Library Buzz

Resources for Mobile Devices - Recap of SLA/DC Presentation

2012-03-05T12:50:00.000-08:00

Context, Content, Contraptions – Resources for Mobile Devices

Paulette M. Hasier, PhD, Manager Research Services, Advanced Resource Technologies, Inc.

Last week the DC/SLA Chapter organized a great presentation on how the Research Services team worked with their IT folks to test, acquire and make available a variety of information resources on company-issued mobile devices.

The key is Context, Content and Contraptions:

Context:

Patrons want things to be simple:

Easy search
Single device
One-stop shop

Patrons want services on better technologies using multiple devices in the workplace.

Content:

Public libraries are overwhelmed with demand – there are waiting lists for the ebook versions of latest best sellers.Corporate libraries are seeing increased demand for ebooks.

Contraptions:

The number of ebook readers doubled over the recent holiday season – 29% of adults now have some kind of e-reader and that number will only increase.At the end of 2011 smartphone sales surpassed PC sales.

Pitfalls & Solutions for adopting new technologies:

Goals:

Make subscription resources mobile.
Make news updates dynamic
Maintain integrity of scientific data

Why is mobility important?Our patrons travel a lot for work – business trips, offsite meetings, testimony.

Rather than guess what the patrons needed – they conducted end-user interviews – not just surveys. They learned that their patrons wanted resources for the smartphone or a tablet – not laptops and not blackberrys.

Pitfall – Product primacy. Right now Apple rules the market so people are requesting those products – but will all the resources run on Apple products?One company got a top-down order for resources for the iPad with no prior discussion or consideration of what content was available for the device.

Other challenges:

WiFi vs. 3G service – building wasn’t configured for WiFi – so 3G is the solution.
authentication method – IP doesn’t work on mobile devices so in the end they went with username and password. Company IT is still working on some kind of pass-through connection that is seamless like IP authentication.
Monitoring agency-specific news RSS feeds not working for mobile – solution – using social media to bridge the need for the short term.

Some lessons learned:

Don’t assume you know/understand what the users’ needs are.

Patrons want things to be simple – but they want the content that they want/need.

Science staff doesn’t want humanities content.

Patrons were happiest with an A-to-Z list of journals they could select from.

There was an expectation of more content being available – so provide information about what is and is not available.

If you are tied to a product, i.e. iPhone or iPad, aim to use applications and resources that are optimized for those products.

Dr. Hasier and her staff will give the following presentations:

Better Websites: Agile, Teens & Duct Tape! Computers in Libraries, Washington, D.C. - March 22, 2012

Impact of Technical Standards on Vocabulary & Metadata Projects - SLA Annual, Chicago - July 18, 2012

Gov on the Go: Mobile Apps - SLA Annual, Chicago - July 18, 2012

Genius and Innovative thinking

2012-01-27T09:20:00.000-08:00

Recently I attended a presentation on original and innovative thinking given by Dr. Alan S. Gregerman.

In today’s interesting and challenging business environment, innovation is more important than ever. Companies of all shapes and sizes need to do a better job of tapping the real genius in all their people, by unlocking their curiosity and openness to a world filled with possibilities. That can also be applied to librarians and information professionals as we support our clients in government, business, academics and students, and the general public.

Alan is internationally known for his expertise in business strategy and innovation. Over the past 15 years, he has helped more than 300 teams create important innovations—with a 90 percent success rate.
Author of Surrounded by Geniuses, Alan takes his audience on a fun-filled journey to discover the keys to innovation and business success—one sure to challenge your understanding of your own potential, the sources of brilliant ideas, and the value of innovation to customers.

Dr. Gregerman was introduced by way of mentioning that he is an accomplished geographer and:

Loves to travel
Spends part of each year in a small Swedish fishing village
Is certified as a referee for both soccer and swimming

How do we enhance the services that we offer? How do we improve and innovate? This generally doesn’t happen in a meeting room just by a leader explaining the need for people to think outside the box.

In order to come up with new ideas or take other ideas and adapt them, improve ideas – we need to take what we know and reach out to others and combine our knowledge. We also need to get out and take a look at the world around us – nature, people, and commerce, and learn.

We need to focus on

My potential to be brilliant!
Where do ideas come from?
What does it mean to cast a wide net?

Curiosity is the key!

Innovation requires change over time and sometimes getting rid of the old, clunky stuff even though it is/was cool at the time it was new.

Dr. Gregerman pulled out something that made him the coolest guy at his college campus in 1979 – a Sony Walkman! At that time, with the Walkman (walkperson?) he was able to take his music everywhere – 12 songs! And if he had a backpack he could carry multiple cassette tapes. He was a party waiting to happen! But along came digital music players and with Apple technology and marketing – the ability to have thousands of songs available on multiple gadgets – iPod, iPad, iPhone, etc. With all that – the Walkman is a breakthrough relic of the past. It was wildly innovative – but it is a relic.

Observe nature part I

I studied Philosophy at one point and one of my professors said – If you want to be a good Aristotelian, then you need to observe nature! That’s what Aristotle did!

Dr. Gregerman told a story of how engineers at Nissan wanted to develop cars that won’t crash into each other. The tackled the problem from many angles but weren’t getting the results they wanted. One day, one of the engineers observed that bumblebees and schools of fish travel in tight formation and change directions suddenly and yet never crash into each other. They brought in experts who explained about the fish – fish continuously emit three kinds of signals that indicate location and keep them from colliding and allow them to signal turns.

Here’s how Dr. Gregerman tells it in his blog – Fishy Business.

Nissan has developed the EPORO Robot Car that is so far testing with great success.

Working with Geniuses

We often don’t know much about the people we work with. We probably doubt our own potential for genius so we don’t really expect the woman down the hall or the guy we see on the subway each day to be a genius. But many of them are, or could be if they tapped into their genius.

Why are they geniuses? They may be subject-matter experts. What makes a genius in business? They are people who hang out with customers and listen and work to understand the customer needs and interests.

Each day we pass by people, places and things that, if we were to stop and experience them could change our lives.

Observe nature part II

Swiss engineer, Georges de Mestral was out walking with his dog and noticed how burrs clung to the dog’s fur. He was fascinated – he studied; he talked to others; he imagined; he adapted. He invented Velcro!

Listen to Customers

Enterprise car rentals didn’t invent the car rental business – but he did take it from the travel sector to the local clients. Then he asked customers what they needed. The response was something like, Come pick me up at the mechanic after I drop off my car – and I’ll rent a car from you.

So Enterprise took the market lead simply by picking up their customers at the point where they needed the car.

Open the windows!

Expertise is good – but we need to stay open-minded. It is great to be well-grounded in a field – but we need to be open to the possibility that other fields can enlighten our own field of knowledge.

Curiosity is the key to our becoming remarkable!

What knowledge gaps exist with my customers? I need to stay with my customers to learn those gaps and learn how I might fill in those gaps.

To be effective – we need to stand behind what we do in a compelling way. LL Bean offers a lifetime guarantee of all of its products.

R. Adams Cowley Shock Trauma Center – University of Maryland Medical Center, Baltimore, MD.

The center runs 24/7/365.

The doctors realized that if they can treat a victim of serious accident within an hour, they have the strong likelihood of returning that person their normal, pre-accident life. There is a commitment on the part of the state of Maryland to have regional heliports that can transport patients and get them to the Medical Center within 40 minutes.

Further, the Medical Center is staffed at all times with expert staff and specialists trained in any and all areas that might be needed. That is on all three shifts, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year.

Now – my business may not be saving lives – but how important is my customer? How important is it when s/he is on hold waiting to speak to an associate or technician or professional and listening to a looped recording telling how important this call is to us?

Is it any wonder that customers lose patience and are angry by the time they talk to the associate, technician or professional?

Concluding:

Life is funny. For over 10,000 years people all over the world were swimming the free-style stroke. Only in Northern Europe, where they only knew the breast stroke – the slowest swimming stroke – did people care about competitive swimming.

Most of us are stuck doing a variation of the breast stroke. We stay in our comfort zone. We may tweak our product or service a little bit – but we will stick with the breast stroke.

It is time for us to get out of that comfort zone. Take a field trip! Go to a zoo, a museum, a park. Visit a factory or a laboratory where they do/make things completely unrelated to what you do.

Follow up:

I was able to get a copy of Dr. Gregerman’s book – Surrounded by Geniuses. It is full of stories like he told in his presentation. The book is only as good as the reader is – indulge your curiosity. Get out of the office. Take a field trip. Read an children’s book and imagine what could be!

Observations:

As someone who gives presentations from time to time – I was impressed by the way Dr. Gregerman gives his presentations.

At the front of the room was a table with an array of props – a stuffed dog, a teddy bear wearing a lab coat and stethoscope, a Spiderman doll, a UPS truck, other toy cars, a grocery bag from Whole Foods.

The props were excellent visuals and helped him to illustrate his stories. And that’s the other key – he was telling us stories packed with content. He wasn’t just telling us about sales and marketing effectiveness at a half dozen companies.

Gives me lots of ideas for the next time I get to give a presentation. There will be props! There will be music! There may even be dancing!

DC Librarians - meet me for dinner and let's dish!

2012-01-24T05:49:00.000-08:00

Please join me on Thursday, February 16 along with other DC area librarians and information professionals at Cafe Leopold located at 3315 M Street, NW in Georgetown.

I will be your host and the folks at Cafe Leopold will have their usual array of delicious continental-style cuisine and yummy cocktails. This event is part of the DC SLA Dine Around series.

Topics will include - blogging, librarianship, people who aren't there and current affairs. We'll have a veritable Algonquin Roundtable!

If you haven't got anything nice to say about anybody, come sit next to me. - Alice Roosevelt Longworth (1884-1980)

Contact me to reserve a seat! Arrival Time is 6:30 PM

The Week that Was

2012-01-13T17:35:00.000-08:00

It has been another busy week and I'm ready for the weekend!

A productive week at work that ended with a couple of completed research questions. One a biography for an executive at my company. We don't have access to Who's Who so I did some Internet searching and searched a couple databases for news stories and found enough to go on.

The other success at work was a meeting with a couple of staff members who were looking for some data. We have an excellent resource for the data and I have had to come up to speed pretty quickly. Fortunately the company rep is really nice and very helpful and just a phone call away. I sat down my clients and talked about the database a little and then ran a search similar to what they wanted. We looked at results and I played with the search and they were happy. That's when they asked a couple of questions that I couldn't answer.

Technology to the rescue -- actually - the database rep Molly to the rescue!! I called her up and she had a few free minutes to answer our questions and explain a couple things. We all learned something.

So, by the end of the day my clients had their data and we are ready for the weekend!

The lesson here:

Prepare
Present
Listen
Respond
Get help as needed

In other professional news - I met with a committee of the DC Chapter of SLA. I am on the committee developing an employment portal. We have a new chair of the committee and she wanted to meet with everyone and keep the ball rolling.

We all got our tasks and mine is to revise the work I did previously and share it with everyone. Almost there! I will get that done this weekend and we will be one step closer. The thing is, I volunteered to do this at a time that I wasn't working. Then I started working and haven't had the free time to give to this project. But it is important to the chapter. So - back to work on that!

Fortunately Monday is a holiday for me. Time to remember Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

A fun website I just discovered!

2012-01-05T06:45:00.000-08:00

Greetings readers!

Today I happened upon an interesting site. Primer - the Online Men's Magazine - Lifestyle of the Millennial Man. The article that brought me to the site was one titled - 10 Words You Mispronounce That Make People Think You’re an Idiot.

I have long cringed as perfectly nice people who are otherwise smart will order an expresso. It is actually spelled e-s-p-r-e-s-s-o and it is pronunced es-presso. So here the helpful author of Primer provides some useful tips on pronunciation.

Sometimes I just give up, as when someone wants to axe me a question.

One friend from college is a self-appointed grammar policeman. I don't go out of my way, but given the opportunity I will advise friends and acquaintances. But one doesn't need to be rude. I previously worked with a woman who had some odd ideas about pronunciations. What drove me crazy was her misuse of I instead of me as in Send a copy of the bill you Sylvia and I.

There was a delightful skit on Saturday Night Live with Phil Hartman as a man who ends up leaving his wife in some soap opera style scene for using expresso and several other commonly mispronounced words. I cringed throughout the sketch but laughed heartily!

Growing up there was a friend of the family, a good ole country boy who was a businessman and went on to serve as Sheriff and later County Commissioner. He said once that he likes to use big words but is afraid he'd use them out of pretext. (That was the joke - he knows the appropriate word is context - it is a pun.) Similarly, if was oblivious to something he would say he was walking around in Bolivia. My favorite word that he would purposely mispronounce is d-e-b-r-i-s. He would pronounce it derbus. I like that pronunciation - and think that de-bree sounds way too fancy for stuff that is just, well, derbus.

My dad was another wit. He had a secretary whom he would madden by referring to CDs as Compact CD Disk Records - those round shiny things you play in your Compact CD Disk Record machines.

Ah - that's fun. But that's different from people who don't know any better and will say nuke-you-lur instead of nu-clee-ur. My personal pet peeve is folks who use an ATM machine. No - just use the ATM - the M stands for Machine!

New Year - New Beginnings!

2012-01-03T06:49:00.000-08:00

Happy New Year! I have wondered before how long do we get to use that greeting. The year is still pretty fresh and new at least into February I should think. But it really only works when we are seeing friends for the first time in the new year. Still, if I don't see someone until April I don't think my opening salvo would be Happy New Year!

It must be very different for our Aussie, New Zealand, African and South American friends who greet the new year in the middle of Summer. Here in Washington, DC we start the new year in some of our coldest days. I think we'd extend the celebration if it were beach weather!

Nothing on the horizon at the moment for 2012. But the best way to commit to a blog is to get started. For now it is good to be at work. Despite the cold air outside, it is a lovely, sunny day. The commute to work went smoothly. So far at work it is quiet but I expect business to pick up soon. The folks here remain friendly.

Once again I am reminded and thankful to working with people who aren't crazy! As my sister says - that's not something I will take for granted again!

May we all have a successful and productive 2012 - and may we be prepared for the road ahead!

Looking back over the year

2011-12-29T12:19:00.000-08:00

It is that time of year when all of us should take some time and reflect on the previous twelve months. Quite a lot has happened in my life and I’m sure many others have experienced some changes.

And the year ends with a couple of good things. I wrote an article I wrote for the GovInfo Pro Best Practices Guide earlier this year. It has been picked up and published by SLA’s Future Ready 365 on Friday, December 23. That, in turn was picked up by PinHawk Librarian News Digest on Tuesday, December 27. (it is a free e-newsletter, but they require registration.)

My year has had some ups and downs but I’m content with how things are at the moment. Let me focus on four aspects of my professional and personal life.

Learning

This has been a year for learning new things. I have traveled and have changed jobs. Travel is supposed to broaden one’s horizons and my trips certainly did that. In addition, my trip to the Holy Land sites in Israel and the Palestinian Territory gives me a different perspective. More on that below.

I have worked a couple of temp jobs and in both cases I have been lucky to work with intelligent and pleasant people who are diligent workers and yet manage to keep their sanity. I have benefited from the experience and learned new systems and procedures.

I’ve had a chance to work with the AGRICOLA database at the US Department of Agriculture. In the course of my work with the National Invasive Species Information Center I have learned so much more about a variety of invasive species than I had ever thought about. In my current position I am learning more about Gartner Research. Also I have been making good use of two databases of government contracts – GovWin IQ and the Federal Procurement Data System.

My Internet skills are improving and I’ve been using Sharepoint more and more for document sharing and creating webpages.

I have also been keeping up with the professional literature and being reminded that librarians need to reach out within our organizations and try to find new ways to support the research and information needs of our colleagues.

The coolest Internet resource that I learned about recently is Medpedia – a wiki written by health care experts. A much more reliable resource for health and medical information than a generic Internet search. But I recommend consulting with your physician for personal health and medical advice.

Back in June I attended the SLA Conference in Philadelphia. I attended a number of workshops and networked with many librarians and vendors. It was a great experience as usual! Write-ups of some of the sessions are posted elsewhere on my blog.

Job-searching

In May of this year I left my government job. Turns out that reading contracts is tedious and not exactly something that sings to my soul. Still I enjoyed the opportunity to work with some excellent people and learned quite a bit.

Since then I have been learning more about job searching, networking, interviewing, writing cover letters etc.

My journey has introduced me to I Need a Library Job (INALJ) and 40Plus of Greater Washington. I attended some great presentations at 40Plus and wrote about them in this blog. INALJ is a daily resource of Library and related jobs nationwide. We also had a get-together of locals here in DC. Naomi House runs INALJ along with others and she is providing a great service. My growing expertise has allowed me to help others. That’s also one of my goals for the next few weeks – to finish work on a website for the DC SLA Chapter.

Pilgrimage to Holy Land

A major highlight of my year was a visit to the Holy Land. I am a Catholic Christian so visiting the sites that are so important in the life of Christ and the early Church was both a cultural and a spiritual delight.

Middle Eastern culture is very different from our lives here in the US. But I found the people very friendly and intelligent. The many places in Jerusalem, Bethlehem, Nazareth and around the Sea of Galilee were remarkable.

It was more than profound to be in the same places where centuries of Jews, Christians and Muslims have lived and worshiped. It is sad to see the divisions that exist between peoples who share so much. Much has been done on all sides but I continue to pray for the peace of Jerusalem and her peoples.

Personal success – weight loss!

Finally I reflect on my personal journey of weight loss. I started talking about it earlier in the year as the incredible shrinking librarian.

Now at year’s end, almost eleven months since I started, I am down just over 78 lbs. I am within 5 lbs of my goal. I have really had to change the way I think about food and eating. I am more aware of my moods and what Weight Watchers calls emotional eating.

In closing

In the words of the poet John Donne, No man is an island. I would not be here now were it not for the help and support of my friends and family. I genuinely enjoy working with so many wonderful people. So I am thankful for the year that is almost over and looking forward to the year ahead.

I hope to be more involved with SLA in the coming year – and look forward to being in Chicago for the annual conference!

Settling into a new routine

2011-11-11T05:43:00.001-08:00

It has been a hectic few weeks. I started the new job as mentioned previously. Interesting work and a nice place and people! Not crazy about the commute - about an hour+ door-to-door. But it is on Metro with a bus transfer and if I get off the bus one stop early I get some exercise.

So far I'm not overwhelmed with work but that may change. I asked the boss if there was anything I could work on rather than twiddling my thumbs. She's been working on a project of digitizing reports that the company has produced. So I was able to help with reviewing the documents.

It isn't very glamorous, but it passes the time and I'm getting a really good idea of the type of work that the company does. That has already paid off. Always surprised how things happen like that.

It will be a few months before the temp will turn to hire if that is what will happen. So making the most of it for now.

And today is Veterans' Day. Many thanks to all of our Vets - starting with my Uncle Dave who served in the Navy in Vietnam and so many others!!

Library networking and more!

2011-10-21T04:22:00.000-07:00

Greetings all -- It has been a hectic few weeks. Part of the time I was out of town attending a band conference in Seattle, Washington. This was my third trip to the Emerald City and I didn't see much more than the hotel and our concert hall. Fortunately I played tourist on my last visit. I did enjoy some great times with friends and ate some delicious food - and still managed to loose 2 pounds!

But what has that to do with libraries???

Before I left I heard from a contracting company about a temp-to-hire position in Northern Virginia. I sent along my updated resume and there was interest so we scheduled an interview for the day after my return from the west coast. I took the Metro out to West Falls Church and found the bus to my destination. It was a gorgeous Fall day. I like fall!!

The company has great offices and the head librarian enjoys a vew to the treetops. The staff were all very friendly and professional. Two of the other librarians are also from West Virginia - Let's Go Mountaineers!. After what seemed a really good interview I started making my way home.

Later in the day I called the contractor to let them know that I had made it to the interview and that I thought it had gone well. My instincts were right - they offered me the job. I will start next week. It will be good to be working again. The temp job I had at National Agricultural Library was really good and I met some great folks so I'm looking forward to this venture too!

On Thursday of this week I was running errands in DC and I stopped by a former agency to visit with friends there. I had worked there for over 15 years. I learned that they are looking at some new software and I was able to give my opinions and share some contacts for more information. Always happy to help.

So now - another lovely fall weekend and a new job to look forward to!! (Please forgive my ending with a preposition.)

Borrowing Genius

2011-10-04T14:06:00.000-07:00

What a whirlwind the past week has been. Having ended my temp job at National Agricultural Library last Tuesday - and some pleasant partings with my wonderful colleagues there - I am back to job-hunting full time. I have applied for a few jobs, I got to my Weight Watchers meeting for an official checkin (down an official 65 lbs since I started back in February!) and then I got a sore throat and stayed in the whole weekend. I'm all better now.

Monday morning and I was back at 40Plus for the regular weekly workshop. I hadn't paid too much attention to the topic and I was delighted to find it was on Creative Thinking. The presenter was Michelle James, CEO of the Center for Creative Emergence.

She opened by talking about the Creative Zone - that lies between stability (doing the same thing in the same way or at least trying to) and Chaos.

|Stability|-------Creative Zone-----|ec|Chaos|

Now that ec portion above is the Edge of Chaos. That's the space where ideas are born. It is an unsettling place - we are uncomfortable - but it is where things happen.

Stability is stagnant - nothing happens. Chaos is frightening and we shutdown. Actually I knew somone who lived in Chaos and despite the frenetic energy not much seemed to happen.

We need this Creative Zone because things change and our old ideas and ways of doing things that might have worked brilliantly in the past aren't working any more.

The next step was to talk about divergence - brainstorming - where we expand the playing field float new ideas - then later - with convergence - we focus the new ideas into a practical plan to solve the problem.

Michelle also took us through an exercise of identifying a problem - I can't get in front of people to interview and sell my strengths. and re-think it.

IWWMI In What Way Might I... get in front of more people and sell my strengths. This can turn a problem into a vision statement. Here's where we brainstorm. And this is where Michelle took us through the Borrowed Genius Exercise.

Borrowed Genius Exercise -

Think of a creative person - someone we know personally or an historical or famous person and in the exercise we borrow that person's genius to look at our problem. How might Shakespeare look answer this vision? Or Leondardo da Vinci? Or, in my case, Salvador Dali?

Something that Michelle said leading up to that and he popped into my head. He certainy was a creative thinker! So, I borrowed his genius for a moment and came up with the following notions:

Outrageous, colorful, change your image, bold colors and patterns, read different authors, be with other creative people, don't rush, savor others, delight in eccentricity, search for the oddness.

That's a lot to think about. Then comes the practical -- how might I do this - in a positive way to make myself stand out. Well. I'm still working on that, but today I wore a vivid plum-colored shirt!

Two more things -- if you're interested in learning about Creative Thinking for yourself - Michelle is running a conference on Sunday, October 23 - in Washington, DC. Check the Creativity in Business Conference site for info and to register!

Finally - 40Plus is a really good organization that is itself 40Plus years old - actually just over 60, it was started in 1938. Anyway there was an article on 40Plus in the October 2, Washington Post. Check out the article!

A good time was had by all...

2011-09-28T06:10:00.000-07:00

Greetings to my neglected friends and followers.

I've had the busiest weeks of late. I just finished a wonderful two-month temp job, my job hunting continues and personal life - mostly band - has been going full tilt. Add to that houselhold chores and projects - hence my neglect of the blog.

The job was really interesting - I learned a lot too. I don't have much of a science background so it was fun to dive into the subject matter at the National Agricultural Library.

The nicest part of my two months there were the people. They were really friendly - from the shuttle drivers and guards to all of the other people who worked there. I have worked at other places - and folks were certainly friendly - but there is just a great culture of commraderie there.

So I've got some experience for my resume and a few new friends and I learned about some of the great resources at another government agency.

So, now back to the job hunt in earnest. I have continued to apply for openings, both private and government. I'm always surprised at how some federal agencies reply promptly to applications and others take months to let you know anything. At least with USAjobs.gov I can check the status of my applications.

By the way - USAjobs.gov is re-vamping their website and it will be down from October 6-12. No postings and now applying. There's a notice that folks will have to resave their searches. It might be a smart move to make a copy of your resume(s) in case they vanish in the process. I'm going to do that right now!

Happy Autumn!!

Oh - and the title? Years ago I came across an item from my hometown newspaper, circa 1911 - about a trip to another town - 6 miles away. There was a party, someone played the piano, someone sang and there was much merriment. The news item concluded, "A good time was had by all." And the writer of this news item? "One who was there."

Another Job Search Seminar

2011-08-20T08:14:00.000-07:00

So last time I wrote about my successful interview and landing a two-month temporary job. That continues to go well from my perspective - and hopefully the bosses are happy too! As I expected I'm learning a lot about the new subject areas!

This past Tuesday I attended the 2011 Federal Librarians Networking Symposium, sponsored by FLICC/FEDLINK. I had registered a month or so back so I was looking forward to it. I wasn't disappointed!

I arrived a bit early and ran into a librarian I knew from a previous job. She is still working but looking. As the day went on I ended up talking to her and got to know her better than I did during the time I worked with her. (We worked at the same agency but in different libraries.) We are the same age and are both big I Love Lucy fans. At the end of the day we both took in the current special exhibit at LC for the 60th Anniversary of I Love Lucy.

But back to the topic at hand - the Symposium. FLICC Executive Director Blane Dessy was at the welcoming table making sure everyone was greeted. After following the maze to the meeting room we were again greeted and given all of our instructions for evacuations and shelter-in-place. Ah, life in Washington...

First up and the moderator for the day was Carol Ramkey, Director of the Library of the Marine Corps. She gave a reassuring talk on the federal application process and how to best work with the system. The take aways:

Read the vacancy announcement thoroughly!
Read it again.
Have a master resume that includes ALL your work and then customize the resume for each job you apply for.
Use phrases from the vacancy announcement in your resume.
No more written KSAs on the first go-around, but you may have to write them up and be sure to respond to the KSAs in your job history!

These were all things that I had heard before but today they struck me and I am re-commited to doing just that. In fact, when I got home later I saw a new posting on USAJobs.gov. I printed off the announcement and read it and highlighted the important parts. Next I printed my resume and looked at it with a refreshed mindset and edited! We'll see how that exercise pays off and I get an interview!

There was a speaker who had been a medical librarian and was recruited to work for a vendor and has really enjoyed that. It works for some people - I'm not sure it does for me.

By far, the most interesting speaker to me was Edna Reid, PhD. Dr. Reid is an Intelligence Analyst for the FBI. She recently posted an blog article about this on the DC/SLA Blog - A Diverse Universe: Exploring the World of Intelligence Analysts.

Dr. Reid talked about how to translate our library research skills and apply for the growing number of positions for Intelligence Analysts.

Interview people with questions.
Search open-source databases like Lexis/Nexis, Factiva, ProQuest, etc.
Review and evaluate search results.
Analyze trends, look for the missing pieces and synthesize.
Perform immediate analysis (quick answers)
Apply meta-tagging data
Prepare written communications and oral briefings

We are librarians -- we do this kind of stuff all the time!

Brad Rogers of LAC-Group talked about the amount of contract work for library staff in the DC area and around the world. LAC recently opened an office in London! (Disclaimer: I am currently working as a contractor for LAC-Group.)

Next up was Mary Collins who talked about her experience of being open to non-traditional opportunities. You can never guess how one thing will lead to another!

Caralyn Champa talked about her experience with the Army Knowledge Leaders (AKL) Program. It is a pretty intensive program and requires a lot of flexibility - but sounds pretty exciting.

Following the Q&A session we made our way to the Mumford Room at the Library of Congress to visit the Exhibitors. There were reps from various contracting companies as well as a few agencies. Some with vacancies, some with none. I talked with a really nice library from D-TIC and I was reminded of the many great resources that are available from them for free!

I met the librarian from the National Arboretum Library - they don't have any paid positions but they are in real need for some volunteer catalogers for a retrospective conversion project! I will post more about that later!

There was at least one agency there who didn't seem to understand why they were there. The two reps were busy talking to each other and ready to hand me a flyer and continue their conversation. I engaged them and in the process learned about a librarian job that is coming open. Not sure if it will be a contract position or a federal position. But it is a job that is near me and I have been interested in working there for some time. Now I just have to keep my eyes peeled for the announcement!

The symposium was really good. This was the third year for it. I understand it was started by Roberta Shaffer when she was Exec. Director of FLICC. She has moved on to be the Law Librarian of Congress. I am happy that Blane is continuing this program. There was a good turn out and I recommend it - so look for it next year in August!

Adventures in Interviewing

2011-08-05T03:52:00.000-07:00

So after all my hard work - attending sessions at 40Plus, networking with INALJ and other places, posting and applying for job after job - I landed a couple of interviews.

One was for a job at a university library. It was a phone interview. I was on the phone with three people for about an hour. I think/hope I did a good job answering their questions. The interview as at 9:00 am. I got up, showered, dressed - more for business casual than for a day at home, ate my breakfast and brushed my teeth. I also closed extraneous sessions on my computer so I could concentrate on the interview.

The search committee had a total of 12 questions starting with the ever-popular, Tell us about yourself?. At the end I had a few questions for them and we thanked each other and said good bye. I did send an email to thank the interviewers and follow-up on the questions. Now I get to wait to see if I am invited for an on-site interview.

The second interview of the week was for a job I hadn't applied for. Ah serendipity!

An acquaintance in another city invited me to join her network on Linked-In. I accepted and thereupon followed a flurry of emails. A friend of hers from grad school works for a library services contractor and we had both posted on a topic on Linked-In. I should contact someone in the contractor's DC area office. More invitations on Linked-In and then a phone call. They have a two-month temp job to finish out a contract at a government library in a Maryland suburb of DC.

The interview was arranged and on Tuesday morning past I made my way to the site. I had been by there for years - a friend of mine lives close by, in fact other friends live near there too. But it was my first time on the campus. I arrived a tad early and the interview got underway.

One of the interviewers mentioned that he has looked at my blog and asked if I would blog about the interview. I considered a wry answer, but well, here I am blogging about it. You note that so far I haven't named the agency.

The interview went really well. Both of the interviewers seemed really nice. And despite everything I know about preparing for an interview - there was a major FAIL on my part. I hadn't taken the time to track down their offices' websites.

I realized it earlier that morning - when it was really too late to do that. So I was honest and admitted that I hadn't. Several excuses popped into my head - but I realized that even given all that - it was my responsibility to do the research.

That being said, I must have done a reasonable job of letting them know what I am capable of because later on Tuesday - after I got home, tracked down the websites, looked at them and emailed my thanks to the pair - I got a call from the rep at the contractor offering me the job.

Yay!! So starting next Monday through the end of September I'll be working on websites, adding links to some bibliographies, and helping out with some reference. All things I like. And it is in a new subject area - so I'll get to learn about some of that. And meet new people, and get out of the house every day.

As the Pointer Sisters would say -- I'm so excited!

Learning 2.0

2011-07-19T11:40:00.000-07:00

I'd like to dispel the old belief that you cannot teach an old dog new tricks. Because you can! Well, at least you can teach a middle-aged dog some new tricks.

As my job hunt continues I have been finding a wider community to help in the job search and helping my job skills. I have also learned from my mistakes.

A friend told me about a resource here in Washington, DC called 40Plus, an organization striving to empower experienced professionals for successful career & life transitions.

They run a four-week Job Search Training Course. I haven't decided if I will take it, but I may - I need to look at the calendar. They provide resume help, interviewing skills (mock interviews that are video-taped), and negotiation lessons. I have to sort out some things before I can commit to that.

In addition 40Plus runs a Monday morning Speaker Series. This week I went to a session titled 7 Mistakes the 50+ Job Seeker Should Never Make that was given by Laura Labovich of Apire-Empower.

As she pointed out - there are no mistakes that one should make - but the seven she talked about are important. I won't rehash the session but among the mistakes to avoid are - not having a plan, not using social media, and Going back to Nixon on your resume. Yeah - she has a sense of humor!

She did mention that while stereotypes abound regarding hiring people over 40 or 50, truth is people over 50 require less training, we are more flexible about our schedules, we're good team players, we're good with customers, we're loyal and we generally need less supervision.

Yea Rah!!

So I keep at it. Finding openings - reaching out to friends, colleagues, former teachers and classmates, attending job fairs and generally being open to what is in store for me.

I missed out on one opportunity - but I figure that means there is something better waiting for me. My sister saw this somewhere - I do perfect work in a perfect way in a perfect job for perfect pay. Okay - it is a little Mary Poppins-esque, but I know the right thing is out there for me - and I do hope it comes along soon!

Calling in reinforcements

2011-07-14T08:18:00.000-07:00

I hesitated to do it - but a few things prompted me to take further steps in my job search. So, in addition to the job hunting and Internet searches and prayers - I reached out to my neighbors on our neighborhood Yahoo group.

It can't hurt and it may lead to something. We have a really good community, diverse and people working at all sorts of places. So maybe there's something lurking out there.

A friend of mind also told me about 40Plus of Greater Washington whose mission is

To empower and connect experienced professionals, managers, and executives for successful career/life transitions and lifelong advancements.

I'm going to the next Monday morning presentation. It beats sitting at home that's for sure!

Hi-ho - still not not to work I go...

2011-07-07T18:36:00.000-07:00

Today I made the trek to Anacostia - a part of DC I don't get to very often. I got to go past St. Elizabeths's Hospital - a psychiatric hospital and the current home of John Hinckley, Jr. among others who don't have a Wikipedia entry. I happen to have two friends who work there - one is a nurse, the other is the chaplain.

I had been on the campus a few times because of the band I play in. Our marching band rehearsed there one summer and before that a combined band of 120 musicians from around the country rehearsed there prior to marching President Obama's Inaugural parade. Our band was the first openly GLBT group to participate in a presidential inagural parade!!

But I digress...

My purpose for going was in response to an invitation from the DC Department of Employment Services to visit the DC Works! Career Center to participate in the Reemployment and Eligibility Assessment (REA) program.

I got there early because, well, that's just how I am. There was quite an array of folks. We filled out some paperwork, they collected other information from us and we had enjoyed a presentation on the services that the DC DOES offers.

Among the services - they have a Resume builder, a job recruitment tool and also have an extensive listing of online learning resources. The staff also provided a list of more job search sites.

To top it all off I got some exercise on the way back to the Metro. I opted to walk the two miles back to further my efforts as The Incredible Shrinking Librarian. Along the way I happened upon this lovely thistle all abloom.

My first thought was of my dear friend Diana Smith - also a librarian and an Anglophile. Then I thought about Scotland - a land she visited on several occasions.

But wait, there's more...

I have been making good use of my Linked-In profile. I happened upon a group on there titled - I Need a Library Job. The women who run this also have a great Twitter feed and a facebook site.

I recommend them highly!!

They post job openings as well as links to really useful articles. Last week when I was really feeling it - they posted a link to an article about avoiding the blues during your job search!! Gave some good practical advice!!

That being said - I'm ending the week on a good note - another day of job hunting and ready for the weekend!

Cheers!

On the job hunt

2011-07-01T14:16:00.001-07:00

Well, it has been another week on the job hunt. I'm holding up well, but it is a daunting task.

The good news is that there have been a number of library openings posted in the DC area - some government, some contract and some private sector.

I applied for a Reference Librarian position at the Smithsonian American History Museum - it was posted as an entry-level position with promotion potential. I talked to the hiring manager -- they got 1100 applicants!!! So I won't be hearing from them for a while.

There's another position that I'm keeping up hope for, and lighting a candle or two as well.

It is Friday afternoon before the the July 4th weekend - so nothing more will happen for this week and I don't expect to hear anything until Tuesday or Wednesay.

Happy Independence Day!

SLA Career Connections

2011-06-23T05:04:00.000-07:00

During the 2011 SLA Conference I attended a few workshops on Job Searching.

Two of them were led by Alan De Back of Alan De Back Learning & Communications

Session 1 - Job Searching

Questions to start with:

How much time do I devote to job searching?
How will I reward myself?
Where will I work on my job search?
What should I tell the people I live? How often will I report my effort and progress?
Who will I be accountable to? (So I don’t get side-tracked. It is good to have a search buddy – someone I can meet with once a week and report on my efforts and progress and what my plans are for the coming week. Someone who can challenge me if I am goofing off or not staying focused.)

Update your resume:

Customize it to the jobs you are applying for. Don’t try to tailor a new resume for every job – that will get confusing – what resume did I send for this job?

Do a self-assessment: What are you good at? What skills do you want to promote?

Use common language. Think about who will be reading your resume? Will it be an expert or a human resources clerk? Use the same words that appear in the job vacancies that you see.

Include details about what you have done. Quantify what you have done. Mention the number of customers, the volume of calls, etc. What are you accomplishments?

List the characteristics of the job that you want.

Strategy:

Networking: Go to church and community meetings. If you are shy volunteer to be a host or greeter for the group and get to know people that way. Don’t be afraid to tell people you are looking for a job. People know people. The grocery clerk may have a husband who has a job opening in your field of interest.

Arrange informational meetings – Contact professionals in your area of interest and ask for a meeting to discuss what they view is going on in the industry. Ask them what the skills are that they use or need to do their jobs. Do your homework and have some good questions about their industry or company. These meetings are asking for jobs – they are to help you learn more about a career that you might want to go into.

Develop an elevator speech. 3 or 4 sentences that describe you – your background, your accomplishments in recent jobs, what your interests are. Keep it simple, in layman’s terms. Write it out and memorize it. Don’t wing this – this may be your only chance to tell someone who you are and what you are looking for.

Job interviews:

How should I prepare? The interview begins the moment I hit the send button to submit my application. The resume, application or cover email is my first impression.

Next – look at the company’s website – find out what they do and if you can who works there. Do you know anyone?

If you are using a professional site like Linked-In – get recommendations from customers and colleagues.

Have some questions ready to ask about the company. Examples: What sort of training and professional development does the company support? Tell me about the culture of the organization? What is it like to work here? What is a typical day like?

Three tips:

Know yourself. Have your elevator speech and be prepared to talk about yourself, your goals and your accomplishments. How your skills fit the needs of the organization.
Take care of logistics. Make a practice run to get to the interview at the same time of day so you are prepared for traffic etc. Make sure you have the address and know what entrance to use etc.
Do things right on the day of the interview. They want you to succeed. They are hoping that you will be the candidate that will be right for the job and solve their problem. Be that person. Dress appropriately. Be clean and awake. Arrive early – if you have to sit in the reception area you can learn a lot about a company just by observing.

Answer the questions that you are presented – if you can think about what the interviewer is trying to find out. Try and answer the unspoken question if you can.

Follow-up is critical. Send a thank you not – simple, hand-written or emailed. If you don’t get a business card, ask for one or ask the receptionist the best way to send a thank you note.

Session 2 - Networking in the 21st Century

Understand the benefits of Networking. It isn’t just for finding a job. It is a way to learn about other people who may be experts in their area. It is also a way to meet people and not feel so alone.

Develop networking strategies – a church group or community group. Take a class, play bingo – but talk to the other people who are there.

Build and practice your elevator speech – your one-minute commercial.

Exercise:

Write out the answers to these questions:

Who are you / what do you do?

How do you serve your customers?

How are you helping customers solve their problems?

What is one recent success?

From these answers fine-tune your one-minute commercial and memorize it.

Prepare for networking:

What am I trying to accomplish?

What questions might I ask and how should I best ask them?

If you are going to a big conference – how might you network? Meet with people from your alumni association. Get a meeting buddy before the meeting.

Tips & Tricks:

Start small
Know your purpose
Accept rejection – learn and move on
Think about what you have to offer
Plan for follow-up
Concentrate on the long-term
Follow-up – don’t lose track of your contacts. Create a tickler system so that every three months or so you are in touch with everyone.

Refrigerator Exercise – for developing a list of contacts.

Take several sheets of blank paper and put them on the door of the refrigerator using a magnet.

Every time you go to the refrigerator write down the names of 10 or so people you know. After about a week’s time you’ll have a pretty good list.

Take the list and prioritize it:

A – People I know who should be in my professional network

B – People who could be in my professional network

C – People who probably shouldn’t be in my professional network.

Then begin reaching out the A group and let them know what you are looking for – your one-minute commercial.

There are ways of networking online. Facebook is good – but it is more social than professional. www.linkedin.com is international in scope. Create a complete profile on linked-in – describe your work experience – make it look professional. Join groups of like-minded professionals.

You can put your linked-in profile address on your business card.

Session 3 - Resumes:

This session was presented by Beth Ann Wilson

There are no rules about resumes – only guidelines.

Ask who will be reading your resume.

Use keywords on your resume. Many big companies use computers to scan applications and look for keywords. These terms are often used in the job announcement.

A second page for your resume is okay – but make sure that you have something worthwhile on it.

Have a bridge statement – who we are – where we want to be going – our preferred skills and strengths. Tell what makes us unique. Make it concise. This is another place to make use of your elevator speech.

If possible, divide your work experience in buckets that correspond with your bridge statement. Show how you used skill A at various jobs or skill B etc.

If you have had many jobs and don’t want to list them all summarize your prior experience highlighting what may be pertinent to the current job you are applying for.

End on a strong note with your education or certifications. Try to have something with a recent date – if it is a certification class or a license.

You can list professional associations but only if you are active in leadership or working on committees. If you are only a member it doesn’t really tell much.

Cover letter – not everyone reads these – but it is good to have one.

1st Paragraph – tells your enthusiastic interest in the position and organization
2nd Paragraph – tells how you meet the qualifications for the job. You don’t need to mention skills that you lack.
3rd Paragraph – confirm your interest in the job and tell them how to contact you.

Again, use keywords that are used in the advertisement.

As a result of these very useful sessions I reviewed and revised my resume. Since I previously posted my resume on this blog I thought I'd post the revised version just to show how I incorporated the suggestions that were made.

DAVID E. MCBEE

Profile: Reliable information professional with strong background in reference and research in banking, business law and other topics. Solid experience in Internet and social networking tools

Employment:
Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve, Washington, DC
Senior Librarian February 2010 – May 2011

Review and prepare contracts negotiation and processing for raw data purchases, Library resources and other databases. Work with vendor representatives, end-users, library staff, attorneys and agency procurement staff to shepherd contracts through the process and help negotiate terms and pricing.

Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, Washington, DC
Senior Reference Librarian September 2004 – January 2010

Perform news, business and legal research averaging 125 reference questions per month. Questions range from simple requests for articles or single documents to complex such as a literature search or legislative history. Search corporate, news and legal resources such as Factiva, Lexis/Nexis and Westlaw; ProQuest, JSTOR, S&P RatingsDirect, Fitch and Moody’s databases.

Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, Washington, DC
Electronic Resources Librarian October 2002 – September 2004
Reference Librarian June 2001 - October 2002

Coordinated access to 60+ databases. Met with vendors and clients to determine access needs. Shepherd software for databases testing with agency IT. Maintained the library's database system. Provide training on database and web resources as needed.

Perform news, business and legal research. Search news and legal resources such as Factiva, Lexis/Nexis and Westlaw; academic resources such OCLC FirstSearch, ProQuest, Ebsco and EconLit and business resources such as S&P RatingsDirect, and Mergent Online. Serve as Library Webmaster, creating new web documents for library resources and services and access to online databases.

Additional Experiences:
DC’s Different Drummers (Non-profit music performance group), Washington, DC
President 2007 – 2009, Vice President 2008-2009. Currently serve as Membership Director.

FDIC Library, Washington, DC
Cataloger - May 1988 – February 1998

Education & Professional Development
MLS - Library & Info Services - University of Maryland, College Park, MD 2000
BA – Philosophy - Christendom College, Front Royal, VA 1983
BA – Liberal Arts - West Virginia University, Morgantown, WV 1980
Certified Content Rights Management – LicenseLogic – Washington, DC 2010
Digital Copyright Certification – E. Lynn Harris 2011

Power of Perceptions – Dealing with Change

2011-06-21T09:14:00.000-07:00

Hyram Smith – inventor of the Franklin Planner

What causes a permanent behavioral change?

Belief Windows

A belief window is the collection of beliefs through which we see everything.

Mr. Smith asked three things of those of us in attendance

Take notes.
Think about the talk for 36 hours.
Teach this to one other person within the next 48 hours.

I will admit that I did the first two but have been slow on the third. Perhaps this will count toward that. - DEM

The basic principles or beliefs that make a human being become more effective and productive have not changed in 6000 years. Aristotle got it right!

Belief Window

There are religious beliefs and many other little beliefs related to how we view ourselves and others.

The number of beliefs on our window is relative to our age. Generally, the older we are, the more beliefs on our window. Our brain validates the belief and there follows a course of action when presented with one of our beliefs.

Example: All big dogs are vicious. Our brain validates this as true. So when we encounter a big dog, our response mechanism kicks in and might panic and run from the big dog. Our belief dictates our reactions to big dogs.

Example: A man may believe that men are better than women. We may ask him, “How’s that working for you? Will that belief meet your long-term needs?” If the man is paying alimony to two wives then perhaps not.

Observation 1 – If the results of my behavior do not meet my needs, there is a harmful belief on my belief window and I experience pain.

Observation 2 – Finding better beliefs is fun and will remove my pain.

Belief has to change before the behavior can change.

Groups have belief windows, as do communities, corporations and nations.

Example: Company A has a belief that it must cut costs. And they need to hire a receptionist – so they hire the least expensive person they can find.

A client is talking to the CEO and says, Your receptionist doesn’t speak English.

Oh really?

Yes. I asked her about some materials that your company has and her response was, “We ain’t got none Jack."

Suddenly the CEO realized that the long term goals of the company were not going to be met if the face of the organization is the cheapest person they can hire. So they change the belief to from cutting costs to It is important that our company have the best reputation.

As a result they decided that one of the directors would be made the receptionist. She accepted only after the new policy/belief was explained to her. She was given a raise and put in charge of company correspondence as well as the receptionists.

When we look at our behaviors and ask why – Why do we do this or that? The answer comes back in the form of a belief.

The power of belief windows is that folks understand this quickly – they get it.

Will the results of my behavior meet my needs over time? If not, I need to change some beliefs on my belief window.

What on my belief window may be harmful and limiting my results?

If our behaviors are not meeting our needs and we are feeling pain – then we should question our behaviors and look at our beliefs and change the corresponding belief on our belief window.

Pain is inevitable – misery is optional. If we choose not to examine our behaviors and make changes to our belief window and persist in our pain then we will be in misery.

We are the only ones who can change a belief on our own belief window.

Like falling off a blog

2011-06-19T12:52:00.000-07:00

In the midst of typing up my notes from the 2011 SLA Conference I went checking on my old blog site. A good friend set up the site in 2005 and I blogged on occasion, mostly around conference time.

Earlier this year I was trying to post on the site and I kept getting an error message. I contacted my friend the site manager and he worked on that. In the meantime I created this site since I already had a personal blog running on Blogspot.

I wanted to reference a blog post on my old site while posting my notes from the conference and saw a frightening comment on Google - Site may be compromised.

In very quick order I called my friend. I had been getting an error when I typed in the url and thinking that maybe I was missing something - I ran a search. The whole site had crashed including their back up. Not a good sign.

Fortunately because I had been talking to my friend about other problems he had downloaded all my postings. Yay! Hooray!!

So once I get the file I have to consider posting them here - but I don't want to post a bunch of old stuff. I will have to talk to the good people at Blogspot to see if I can somehow change a posting date.

I had some pretty good posts. Including the ones I was asked to remove by a former boss. I should have saved them and reposted after I left that job. C'est la vie.

Government Information Professionals: Now and in the Future

2011-06-19T08:06:00.000-07:00

Blane Dessy, Executive Director, FLICC/FEDLINK

NewFeds

Blane started by talking about the NewFeds group – Librarians who have worked for the federal government for less than five years.

The group has a lot of energy and they are trying new things and having fun!!

Invisible role of libraries

Government Libraries lack visibility in agencies.
Government Libraries lack visibility in interagency groups and task forces.
Government Libraries lack visibility in many professional associations.
Government Libraries lack visibility in the literature.

We should write more – articles, blogs etc. Following the talk Marie Kaddell mentioned that many government libraries do 95% of the work - the research, plan and implement a great program, but then fail on the remaining 5%. They don't write it up and share it with other librarians. It takes time, but we need to share our accomplishments.

We can make our libraries more visible in our agency, our association and in professional literature.

It is the nature of academics to publish – but government librarians are so busy they don’t make marketing/promotion part of what they do.

How do we come in from the margins to the center of the page?

Find one thing that will help to promote the library.

If it were easy – anyone could do it.

If we want people to think we are leaders – we need to lead.

FLICC/FEDLINK works with 2200 federal libraries worldwide!

Federal Information Enterprise

Info professionals are placed throughout the federal government.
Considerable amount of $$ is spent on info acquisition & creation ($15 billion est.)
Many different missions and objectives

How do we bring that broad and diverse group into a single community? We need to find a way.

Two new developments for government libraries:

Identification and digitization of internally created content (strategic knowledge asset of the agency)
Putting Department of Justice collections on the website

Find the collections, identify them and make them available to everyone in the agency and outside if possible.

Mining our own materials – we need to become the masters of this information.
Digital Preservation - NDIIPP – National Digital Information Infrastructure & Preservation Program

How do we preserve digital data?

Think about your agency’s digital legacy.

Paper can last 5 centuries – how long will a flashdrive last?

Strategic content management – How do we engage our stakeholders?

How do we measure performance?

Conduct agency audits to discover what data are being purchased – other departments are spending money on books, periodicals and data purchase – how can we find out what is being purchased and what leverage our agency purchasing power?

Some agencies have already done this. See my Best Practices article from 2010.

Part of the future is customization of data for agencies. This will cost – is it worth it?

Mobile devices – these are widespread in the federal sector – are we marketing our resources to them?

William Butler Yeats –

In dreams begin responsibility.

Don’t wait to strike until the iron is hot, but make it hot in the striking.

Knowledge in Judgment: Making Good Decisions

2011-06-18T08:00:00.000-07:00

Larry Prusak gave a talk on Knowledge in Judgment at the 2011 SLA Conference.

This session is based on a book that Dr. Prusak is writing with Tom Davenport, Working Knowledge -

Tweets about the talk.

Does an organization have/exercise good judgment?

Are they open to other forms of knowledge?

Cognitive Diversity:

Mentioned The Difference by Scott E. Page.

People with different mental toolkits – a different worldview – they have a different way of thinking.

Example: Dr. Prusak worked on a marketing team in Norway with an Indian musicologist who was an expert in the structure of the music of J.S. Bach. He was able to see the big picture and how the whole structure worked together.

It is good to have people of diverse backgrounds tackle a problem. A different set of people from a homogenous background and training are not likely to solve a problem that a similar set of people couldn’t solve.

Ground truth:

What is it like for troops on the ground? The Army trains generals and commanders in a classroom – but until a leader put mini-cams on the soldiers when they landed in Grenada back in the 1980’s – they didn’t know (remember?) what it was like on the front line.

The exercise showed they needed to teach/train for what was really happening on the ground – not x’s and o’s showing battle formations.

All knowledge is local. (viz. Pascal)

What you know is dependent upon where you are standing.

Looking to the future is one of the planks of good judgment. Norway spends its windfall of oil revenues on infrastructure and investments for the future. Abu Dhabi spends much of its oil revenues – building a ski slope in the desert!

Decision architecture can be the culprit. There needs to be accountability in decision making!

NASA changed its decision architecture following a review after the Challenger Shuttle blew up. Now they solicit input from all levels. An engineer runs a meeting with folks from all levels and departments and asks if there are any concerns about the current project. The engineer walks the room to read body language and ask people. If there is a concern they can address it and solve it. There may be a delay – but lives are at stake.

Democracy is an excellent way to ensure good judgment.

Wisdom of crowds:

At county fairs there are contests to guess the weight of a bull. Not everyone guesses correctly – but the bulk of guesses by the experts (cattle owners and handlers) is always clumped around the correct weight.

Democritization of knowledge is marked by the global search and appropriation of new ideas.

If you think that only you know something you will fail.

We can force an organization to make good decisions. But what can we do?

Change the structure in the area that you can.
Don’t wait for management to change.
Make improvements and others will notice. They will see the changes in your area.
That will cause them to make changes in their areas.

MBA curriculum is a technical subject. It doesn’t encompass the social and political. It needs to do that in order to teach people that their business decisions have consequences beyond just the company’s bottom line.

Ideas have consequences! (Representative Gabrielle Giffords (AZ) would likely agree with this comment.)

Generally companies that are mission-driven do a better job at decision making – because they are thinking of their mission – not their profit.

Getting Out in Front of the Curve

2011-06-17T12:55:00.000-07:00

From the SLA 2011 Conference

Stephen Abram Looks to the Future: Getting Out in Front of the Curve

Slides from this session

1890’s – economic depression gave rise to the Industrial Revolution – scientists were our saviors.

1930’s – economic depression gave rise to the Financial Market driven economy – CEO’s, MBA’s and CPA’s were our saviors

2000’s – economic recession should give rise to the Information driven economy when Librarians should be the leaders.

If we, as libraries and librarians (information professionals), are not where the people are – we are marching toward irrelevancy. If our patrons (and would-be patrons) are on Facebook and Twitter and 2nd Life and wherever next – we need to be there too so they will know who we are and we can communicate and work with them where they are.

We only get so many once-in-a-lifetime chances to do great things.

Find the real needs or our users and align ourselves with them. (Sounds a lot like Mary Ellen Bates’ notion of building a fan base!)

Internet and technology are still in their infancy stage. The next shift is coming!

Close to all printed works are available online. Most all audio and video is already searchable.

What is getting in our way for using the resources and technologies that we have and will come?

You don’t know what to do – learn
You don’t know how to do it – get a smart phone and a manual and read it!
You don’t have the authority or resources to do it – play – kids don’t ask permission to play.
You’re afraid you’ll get in trouble – it is always easier to apologize than to ask permission.
Once you figure out what’s getting in the way it is far easier to find the answer (or decide to work on a different problem).
Stuck is a state of mind, and it is curable

These are just excuses!

What we as librarians do is to make sense of the morass of information.

20 years ago we put all the US case law and regulations online – that didn’t eliminate the need for attorneys.

Calculators and spreadsheets didn’t get rid of the accountants and budget staff

Similarly – making data and information available online will not mean the end of librarians and other information professionals.

What do these have in common?

Columbus, Cook, Magellan and Libraries

They search for the corners of the earth, the edge of the oceans and discover dragons

Questions for today’s librarians:

Are our priorities right?
Are learning, research, discovery changing materially and what is actually changing?
Books – not so much any more – not going away – but not what is driving us!
What is the role for librarians in the real future? i.e. not just what is an extension of the past

What has changed?

End users

Physical access and basic reading have already evolved to intellectual access with new competencies
Libraries – are they at the heart of the campus? Not anymore.
Students are focused at the lesson and event (essay, test, exam) level
Researchers are connected beyond the host institution

End users want meals – tasty and nutritious.

In the past, libraries have offered them grocery stores. How do we create the meal from the resources that we have? How do we give them not just books and data – but the learning experience?

Librarians play a vital role in building the critical connections between information, knowledge and learning.

Provide a platform to help the end user co-create the learning experience.

The new platform – the knowledge portal – the Information Commons
What will the end-user be like at the end of the experience?

Our end users are changing – Millennial and Post-millennial people are generally smarter, they read more than Boomers, because of gaming and the Internet their eye movement is difference. Their brains wetware is different!

But – Twitter and Facebook are dominated now by middle age folks.
eBook reader usuage is largely middle-aged
Mobile data usage is growing beyond youth and is expanding in the workplace!

Text-based learning is good – but some people use logic-based learning and most respond best to visual/experience-based learning.

Target the end-user – REACH OUT!

We need to be a Beauty Salon – market what we do for the end-user – what the experience will be. You go into a Beauty Salon and come out looking/feeling beautiful! You go into a library and come out – smarter!

Google/Bing/Yahoo etc. are great at Who – What – When – Where – but the answers to the Why and How can be manipulated to give different results.

The learning experience is:

Data – Information – Knowledge – Behavior (not wisdom)

What do WE need to know?

How do library databases and virtual services compare with other web experiences?
Who are our core virtual users? Are there gaps?
Does learning happen? How about discovery?
What are user expectations for true satisfaction?
How does library search compare to consumer search like Google and retail or government?
How do people find and connect with library virtual services?
Are end users being successful in their POV?
Are they happy? Will they come back? Tell a friend?

What would you attempt if you knew you would not fail?

We need to provide clarification – not just information – there’s too much information!

Great start to SLA - 2011

2011-06-13T13:06:00.000-07:00

Arrived safely in Philly last evening. Dinner with a friend then networking with Business & Finance (and others) Librarians. Seeing other friends and making new ones.

Monday was a great start with Steve Abrams talking about getting in front of the curve. Seems as though I missed a really good opening address on Sunday - be prepared to re-invent your job!

Steve talked about the many changes that we will face as librarians and information professionals. I will post my notes from the talks when I get back to DC.

Larry Prusak gave an excellent talk on making good decisions. Seems the notion dates back to Aristotle!

More to come!

Business cards - Oh my gosh!

2011-06-07T07:42:00.001-07:00

So when one is unemployed and actually trying to find a job - one has some free time. Yes, there are many chores that are calling for attention - but there are also the job-search and networking chores.

I was dusting off things on my LinkedIn Profile and happened upon a group called Librarians Seeking Jobs. So I joined and I have seen helpful comments in many of the discussions.

One was from a librarian who mentioned her need to get business cards (okay - networking cards) for the ALA Conference. Well - I'm going to the SLA Conference next week and realized that I needed cards.

But I've waited too long to order them online unless I want to pay $87 for overnight shipping. So I went the old-fashioned route and found a local printer - took the Metro over there and placed the order. Some discussion to keep the cost down - but I'm getting a good, eye-catching card - I think.

Be the first person to get one from me at SLA!

The Incredible Shrinking Librarian

2011-06-03T03:39:00.000-07:00

Back in February I joined Weight Watchers. Over the years working at mostly sedentary jobs and not inclined to much exercise I had continued to gain weight. I did a few diets and for about 2 years participated in a trial for a weight loss drug. I learned a lot, lost some weight and gained it back.

As I have gotten older and seen some further health and life issues I have realized that dropping some of this extra weight will be a big help to me all around.

Having tried other types of diets I decided on Weight Watchers. I have a few friends who successfully lost weight following the program and more than anything there are no special foods or pills or supplements. I can eat whatever I want - I just need to watch how much I'm eating.

And there is exercise - I'm still working on that - but I am walking more. Most exercises I find incredibly boring so that is still a challenge. I am going to the SLA Conference in Philly and I'm staying at a hotel that is a 25 minute walk from the convention center. That will help.

And my progress since joining in February? I'm down 39.4 lbs! I still have a ways to go - but as my grandmother would say, Nothing beats failure like a success!

I couldn't have done this without the support from the meeting group and my friends and family. Most importantly I thank George for cooking such delicious meals and responding to my questions of How much rice is that? How many ounces of chicken is this?

Self advocacy!

2011-05-30T09:49:00.000-07:00

For several years now Marie Kaddell, an information professional with Lexis/Nexis has run great blog - Government Info Pro. Each Spring Marie invites librarians and other information professionals from government libraries to contribute toward a best practices compilation for the year.

I have contributed in years past and she recently republished my article from 2010 on her Blog. The article I wrote is Advocacy, Competence, and Service: Experiences in Librarianship.

The 2011 edition of the best practices guide should be coming out soon! Look for it!

Serendipity of librarianship

2011-05-30T09:27:00.000-07:00

At some point in my life I became vaguely aware of a file system used in libraries called the McBee System. The McBee Company exists today - though I'm not related to those McBees The company made its name as the creator of a product called Keysort.

My sharing the name McBee with the developers of this system came into play another time when a librarian showed me a children's book Library Lion written by Michelle Knudsen.

When I was working at the FDIC Library one of the librarians, Len, came across an ad in a periodical from the 1940's featuring the following:

McBEE is a fact fancier ... with two decades experience in the care and culture of internal business information, of higher yield and earlier delivery in reports and records.

Does your corporate thinking ever have that tired feeling? Suffer from delayed decision deficiencies, sluggish judgment, management manana? .. Put your front office on a fresh fact diet! Call a McBee man - nearest office, or New York direct ... No miracles - but several thousands of satisfied users!

Truth be told - this McBee man is also a fact fancier with great ideas and over two decades of experience working in special libraries.

So if you're looking for someone who enjoys research and digging into facts, who provides excellent customer service and gets along well with colleagues, executives and patrons - contact this McBee man!

Putting the E in Library

2011-05-28T05:21:00.000-07:00

Article written for document for Government Info Pro.

The late Gilda Radner created a character for Saturday Night Live named Emily Litella who would speak out on various topics. Unfortunately, Miss Litella didn’t hear things quite right so she was against the efforts to remove violins from television programs. She was corrected that the effort was to remove violence from television programs. As this new information would sink in she would realize that it was very different from what she had been thinking and she would end her spots with an apologetic, “Never mind.”

I wonder what Miss Litella would have thought of e-braries and e-books and e-journals and e-patrons and e-librarians and who knows what will be next.

It started with e-mail and as that caught on we all started living in an e-world. And to no one’s surprise this didn’t simplify our life in the least. We have to make distinctions between e-mail and postal mail (or the pejorative snail mail), and e-journals and print journals. Having been a cataloger I can appreciate the many challenges this created to the folks describing our collections.

From everything we read and experience we know that a lot of users will still prefer print resources, but more and more will want information made available in a variety of electronic formats ported to multiple devices. And we, being the service industry that we are, will strive to meet that need explaining to our budget folks that it doesn’t mean it is cheaper nor that we will reduce the footprint of the library.

The January/February 2011 issue of Information Outlook was all about mobile applications. Coincidentally in my last job that was a big push as well. The agency rolled out mobile devices to about 1,000 research staff and we let them know what the Library can provide for them on their new tool.

As in other instances, this is not something the Library can do on its own. We need the help of our IT folks – the ones who control access to what is on the mobile devices – to open the gates for the Library content. We have to work with our vendors to find a good solution for subscriptions that will work in our total environment – desktop, physical collection, and mobile devices.

It is exciting when you find a partner for a project who understands the value of what we are trying to deliver to our end-users. Often we have to educate in many directions – and we have to learn. What devices is our agency buying? What information resources have mobile applications? What is the pricing structure for the access? What products will we make available?

The Oxford English Dictionary may have a mobile app, and it would be oh-so-cool to have it, but how many of us would actually push that out to our mobile end-users?

We need to keep up with the wave of e-information. The demand is there and if we don’t do it, someone else will. Like all the other tools for information access this needs to be part of our expertise.
The same way we went from print to dial-up, to software and then to Internet – we need to help our end-users get their information on their mobile devices and keep up with what the next platform will be.

Once you find the IT and Communications folks who are managing the mobile devices work with them to develop the Library application – pointing to the Library resources that staff can access on a mobile device. Talk to your vendors to make sure you are licensed properly to give access to your users.

Review and refine your list. If you already have a page on your website listing online news resources you have a head start! Just as we had to rethink presentation and writing for the web – we have to be even more concise on a mobile device. A segmented list of resources on a website is easy to navigate – on a mobile device keep to the basics until users ask for more.

If you have been around the Internet since the early days then you’ll remember those Under Construction pages that we used to put up and use. Those are long gone – everyone understands that the Internet is under continuous development and updating. It is the same with mobile devices. People will expect additional resources and upgraded applications. Let the vendors take care of upgrading the apps. But don’t worry if you have a great news resource that you have finally been able to contract. Roll it out. If it is a significant resource, then roll it out right away. If you have a couple new resources in the works then roll them out together.

Two agencies I worked for had a lot of agents in the field who were then still using dial-up access for the Internet when they were on the road. For that reason we designed our pages with as little graphics as possible and did our best to avoid anything other than html.

This experience taught me something about our users. You need to take care of your biggest user group. By minimizing graphics we didn’t hurt our onsite users with a fast connection. Our efforts helped them too. Government librarians are looking at a finite set of end users with mobile devices. Yes, they seem to breed like rabbits, but they are still expensive enough that not everyone in your organization will have one. So you don’t want to license solely for the mobile devices. Even the mobile users will want to read the Wall Street Journal on their desktop or even in print. (Print? Remember that?)

To be good librarians we need to see what our patrons are doing and listen to their questions. We don’t need to pounce on everything – but we need to be aware of trends so we can be ready to ride the wave and not get caught by the undertow.

So – there isn’t and E in Library, but there is an E in Libraries and end-users and mobile devices. And there are two E’s in people and those are the folks we are here to serve as librarians.

Librarian for hire

2011-05-27T11:58:00.000-07:00

I'm doing all the other things one should do when looking for work - research, networking, applying - but I thought I'd put my resume out there. One never knows - I have 25 years experience working in all areas of the library and at most levels.

Hire me! I'm a great librarian!

I am a librarian with over 25 years of experience working in federal libraries. I started out as a library technician and worked my way up, eventually earning an MLS from the University of Maryland in 2000.

You can see by my resume that I have worked at three US banking regulatory agencies - the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC), the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC), and the Federal Reserve Board (FED).

At the FDIC I held a variety of positions including cataloger, webmaster, reference librarian and electronic resources librarian. In addition to being the cataloger I was responsible for managing the Library’s database system – STAR from Cuadra Associates.

From 2004-2010 I was a Senior Reference Librarian at the OCC and provided reference and research support to our legal department, economists, bank examiners and other staff. For part of my time I served as the library webmaster.

At the FED my principal duties have been to review contracts for database resources. As part of my duties I have worked on several databases including the Library’s Millennium OPAC from Innovative Interfaces, Inc.

I provide excellent reference and research support in banking, legal, news, politics, the arts and more.

Senior Librarian February 2010 - May 2011
Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve
Washington, DC

Review contracts for Library resources and other databases. Work with vendor representatives, end-users, library staff, attorneys and agency procurement staff to shepherd contracts through the process and help negotiate terms and pricing.

Senior Reference Librarian September 2004 – January 2010
Office of the Comptroller of the Currency
Washington, DC

Perform news, business and legal research. On average about 125 reference questions per month - questions range from the simple requests for articles or single documents to those needing considerable research such as a literature search or legislative history.

Search corporate, news and legal resources such as Factiva, Lexis/Nexis and Westlaw; ProQuest, JSTOR, S&P RatingsDirect, Fitch and Moody’s databases.

Electronic Resources Librarian October 2002 – September 2004
Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation
Washington, DC

Coordinated access issues related to 60+ databases. Met with vendors and clients to determine access needs. Shepherd software for databases testing with agency IT. Maintained the library's database system. Provide training on database and web resources as needed.

Reference Librarian June 2001 - October 2002
Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation
Washington, DC

Perform news, business and legal research. Search news and legal resources such as Factiva, Lexis/Nexis and Westlaw; academic resources such OCLC FirstSearch, ProQuest, Ebsco and EconLit and business resources such as S&P RatingsDirect, and Mergent Online.
Serve as Library Webmaster, creating new web documents for library resources and services and access to online databases.

Additional Experiences:

Paley Center for Media, New York City, New York
Volunteer internship for two weeks – indexing news articles.

DC’s Different Drummers (Non-profit music performance group), Washington, DC
President 2007 – 2009, Vice President 2008-2009. Currently serve as Membership Director.

FDIC Library, Washington, DC
Cataloger - May 1988 – February 1998

Education
University of Maryland, College Park, Maryland
Master's Degree in Library Science - 5/2000

Christendom College, Front Royal, Virginia
Bachelor's Degree in Philosophy - 5/1983

West Virginia University, Morgantown, West Virginia
Bachelor's Degree in Liberal Arts- 5/1980

Adding Value to Your Community

2011-04-13T12:58:00.000-07:00

Patricia Martin – CEO Litlamp Communications

Presentation

Author of Renaissance Generation: the Rise of the Cultural Consumer and What it means to your Business

Ren/Gen – Renaissance Generation

3 indicators of a renaissance:

Death comes first (demise of the financial markets maybe?)
Facilitating medium – the Internet
Age of enlightenment

Psychographics of the population

people who believe that Knowledge is Power
learn baby, learn

The Ren/Gen is ready for this Renaissance:

Embrace diversity – they are creative
Idealists – they are self expressive
Collaborators – they are sensualists – the only know what they can experience (with others)
Fusionists – the bring together the diverse elements of who they are – engineer/attorney/poet

There has been an explosion of blogs (self-expression) and ebooks (non-traditional media), etc.

Depth of the shift – the impact is huge given the global economy

Businesses can capitalize through branding and getting buy-in and loyalty to their brand.

Move from Me to We – give people a sense of belonging to the group, the tribe
Empower creativity – give people the space to think for themselves
Manage the human interface – remember that in the end customers are still people

Examples:

Launch of the new Ford Fiesta

Reached out to bloggers – chance to win a new car for 6 months – all expense by proposing a trip to take and then blog about it. Response came from a group of bloggers who weren’t interested so much in the car.

Old Universe – Brand is the center of the Universe
New Universe – the user is the center of the Universe

Outcome – let the bloggers share the car – led to shared financing.
Benefit – people gained a sense of belonging to a community.

Google – New products and improvements

They wanted to improve the users’ experience of Google so they identified their Superusers and asked them.
Best users are the ones who collaborate on building the rules

Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs

The Human Interface

Jonathan Harris – artist and computer scientist

Stop the nonsense in the Internet – take the power to create a new world on the Internet.

What are people yearning for? The want to be wanted. (MoMA commission).
Curate the human interface

We have to come up with the story about the future!

The future – there will be screens everywhere – at the barbershop, the grocery store –
Return on Time will replace Return on Investment (because Time is Money after all)

The power of the story is the killer app!

Being able to engage our patrons to be a part of the shared story – is the ultimate human interface.

This Renaissance is an Uber-enlightenment – and the pre-cognitive folks - the visualization people

And why is the library so important in all this? The Library is the only reliable source for neutral information in most areas.

FINRA is trying to get public libraries active in the area of financial literacy – precisely because people trust that they will get neutral information from the library.

To sum up:

Add value to your community:

Put the User at the Center of the Universe
Let Users collaborate on the rules
Curate the human interface

Mobile Content

2011-04-13T12:55:00.000-07:00

Megan Fox

Presentation

More interest in accessing data on a mobile phone than to call people
What info do people need on a mobile device? Not everything – but some things – ability to search the catalog, reserve items

DC Public library was among the first – open source code – also use Boopsie as a good resource to write code for mobile.

Library anywhere from Library Thing is available for libraries.

Library Vendors / Publishers

RefWorks is mobile
Ebsco is Mobile
Safari Books online
www.libsuccess.org
www.musingsaboutlibraries.org – Ready Reference apps
GetJar App World – a nondenominational source for mobile apps.
Can still send text searches to Google, Yahoo and some others.
Voice – you can give a voice search request to Google and others.
Touchscreen – drawing on maps
Bumping applications for paypal, Facebook
OCLS – shake it
Public transit, book recommendations,
QR Codes
Bar codes
Augmented realities – pulling in the social networks – recommendations by friends and friends of friends on a band, a restaurant, a movie, etc.

Take a look at the W3C mobile standards

Content Strategy and Writing for the Web

2011-04-13T12:50:00.000-07:00

Aaron Schmidt

Remove Unnecessary Words

Do less (remove unused pages from the website)

Less is Less

Content Strategy: A way of looking at websites

Content – any stuff you have online – html pages, images, mp3s, tweets, facebook updates
Strategy – a plan to achieve a goal

Another definition - Planning for the creation delivery & governance of useful, useable and desirable content.

WHY? – ask questions about everything on your website. Need a plan to make that happen

Lifecycle of a piece of content

Request
Create
Edit
Approve
Publish
Update
Archive/remove

But content management includes style.

Who does this stuff? Is there a plan? Are their people who have/share these roles?
Request/create

What do we want to say?
What do our patrons need?
Who are our patrons?

Creating personae – who are our patrons?

Ask questions about the patrons’ lives – not how do you use the library, or what they think about the library. Ask about their lives and discern from that how the library might be able to serve them.

Brainstorm common tasks

Group the unique tasks

Next – compare the personae and the user needs to the Website to see how the website is doing in trying to satisfy those needs.

How? Run a content audit and see everything that is on the website.

Check if the page is

Accurate
Useful – business need? Patron need?
Used
web-written
on-message
when was it last updated

Assign a scale to these items – maybe use Excel or similar – to report the scale. Have one person work on a single column – that way the scale will be applied uniformly.

After the audit is done – it can become a good tool to routinely

Write for the Web

Center for Plain Language

Plain Writing Act of 2010

Most use of the website is functional reading – mostly we need to provide people with answers to their questions.

Should be conversational – friendly and informative
No PDFs – convert the information into html
Inverted pyramid writing – people look at the top of the page first – Put it at the top
Have plenty of white space
Separate and float headings and content
Make pretty urls
Don’t use all caps
Write in an active voice
One thought per sentence
Sentence fragments are okay
Text size is important – not too big nor too little
Sans serif font
Use adequate contrast
The library – We
The patron – You
Skip the animation
Create content templates

Cloud Computing’s Impact on Library Services

2011-04-13T12:43:00.000-07:00

Roy Tennant
Internet Librarian – October 26, 2010

Over-hyped
What are some reasonable roles for Cloud Computing
Makes us think about technology and how we use it – and what some of our options are.
Technology that makes Cloud computing affordable
Inexpensive commodity servers – add them as needed

Virtualization

We used to need a separate box for each operating system and separate applications. Now we can slice and dice a single server that has multiple operating systems and applications that run on each of them

Companies like BitNami that host our system.

One simple download to install the various components of a bigger set of applications.

Wikipedia - Cloud computing is Internet-based computing, whereby shared resources, software and information are provided to computers and other devices on-demand, like electricity.

Infinite, immediately available computing power. No more technical requirements
Computing power has become a commodity
Amazon web services ec2 – Electronic Cloud Computing
No commitment to hardware
Inexpensive
Ubiquitous information – from any device

Innovation – iPhone

An Agile Approach to Library IT Innovations

May Chang – Head of Library IT Services

Library Hi-Tech article - When to be Agile
Davenicolette.net/articles – 1995
Agile Manifesto
Individuals and interactions - Over processes and tools

Working software - Over comprehensive documentation

Customer Collaboration

Agile Principles

12 principles
Crystal Method
People differ in working styles
Alistair Cockburn – Crystal family of methodologies because every project is slightly different and needs of its own
Putting into practice
People
Tools
Marketing

Leader – change manager, ability to adapt to change, a facilitator rather than an ultimate authority

Members – cross-functional motivated, team player

Tools

Mind map instead of bullet points – so no one part is better than another
Thinking wall – white sheets – static cling to wall – write w/ markers – not restricted by the size and location of the white board

Task Board – use sticky notes

Think outside the box – but make it work inside the box
Website – make it work for new students – music, sound, movement – but parents, funders, faculty will also be looking at it – so need to provide some guidance

Mobile version

Roving Reference & Patron Notification
John Blyberg

Darienlibrary.org

Reference desk like a WWII pillbox –
Created a lightweight Reference desk – more open – inviting.
New space was wireless
Smaller tools – netbooks – to be roving to assist with reference as they walked the stacks and the reference room – wireless phones
Netbook is small – but still awkward – what else can you work with -
The OPAC is there – so make it an access point for reference staff.
But where is the staff? Users couldn’t find the lightweight reference desk – because it was so small in scale. And the staff was roaming – not at the reference desk. What to do?

Pagers didn’t work

Vocera – lavaliere communicators
Restaurant pagers – but that’s the reverse of what they needed

Life alert bracelets

Requirements

use existing tools
fit into workflow
simple to use
effective
reliable
Fast

Notify.io – software for a notification router – download and host on local server – open source software

Can use email, IM, or Prowl (an onscreen notification system)

Adding Value – CIOs

2011-04-13T12:37:00.000-07:00

Michael Ridley – CIO, Director of Libraries, Guelph University, Canada

Presentation

iCampus – Enterprise IT – trying to create a system and controls

One Community – many neighborhoods

But there is Tech Populism – everyone is her own IT department. We select computers and apps etc.

The Community has Tribal Identities – Information professionals, students, faculty, admin, etc.

The Information Age

We love that because we are information professionals. This is our age. Except, the information age is over. That metaphor is maybe holding us back

The Age of Imagination

How do we change the rules to make a better place? Information isn’t enough.
Think differently about your organization – it doesn’t have to be a 19th Century organization. There is a structure but it is an Open Organization
Be experts at failure – try things. Our advantage is our ignorance of what the outcome will be and that ignorance is our bliss. We don’t know what the tools are or where we are going.

Donna Scheeder – LC – CRS

Understand your organization. Understand the decision-making process. How much room is there for risk and failure?
Enterprise-wide approach – keep the technologies running.
What do customers want? Can we astonish them with what we can do for them?

Reviewing files

2011-04-13T11:51:00.000-07:00

I am changing jobs and I am going through my files to save or remove documents that I don't need to keep any longer. Among them are my reports from the 2010 Internet Librarian conference held in beautiful Monterey, California. So I will be posting them on here.

Search Engine Update – Chris Sherman
Track A – Information Discovery & Search

Presenter's website

There are effectively two search engines with a combined 90% market share – Google and Microsoft Bing. No serious challengers for the next 5 or more years. There will be niche players, but no challengers. Google isn’t the top search engine in other countries.

Google -
Google has gotten faster – faster results, faster crawling and indexing and faster “search suggest”
Caffeine Update – biggest overhaul to Google in more than 5 years
50% fresher results
Algorithmic improvements – to change the results
We will need to bookmark our results because we won’t be able to recreate our Google search results again

Google Instant – Yahoo! Did this already
Google Search Suggest – get suggested queries as you type
Google images – improved display and scrolling to compete with Bing
Image swirl – is a visual discovery tool to find related images, artists etc.
Google Real Time Search –
Searches from Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, etc. More useful than Twitter’s own search engine.
Caution – Google – don’t be evil – policy is to go up to the creepy line and not cross it.

Bing:

Timesavers – “More on this page”
Intent classifiers – determine how the result page will be laid out based on our search
Site links – may be popular links – but also contact information for all results – not just the top result
Suggesting links for more vague queries that might look at all sides of a question – Is there global warming?
Product research – general search – suggest products – search on a specific model – provides reviews etc.

Bing entertainment

To grow its entertainment distribution business
Music movies, tv, games etc.
More than 5 million full-length songs and lyrics, hundreds of tv shows more than 100 games – streaming – cannot download w/out purchase.

Bing Maps – advantage – allow you to post photos in Photosynth – combine maps with video and photos
Bing travel – shows when airfares are changing!!!
Bing University – ranks the universities
Bing Recipes

Wolfram Alpha
http://www.wolframalpha.com/
Integration – high quality factual responses to queries.

Yahoo

Bing is running Yahoo search
Yahoo doesn’t equal Bing – but they are aiming to change their results view
Bing is the innovator now – Yahoo is in survival mode.

Blekko

New search engine
Use slash tags to filter your search results – it is a closed beta version –but they may allow people to access and trial the search engine (Mary Ellen Bates talked more about this Search Engine).

Practices of Search Engines

Targeting

Types of targeting:

Device monitor
Geographic – knows where we are and prompts local weather e.g.
Demographic – age, gender etc.
Behavioral

Targeting with ads – Ads match our interests
Buzzword for this is retargeting

How do you opt out?

Google dashboard
Microsoft advertising
Yahoo Privacy – Interest Manager Beta
Network Advertising Initiative – allows one to opt out worldwide

Other search engines

Factual – giving structure to the unstructured web.
Semantifi – natural language query
Microsoft – Academic Search – indexing academic publications – heavy on computer science and engineering
Ask isn’t really a search engine – back to doing Q&A – built a social network of experts – Still using Teoma – but not a search engine

Super Searcher Tips
Mary Ellen Bates
her slides

Yahoo Correlator – http://correlator.sandbox.yahoo.net/

A way of visualizing a search of Wikipedia – a filter w/in Wikipedia

A way to get an idea of where to go next – find the next place to find the answer

Tries to find relations between Wikipedia articles – taps into the intelligence of Wikipedia and find contacts and datamine Wikipedia. It is broad and controlled.

Bing Norelax – most search engines will assume with a search string with multiple words that not all words are important. To use a Boolean and norelax will allow you to force the AND for all the words

Example: Wifi security airport hackers norelax:hotspot

Google New – http://google.com/newproducts/ - where we can see what Google is working on and you can filter to look at just the product we want (news, Scholar, etc.)

Blekko – http://blekko.com/ - open invitation beta (friend them on Facebook)

The slashtags – is a customizable search engine – This is an old concept use their tags or create your own tags. And they will disclose what sites are included in their customized tags
Slashtags are not shared – and tied to your personal login

Twitter lists – create and publish an RSS of your faves – who does the guru monitor? Is this person on anyone’s list? Who else are on those lists?

Search via Google – pulling the Twitter feed and
Google search - Site:twitter.com inurl:lists

LinkedIn

Monitor our own company

Look at new people and promotions – and reach out to those people – what do you need right now to help you with your job?

Newsy.com
The Week meets YouTube – summarizes the weekly news – uses human editors
A summary of what people are saying about a current topic

SlideFinder.net
Allow you to search Powerpoint presentations – indexes individual pages – it is a way to find an authority on a topic – then find out more about the individual – download the slide

World Govt. Data from The Guardian
www.guardian.co.uk/world-government-data/
Find datasets on a particular topic – more granular than some other sites
Compares apples to apples – tries to standardize the measurement so we can compare the statistics from different countries

Factual.com
Searching datasets
Like Wolfram|Alpha, but Factual.com is a wiki – find datasets but others can comment on how they mined the dataset or displayed the data to make it more it more useable. Shows how they found insights into the data.

Google Fusion Tables
Upload your data table
Visualize the results – map, line-bar-pie-scatter charts, timeline
Find some way to tell a story with the data.
It is a way to provide a non-Google like response

Google Public data explorer
Public data and allows us to apply filters or charts and tweak to tell a story
Datasets you can play with
Google wants agencies to share their data

Create Intelligence
Google News Archive – burst of interest in this product between March and August – Factiva has something similar
“Our Competitor’s name is rarely mentioned along with ours.”
Us AND them – 942
Us NOT them – 59742
Not obvious in the search results – but is evident during the search itself
Gives us enough to give us a sense

Use QR codes
I had never heard of these - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/QR_Code
Create a 2D code for anything!
You can install an app on a smartphone to read these codes and be linked to more information about the item. A barcode on steroids.

Advocacy, Competence, and Service Experiences in Librarianship

2011-03-29T05:35:00.000-07:00

Last year I wrote an article that was included in 2010 Best Practice for Government Libraries document compiled by Marie Kaddell at Lexis-Nexis - blogger and writer/editor of the Gov-Info Pro site.

Here is the article that wrote and contributed last year - now I've been asked to write another article for this year. How exciting!

I have had the privilege of working in three federal libraries with similarities and differences. One of the greatest benefits of working in my current agency is that the library is part of a research division. The management outside the library understands the value of the library to the organization.

The benefit of this is that the management team knows our strengths and understands what we bring to the organization. The challenge is that they have expectations of service to satisfy the needs of the organization. That puts them in the position of being advocates for the library.

Advocacy

At the 2010 Computers in Libraries Conference, Ken Haycock, Director of the School of Library & Information Science at San Jose State University said that advocacy is not just self-promotion. It is closer to marketing in that we determine the needs of our users and advocate how we can help serve those needs.

Key to this is having a library director who is also an advocate who looks for ways the library can serve the organization in less traditional ways – building on the skills of librarians.

One current project has our librarians working with research staff to build the subject areas of the division’s Intranet site. We look for resources that support the research in various subject areas that our research staff is working. We get to work with our IT to populate the website with those resources and other news. This project will result in a portal for our division topic pages created by both librarians and the researchers who will be using the resources.

Another way we are reaching out is by serving as liaisons to different research divisions. This is not quite the embedded librarian model – but a way of getting us outside the physical library to remind people of the resources and services we provide. We put a human face on the library.

A third way we are reaching out is by giving guidance on the information database contracts that the agency has. A colleague has laid most of the groundwork, and we are working across divisions to aid the process, review the contracts, make sure the database will satisfy the information needs of the users and that the contract will allow our researchers to use the data to accomplish their research goals. This is a service that was done to good effect in another library where I worked. Here we have the added support of an attorney in our Legal Division to help us review and negotiate the contracts.

Competency

So we have the advocacy part, but that will only get you so far. Next you have to have competency to back up the demand your advocacy creates. Competency is not elusive, but it takes work. Years ago a mentor said to me that in his vocation one had to be a lifelong student. That applies to librarians as well.

Competency is a challenge for us to know our strengths and weaknesses and knowing the strengths and weaknesses of others. We don’t have to get all Myers-Briggs about this, but it is important to know how we can work with our colleagues to the best advantage for the library and the organization as a whole.

We need to read our professional journals and attend conferences and workshops. We need to see what our colleagues are doing in other libraries and we need to learn from the new generation of librarians and we need to be able to guide them. All of this means a commitment to learning and being open to new ideas and new perspectives.

We cannot always implement every new idea and we should be somewhat circumspect. If we change too much too fast – we risk losing some of our patrons. We also need to understand how much change our organization will support. Sometimes there are technical reasons we cannot implement something, and sometimes it would not fit our organization. My current organization is not ready for exclusively virtual meetings – but they are willing to adopt 21st Century technology. My last agency was apprehensive about blogs – but I was able to create one for the library that was well-received.

As for our professional reading and education – not everything will work. Some articles in Information Outlook or Library Journal will be helpful – but probably not all of them. Sometimes at a conference we’ll have to choose among three great sessions being offered at the same time and two hours later there are no sessions that appeal.

I learned from one colleague to be ruthless with my time at a conference. If a speaker or topic is not meeting the description of the session and there is a simultaneous session that you are interested in - get up and go! If a speaker is only going to read her/his Powerpoint slides – get a copy of the slides and find another session.

You or your agency is paying for you to be at this conference so don’t waste your time or your money. Often I do well to talk with friends in the Government Information Division and get some ideas about a talk that is worth attending – or we sort through some challenges we are facing in an impromptu roundtable. Learn from our colleagues!

Service

Then there is service. We all think we have that covered because we are librarians. Years ago I worked as a hotel clerk. People would come in and ask a question. I had the choice of answering the question or responding to the information need, and that was before I ever heard of a reference interview.

Service requires listening to your client with your full attention. This is first of all a matter of respect for your client. Secondly it is the only way you’ll be able to get a handle on what the information need really is. It is very easy to hear the first couple of sentences or scan the email (I am guilty) and guess at what the request is. Next thing your mind is racing through your favorite resources to provide that answer. The problem is that we miss part or the crux of the question. Breathe. Focus. Listen.

I know of a librarian who was invited to a meeting with a senior client group who wanted her help on a project. She spent the meeting on her blackberry – reading and typing. She might have been telling herself that she was multi-task, but the message to the clients was that she was not listening and was not interested in their information need.

Another part of service is working with our colleagues. When we recognize a colleague as an expert in an area of research – we help ourselves by asking for his/her help to find an answer. If we are the expert then we need to be willing to help our colleagues when they come to us – but we need to make it a learning experience for the colleague. Yes, it is easier to answer the question myself, but that does not support our colleagues or the organization as a whole.

Our service doesn’t end there either. We follow-up, we remember that a client is interested in this topic and even a month later send along an interesting article on that topic. We need to share some of that information with our colleagues. Who is interested in this topic? Share that knowledge with your colleagues.

This is the time when we have to fight the self-preservation urge and think of the good of the Library. It isn’t good if only one person is doing everything. We need to share the knowledge – isn’t that part of Knowledge Management? I may finally have a winning Powerball ticket and assume a life of leisure. If my colleagues don’t know what I have been working on the organization will be at a loss.

So there you have it – some of the greatest tools of Library 2.0 are ones that are tried and tested: advocacy, competency and service. If you get those down you’ll be able to use blogs, desktop delivery, portals and wikis effectively to serve your clients’ needs.

Back by Popular Demand

2011-03-28T13:34:00.001-07:00

Greetings readers,

The Back by popular demand is a euphemism. After almost a year hiatus I doubt I have any readers. Prove me wrong?

So the past year has been a full one and I have learned much. In my current job - reviewing contracts for data and database services - I have learned about reading contracts and what goes into a good contract. The needs agencies have to publish and the relative willingness some vendors have to allow us to negotiate terms.

From colleagues I have observed much and learned as well. From associates at other libraries I have learned that somethings never change. By the way, I hear karma can be a bitch.

So on the whole it has been a good year. I lost a long time friend suddenly last fall and another friend passed away in February from cancer. Maybe the good do die young and I'll be stuck here until I'm over 100. Actually - that has been a goal - not so much in and of itself. I have a goal to live beyond 2063 when my home state of West Virginia celebrates it's Bi-centennial.

But I digress... It is Spring - Washington, DC's best season what with all the lovely parks, warm temperatures and low humidity, and the lovely Cherry Blossoms. In the spirit of renewal, I am renewing my blog and talking about topics related to the work of librarians.

Important topics from work and the ether:

Contracts for electronic resources and data

Resource sharing tools like Sharepoint

Customer outreach and liaison with customer groups

Creating new libraries

A year of change

More to come on all of this!! Spring is the air!!!