Archive for the 'Libraries' Category

Interviewed for the TechSource Blog!

Cliff May 30th, 2008

Michael Stephens interviewed me for the TechSource Blog–what an honor! We chatted about Facebook, libraries, and catalogs as social networks–check it out! “Thank you”s go out to Michael for the interview, and Cindi for snapping such a great shot of me.

Advice for librarian job applicants

Cliff May 21st, 2008

Job hunting is something every librarian does more than once.  I’ve served on a fair number of search committees in my relatively short time as a librarian. Here are some pointers I’ve put together for a friend who’s getting ready to apply for jobs as she graduates from library school.

Application:

  • Coursework doesn’t count for much — I’m glad you took a class on X, but that doesn’t count as experience in my book.  It’s important that you learn the theory behind all aspects of librarianship, since those theories inform what we do.  However, theory and practice are not the same thing.
  • Internships count — Being a librarian is like being an archaeologist–they’re both practicing professions. You can study theory from dusk till dawn, but until you actually dig up bones (or help a crying freshmen find a full-text article at the last minute), you won’t know what it’s like to “do” librarianship. Get as many internships as you can, and make the most of them while you’ve got ‘em.
  • Don’t apply for a job you won’t accept – Some folks suggest applying for everything because it gives you “practice” and you “never know.” The reality is that it’s more paperwork and hassle for the folks on the search committee. Ask yourself if you would accept an offer for the position before you apply.
  • Fill out the stupid form — Many institutions require you to fill out a Human Resources form of some sort when you apply.  When they say “applications without the form will be marked incomplete and discarded,” they mean it.  Fill it out completely, and if you need to sign the form, sign it.  Not doing so shows me you aren’t really interested in the job.
  • Don’t apply for a job you’re not qualified for — Again, you’ll be adding more paper to stack that’s already too big.  If you don’t have strong qualifications or missed out on getting a relevant internship, apply for an entry-level position (and yes, they are out there!).
  • Write for your audience — A good rule of thumb for anything written down.  You’re not writing for a generic audience, you’re writing for a group of tired, overworked librarians who got suckered into serving on yet another committee.  Wow me.  Get me excited.  Don’t be smarmy or flattering, be genuine. Make me want to meet you.
  • Your cover letter is your voice — This is the most important part of your application packet, because it is your chance to address the search committee.  Tell me why you are interested in this position.  Tell me why you are qualified for this position. Tell me what you’ve done, and how it related to this position.  If you give me a generic letter about your generic qualifications, you’ll get a generic response–not interested.
  • If you can, explain why you’re leaving your current job — This is something that every search committee wants to know so if you can explain it up front, it will save everyone time.  Of course, don’t bash a previous (or current!) place of employment–that shows me that I might be the one you’re bashing in the future.
  • Proofread, proofread, proofread — If there is a single spelling, spacing or grammatical error anywhere in your packet, you drop off my list.  I don’t want to have to work with you on a committee, and spend my time fixing your errors.
  • Don’t overload me — If your cover letter extends beyond a page and a half, I’ll likely stop reading (unless you’re a really great writer!).  C.V.s should be longer, but the same rule applies.  I don’t need to know about that 1/2 hour seminar you attended 12 years ago, especially if it doesn’t have anything to do with the job you’re applying for.
  • Ask your references if you can list them — Imaging the awkward silence you’ve created when your reference gets a phone call they aren’t expecting from someone they don’t know.  You can bet that any glowing reference they might have given will be a little less shiny.  It also shows me that you’re not professional or considerate (and therefore not someone I want to work with).

Phone Interviews:

  • Give a land line number — No one wants to have to ask a job applicant “can you hear me now?”
  • Dedicate the time — If I’m asking you about your experience with collection development, I don’t want to hear your child/neighbor/coworker/waitress/flight attendant in the background. And you should NOT be driving.  This is not the time to show off your multitasking skills.
  • It’s OK to be a little nervous — After the first few minutes, it’ll go away.  Practice beforehand over the phone with a friend.
  • Don’t ramble — Remember your audience is tired, overworked librarians.  Don’t put them to sleep with irrelevant anecdotes.  Make sure you’re answering the question that was asked.
  • Be careful of pauses — If you pause too long, it looks like you’re trying to create a bullshit answer.  If you don’t pause at all, it looks like you’re cocky or thoughtless.
  • Send a thank-you card — It’s not sucking up, it’s showing you’re grateful.  Everyone appreciates a little gratitude.

In-Person Interviews:

  • Be professional — Be on-time, well dressed, polite, etc.  Librarianship is a profession–act like a pro.
  • Let me know who you are — In a search, we can’t ask anything about your personal life that doesn’t relate to the job–unless you volunteer it.  So if you like cats, knitting, mystery novels, or biking, please volunteer that information.  It makes you look a little more human, and who knows?  We may have the same hobbies! However…
  • It’s ok to keep personal stuff personal — If you’re not sure you want to mention your spirituality, political views, or cosmological philosophies in conversation, then don’t. If you don’t want it questioned or discussed further, don’t bring it up.
  • Interview me — Remember, this is a two-way street.  Ask thoughtful questions that show me that you’re really thinking about joining our team.  Just as much as we’re interviewing you, this is a chance for you to interview us.  Hopefully, you’re looking for a good match for your career goals and skills, and not just a paycheck.
  • Be kind — Librarians, as a rule, are bonkers.  That’s what makes us able to do our jobs so well.  So if there are one or two cooky folks in the group you talk to, just smile and nod.  But at the same time, imagine working with them every day.  If my level of neurotic organization would drive you insane, chances are you don’t need to work with me.

I’d be interested to hear of any other advice you have for recent LIS graduates, or folks who are getting ready to hit the pavement yet again.  Leave a comment!

Elsevier’s solution!

Cliff May 15th, 2008

Well, after first having my email client send the message to my junkmail (?!?), I got Elsevier’s response and solution:

Hi Cliff:

Someone on my team brought your email to my attention. I want to first
apologize for the confusion over access to this title. American Journal
of Obstetrics & Gynecology is a title which is unique for Elsevier in
that we provide the full-text only online, while the print edition
refers readers to the online version to read the full-text.

This has caused some confusion as the online version, as one of the
online support representatives advised, is accessible by username and
password only. I understand this is not ideal for institutions and most
institutional customers would prefer access via IP range.

While we are working on a solution to this problem, we’re not quite
ready to publicly launch the final version of the American Journal of
Obstetrics & Gynecology website which will be IP range enabled. That
said, as your users urgently need access, I would like to make available
to you and your users access to the new site ahead of the public.

If you let me know the IP range that you would like enabled, I will have
one of my colleagues set up access and contact you with the details.

I hope you find this an acceptable solution and I look forward to
hearing from you.

Regards,

And my response:

I’ll take the IP access to AJOG (it’s the least I can do after complaining publicly). Our range is: [snip]

Let me know when it’s up and I’ll test it to make sure it’s working. I look forward to the day when all libraries’ users can have that kind of easy access. But for now, thank you for your patience and hard work on this!

For a moment I thought of politely declining IP access as an act of solidarity with those folks/institutions who don’t have it, but that would be hurting my users and helping no one. So there you go. Score one for my library’s users. They probably will never know that this went on and couldn’t care less–but hey, us librarians are just supposed to make resources easy to use, right?

And yes, I’d like to thank Elsevier for doing this. They’re making an exception to help my users, and they’re also working on a more wide-spread solution. Hopefully all of us (vendors, users, and librarians) will continue to find and fix problems to make our users’ experiences easier.

Fighting inequity in speaking gigs…

Cliff May 14th, 2008

Following up on Meredith’s blog post about the challenges of speaking gigs in the library community (and the awesome conversation that followed), I’ve created the Library Speakers Anonymous wiki. This wiki will allow individuals to post their experiences of speaking at conferences anonymously (or not, if they wish).

Folks who speak at library conferences talk to each other about how much they are compensated and how well they are treated. The word spreads somewhat informally through conversations, blogs, IMs and emails (whether conference organizers realize it or not). And yes, there are inequities in compensation and treatment. Hopefully this wiki will help bring some of those to light.

So if you’ve spoken at a conference, feel free to tell how you were compensated, how you were treated, and whether you’d do it all over again!

EDIT:  The wiki is now *officially* anonymous.  A shared username and password has been created and posted to the wiki homepage, preventing your IP address from displaying.

Whether to write a Facebook App?

Cliff May 13th, 2008

As someone who speaks fairly regularly on social networking sites (MySpace & Facebook in particular), I’ve been struggling with the idea of whether to write library applications for these services.  My short answer?  No.  At least not yet…

SNSes are by their very nature social- -people get on these sites to interact with other people that they know.  Right now the only services I could push out would be our catalog and databases.  Because they have no social interaction (users can’t share what they’re reading/researching), there’s no point in pushing the services into a social sphere.  As Laurie Bridges points out, the services that actually get used are the ones with a high degree of social interactivity (no matter how silly they are…I’m looking at you Pirates vs. Ninjas vs. Zombies vs. Werewolves people!).

I think it’s awesome that institutions are reaching out to their users by putting more of their services out on SNSes–this is user-centric service, to provide services where the users are.  But I would rather wait until MPOW has a next-generation catalog and interactive databases that allow users to interact with data and each other.  For now, I can spend my time on trying to get us that next-gen catalog, and interacting with students by being myself in Facebook!

PINNACLE

Cliff April 24th, 2008

Pinnacle (3)

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?

Library Instruction: Quantitative Assessment Pre- and Post-Test

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.

Usability studies

Cliff March 24th, 2008

Anyone who has ever met me in a library context knows that I go on and on about asking the user.  Well, I’m in the middle of conducting usability studies.  I’m not only asking the user, but *watching* the user (because sometimes what they say is not what they do).   I just completed Phase 2 of 4, and with the help of three great folks, we’re hoping to finish it by July 1st.  Details will follow, and hopefully publication will come thereafter; but for now, I’m swamped in data.

The librarian song

Cliff February 8th, 2008

Can you teach tagging?

Cliff January 29th, 2008

puzzlebeesnap

This is from a Facebook App called Puzzlebee.  You can share your photos with friends as puzzles.  You can also tag puzzles, but first you have to pass a tagging test.

Bad tag!  Bad tag!  No no no!

I mean, come on.  Isn’t that the point of tagging? That I can tag something as “Fred” if I want my friend Fred to view it?  Or that I can create my own shorthand (TBR = to be read)?  I do this with tagging, and I don’t consider myself misleading other people, because those tags are created for searching purposes, not browsing purposes.

I could see librarians leaping on this idea of creating tagging tests before users could contribute tags to a catalog.  However, rather than improving the user experience, it’ll be one more hoop that we would be creating for users to jump through.  Just say NO!

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