The internet is really really great

The final article that I found of particular interest, enough to write about, was Hsin-Liang Chen’s Use of multi-modal media and tools in an online information literacy course: College students' attitudes and perceptions, which discusses “[i]ntegration of multi-modal media and tools in an online technology and information literacy class.” According to Chen, the quality of the media and tools, the amount of technical problems, and the technical savvy of the class participants all affect the satisfaction of the participants with the class. Basically, “[t]he results of this study suggest that online courses should provide a rich array of online media and communication tools to strengthen course interactions and student engagement. Additionally, this array of media and tools can expose students to the benefits and challenges of dealing with information and information technology in a networked world.”

Honestly? I could have told you that. I suppose that those conducting these studies haven’t completed (5.5 more months!) a degree entirely online, and base their entire scholarly experience on online interactivity.

Luckily, I’ve really enjoyed my classes and the instructors’ usage of online tools. Every instructor uses different tools in different combinations, and, depending on both the subject matter and the organization of everything, they all seem to work. Of the two, it’s the organization of the material that really affects my opinion of the class. Using Blackboard, instructors have a lot of free reign as to how they post class materials. Much like a library, the better the organization and the more natural the flow of information, the easier it is to find and, then, apply to my studies, the better. Also, distance education is difficult enough without being able to interact face to face with instructors and fellow students. Most classes utilize message boards to provide some semblance of natural class discussion, but even that’s difficult.

The best classes, and I’m not just saying this because the class this paper is for is one of them, have found a way to combat even that, by using presentation chat software (like Adobe Connect) to have real time class meetings. It’s provides a much more comfortable forum for instructors and students to work together and build relationships. Though one of the perks of online education is doing it on your own schedule and required class times go against that, it’s still nice to have a more personal connection with everyone. Now, what I haven’t experienced is Chen’s conclusion that “female participants reported lower levels of computer skill and indicated a tendency to procrastinate in course work.” If I procrastinate, it certainly has nothing to do with my level of computer skill.

Overall, my interest in this material actually confirms, to me, that I’m on the right career path. I still have quite a lot to learn, but I’m excited about learning it!

Life is what happens when you're busy making other plans

Another concept I’ve been able to become more familiar with during this assignment is that of scenario planning and strategic planning. Strategic planning, according to Steve Connor, et al, in Steering a Future Through Scenarios: Into the Academic Library of the Future, “is a process to order the available resources to ensure an effective execution of plans for the coming year or period. Scenario planning challenges and questions the bases on which the logic of the existing operations are based. It is a technique which enables participants in the process to grasp new and previously unexplored options.”

The article discusses a library in Hong Kong employing the technique, upon a librarian’s retirement, to plan for their future. I can relate, as I was hired to replace two retiring “librarians”. What I did not have was much of a chance to plan before they left. Still, I have been able to execute scenario planning as I go. As I discover “the way things were” in my library, I can judge how well it worked, and whether it needs to be modified or replaced with a different method entirely. Once I know what needs to be changed, I can use strategic planning to execute that change. I hadn’t realized the difference before.

What the library in Hong Kong did that I didn’t was more heavily involve the stakeholders of the library in their planning. As I discussed earlier, I have used what I have learned from the teachers, my patrons, and I have run ideas by various mentors and my boss, but very little of the actual planning and its execution has been done by anyone but me. In the end, that’s actually okay, because I know what I’m doing will work. My boss hasn’t stopped me yet, and just about every idea I run past someone is met with approval, which reminds that I really do know what I am doing and others trust me to do it. I may not face formal reviews or a lot of meetings to get official validation for my methods, but trusting me to do my thing is good enough. I know I and what I am doing are appreciated, even if I’m only told so informally.

Getting to know you

Speaking of talking about it, what good is a library if no one knows about it? While my library serves the entire district, which has over 500 arts teachers, I only actually work with approximately a hundred of them on a regular basis (a number I am completely guesstimating). Of those, maybe half of them use the library consistently every semester.

At least once a month, I get an email from an arts teacher that starts out with something like “I had no idea this library existed! Great! Can you help me with XYZ?” I know that I send out a “Using the Fine Arts Library” email every year and I’m introduced, and usually speak, at the fall inservice meetings. Yet there are still teachers completely oblivious to my library’s existence.

What I would like to do, this fall, when I’ve completed the updating project, is to spread the word even more, especially now that I’ll be able to track circulation statistics. According to Rajesh Singh, in Does your library have an attitude problem towards ‘marketing’? Revealing inter-relationship between marketing attitudes and behavior, there are three levels of marketing – strong, medium, and weak. The prime aim of a library with a strong marketing technique is “identifying and meeting customer information needs” and “these libraries aim to build a relationship with their customers by offering tailored services and products which satisfy their information needs and problems”. As one can expect, medium and weak go down from there.

Of course, I hope to be more in line with a strong technique, and I think I’m on track. While, in the end, it will have taken me three years to fully update the system, it has given a chance to get to know the teachers I serve and their needs, and I’ll be able to use that to my advantage in my marketing and continuous updating of the library.

I'm gonna go to the High School of Performing Arts!

In Sharon Weiner’s article, The Contribution of the Library to the Reputation of a University, she reports a study done to explore “the relationship between a peer-assessed reputation rating for each of the 247 doctoral universities and cross-institutional performance indicators for universities and their libraries . . . The findings showed that the role of the library was important . . . in contributing to reputation.”

In my limited experience, I completely agree. I usually get a variation on one of three responses when I tell people what I do for work and where. “That’s cool.” “What a fun job!” “I didn’t know those kinds of libraries existed on a school district level.” To the last one, I usually respond, “I didn’t either.” Having such a library I think directly speaks to the quality of education for the students in this school district.

There is a high value placed on arts education here, and it shows. I don’t have any statistics readily available to back me up, but our students consistently rank among the top in the nation in academics and arts. While the teachers are often strained with too many students and not enough time with them, arts education still exists in every school.

As the 12^th largest school district in the country, of course we have a library to back that up. And, with the work I’m doing, the library is improving, rapidly, and should be at the level we want it at by next school year. The library will finally be something to talk about, much like the school district, and not just because of how backwards it was.

My dog ate all my homework last night

As an avid library blog reader, I often only read the articles attached to headlines that interest me, and I usually relate whatever I’m reading to my current professional life. For example, I don’t own a Kindle, and don’t plan to, so anything that comes up on LISNews about them, I tend to ignore.

Yet, where my industry reading fails is journals.As a member of a handful of professional library organizations (VLA, IAM-L, MLA, ALA), I often receive a handful of newsletters and journals in the mail, but I rarely crack them open. So, this assignment, to read the latest edition of the Journal of Academic Librarianship and write a "bloggy, self-reflective coupla pages", was actually really interesting to me.

True to form, I only read the articles that were actually interesting to me, but that turned out to be more than I thought. Also true to form, I easily related it to what I’m doing professionally, and, as a blogger, I’m rather looking forward to expounding on my thoughts, and then actually publishing them on my blog (which will be found here over the next few days). In lieu of an official citation, all articles referenced can be found in the January 2009 volume of The Journal of Academic Librarianship.

See I don't know everything and I know I'll never know

Librarians are amazing, no doubt. They are an invaluable source of information because they seemingly know everything about everything, especially in a subject library. If they're a science librarian, for instance, they must know everything about chemistry AND physics.

Right?

Let me let you in on a little library secret.

It's not true.

We don't know everything.

We do, however, know how to find it. We might have to ask you a lot of questions to do so, and we may lead you down the wrong path at first. But, I promise, if we're patient with each other, not only will we find what you're looking for, you'll learn how to find it on your own next time.

So, please don't be surprised if I don't know right away where to find the Chinese landscapes or the self-portraits of that one guy from Finland, or if they'll be the ones you like, rather than the ones you don't.

We'll like each other a lot more that way.

C'mon darlin', let's go back to bed

This is what my car looked like this morning.



This is what my pants still looked like two hours later (look closely to see how wet they still are).

This is what the floor I'm melting on looks like.


This is what I look like (I'm still cold, and my nose is still crooked).


There are maybe seven or eight people in my entire building that came in today. Schools are closed. Many things are canceled. And, yet, diehard that I am, I am at work.

At least I can play my music as loud as I want. Which I do everyday anyway.

Who's that girl?

I'm That Girl

That Girl who plays on her iPhone as she works out.

That Girl who spends all day Saturday afternoon and evening studying, foregoing all social invitations.

That Girl who goes grocery shopping by herself on a Saturday night, sans makeup, wearing jeans, a hoodie, and a baseball cap. (When else, I ask you, am I going to get that done?)

That Girl who blogs at 2 AM.

That Girl, who does all those things, and doesn't care who knows.

The spark of creation

As seen today on Blog Segullah, the following is a short video produced by lds.org, mixing the immeasurable words of President Uchtdorf with beautiful music and images.

It's inspiring and a wonderful reminder of the divine nature within each of us. I wish I created more. I write often, both here and in my daily journals (yes, there are two), but did you know I used to paint and draw? I wasn't particularly good, I'll leave that talent to my sister and aunt, but I still haven't cultivated it in years. I do have some sewing and crafting talent, and I've recently thought of several projects I want to do (some more utilitarian than others), but I'm probably not going to get to them before the sewing machine I have a love/hate relationship with moves to India (even I'm still the only one to have used it). Anyone have a sewing machine they want to give/sell me?

There are lots of things I like to create, and you probably feel the same way. I'd love to hear about those things. As Pres. Uchtdorf says, we all have the power to create. Every one of us.

Still a chimp in a suit

A few more thought's about yesterday's adventure.

It didn't dawn on me until after I posted that the song lyric I was used was from a song I heard both on the way to and from the lunch. It's not like I listen to Seether on any sort of regular basis, but I guess it was yesterday's theme song. Usually, the song lyrics I choose are not so coincidental.

Ladies, if you're going to be in public, especially if you're going to be speaking in public, bras are not optional. Sorry.

When the editor of PR News first started speaking, the Father of the Roaming Gnome turned to me and mentioned that she looked really young. I agreed, but realized, knowing the age of most college graduates, that she couldn't possibly be any more than a year or maybe two younger than me, and, since she's an editor and not just an assistant or something (yay her!), she could very easily be older than I am, and holy cow! how old do I look!? It must have been the suit I was wearing. Of course, when I recounted this story today, I also mentioned my plans for the weekend (80s party tonight, grocery shopping and homework tomorrow), it was suggested that maybe it's Saturday's like mine that are aging me prematurely. Super. I'll just hold onto the weekend where a stranger thought I was 18 and a friend thought I was 30.

Finally, I'll never get tired of passing things like the Washington Monument and the Pentagon as I casually drive back to my office. DC is a great place to live.