and selling his work, they’ll probably be able to remove the copyright notice, right?

• Libraries , presentations
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Cliff April 23rd, 2008

Getting actual quantitative assessment of library instruction is something that most librarians hate to do–it often eats up our too-precious time with the students.  And yet, I find myself dissatisfied with the “how’d I do?” opinion polls that we’ve used in the past.

So as part of our annual goals here at MPOW, we’ve created an online form for students to fill out as a pre- and post-test.   The results write to a tab-delimited text file using ProcessForm 3.0.

By including a hidden date and timestamp, we’re able to separate classes as they are added to the text file, and then import them into a spreadsheet for analysis.  Couple this with the students’ institutional ID number, and we can compare pre- and post-test scores while keeping the students’ anonymity intact.

With a little help (read: enforcement) from friendly professors, this test could be self-administered before and after the library instruction session to prevent eating into precious library instruction time.  Additionally, the test could be performed pre- and post-library instruction, and then again at the end of the semester.  Let’s see how much they really retain!

I welcome comments, criticism and suggestions! A big “thank you” to Andy and Sherrida for making this happen, and feel free to steal the code from the assessment form.

• Libraries , teaching , technology
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Cliff April 15th, 2008

I’m back at work.  I had a blast at CIL2008, and took plenty of photos of the DC area and my friends.

Since I’m overloaded here with doing the Technology and Electronic Resources positions (and on the search committee for the ER person…and trying to prep for upcoming talks…and trying to prep for the graduate class I’m teaching this summer), I’ve been a little lax in blogging.  I’m working on all sorts of cool stuff, and I’ll tell you all about it once I’ve actually completed some of the projects.

To be continued….

(muhahaha)

Oh, and just FYI, listening to Star Guitar on the Metro is teh awesome.

• CIL2008 , me
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Cliff April 8th, 2008

It’s both exciting and intimidating to see many of the ideas that I plan on talking about today being discussed by other presenters.  I don’t want to beat the audience over the head with these concepts (user-centric services, a library catalog that doesn’t suck, etc.), but at the same time I think that the fact that we’re all repeating these things means that we’re all on the same page and we agree about this stuff.  It’s the squeaky wheel that gets the grease, and there are some excellent, intelligent, and well-squoken wheels here.

That’s why I love the ITI conferences.  This is my second one, and I get to meet and interact with folks who I admire and who challenge me to think in new ways about libraries and library services.  Many of the ideas that I’ve brought to my library have been formed from interactions with the folks that I see at these conferences, whether online or in-person.  It’s easy to become worn down with the day-to-day struggle of trying to fix code or perform usability studies, so it’s very refreshing to come to a conference like CIL and meet those amazing people who are doing amazing things at their libraries.

I was able to attend Jenny’s session on Hi Tech/Hi Touch, and really felt like I should go back and look at our services again to see where I can increase the “human principle” in our library’s services.  I posted my notes from that presentation, but went back and set it to private, lest I clutter up folks’ RSS feed readers (my bad!).  After all, she can say it much better than I.

I attended Library Web Presence: Engaging the Audience with folks from Penn State and Temple, who created widgetized undergrad pages, and showed off their use of LibGuides (respectively).  Again, I set my notes to private after second thoughts–again, my bad!   After that was website tune-ups with Jeff Wisniewski, Learning Commons with Tombrarian, and User-Generated Content with Roy Tennant (sitting next to the poster-child for that session, Meredith).

I skipped out after the last session to meet my Dad, who I don’t get to see that often.  He was in town justifying a honeybee study to EPA (eee-paaaaah!). We went to Ruth’s Chris with my friend Sarah and Dad’s entomologist Rob (shouldn’t we all have our own entomologists?).  It was an amazing meal and some fun philosophical conversation about relationships, religion, and the meaning of life (and bugs).

I’m really looking forward to today (Day 2).  Wish me luck on my session!!!

• CIL2008
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Cliff April 7th, 2008

I can honestly say, that us Librarians are not the best wayfinders in the world.  I wonder if it’s the fact that many of us are shy, or whether we just are willing to stand on a street corner and wait for someone to rescue us:  “Come!  The conference is this way!”  Needless to say, I spent a little time this morning running around asking questions for a pleasant group of lost librarians (myself included).  It’s amazing how often we tell our users to “Ask a Librarian” for help, and yet we’re afraid to ask for directions. Hmmm…

Additionally, I somehow got financially messed up ala Metro–I paid about $26 for what I thought was a 7-day pass, and I got off the subway to discover that I wasn’t allowed out because I owed them $1.60.  I’ll be spending a little time this mornining figuring out exactly what I bought.  This just goes to show that when there are flashing lights and rushing people, the last thing that you want to do is read the fine print and look like an idiot.  Either I should have done my research ahead of time, or they should change the Metro system to be easier.  I wonder who’s going to win that one?

• CIL2008
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