Do This, Do That, Do the Other Thing

Moving process completed, internal demolition begun

Richard Bernier — Thu, 17 Jun 2010 19:52:42 +0000

We are now fully moved into our temporary location for the library renovation. All books were moved out of the library by professional movers. Not all 80,000 volumes were able to fit into our temp location. About 10,000 had to go to another facility along with the Archives. Light demolition of the interior of the library has begun (ceiling panels removed, furniture removed, networking equipment removed). Hopefully the contractors will begin work next week.

Meanwhile, five miles south of campus, the staff of Logan Library have taken up residence in Box City, a large room in a with over 4,000 boxes of books. The weeding process has begun amongst all the chaos of settling into a new place full of books. Two of us are located in the front reception areas, and the rest of us are wedged into various crevices of boxes stacked 4 and 5 high. Numerous obstacles have been overcome in the past week including a wireless option that didn’t work. With a very weak Internet signal, not only was it almost impossible to do our work, but our phone option was also a bust (Voice over IP). So we now all have wired Internet connections. Then yesterday the air conditioning was fixed. We had temperatures in the 80s on Monday. They needed to fix the fix today because this morning the temperature was 60 degrees while the thermostat was set to 73. Brrrr! That is now fixed.

I finally have a handle on things and am able to plan a little for my ASEE conference next week. I am presenting a paper for the Technical Papers session. My paper title is “Using LibGuides as a Web 2.0 Content Management System & Collaboration Tool for Engineering Librarians.”

Been away…Been busy

Richard Bernier — Mon, 07 Jun 2010 12:54:49 +0000

Yes, I have been away for quite some time. Why is that? My library is getting a major renovation this summer and we’ve been preparing. The entire library will be gutted, completely reconfigured and we’ll have all new furniture. We should be moving this week and all of the books on the first floor have been boxed up by a moving company. They will start upstairs, which is where most of the books are, probably today. So what I did for four straight weeks including some weekends was packing up Archives. Our Archives was really just three storage rooms of stuff, over 100 years worth. Nothing is catalogued, there are no finding aids, and there is very little order. We are talking total chaos. Think of the show “Hoarders.” It was almost that bad, only we couldn’t rent a dumpster and throw stuff out. Just about everything had to be kept. Here was the main challenge. Everything needed to be organized and placed in proper archival boxes. To make it more challenging, our Archives room in the library on campus will be about one third the size of what it was before. So that means a large number of stuff needs to be stored off-site. Thus, I had to organize the items according to what will stay on site and what will remain off-site. This all had to be done in a month. That meant long tiring days on my feet, doing actual physical labor. I liked that, but it did get exhausting at times and also stressful given the time restraints.

So the plan for the rest of the summer? Move to an off-site location which is a large room where all the books will be located so that we can do some major weeding. We’ll have to do that in order to fit all the books upstairs when we move back in. Plus we’ll need to provide a certain level of library service which will be challenging. The details on al that are still being worked out. Oh, and I have a presentation to prepare for at the ASEE Conference in two weeks. I am thinking I will have to work on that in the evenings at home.

National Library Week – “Rock the Library”

Richard Bernier — Mon, 19 Apr 2010 20:45:16 +0000

Last week, the staff of Logan Library marked National Library week in several ways. First, we had a READ poster contest and called for volunteers for appear in a READ …@ Logan Library poster. The posters were placed on our Facebook page and voted on. The winner won a framed printed version of their poster. We had daily drawings for prizes. Library users simply had to come to the library, write their name on a slip of paper and drop it into a basket. The week was capped off by a Friday afternoon party, “Rock the Library” where attendees were treated to food, music provided by the student run radio station, and additional prize drawings. We also used the opportunity to showcase our Digital Archives Project and Noodle Tools, a bibliographic citation tool. In the grand scheme of things, it allowed us to promote the library and increase our presence on campus. This is just one tiny step in our plans to make the library a larger partner in the academic mission of the institute.

Fantastic Task Manager App for the iPhone

Richard Bernier — Thu, 01 Apr 2010 15:22:00 +0000

I think I may have found the perfect task manager program for my iPhone. It’s called “Remember the Milk” (RTM) http://www.rememberthemilk.com/ With my former phone, the Palm Centro, the only option I was aware of was the Outlook Tasks feature which I found completely useless. So I was left using my calendar and the “Notes” program. The Notes program helped but it left much to be desired. With RTM, I can set tasks for specific days and set due times. I can postpone tasks. If a task does not get done on the day it is due, it shows up for the next day and every day that it remains undone. I can set sound notifications for when tasks are due. I can classify tasks however I want them classified. For instant, I have categories for “Personal,” “Work Tasks” and “Work Projects.” Keeping these separate or combining them is a key feature for me; one that I was not able to do with Notes. There are a host of other features as well. Unlike the thousands of free apps out there, this app cost $25 per year, but you can use it free for two weeks. After two weeks of using it, I was hooked and coughed up the $25. I’ve found this program to be the best task/time management tool since being able to sync my Outlook calendar with my phone. If you have an iPhone, I highly recommend trying it out for two weeks.

IOLUG Spring Meeting Details Announced

Richard Bernier — Mon, 29 Mar 2010 14:29:56 +0000

The Indiana Online Users Group Spring Meeting will be held on May 14th, 2010 at Indiana Wesleyan University Indianapolis Education Center North. The theme is “You Can Take it With You: Libraries Moving Into Mobile.” Details and registration can be found at http://www.iolug.org/index.php/programs/spring-2010-program/ .

The keynote speaker will be Jason Griffey, Head of Library Information at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga. His talk is titled “The Future is Mobile.” I will be sharing a session with Bill Helling, Assistant Director and Head of Reference (former Systems Librarian) for the Crawfordsville District Public Library. Our session is titled “How Friendly are library Websites and Databases?” Bill’s session will be titled “How Does Your Library Website Really Look Like?” This focuses on how to create a library website that usable for mobile devices. My session “Bill Helling, Assistant Director and Head of Reference (former Systems Librarian) for the Crawfordsville District Public Library” is on accessing commercial and free databases with mobile devices. I will demonstrate using an iPhone. Right now I am looking at demonstrating EBSCOhost, WorldCat, Encyclopedia Britannica, and USA.gov. I may add in additional databases if time permits.

Registration is $45 for IOLUG members and $65 for non-IOLUG members.

Library Computers Used by a Third of Americans

Richard Bernier — Thu, 25 Mar 2010 14:40:39 +0000

Here are some interesting stats from a study paid for by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. The study shows that a third of Americans – about 77 million people – use public library computers to look for jobs, connect with friends, do their homework and improve their lives, according to a new study released Thursday.

While this is good news for libraries right now, I hope library usage does not decline significantly as the “digital divide” narrows. I would hope that people would still see the value of libraries even if they have Internet connectivity at home. If the public sees the library as simply a place to gain free Internet access, there could be serious implications for public libraries. For the entire article, go to http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/03/25/library-computers-used-by_n_512681.html

Logan Library to Celebrate National Library Week with “READ” Poster contest

Richard Bernier — Tue, 23 Mar 2010 14:06:38 +0000

To celebrate National Library Week ( April 11-17th), Logan Library will having a “READ” poster contest. The “READ” poster project is a program that the American Library Association created and attempts to promote libraries and reading by all segments of the population by showing celebrities reading or posing with a book that they like. Libraries have tapped into this program by either displaying these posters in their libraries or by creating their own of people in their community. For example, colleges and universities have created their own posters but by using their own staff, faculty and students.

This week, Logan Library has kicked off a contest to see who can come up with the most creative poster. Anyone in our community is free to send us a picture of themselves or student group reading and we will place it within a template that shows a standard “READ” heading made from Rose-Hulman lettering, “@ Logan Library” and their name or the name of their group. The winner of the most creative poster will win a prize. These posters will not all be printed, but rather placed on our Facebook page where our “fans” will be able to vote for their favorite. The winner of the contest will be chosen by the poster with highest number of “likes” by our fans. So far we have two posters, one of the entire library staff posing around a Civil Engineering “sculpture” and one of myself. Mine shows me in the library, leaning on my congas (yes, I lugged them into work for this picture) and reading “On the Road” by Jack Kerouac. We hope to use this as a means of promoting the library at Rose-Hulman, promoting reading, and increasing our Facebook page membership. Details can be viewed at http://www.rose-hulman.edu/drc/library_contest/

In addition to the poster contest, on the afternoon of Friday April 17th, we will host a “Library Rocks” celebration at the library. We will have music and food outside and inside we will have several workstations showing off what we do. For example, our library director will be demonstrating a new tool we have subscribed to “Noodle Tools.” I will be either showing off LibGuides or our Digital Archives project. I will post more information about this event as it develops.

Outsourcing Librarianship to an iPhone App

Richard Bernier — Fri, 19 Mar 2010 13:13:12 +0000

Yep, I’ve found a way to marginalize our profession with a simple iPhone application. I bought an iPhone last week and I LOVE it. It’s the best invention since the iPod and will be even better once they make the storage on them big enough to hold all my music (other 50 GB right now). I downloaded an app called “Librarian.” Yep, our days are numbered! You turn it on, set the noise sensitivity meter and when the volume goes over that point, it goes “Shhhhhh!” THAT’S IT, WE’RE FINISHED!! I mean, yeah now we have more time to check out books, but that is also being taken over by self checkout systems. So I guess we’ll get to just sit around and do the part of our jobs we enjoy the most, READ!

Seriously, isn’t that what many people think about our profession? Come on, we’ve all heard it…we tell people we are a librarian and they say “OH! I love to read! That would be a great job.” Or when I was in library school I would have people ask me why I needed a special degree for to do that? I heard that more when I lived in Kentucky than I do in Indiana – I’m not making Kentucky jokes, just stating a fact. But even in Indiana, among other professionals and highly educated people, there is general lack of understanding of what we do. I’ve spoken to people who realize it is a profession and that a Masters degree is required. They have respect for the field, but still ask, “so what EXACTLY do you do on a day to day basis?” They don’t know. So I guess next time someone asks me, I will break out my iPhone, turn on that app, and say, “Well, I used to do this” (and play the Shhhh sound), but now my iPhone does it for me. I figure that might be a good starting point when having to once again, explain what exactly librarianship is all about.

Timbale solo at Rose-Hulman Community Concert

Richard Bernier — Tue, 16 Mar 2010 18:49:23 +0000

My performance at the Rose-Hulman Community Concert went well this past Saturday. I did a timbale/percussion solo. I only messed up twice but nobody noticed until I told them about it later. The video can be viewed at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PP9Mmtn5jDU

New Time Management System

Richard Bernier — Tue, 16 Mar 2010 14:41:11 +0000

It’s been a while since I last posted. That is because I’ve had to rethink how I complete tasks. In my last post, I wrote about all of the projects I have going on and how busy that will keep me. Not long after that post I hit a wall. It dawned on me that I was multitasking and task switching on a large scale. While I was making progress on several fronts, that progress was very slow and nothing was really being completed. So one day I decided that I needed to make a list of the things (larger projects) I need to accomplish and focus on one at a time instead of bouncing around from one to another. My first goal was to finish updating the list of AtoZ records in EBSCO AtoZ (at least the ones I have now; there will be more to come later). I expected that to take me months, but I did it in three days. Of course it was 3 days with my head stuck in a spreadsheet and web browser which almost drove me mad; but it has been completed. Second, I created a summary of the student survey that I conducted last week. Next, I finished updating my paper for the ASEE conference and uploaded the final draft yesterday. Today, I start preparing for my IOLUG conference presentation. My next major project will not begin until this one is complete. Of course there will be other projects and tasks that will interrupt this process…students needing help, a variety of requests from my boss, and bibliographic instruction classes to prepare for to name just a few, but I think I have come up with a good time management /project management system that will work well for me. So far the results have been excellent.