Moving process completed, internal demolition begun

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

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.

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

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.

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!

Logan Library Begins a New Era with New Online Catalog Agreement

Administrators sign a memorandum of agreement for new consortium - (Left to right): Art Western, Vice President of Academic Affairs at Rose Hulman; Gordon Afdahl, Vice President for Finance and Administration at St. Mary of the Woods; William Bruce, Chair of the Vigo County Library board; and Robert English, Associate Vice President for Academic Affairs at Indiana State.

When students return to Rose-Hulman for the Fall 2010 quarter, they will notice a remarkable difference when searching the library catalog for books.  They will first notice a brand new search interface that delivers results quite differently than what they are used to from traditional library catalogs.  Second, they will notice that search results also include books and other materials from Vigo County Public Library (VCPL).

On Jan 28, 2010, Rose-Hulman Vice President of Academic Affairs Art Western signed a memorandum of understanding with administrators of three other area institutions creating a new shared library catalog consortium.  Since 1985, Rose-Hulman has been a part of a shared online catalog system with Indiana State University and Saint Mary of the Woods College.  The current integrated library system, Voyager by Ex Libris (formally owned by Endeavor), is the third online catalog system during this period of time and has been in place for the last eleven years.  The new agreement does two things.  First, VCPL is now a part of the consortium making it a four member group.  Second, the catalog will be migrated to a new integrated library system called Millennium by Innovative Interfaces Inc.

The library directors of each of the four libraries. (L to R): Nancy Dowell, Directory of Vigo County Public Library; Rachel Crowley, Institute Librarian at Rose-Hulman; Judy Tribble, Library Director at Saint Mary of the Woods College, Alberta Davis Comer, Dean of Library Services Administration at Indiana State University.

The Consortium
The new consortium changes will not alter the borrowing process between the three colleges that is currently in place.  Students, faculty and staff from any of the three colleges will be able to borrow from the other three libraries by using their current college ID card.  Rose-Hulman students will still be able to borrow books from VCPL .  VCPL’s current policy towards Rose-Hulman faculty and staff requires them to reside in Vigo County.

The Integrated Library System
Millennium was selected over three other systems because it has the most capabilities, making it able to meet the needs of multiple libraries of different types.  It also ranks number one in customer satisfaction.   For the end-user, the most striking difference would be the user interface.   In addition to a traditional catalog interface, users will have the option of a faceted search engine which incorporates features such as a spell checker (e.g. did you mean…?), tag clouds and relevancy ranking.  Search results can also be narrowed down on the results page rather than having to reconstruct a search from scratch.   We hope that it will make the research process easier and more productive when more formal and structured research is not necessary.  The migration process has already begun, but the system is scheduled to go live in July or August of this year.

eBook Readers and Student Text Books

While I have never been a big advocate of eBook readers, I have found value in them. The value I have found tends to be more or less, the opposite of what the author in this article states. If I had the desire to read the epic novel, “War & Peace,” I would want to read it in a paper copy and then have it to place in my library. Back in 2000 when I started at Rose-Hulman, I was given the duty of experimenting with numerous eBook readers. The conclusion I came to then, I still hold today. I don’t see them replacing the type of book you would want to read cover to cover, at least not for most people, but I do see their advantages as a means of delivering text books to college students. The author of the article states that text books purchased for a class should be held onto when the class is over as part of their education. It’s an academic thing. He finds the idea of students not highlighting or annotating a text book so as to not degrade the resale value appalling. I can certainly relate to this notion as I held onto almost all of my text books. There were a few here and there that I sold, but most I kept. But the fact of the matter is, text books are extremely expensive, bulky, heavy, and for general education classes, will more than likely never be opened again. With students strapped for cash, it only makes sense to sell back these books that otherwise may one day be used as door stops or as I have used them, to prop up the head of my bed during times of sinus infections so I could breath at night. So what I said nine years ago, I still say today. Ebook readers would make a nice alternative for student text books. Being a laptop campus, our students walk around with back packs that hold their laptops, numerous textbooks, notebooks, and other items. You would think they were hiking the Appalachian Trail rather than walking across a small campus to attend a few classes the way these backpacks stick out two or three feed from their backs. I can envision a model where students could be given the option of either purchasing the eBook for permanent ownership, or by leasing it for a specific amount of time for a lower cost. There are barriers to this of course. While the Kindle has been the most successful eBook reader so far, the technology still needs some tweaking and the business model has a long way to go. Recently, Amazon removed copies of George Orwell’s 1984 and Animal Farm from their website and from their Kindle reader devices, copies these users assumed that they owned. The alarm caused by this development has caused people to once again to lose faith in the eBook concept. Call it good timing, or good luck, but that same week, Barnes & Noble announced the launch of its eBook store and its reader, the Plastic Logic eReader device which will be released in early 2010. The eBook industry is still unstable, but as we grow closer to standardization and more and more mediums of communication (books, news, articles, audio/visual) are accepted into the digital realm, there will be a place for eBook readers. And while textbook publishers may be a late adopter, I still expect there will be a place for them in the future world of eBooks.
Reference: http://www.insidehighered.com/views/2009/11/03/golub