Look inside the mind of a library circulation worker...

...when things are super slow, I get sucked into the Bermuda Triangle of social media:


When I'm really bored, I make Venn Diagrams:



Thankfully I have enough on my plate that this doesn't happen super often!

MLK, Osama and a global game of telephone

On May 2nd, the day after Osama was assassinated, I saw this quote on the Facebook wall of a good friend:

I will mourn the loss of thousands of precious lives, but I will not rejoice in the death of one, not even an enemy. Returning hate for hate multiplies hate, adding deeper darkness to a night already devoid of stars. Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate, only love can do that. MLK Jr.

I liked it. It matched the sentiment I was feeling, so I shared it. A lot of other people did, too. A lot of other people.

Apparently, the first line of the quote went viral on twitter. The only problem was that the first line of the quote wasn't Martin Luther Kings words. The rest of the quote is from MLK's book Strength to Love but that first line seemed to have gotten picked up and passed along as part of the quote.

There is a lot to be said about this situation. About citing your sources, about inspiration, even about appropriate reactions to global events.

What I find most interesting about this (semi)fake quote is how social media highlights one of the most basic rules of information science: The most trusted source for information is someone you already know. Those of us who saw the quote on a friend's Facebook wall or in a twitter feed trusted that person. I know I didn't think to confirm the validity of the quote, and obviously neither did others. This is a prime example of how Facebook, and social media as a whole, has become such a major player in the past five years. In the digital age, it's a way of building networks with those we already know and trust.

I think that this is an important reminder for librarians, especially in terms of the customer service that we offer our library users. Not that we have to be on Facebook (which I feel anyways) but that it is important to be seen as active and prominent members of our community. Whether it be a college campus, a corporate office or even just a local community, the days of hiding in the library are over. Our patrons need to know who we are.

David Shumaker has been doing some great research into the concept on embedded librarianship - worth checking out.

To see the original Facebook post the caused the misquote to go viral, click here.

Photo Credit: Minnesota Historical Society

Public Librarians, take a bow!

The past few days have been pretty exciting for libraries. There has been some amazing, and loud, debate surrounding Harper Collins' new policies surrounding library's purchasing their ebooks. In simplest terms, Harper Collins - working with Over Drive - will sell their ebook to a library, but that ebook can only circulate 26 times before the library has to repurchase said book.

Librarians are not pleased, and between Facebook, Blogs, and Twitter they are letting the world know how disgruntled they are. To see the crazy amount of noise that librarians are making for yourself, just go to twitter.com and search for #hcod. You don't even have to log in or create an account, the results will pop up. Just be sure to come back here when you're done.

And it makes sense why librarians are up in arms. This would take collection development in a whole new direction. When library funds are limited it can be challenging enough to try and make your collection grow appropriately. But, as this youtube video highlights, Harper Collins' new policy would add even more constraints to collection development.

It would be like trying to buy gas, but for every five gallons, you would have to buy back the keys to your car.

I am finding this debate absolutely fascinating. Working in a medical academic library, we certainly emphasize electronic journals, but not so much electronic books. This issue is going to affect public libraries the most...

...While ebooks have been around for about a decade, best practices for delivering content to the masses still need to be figured out. Even for-profit organizations are scrambling. Traditional booksellers like Borders are going belly up while independent writers who avoid traditional publishing houses are making millions. And it's just as confusing for libraries. There has been a lot of discussion among my classmates on what the best answer is, and the debate seems to follow most debates in librarianship: services versus systems.

So, what's the best answer? I have no idea. I'm not sure anyone does. But that's not important. What is important is that librarians are contributing to the discussions. While many people argue that libraries are irrelevant in the 21st century, this debate is proving that librarians help shape the way individuals will receive digital content. Need evidence? Both authors and publishers are taking notice:

Marilyn Johnson, author of The Dead Beat and This Book is Overdue, posted on her blog that while publisher and authors need to be compensated, it should not be off the backs of libraries.While it may be lukewarm, Harper Collins themselves commented on the debate that librarians are stirring up. They call for collaboration, but it doesn't sound like they will change their policy.

I'm real excited to see where this debate goes. But I am mostly excited, and proud, of the way that librarians are refusing to give in without a fight.While I may only be on the sidelines, battles like this are the reason I went into library school.

In defense of twitter...

So, I am one week in to my own twitter account, and I'm loving it.

On a superficial level it's a great way to pass the time during the quiet hours in the library when I am working the circulation desk.

On a deeper level I love the constant sharing of information. Maybe it's because I am such an extrovert, but I love microblogging. It's quick and dirty and gets the information out fast. I love seeing all of the different links that people share and I love having a place where I can unabashedly share my own links. Sometimes I am hesitant to post stories/videos/pictures/stuff to Facebook, because I'm afraid of over-sharing. But that's kind of the point of twitter, to over-share.

I have been getting interesting responses when I tell people that I have a twitter account. People who have an account seem supportive or amused. People who don't have an account seem skeptical (at best) or express their out right disdain for twitter (at worst). I'll admit that I stayed away from it for a while, but that was mostly because it seemed overwhelming to me (and I thought you had to have a smart phone to use it). I think with any form of social media, there are going to be people who don't see it's relevant use.

But I have been finding Twitter super useful. Whereas Facebook is a great way to stay in touch with people, Twitter is a great way to follow the informational people consume - especially when their interests align with yours.

Photo credit: dbarronoss

Facebook is a learning tool. No really, it is.

Haters love to hate Facebook.

I think it is one of those phenomenons where a cultural artifact (or a meme) circulates through certain thresholds of popularity: starting underground, moving onto edgy, then widespread, loathing, and finally ironic. Kind of like Dave Mathews Band.

I think Facebook is teetering between widespread and loathing. In one moment people will cry foul about privacy issues and parents creating face book pages, threatening to cancel their account, yet in another moment they will turn around and chronicle myopic details about their lives on their Facebook wall.

While I think there are serious concerns about Facebook's privacy policy (I would love to write a blog post about it someday, but that would take too much research and I have enough on my plate as it is), people have to realize that Facebook is the internet, and unless you want something to say completely private, DON"T PUT IT ON THE INTERNET. Now that she's has a Facebook profile, I fully realize that my Mom could find anything I post online.

While I think people are always going to rip on Facebook (as they should - it is a corporate entity whose only mission is to profit off of it's users), it is forever going to be a part of our lives. And now that I'm undertaking internet-based scholastic endeavors, Facebook is fast becoming part of my classroom.

Case-in-point: this semester an instructor assigned our class a take home exam. Having some foresight, the instructor explained that she believes that adult learners work best through collaboration, and highly encouraged us to work together on the exam. Being young adult learners, most of took to Facebook as our collaboration facilitation.

One member of the cohort sent our a message to the rest of us, initially to try and set up a time when we could all get together, but we all started posting questions we had about the exam, and soon our discussion grew. At this point there are almost 50 posts in the thread, occurring over the span of a week between fourteen students. It's been the most intense Facebook experience I have had in the half decade I have had an account.

Yet, it's not very surprising that it's been natural for us to discuss our exam through Facebook. Posting an electronic message, regardless of the venue (Facebook, a Blog comment, Black Board, etc.) is like school for us. Online posts and comments are fast becoming a ubiquitous form of communication. My friends and I joke that with the proliferation of social networking, email feels really formal now...

Protrait of a book as a library item

I just checked out a book today.

I know, when you work in the library field, that may not be the most exciting piece of news. But I started thinking about the journey this book took the information within this book took before and after it reached my hands.

The book in question is Sarah Silverman's Bedwetter: Stories of Courage, Redemption and Pee. I think it's going to be an instant classic.

The story of how I ended up checking this book out has a very logical beginning: Facebook. One day, not too long ago, I was chatting, via Facebook wall, with my friend Liz. Liz, an amazing individual, has been living in New Hampshire the past few years. Which is kind of unfortunate.

(sorry Liz, it's true)

Don't get me wrong - I love New Hampshire. It's my home state, and I'm proud enough to be from there to have the outline tattooed on my ankle:

(It says "The Shire" underneath. And yes, it's there forever)

BUT, for a hip, intelligent individual in your mid twenties, the granite state is kind of a boring place to live (Right, Liz?) However, we were talking about New Hampshire's more positive attributes - such as it's export of comedians - mainly Adam Sandler and Sarah Silverman (New Hampshire is a great breeding ground for fart jokes). As we were discussing our mutual appreciation for Sarah Silverman, Liz mentioned her new book. In my excitement I went ahead a placed a reserve for it at my local library.

Luckily, I was one of the first to place a reserve. Even though the library didn't own a copy at the time I placed my hold, within a few days the reserve list swelled to over 150 holds. As I picked up my book today I thought about that fact. Granted, the library owns almost a dozen copies of this book, but this title is going to spend the first few months as an item in this library circulating. It's not going to sit on shelf (other than the hold shelf) for a patron to come in and browse. That idea simply struck me funny.

In fact, browsing the shelves at Multnomah County Library kind of sucks. It's because all the good books aren't in the library but are in circulation. It's rare, when I request a book, to see its status as being on the shelf. In order to get a book in your hands, it seems like you need to do a little Internet research first - read a review of it online, or have a friend recommend it to you through a social networking site. Then, after a few clicks, you place it on reserve from your libraries Online Public Access Catalog and (depending on the popularity of the item) after a few days or weeks... BOOM! It's yours.

Thinking about the life cycle of a library book makes me think about those libraries who are doing away with their books. The most recent case I've heard about is Stanford University's Physics and Engineering libraries. Another case, reported back in September 2009, involves an elite New England prep school removing all of their books from their library and turning it digital.

I think one of these libraries is appropriately removing their books and the other is not.

In the case of Stanford, both of these libraries are primarily research based, and the information these patrons are gathering will mostly be available online, anyways. Not to mention that Stanford is already having space issues (as reported in the article), so if you have to choose one library to free up shelve space, science libraries would be at the top of my list.

In the case of the private high school, I think their efforts of revolutionizing their library could end up being counter productive. These students are still developing their academic and research skills, and the interaction with physical print is a great benefit to their development. Here is an article from the Chronicle of Higher Education that proves this belief. Print is more conducive to a variety of learning styles, whereas reading from a screen is not.

I know this post is getting a little bit too big picture (welcome to my brain), what started as a post about a silly comedienne's memoir is now spinning out of control into the ethos of educational theory, so I'll try and draw this tangent to a close. I just think it's interesting to look at a book, which is fast becoming a controversial cultural artifact, as a library item. In one case you have a library that is responsible in its removal of books, another library that is irresponsible in theirs and a third, highly regarded public library, that requires you to log onto a computer to gain access to the books that can't be found on their shelves (which is the majority of them).

For those of you who wonder what types of things we deal with in library school, I hope I gave you a little something to chew on.

Interesting social networking study

The University of New Hampshire released a study examining the correlation between student's time devoted to Web 2.0 and their grades. Their findings? None. Their was an even distribution between students who considered themselves "heavy users" (more than an hour a day) and "light users" (less than a half an hour a day).

This seems to make sense. It comes down to time management, and there have always been ways to distract oneself from their schoolwork. Twenty years ago is was Super Mario Brothers, ten years ago it was spider solitaire and minesweeper, today it is mafia wars and facebook.

What is interesting is that 92% of the student who participated in the study were all on facebook.

As I said earlier, Big Brother has a new name, and it's Mark Zuckerberg.

Big brother has a new name...Mark Zuckerberg

I know I've already posted today, but before I forgot about it, I wanted to get this up here. Just a quick rant before bedtime...

Ever since I saw the open letter on Facebook about its new privacy setting, I've been kind of curious, especially since they unveiled them today. So I did some research....

I think this article is one of the best posts I have found about Facebook's new privacy settings.

Although, I have to say that the best privacy setting is to be truly private. As my friend Anne once said, "Don't want someone to see something? Don't put it on the internet." Now that my mom is my friend, she's my new litmus test for anything I post, although I'm sure she still gets offended every now and again.

Although Facebook's mission is to help people connect with one another - we have to remember that they are a business. Any business's number one priority is profit. And if it's profitable to try and spread as much information about you as far as possible, then by-golly they're gonna try.

Oh - and for the record, here is another reason to hate mafia wars...