Sandra Herber: Future Librarian

I don’t have many comments on this week’s readings but some interesting things that popped up that were new or interesting to me were:

In 7 Things you Should Know About RSS it was pointed out that it is almost impossible to gauge the impact that the syndication of materials through RSS feeds is having because it is very difficult to track the usage of RSS feeds.  I know when I add a feed to my Bloglines reader, it will tell me how many subscribers there are to that feed, but I’m sure that is only those who subscribe through Bloglines.  As we know, there are many other feed readers out there.  As librarians we want to measure the impact we’re having but this is an area where we cannot yet do that in a quantifiable way.

I liked some of the uses for RSS feeds outlined by Randy Reichardt in Success Story: RSS Moves into the Mainstream at the University of Alberta Libraries.  A professor getting an entire list of new books at the library would be quickly put off, but the fact that he or she could limit their feed to the second level of an LC classification is a great feature.  The worst thing we could do is add to people’s information overload.  We need to, as Reichardt did, allow customization so that people can get just the information they need.  This leads me to the intriguing idea of Yahoo! Pipes .  I know that Amena has given them a try and Amanda has warned us that they can be tricky, but idea behind them is so exciting to me.  Customization is the weapon we can use against information overload!

Another article on ease of use, Melissa Rethlefsen’s video of how to add RSS feeds to library websites, made the process seem very simple.  The promise of Web 2.0 technology is that it should be simple to use.  Sometimes that is true, but often it is not.  This is a case in which is seems it might be.

In Programming Skills Could Transform Librarians’ Roles, David Stuart tells us we need to not only be familiar with new technologies, but that we need to go beyond that and learn programming skills.  Either I haven’t taken the right technology courses, or the MLIS program has not yet bought into this idea because this is not a skill that I am going to possess by the time I finish this program (in a few weeks time).  My philosophy has been that I want to learn how things work and what is possible so that I can interact with the IT department at my library in an intelligent way.  I will know what is possible, but not have to do it myself.  Now, it’s debatable if I’ve achieved that skill, but that is still a far cry from what Stuart is advocating.

In the first week of this course, I scanned down the list of topics we would be covering and this one (Cloud Computing) was one I did not recognize. After this week’s readings, I realize that I have been using cloud computing for a while now without putting a name on it.  It just seemed to me to be a natural evolution of the properties of the Internet.  The readings, however, talked not just about individuals using cloud computing, but institutions and that was really interesting to me.

One of the things that was interesting about this week’s readings was that one of the drivers for institutions to use cloud computing is cost reduction.  7 Things You Should Know about Cloud Computing and Library Cloud Atlas: A Guide to Cloud Computing and Storage both mention that there are savings to be had for institutions that “rent” applications or space rather than spend large amounts of capital.  Some of the examples were of very small institutions, but I believe in this economy, large institutions should be interested in this, too (though their cost savings might not be so large).  These ideas were all new to me, but very intriguing.

Some of the articles brought up the major issues around cloud computing which, I think, might mean that we aren’t “quite there yet”.  In 7 Things they mentioned “concerns about privacy, security, data integrity, intellectual property manage­ment, audit trails, and other issues.”  Other readings also mention these issues and those are pretty serious issues!  One of the speakers in What is Cloud Computing? also mentioned the issue of bandwidth – you need a significant amount of it to move all your work to the clouds.  So, all in all, it might be a little while before all these things are worked out and we can all feel comfortable in the clouds.

This leads us to libraries.  How does cloud computing affect what we’re doing?  We will obviously need to provide “the fastest connections [we] can, and security measures that do not block access to what users want”, according to Michael Stephens.  And, on the related topic of mobile computing, we also need to encourage our users to access the library in ways that they are already using (texting, mobile websites).  I liked Steve Kolwich’s point that “college libraries should not be picky about how they are willing to communicate with students” – we should just be excited that they want to contact us at all rather than doing a Google search.

I must admit, like others of you out there, that I started the readings this week with some scepticism.  With some caveats, though, I have been won over.  When (not if!) I get a job in an academic library, I will give social networking tools (particularly Facebook which is the one used most by undergraduates) a try.  I’m already on Facebook, so I’ll have to figure out (as I mentioned in a comment on Amena’s blog post) whether to just use that profile or create an entirely new one for me as an academic librarian, but I do feel that there is potential here.

The Big Caveat

There are some caveats to using social networking tools in an academic library and the main one, I think, is to be very careful about the potential perception that students might have that you are “invading their space”.  At the OLA Superconference last week I went to a talk about Reference at Guelph-Humber and how they tried roving reference in the Learning Commons.  They did not get a good response at all.  In fact, one librarian said that when she was sitting at a table with students, one of their friends came up and said, “What is SHE doing here?”  I don’t think it would feel any different to students if we forced ourselves (with the best of intentions, of course) on them in another space they feel is their own: Facebook.  In Crossing Boundaries, Anne Hewitt and Andrea Forte found that one third of the students they surveyed did not believe faculty should have a presence on Facebook.  Now you might argue that librarians are different from faculty (they are not involved in evaluating coursework, only in helping), but I think we should be aware of this concern and it should shape how we plan to use these tools.

Popularity

A number of articles pointed out how popular Facebook and other social networking sites are.  We have to know that that is where our students (as academic librarians) are spending a great deal of their time.  As an article in Educause, quoted in Reaching Students with Facebook: Data & Best Practices stated, this technology has captivated our students and because of that, exploration of what they enjoy about it will allow us to incorporate such captivating material in our approaches to them.  Of course, here, too, is a caveat – it’s can’t be lame and done, as Amanda said, without authenticity.

Promotion

Promotion is going to be the key, if we want to avoid students feeling that we are invading their space.  Librarians at Penn State promoted their Facebook presence during subject-specific library instruction sessions: “the librarian explicitly stated that he often provided reference and research assistance via Facebook.”  By simply using Facebook as another way that students can contact you (albeit one on which they spend a lot of time and with which they are very comfortable) students can remain in control.  In this article (Reaching Students with Facebook: Data & Best Practices) the authors specifically said that they did not recommend friending students on Facebook: instead “let them decide when and where they need you.”

It’s What You Do With It

The last word goes to Meredith Farkas from her Libraries in Social Networking Software: “I do not think that there is anything inherently ‘cool’ or useful about having a profile on these sites. Just like any social software tool, it’s what you do with it that matters. And many libraries aren’t really doing anything with their profiles.”  This could be the motto of this class.  All these tools have huge possibility for utility, but we should be very wary of using them just because they are the new, shiny thing.

I went to the OLA Superconference this past week for the full Wednesday evening to Saturday morning run.  It was not only my first time at that conference, but my first time at any library conference and I had a fantastic time.  I saw some great sessions, heard about some very exciting things that academic librarians are doing and met some very interesting people.  Here’s my advice for anyone going to the conference for the first time next year.

The Living Library

This was a seriously underappreciated event.  It was a chance to ‘check out’ a human book from the Career Centre for a half an hour.  This was you could talk to a library CEO, an academic librarian or a children’s librarian and ask them anything about their careers or current jobs.  I was lucky enough to ‘check out’ Jane Dysart (of Dysart and Jones consulting), Kim Silk (the Data Librarian at Martin Prosperity Institute, Rotman School at the University of Toronto) and Amanda (our fearless leader).  They were all incredibly open about their careers and about prospects in academic and special libraries.

Networking

This sort of segues from the previous paragraph: the conference is a great place to get to know librarians in an area that interests you.  Most of us are either a bit sceptical or a bit nervous (or both) about the idea of networking.  If you fit into this category you should go to one of the opening events: The Art of Networking (Wednesday evening).  It’s a nice, gentle way to get started talking to new people at the conference and the OLA Board of Directors is in attendance, so you can meet them, too.  As for the rest of the conference, I found everyone to be very friendly and receptive to someone just about to graduate with their MLIS.  It made ‘networking’ almost painless.  The “Meet the Employer” session on Saturday morning was also a great chance to talk to librarians and human resource professionals from a number of academic and public libraries.

The Zen of Picking Sessions

In a conference with 251 different sessions, you will really be spoiled for choice.  Even by being ruthless I found that in most time slots I had 3 sessions I wanted to go to.  When I finally made my decision, I’d worry that there was a better session somewhere else that I was missing.  My solution: stay put and get as much as I could out of the session I chose.  Maybe this is more about life than about the Superconference, but there is something to be learned in every one of these sessions and if you try to do everything, you are sure to miss it.