The Small College Librarian – Part 1 – Introduction

http://thisthatotherthing.wordpress.com/2010/01/04/the-small-college-librarian-%E2%80%93-part-1-%E2%80%93-introduction/

The Small College Librarian – Part 2 – So Many Jobs, So Little Time

The Small College Librarian – Part 3 – Multitasking/

This is a first of a series of sections I plan to write regarding the balance librarians of small college libraries must strike between service to their user population and other activities regarding professional development.  These activities include many of the traditional activities that librarians in tenured track positions must be involved in to gain tenure.  They are also important to those desiring to remain at a small college for reasons I will explain later.  These include research and publishing, involvement in professional organizations and committee work, service to the university or college or perhaps even community service.  Librarians of small colleges with few staff members, operate in a very different world than those of larger universities.  First, many of these positions are not tenured track, thus there is little if any institutional incentive to publish or be engaged in professional activities outside of their library.  This librarian must be more self motivated and see the long-term benefit for their career in doing so.  But simply being motivated to do so does not make it easier.  Small college librarians often must wear multiple hats and carry on the duties that are done by many librarians and staff members at larger Universities.  Multitasking becomes the norm, both over the course of a stretch of time and within a short amount such as within the hour.  For example, that last sentence was interrupted by a student requesting virtual reference assistance.  Seriously! I kid you not!  I had to switch gears while writing a sentence on multitasking.  How is that for irony?  We have two librarians that provide reference assistance in addition to many other duties and so “reference time” in whenever someone needs help, not necessarily during our scheduled desk time.   I will expand upon the multiple roles we have at Logan Library in my next installment.  While I fully understand the drawbacks of multitasking, I have learned that multitasking can be managed in a way that minimizes the negatives and allows one to control their multitasking rather than having their multitasking control them.   Of course, there are exceptions.

Working in a small college library can be rewarding and fulfilling.  But whether you plan to move onto a tenure track position or remain a small college librarian, there is still a juggling act that one must contend with.  In the middle of this juggling act, service to our users should always come before personal gain.  What time there is for professional development, self education, and service is often fragmented and fitted in when time allows.  Therefore, transitioning from a small academic library to a University can be challenging for those who so desire.  Small college librarians must learn balance in serving their users and staying involved in the library profession to avoid staleness.  This series shall touch upon such topics as performing regular job duties, librarian scholarly publishing, multitasking, keeping up with the latest innovations and avoiding burnout.

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.