IOLUG Spring Meeting Details Announced

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.

Outsourcing Librarianship to an iPhone App

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.

New Quarter – Tons of Work Ahead

We begin our Spring Quarter at Rose-Hulman today and what a way to start it.  I started with an 8 AM lightening round orientation for a senior design class.  I was given 15 minutes and had to speak fast and to the point.  While it was the quickest class I’ve even done, it certainly helped to wake me up.  Now I am ready to take on the day, the week, and the new quarter.  We’ve got our work cut out for us.  We’ll have training for our new ILS system (Millennium by Innovative) which will be implemented this summer.  We are right now planning for events for National Library Week in April.  We are doing some party on the last day of the week but are also going to do one of those “READ” poster campaigns.  I got it started by creating one of myself.  We will be doing some major weeding of the collection to make room for possible library “modifications.”  We are moving forward with our library liaison program with each of the departments.  I am not sure how that will go, but it’s definitely a worthwhile experiment.  I hope to complete scanning all of the Modulus yearbooks and finally be done with that.  That all depends on how many hours my student worker can work.  There are about 15 more books to do.  I will evaluating some EBSCO products.  I am about to submit a final draft of an ASEE conference paper that has been “accepted pending changes.”  I have to help plan for the IOLUG (Indiana Online Users Group) spring meeting.  I will be presenting on using mobile devices to access commercial databases.  I am getting an iPhone tomorrow to begin planning for that.  I will also have to plan for the ASEE conference in June.  And of course, I will have to continue to update those AtoZ records.  OK, now I’ve scared the crap out of myself writing all that down.  Time get to work.  CHOP CHOP!

My First Mobile Library User

Yesterday I was at the reference desk and a student came to me with a call number and asked where he could find that book.  No big deal right?  Well, the call number was on a catalog record on an iPhone.  I thought “hey, cool, we have not gone mobile yet and the users are pushing it first.”  Usually we implement a new technology and then see if it catches on.  This is promising because we do have plans to create a mobile presence withing the next 8-9 months.

On My 14, 2010, IOLUG’s spring program will be titled “You CAN Take It with You: Libraries Moving into Mobile.”  I will be doing a session titled “Tested and True-How friendly are library websites and databases?” with Bill Helling.  Bill’s part will be on mobile viewable library websites, mine will be on databases with mobile capability.  I am compiling a list of these databases now but won’t be able to fully experiment until March when I get an iPhone of my own.  In other developments, Logan Library will be moving along with our consortium led by Indiana State University to Innovative’s Millennium with the Encore add-on.  One of the features that Millennium is supposed to have is a Mobile version of the interface so I’ll have to wait until its launched this summer to experiment with it.