This Week’s Agenda

http://thisthatotherthing.wordpress.com/2010/01/18/this-week’s-agenda
Yep, have to work on MLK Day.  But that gives me a jump on the week.  That’s my story and I’m sticking to it.
•    Post Part 2 to my blog series “The Small College Librarian.”  Part 2 is titled “So Many Jobs, So Little Time”
•    Work with Office of Institutional Planning and Assessment to complete online survey for students use of Web 2.0 services
•    Work with student worker to continue adding yearbooks. – Will upload 1960, 1961, 1964, and probably 1966 which she started scanning.
•    Setup new scanner when it arrives (hopefully today).
•    Create new LibGuide
•    Work on updating AtoZ records (Hopefully will be able to finish A – C tab.
•    Look into evaluations of Serials Solutions Products

The Library Website with a Face: Digitally Connecting to People Where They Are

http://thisthatotherthing.wordpress.com/2009/11/17/the-library-we…where-they-are
Yesterday I gave a summary of the Indiana Online Users Group (IOLUG) Fall 2009 Meeting in Plainfield, Indiana on Nov 13, 2009.  Today I would like to expand a little upon what I spoke about.  I only spoke for 15 minutes, but it was about something I discovered that has profound implications for a small college library like mine.  My topic was “The Library Website with a Face:  Digitally Connecting to People Where They Are.”  In summary, creating a website where the users can always see if a librarian is available to help them and the ability to connect to them instantly through a chat widget.

At Logan Library, we experimented with a third party virtual reference service for one year.  We had very few virtual reference sessions.  First, to keep the price down, we could only have one librarian logged in at a time and there were large chunks of time when nobody was online.  Second, the chat link, a button that said “Online” or “Offline” depending on whether someone was logged in or not, was only located on the library website’s main page.  At the time that we stopped this service, we began a subscription to LibGuides, a Web 2.0 platform for creating subject guides.  By default, each LibGuide adds the guide owner’s profile to each page of the guide.  Profiles can include numerous types of contact information as well as a chat widget from almost any of the major IM services.  While the most commonly used widget by librarians is for Meebo, we decided to use AOL Instant Messenger and use their widget directly.  We found this best to suit our needs.  We also use Trillian instead of the actual AIM software because it allows us to set the time for the “away” message to coincide with the screen saver; thus we can set it to a very short amount of time so that if we walk away from our computer, the away message will kick in shortly thereafter.  This decreases the chances of users sending us a message and not getting a reply.  Since we only have two reference librarians, we also made it so that the profile of each of us was on the main page of each guide home page, thus they can see if either of us is available.  Finally, we added a “Help” tab to each guide which contains contact information and chat widgets to other library staff members who can help in other ways.  For example, our Interlibrary loan librarian’s box has her contact information, her chat widget, and her picture with the caption “I can help you with questions about Interlibrary loan requests.”   Likewise, each reference librarian’s caption says “I can help you with your research.”  This removes the ambiguity regarding who can help for certain questions.

As a result, we have seen virtual reference questions jump from a handful a quarter to a handful a day.  Most questions such as “what database would be best to search for a particular topic?” or “how can I find out if we subscribe to a particular journal?” can be answered quickly and easily.  In the past, most students would wait until they had time to come to the library to ask these simple questions.   If someone needs more in-depth reference assistance that is hard to do through chat, we can simply set up a time to meet them in the library to give them the appropriate attention.  Thus, knowing that most research is being done outside of the library and with the frequency of use, we know that we have filled an important void in our library service.

Our LibGuides site can be viewed at http://library.rose-hulman.edu and my presentation can be viewed at  http://www.slideshare.net/histrydude/the-library-website-with-a-face-digitally-connecting-to-people-where-they-are or by clicking the image above.

Teaching Information Literacy in 15 Minutes

http://thisthatotherthing.wordpress.com/2009/10/14/teaching-information-literacy-in-15-minutes/
What?  Teach information literacy in 15 minutes?  Are you mad?  It can’t be done!  OBSURD!  Yes, I admit, the notion is absurd.  That is not my goal today.  In fact, I would be happy if all of our students were information literate by the time that they graduate in four years.  My goal today is to give 271 Freshmen (in addition to 208 already) a sliver of information literacy in 15 minutes.  Goals in the fifteen minutes:  1) Library website and LibGuides navigation and how to use it for research, 2) How to use our EBSCO AtoZ search tool, and 3) How to make an Interlibrary Loan Request.

So what is this all about?  All Freshmen at Rose-Hulman must be enrolled in a one credit College & Life Skills course their first semester.  They will spend five of their ten weeks in small group discussions with their mentor and the other five weeks they are introduced to an important academic support service that they need to know about.  This week they meet with the Library and the Learning Center downstairs whose primary duty is tutoring.  They spend a half an hour in each area.  The first 15 minutes in the library is spent on the main floor where our library director talks to them about the library and gives them a quick tour.  Then they come upstairs where I am set up with a laptop and LCD projector to give them a crash course in the basics of navigating the library website to conduct research.

Information literacy encompasses a wide area of knowledge including but not limited to, knowing what kind of formation is needed, how to select quality information resources, what access points to use, how to evaluate the quality of resources and how to understand the economic, legal, and social issues surrounding the use of information in an ethical and legal manner.  As mentioned in my previous post The Challenges of Teaching Information Literacy, we are grappling with revamping our library instruction program to incorporate all of the ACRL guidelines for information literacy so that our students are proficient in all of these areas by the time they graduate.  Since most library instruction sessions are only 55 minutes long, we have to come up with an approach on what points to cover for Freshmen Composition classes through Senior Design and graduate level classes.  So naturally since these are Freshmen, it makes sense to introduce them to the website / LibGuides and how to use it for research.  But I also took the time to touch upon our number one reference question “How do I find out if we have a specific journal, or how do I find this article?”   If I had a dollar every time I’ve been asked that question, I would be rich.  And so WHAM!  There you have it!  Information Literacy in 15 Minutes…kind of!

P.S.  I spoke to four sections last Friday, four sections yesterday, and ten sections today.

Redefining Library Relevance at Rose-Hulman

ACRL Value of Academic Libraries Comprehensive Research Review and Report is a RFP “seeking proposals for the development and delivery of a comprehensive review of the quantitative and  qualitative literature, methodologies, and best practices currently in place for demonstrating the value of academic libraries.”  The relevance of academic libraries is being questioned as a result of changing user expectations due to search engines like Google.  Libraries are scrambling to define themselves as relevant to their user community.  At Logan Library, we are doing this in a few ways.  One is through increased emphasis on information literacy.  We are changing the way we teach library instruction and trying to reach more classes each year.  Our goal by the end of this academic year is to develop a more comprehensive methodology for turning out information literate students by the time they graduate.  This process starts Freshmen year and builds in complexity throughout their four years at Rose.  Since we are starting with Freshman through Seniors all at once, it will take four years before we will see a group of students move through this process.  We are still hashing out this process which we will continue to do throughout this academic year.

The second way in which we are redefining our relevance is by our transformation to a Library 2.0.  While our users may not have any idea what this means, or simply think we are making up some trendy  sounding name for ourselves, they are aware of web 2.0 technology as it is already an integral part of their lives online.  We have done this through the implementation of LibGuides; chat widgets available on our LibGuides pages, Twitter to inform our users of changes to LibGuides and other library news.  We have also added a Twitter widget to our library home page to make our tweets visible to those who are not followers.  We will soon explore uses for facebook .

The transformation is taking slowly taking place.  So far the response has been positive.  We already knew that most research by students is being done outside of the library, so the chat option was implemented to reach students at their point of need.  So far, so good; we are getting several chat reference requests per day.  We have gotten positive feedback from the professors we have conducted library instruction for, and the students seem to be more engaged during the process.  While we do not have the funds currently to build a new library or add a number of new resources, we are in the process of redefining our role within the institution and hopefully increasing our relevance as well.

FINALLY, a use for Twitter

I have finally found a use for Twitter.  Yesterday I created a LibGuide for a Technical Communications class we did library orientations for (6 classes last Friday).  We started seeing students asking for research help the same day and already I have heard students mentioning that they forgot some of the resources that we mentioned.  Unlike in the past, I did not create a paper handout for the students to use as a reference.  Instead, I created a LibGuide just for that class, making this the first class I have done this for.  The email alerts feature in LibGuides only alerts users of new Guides, not changes to already existing guides.  Since I am sure I will be making changes to the guide and adding information, I wanted a way to update our users of new information.  Ahhh, Twitter to the rescue.  I created a Twitter account “loganlibrary” and posted my first update.  I sent all six sections of the class the news of the new guide and of the Twitter account and so now we’ll see how it plays out.  I’ll post an update on usage of the guide and the Twitter account later.