How difficult is this really?

"This might sound like a condescending question," [WARNING BELLS!] "but how difficult is this really?"

Students, eh? So much arrogance, so little life experience.

The question was asked of me by a student to whom I'm teaching Digitisation. Digitisation is an odd thing to teach. You have to mix theoretical concepts with practical stuff like how to create a .tiff file. And you have to assume no one knows what a .tiff file is. So you get those students who think that what you're teaching them is boring and obvious.

Well, of course it's boring and obvious. Mostly. But what I said in reply was this:

"Yes, it's not difficult. Pushing a button on the scanner is easy. Filing images is easy. The exciting part is knowing you're part of something bigger. Knowing that you're creating a repository that is making the academic output of your institution visible to the world. Sitting down with an academic who has a collection of slides never seen before and knowing that making them available digitally will change the way research in that area will be conducted. Listening to a photographer tell you about the collection of photographs he's donating to your archive, knowing that this is his opportunity for his work to be seen all over the world. A monkey could do the scanning part. But it's not difficult to find the excitement in digitisation."

Underwhelmed

More observations from my experiences as a student:

I've used Library databases, e-books and e-journals to a limited extent at work. I'm not a subject librarian, so expertise in this field isn't a requirement. In order to complete my assignments, I'm relying heavily on them at the moment and I have to say: I've been underwhelmed. 

I've been working against the clock during this time away: we attend lectures from 8.30-4 and we have the evening to work on assignments. When you're in a rush, the last thing you want is:

1. ... for the off-campus login to the Library databases to not work. Because you know that no one will be at work at this hour to fix it, so you'll have to wait for the next day.

2. ...for the web interface to be clunky: you need to find what you're looking for without having to scratch around and click on random links, hoping they'll take you to where you want to be.

3. ...for the e-journal platform to be down. See point 1 above.

4. ...for the publisher site of the journal article you've finally managed to find to be down. Argh.

5. ...to find out that, just to read an e-book, you have to go through 20 steps and produce a DNA sample.

5. ...to download an e-reader, save an e-book to your bookshelf and then, when you want to read it the next day, get a message saying that the installation of the reader doesn't work. 

It's a valuable experience being a student: I've taken off my librarian-goggles and I'm seeing things through my clients' eyes probably for the first time. 

Yesterday, on my Twitter feed, I read a tweet that said something along the lines of: "I'm tired of people saying today's students are lazier. We use Google because it works."

I think we can't afford to dismiss statements like these. We need web sites and online interfaces that just work when students need them. 

From Librarian to Clueless Student

Being a student again is an interesting experience, especially from a Library use point of view. Studying at a different institution to my home one puts me back in the shoes of someone who has no idea of the workings of the Library. I'm now able to look critically at how an academic library attempts to familiarise students with what it has to offer.

Here are some observations so far:

- I only got my student card a week after I arrived here. That meant that I was an outsider for a week: I was stopped by security when I wanted to enter the Library and I couldn't use any of the facilities.

- We were introduced very early on to our personal subject librarian. She gave us an hour lesson on what we could find on the Library web site and how to use the databases.

- I still can't get into the Library databases. There's a process you have to go through to get a pin number in order to register on the site. The pin has apparently been sent to my institutional email address, but I have no idea what that is. This is very frustrating, as I have an enormous amount of work to get through and some of the sources we're using are only available through the institution's databases and/or e-books.

- I really appreciate being able to communicate, via email, with my subject librarian. I've emailed her about the pin problem and hopefully, we'll be able to sort it out together.

- Being able to use the Research Commons is fantastic. There's a comfortable lounge to sit in, free, fast wireless, coffee on tap and clean bathrooms just around the corner.

- I have no idea how to photocopy anything yet. I'm going to go to the Library today to find out.

Pinterest for Special Collections

I'm doing my Master's at the moment and one of our assignments this week has been to blog about two social media tools that we'd like to use in our Library. Here are my thoughts on Pinterest:

I have, for a while, been interested in the potential of Pinterest as a social networking tool for academic libraries. A fairly new platform (it was started as an invitation-only site in 2010), CNN reported last year that it was the third most visited site in the US. Briefly, Pinterest is an online board onto which users can “pin” interesting images and/or links.

There are various ways that academic libraries can use this tool. It has visual appeal and lends itself to activities such as advertising new books by pinning images of book covers, as well as announcing events in the Library by pinning images of posters.

The potential use of Pinterest that most interests me though, is that of creating a historical image collection. Many academic libraries these days have digital repositories where they curate and collate their digital Special Collections. Pinterest allows one to create an online collection of historical images outside of this repository. The benefit of this would be that information such as this is pushed out to Library patrons, where they are and using the tools with which they are familiar.  

See, for example, what Southwestern University in Texas is doing with their Pinterest Board to promote Special Collections.

You need to dress professionally

I attended a presentation recently where the audience - predominantly academic librarians - was told the following:

"You need to dress professionally. Just because the students are in jeans and trainers doesn't mean that you should be."

I'm not sure why, but this opinion irks me. And yes, I think it is an opinion, rather than a fact. Dressing "professionally" does not make me a better librarian. Conversely, wearing jeans doesn't make me a bad one either.

I posed the question of professional dress on Facebook and got some interesting responses. Some are adamant that the way we dress affects the way people treat us. I think there is a fundamental flaw here: we accept that people should judge each other by appearances. I think we shouldn't.

One responder said: "Your argument is flawed. It is not the other person's responsibility to get to know you first and then judge you for who you are. The fact is you are already saying who you are by dressing sloppily. Dress for the occasion/situation and you will be judged by who you are. If you want to be taken seriously then dress seriously!"

Here is where the disconnect happens: casual attire = sloppy = inefficient/bad at your job; professional attire = neat = good at your job. I don't think this is necessarily so. Is casual attire always sloppy? What exactly is "casual" attire?

To me, the most interesting response was the following: "Define 'professional'. It is not a universal definition, it is very contextual. Also, quite outdated. The 'professional' attire is clothing that you *need* to perform your specific profession. Uniform / lab coat / safety goggles whatever."

I hadn't thought of it like this. What do I need to wear to be able to carry out my job as an academic librarian? Certainly not safety goggles. Heels? Would a tailored suit help me to do my job better?

What do you think?

Librarians are partners in research. Discuss.

There's a lot of talk these days that academic librarians should be partners in the research process with academics and students. How this is carried out differs from institution to institution, but it can include things like helping with reference management and citation, finding appropriate journals in which to publish and assisting with the writing and/or formatting process. My question during a presentation this morning was: are academics and students on board with this? Do they accept this new role of librarians? Do they see them as more than just people behind a desk who can help them find a particular reference? The answer from the podium was that it differs from department to department. Some are more accepting than others. I'm not sure. What do you think?

On to-do lists and organisation

Said I was going to post every day this month. Uhm, that's been going well, hasn't it?

I've been thinking lately about prioritising work. Most libraries are short-staffed, so we're all doing more than, in an ideal world, we should. But how do we get the most of out of our days while at the same time delivering a good service to our patrons?

My (seemingly endless) daily to-do list goes something like this:

- Prepare work for student assistants - ensure they have enough to get on with for at least an hour or two without bothering me.
- Check to-do list for really urgent stuff that can't wait and deal with those.
- Check email for ditto.
- Quality check stuff that students and staff members have done the day before.
- Create derivatives of stuff they've done and package and send to requester.
- Upload yesterday's theses to digital repository and email requester with link.
- Prepare new projects for students and staff by deciding on file names, creating digital folders, deciding on metadata fields and metadata to be used.

Other stuff I do includes being on the marketing team and the work that that entails, dealing with issues to do with the digital repository, like display problems or downtime, maintaining twitter accounts for various depts.

Ok, there's more, but I've lost the will to list it all.

To keep on top of things, I maintain a to-do list on an Excel spreadsheet that I open at the start of the day and keep checking throughout the day. I also change the status of particular emails that I can't deal with right away to "follow-up" and check those regularly.

How do you arrange your working days so that you don't get behind on important stuff?