Category: Libraries

A lot of the reference or current events databases have been reinventing themselves over the summer to have “topic” or “concept” pages. Opposing Viewpoints and Credo Reference are two such examples. The idea with this is that students not only get the information provided in the database, but also information pulled in from other sources such as Google Books, news sites, podcasts, or potentially other library subscribed databases. Initially I was excited about this idea, but now that I see it in practice I’m not so sure.

Partly this is just an aesthetic reaction. Yes, I know we are all used to seeing pages filled with lots of stuff, and are getting more and more used to it. I also know that undergraduate students are not pursuing their research with the single-mindedness of a scholar. But really, there’s a lot on the page, and it becomes difficult to focus on one element long enough to evaluate its relevance to your own research.

Since these features are so new, I haven’t yet had a chance to see how actual students use them. For the first year students we teach, I can see this as a good way to get them into something at least vaguely credible right away. One thing that the new Opposing Viewpoints has done, however, is to remove the “pro” and “con” indications from sources. The idea behind this is to make it possible to give an assignment to spot the bias. This is something that students invariably struggle with unless it’s made very obvious.

From the way these thing are working right now, I still think librarians should be thinking about ways to construct more dynamic research guides with a lot more focus on search and discovery. That way it’s easier to ensure that we are giving students a multiplicity of viewpoints and not just a one stop shop of topical information. I do recognize, however, that this is a time-consuming process, and in the end it may be better to throw students into a topic page with too much stuff on it that has some selection at work than to just leave them to find their own way. Not that I am so naive as to think most students are using library resources to start their research–but a girl can dream!

I’ve been back from the American Library Association conference in Washington D.C. for a few days. Took me another few days to recover–took a nasty fall near the Capital and kept walking anyway, so I had to hobble around a bit. Number one lesson learned at the conference? Don’t tweet anything about anyone else in the room at a tech oriented session, because there’s an excellent chance the presenter will say “Let’s look at the #ala10 tweets”.

Here’s what I did at the conference. Not that I imagine my faithful readers are really excited to hear about this, but this way I will remember!

I arrived Friday evening and caught up with old friends.This is the best part about traveling for conferences, no?

On Saturday I arrived at the convention center around 9 to register, and did manage to run into people I knew right away. So that was nice. My first session was “Developing Rich Internet Applications for Libraries”. It wasn’t immediately applicable to anything I’m doing right now, but did inspire me to work on a fun project of some kind.  After lunch I went to “What is Your Library Doing about Emerging Technologies?” for a few minutes. The part I saw was basically emerging technologies librarians discussing the history of their positions and what they do on a daily basis. Sounded familiar to me!

Had to leave that session early because I presented a poster at 3, entitled “Research on the Go: Reference in 140 Characters.” (I will have more information in my portfolio section soon). This detailed the process and results of the text message reference pilot at Dominican. I love talking to people individually in the way a poster session allows, and I got a good chance to chat with other poster presenters during lulls.

The less said about my Saturday evening the better, other than that it involved the weirdest Thai restaurant ever, catching up with old friends, and the weirdest cab ride ever.

Sunday morning I went to “Designing Digital Experiences for Library Websites”. Some of this was extremely helpful; most of it reinforced what I already knew. To someone who is new at a job, getting that kind of reinforcement is very comforting. During the course of tweeting through the session I managed to meet up with a friend, and then we went for lunch together and ran into another friend on the street. I love that all of a sudden Washington D.C. felt just like Champaign-Urbana. In the afternoon I kept my resolve and did not go to the cooking pavilion in the exhibits for the whole afternoon, but instead went to the LITA panel on “Top Tech Trends” in libraries. This again reinforced a lot of things I already knew, but again, this wasn’t a bad thing for me.

Monday morning I was a tourist in 98 degree weather. Not my smartest plan ever, but I can’t resist a trip to the National Gallery (which is well air conditioned). I also couldn’t resist racking up the steps for the Dominican pedometer challenge, so I did a lot of walking. Needless to say, I was thrilled to be in the air conditioned convention center for the afternoon. I attended the “LITA Ultimate Debate: Open Source Software–Free Beer or Free Puppy?”. This was entertaining, though of course all the panelists had the same talking points they always do whenever you hear them. I left early to go to the exhibits before they closed completely, which meant a mad dash through the exhibit hall not getting to all the booths I wanted to, but a few useful contacts made.

All in all felt re-energized by the conference. I know it’s not really the best place to learn new skills and trends, but it is a place to connect with a lot of people old and new. I am ready to spend the rest of the summer planning and testing and playing with web services.