Towards the summit

Source: Flickr user Loren Sztajer  

Oh, winter break, how sweet you are.

I'm sitting in my parent's house, in my Mom's home office. She really has created a beautiful space, and it would be a shame not to take advantage of it for some writing. Especially when there is a full pot of coffee down the hall and my hometown is buried in a few inches of freshly fallen snow.

I thought I'd write up another year in review post. I wrote one at the close of 2009, when I first started the blog and had just finished my first semester in library school. And I really enjoyed writing it. Yes, "best of" lists and "year in reviews" are cliche and overdone, but reflection is an important part of the human experience. So here it goes...

2012 was a big year. Biggest accomplishment: finishing my Masters. Not going to lie, it feels really good to have gotten the degree before I hit thirty. Not only am I thankful for the opportunities it is going to provide, I am thankful for all the amazing people I met along the way.

Next big accomplishment: landing a full time job. For the past two months, I've been the Resource Sharing Library Technician in the Public Access Services department of Portland State University's Library. Not only do I feel incredibly lucky to have a job in a market where the typical new-graduate experience is to piece together part time, on-call, and temporary jobs but the job that I landed is amazing. I oversee the inter-consortum borrowing and lending of library materials, working with an amazing team who process a few hundred books a day. It's so wonderful to be back in access services, especially at such a large university with such a dynamic circulation desk. While I have loved my experience with digital library production, I am thinking my home is going to be in the public services arena of librarianship. And I'm really looking forward to making PSU my new home.

Other accomplishments of the year: working on my first conference committee, meeting and handing over my cover letter to Rachel Maddow, and volunteering with EveryLibrary helping to raise money for the very first National PAC in support of local libraries.

Like I said, 2012 was a big year. And I hope that 2013 will be even bigger.

The only specific projects I have coming down the pike are a few possible writing projects and helping out when I can on the Infocamp Portland 2013 planning committee. There is nothing concrete to base my optimism on other than the fact I am optimistic. My path into professional librarianship is unfolding in the same way a trail up a mountain does. It takes lots of little steps to get to the top. But the steps add up, and pretty soon you can see how far you've come. At the close of 2012 I am reaching a vantage point: I  see how far I've come, and the path to the top is become much clearer.

I know that optimism for the sake of optimism is probably just a self-fulfilling prophecy. But I am okay with that. I'm doing my best to take the positive energy I do have in my life and running with it... up the path and towards the summit.

OHSU Library: Why are we here?

Although I am no longer working with the OHSU project, I am very honored that I was included in this project. Produced by User Experience Librarian Laura Zeigen and directed by Amy Fraizer, a student worker, this video is an excellent look into why librarians and library staff love their jobs:

Centennial Post: Keep Calm and Ranganathan On

One Hundred. 100. Centennial.

I find it appropriate that I made this milestone as I wrap up my MLS education. I am entering my final semester, and have just finished my Capstone requirements. For the Capstone course, I created an online portfolio highlighting my academic and professional requirements and presented the portfolio to my cohort members, professor, adviser and Dean. To celebrate my one hundredth post, I thought I would share my capstone presentation. I related my favorite assignments with Ranganathan's Five laws of Library Science. With each law, I have provided a link to the corresponding page on my portfolio. I hope you enjoy reading this post as much as I enjoyed putting it together:

Keep calm and Ranganathan On

Ranganathan was one of the first theorists I learned about in library school. Throughout this journey he has very much been both an anchor and a trail blazer for me. As a student, whenever I could not wrap my mind around a situation or a concept, I would think “What would Ranganathan do?” And one of his five laws would provide me with an answer.

First law: Books are for Use

His first law is the basis of the foundation of our profession: use. As a librarian, Ranganathan saw that the majority of books were literally chained to the shelves to prevent theft. He recognized this as detrimental, and new that librarians needed to promote access and use of the materials in their library.

This is still true today.

Librarians have always been about connecting people with information, building relationships. As Brenda Dervin would say, we help individuals add meaning to their experiences. When Ranganthan was a librarian, the most common format for information was books. Today there is no common format, but we still help build relationships.

For the course Information Services for Academic Libraries, I created an annotated bibliography based on Megan Oakleaf’s report: The Value of Academic Libraries, focusing on how librarians can assist their institution;s efforts in building high levels of student retention. While this may not seem like a typical role of a librarian, it is actually the focus of what a librarian is.

Where Libraries have been going through a shift from systems to services, so have educational paradigms. Before, it was seen that if students were using library systems they were more likely to graduate. Now, it is sent that if a student has a meaningful relationship with a member of the university staff, they are more likely to graduate. Since Librarians are already in the role of connecting students to information, we are in a strategic place to help foster relationships between students, researchers, faculty and most importantly, librarians.

Second Law: Every reader his or her book

This law suggests that every member of the community should be able to obtain materials needed, which implies a thorough understanding of you community and communities needs. This law was most relevant to me, again, during the course Information Services for Academic Libraries.

An ongoing conversation of that class was the need to understand your users, but in the context of their discipline. We discussed the three different disciplines – Sciences, Social Sciences and Humanities, and how their information needs and searches would be different.

This lesson culminated with an exercise in Academic Reference. We were given a list of typical reference questions and were asked to find 2 reference sources that contained the answer – both in print and electronically. We had to think about the user and what would be the best source for them.

Third Law: Every book its reader
This principle is closely related to the second law but it focuses on the item itself, suggesting that each item in a library has an individual or individuals who would find that item useful.

This law was constantly in the back of my mind as I was working on OHSU’s digital collection of campus photographs.

I was given the task to generate the Metadata for 160 images, mostly of the Portland Aerial Tram. At first I wondered: why do we need so many images? Looking at the collection, if search for pictures of the tram you will come up to close to 1000 images.

Working with our Metadata librarian and working with the collection, I realized to look at the collection as a whole, and I learned that you never know what a person’s need may be. There might be a day when a patron will need an image of the half constructed tram, or the tram's first run, or the tram at sunset or the tram at sunrise or looking up at the tram or looking down at the tram. We will have their needs covered as best as possible.

Fourth Law: Save the time of the reader

This law is the recognition that part of the excellence of library service is its ability to meet the needs of the library user efficiently.

While Ranganathan original wrote the law in relation to the ease of accessing materials, and thus collection and library management, with the shift from systems to services, I think that instruction of information literacy now plays a huge role in saving the time of the reader, teaching patrons how to efficiently search for and select the best sources for their needs.

For teaching in the Information setting, I developed a curriculum that would teach upper level college students how to incorporate 21st century technology into their research projects. Specifically I chose to teach efficient ways to incorporate RSS feeds into their research, selecting both news sources and blogs and appropriate database searches that would deliver potential sources to them, allowing them easy access to a spectrum of information specific to their topic.

By teaching them to make the internet work for them, they will be able to shift their focus from constant searching to analyzing and thinking critically about the information that is delivered to them.

Fifth Law: The library is a growing organism

This law focused more on the need for internal change than on changes in the environment itself. I think it is pretty apparent that librarianship is changing, as this is conversation we have all had since day one.

For the group project in the Management and Administration class, I worked with an amazing group in developing a strategic plan for a community college library. We wanted to confront these changes head on. We looked at the trends affecting this specific field of education – the massive growth in student populations and the popularity of distance education. We knew that students weren’t searching for information at the library, so we wanted to bring our services to them through embedded librarianship, which would not only meet students changing needs but also highlight that librarians can partner with administration and instructors to help overcome these challenges.

Tomorrows libraries are going to look much different than today’s libraries, which already look radically different than the libraries of Ranganathan. I am fairly certain that he would approve.



So now, here I am, looking back. And true enough, Ranganathan and his laws have been the way for me to sum up the lessons of the past two years: Building relationships, knowing your users, providing access to what individuals and communities need, providing efficient services and quality instruction, and being able to adapt and change.

But there is one lesson that I learned not through him, but through the members of my cohort: the importance of community. These lessons and ideas would be lost of me if it wasn’t for my classmates to bounce them off of and work on together. I can not thank them enough for such an amazing journey. I could not imagine where I would be today if I had to do this on my own.


Image Credit: AtliaTheHun on Flickr
Image Credit: Marta Murvosh

As seen online

There have been lots of fun tidbits floating around the internet the past week. Here are some that have caught my interest:

The first is from the public library in Troy, Michigan. In 1971 construction of the new library was finished, and the children's librarian wrote to hundreds of celebrities, authors and notable public officials asking them to wrote the children of Troy about their new library. She collected 97 of them and they are now up on their website. Some of my favorite's include Issac Asimov, Dr. Seuss, Saul Alinsky, Pearl Bailey, and Vincent Price. Even Ronald Reagan and Pat Nixon wrote some very sweet letters!



Here's an article on how the University of Chicago has built an underground book storage facility that is powered by robots. While this has the potential to cut down on the potential for browsing, I think that this still awesome for an academic library. It creates more space for studying and creates a protected space for valuable materials and archives. Plus, robots are cool.

The Chronicle published another great article looking at innovative academic libraries. This one describes embedded librarians at Johns Hopkins and reworking space to match students needs.

I love working in a medical library and I love learning about new (and free resources). This interactive 3D Human Anatomy Search Engine is pretty rad, and I feel would be an excellent resource for a more general academic or even public library.

I've posted about Snooki before, and I will probably post about her some more. Here is a great article about two academic librarians who use MTV's The Jersey Shore to their advantage.

Demystifying ILL

As an undergrad, I LOVED interlibrary loan. I was doing one of those crazy esoteric senior projects - examining the historical development of agriculture technology and the bifurcation of nature and society (say that 10 times fast). While we had an awesome library, it didn't have most of what I needed to write this paper. Interlibrary loan saved the day. Putting in a request one day and having it show up in either my email inbox or campus mailbox was amazing. If I knew then that I would be working in an interlibrary loan office a few years later, I would have been much more appreciative.

I now realize that interlibrary loan is a lot of work. And I don't think that library users are aware of this. I know I didn't before I worked in a library. So I posted this thought on twitter:

I hope patrons realize how much work goes into getting their articles through ILL...

..and I got this response:

@JenniferMReads I'm a librarian & don't know exactly what goes into getting an article via ILL! Blog post idea??!!

Well, JenniferMReads, here it is. I lift the veil of Inter-Library Loan:

First, a note. My responsibility right now is just to process incoming lending requests, providing patrons from other libraries with materials from our collection. Also, we're a relatively large medical academic library, so we get a lot of lending requests. That said, here is a *brief* description of how this process goes down:

- Request comes in through one of three avenues: illiad, docline or document delivery

- I process the request, locating where it might be in the library (physical location or electronic database) and what format the requesting library would like it in (physical book/journal or tiff or pdf)

- Locate the item, pulling it from the stacks or navigating databases and publishers websites

- Scan the item and save it in the preferred format or download the article

- Send the item: package and address the book or journal or make sure that the proper electronic format gets sent through the appropriate electronic pathways (through Ariel or Odyssey software or save the pdf on a server and email the link to the library).

- Repeat again, and again. and again. and again.

The craziest part about ILL is that requests never. stop. coming. in. It's like running up a giant sand dune. Each step takes you closer to the top, but you are constantly sliding backwards. If you ever stop, you'll find yourself back at the bottom.

And these are just requests from other libraries, let alone placing a request for material from another library for our patrons.

While this post might sound "woe is me," I love working in inter-library loan. It provides many hands on learning opportunities. I am constantly thinking of the user, remembering what it was like to receive requested articles. I also remember what it was like to receive an article that was blurry, cut off, hard to read or had lots of black areas from poor scanning/copying that wasted toner when printed off. So I take care to ensure that my scans are readable and printable. I know patrons don't stop to think about the quality of their article - unless the quality is poor. So my goal is to make sure that patrons don't don't how awesome there scans and copies are.

I'm also getting some great experience navigating through databases and publisher websites. In the few weeks that I have worked in the ILL office, I have probably looked up more journal articles than in the entirety of my post-secondary academic career.

And of course I spend the time with some great individuals who create a pretty awesome work environment.

ILL is an essential part to the library system, creating additional avenues for patrons to access information they need. I hope this description helps clear up some of how those materials are brought in. And if you ever receive a journal article from a medical library in the Pacific Northwest, know that it was sent with a little bit of love!

A Call for Creativity

This is the second post in a series celebrating National Library Week.

This term I am enrolled in the class "Information Services for Academic Libraries," which has provided some of the best readings to date in my MLIS program. One of the latest articles we read was Lingo and Tepper's "The Creative Campus" from the Chronicle of Higher Education.

While this article called for the need of more creativity in the academic institution as a whole, I feel that this argument is especially true for academic libraries. In a day and age where shouting out your relevancy to your users, communities and power holders may not even be enough, incorporating and promoting creativity within your organizational culture can certainly go a long way. Here are some recent examples of creative efforts by academic librarians:

Using free social networking tools to embed yourself in classes. Again in the Chronicle, there was an article highlighting a librarian who is embedded in a classroom, where she and the students are logged into twitter together. Throughout the class discussion, she will tweet relevant information sources and material. What is amazing about this is how in happens in real time, and the sources she recommends are in response to the topics and ideas brought up in discussion, not based off of a course reading list or research topic list - creating organic librarianship rather than static librarianship.

Re-imagining physical library space. I found this one by browsing Library Journal's list of 2011 movers and shakers. Joesph Sanchez, Library Director at Red Rocks Community College, converted an old storage room into a recording studio. Not only is that an amazing service to offer to students, but this would also be a great resource to include in marketing campaigns.

Providing amazing User Experience and Web Design. Everyone laments the ineffectual design found on academic websites (xkcd captured the sentiment perfectly). Creativity is an essential element of good design, and a lack of creativity equals bad design. Library websites are not immune from this phenomenon. I find that the typical causes for poor design on library websites are the stiffing policies set in stone by bureaucratic institutions. However, there are some libraries out there who are getting it right: While not perfect, I think PNCA's Fine Art Library is one of the better academic library websites I have seen. Simple? check... Navigable? check... Visually appealing? ...check and check!

Not only is this week National Library Week, but today is National Library Workers Day. Library workers (especially student workers) can be some of your biggest sources of creative potential, often bringing specialized skills and resources to the table. And keeping with the theme of Big Tent Librarianship, while this post focused on Academic Libraries any and all forms of libraries could always incorporate creativity. In fact, one of my favorite library websites comes from a public library! When it comes to creativity, I am a firm believer that we all have a thing or two to teach each other!

photo credit: New York Public Library, 1923, via The Commons

My first prezi!

When it comes to emerging technology, I usually feel like I am late to the party. I just got a twitter account, I've just started to really embrace cloud computing and I don't have a smart phone yet. However, I have finally been converted to Prezi. I've seen it used for conference and class presentations, and the seamless navigation puts power point to shame.

Working on a group assignment, we were given the task of leading a class discussion focusing on how libraries can contribute to improving student experiences. My classmate Kirsten (check out her amazing food food blog) and I came up with a tight little presentation. Check it out:

Student Experience on Prezi

We certainly didn't take full advantage of Prezi's potential. Because we were leading a discussion, we did not want to overwhelm our audience with information. We just wanted to highlight the relationship between enrollment, experience and retention. We are certainly happy with what we came up with.

This was a great assignment. It helped me think about how academic libraries can really contribute to their institution's wider community. Through collaboration, everyone benefits.

This assignment was based on Dr. Megan Oakleaf's ACRL report "The value of academic libraries," which is worth checking out if you are at all interested in academic librarianship, library marketing or communicating the value of your library to your community.

Just 'cause they're digital natives...

"...even though young people may have been exposed to computers since they learned the alphabet and may be avid users of sites like MySpace and YouTube, college-aged students are no more likely to be natural-born researchers and scholars than anyone else." -Allison J. Head (2008), Co-Director of Project Information Literacy


photo credit: LSE Library via The Commons

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.

This dude's crazy.....

....but he might be on to something

An article just arrived in my in box, and the first line really caught my eye "Bill Mayer imagines a library without librarians."

Wha? Really? No.....Seriously....?

...and then I read the article. It seems that Mayer (the university librarian at American University) actually has some radical, and maybe even good, ideas.

He doesn't want to get rid of librarians, he just wants them out of the library and in the community. He also wants to incorporate various community collections (In the case of AU, collections that various student groups and campus departments have already built up) and pull them together with the library's collection. As I go through library school, I am amazed at how often that word pops up....community.

It seems that libraries have gone through an evolution where the original focus was on the information itself, and then the focus was on the systems of retrieving information, and then the focus was on serving the patron. I think its time to stop thinking about serving individual patrons, but looking at a community, as a whole, as the patron. I also think that we need to stop thinking about bringing the patron to the information, but bringing the information to the patron.

How do we do this? I have no idea. That's what I'm going into debt for.

Anyways, it's a great article, I highly recommend you check it out.

And I'm curious about this Bill Mayer character, he seems like someone to keep an eye on...

In which our protagonist lands a job...

It really looks like I am going to be a librarian...

When I first started thinking about getting my MLIS here in Portland, I had a former coworker who was enrolled in the program I wanted to join leave the bookstore for a position with a prominent medical university here in town.

"Hmmm," I thought to myself, "I bet that would be a great job to have while going back to school. In fact, I think I would love to work there..."

With the process of getting into and starting school underway, I turned my attention to getting a job that would start my career as a librarian or information specialist. Fate smiled upon me, and I bumped into the former coworker, and she let me know that the prominent medical university was hiring student workers AND she would put in a good word for me. She is an angel. After applying and having a great interview, I start work on Tuesday.

It's going to be fascinating to work in a medical library, since I've never had any intention on being a doctor. Yeah, they make a lot of money, but blood is gross. Really gross. At least when I am bored at work I can research various debilitating medical conditions. Whenever I or a loved one receive a diagnosis, I'll certainly have the resources to find all the worst case scenarios possible and give the doctor a run for their money. Good thing I'm not a hypochondriac!

In other news...

Found this great article on cnn.com about the future of libraries. What I like about it is that it is not super alarmist. There is no "THEY'RE BURNING BOOKS" mentality. The article states that the way society gathers and devours information is changing, and libraries need to change to stay relevant. I especially like the end of the article where the funding issue is mentioned. There is a real catch 22 to the fact that updating libraries is super expensive, but with the current economic shenanigans we're going through, libraries can't afford to remain competitive.