Reference Musings

The energy of a good conference

2009-10-09T07:35:00.002-04:00

Last week I attended UNYOC. I hadn't been to anything substantial (discounting 1 day meetings) since last October. The speakers were good. Got in some good discussions with the vendors, the venue was pleasant, and the company was great.

I was particularly intrigued by the presentation on the Horizon Project.

Last day of class

2009-01-13T10:30:00.002-05:00

I meant to post about this when it actually happened, but I figure it's still worth talking about.

Way back in the summer I was asked to go do a 40 minute BI in a exercise science/nutrition class on avoiding plagiarism and evaluating websites (yeah, I know, two topics that don't exactly go hand and hand). I agreed and to be honest was so not looking forward to it. The instructor left and the new person who inherited the course still wanted me to do it, just could we switch the dates. Without thinking I agreed. It wasn't until late in November that I realized that I would be showing up on the very last day of class.

Recipe for disaster.

Or not.

I have the thing all prepped from the last time, but one night I'm watching TV and one of these horrid commercials on the general greatness of High Fructose Corn Syrup comes on.

Ok, so these are exercise science and nutrition students and they know darn well that this is a load of hooey. And I have them. I can feel it. I point out the web site and say, we'll look at it in a sec, but first I thought you might like this:

And they're dying.

We then go to the link off the first video which leads to the Corn Refiners Association site and then I'm able to talk about bias, how to evaluate web sites etc.

It worked so well I'm hoping I can use this again.

Dude, I know what I'm doing

2008-09-04T08:49:00.003-04:00

Scenario: me on the reference desk after 5. Guy in line. Helping a student who like EVERYONE ELSE IN HER CLASS is trying to get her hands on the one recent copy of a textbook for her course. I've helped her earlier in the week on the same issue--helped her do a recall and explained/warned that people could do the same thing to her. Now she is dismayed and indignant that this has actually gone down.

Meanwhile guy in line is getting impatient. I make eye contact, tell him I'll be with him in a minute.

Now the student is looking at getting a previous edition. The only one left that we have is from 1989. She wants that one. Of course, she does. Maybe it's me, but I get awfully nervous when a medical student is willing to learn from a 19 year old book and the subject is not "where is the spleen?" Finally we're done and I turn to the patron.

He needs a "drug desk reference book."

Ok, fine, are we talking PDR?

Yes, no. A drug guide.

I start to walk him over to the reference collection.

No. He wants one he can check out.

Which means an older edition. Ok. Does he have a specific one in mind? Does he have a particular drug he's trying to look up? What does he need to know about the drug?

He tells me "just type in 'drug guide' into the catalog."

I meanwhile am trying to see what we have and am searching for specific titles.

He walks around and goes, "No. Just type in 'drug guide.'

I try to explain that this is not really the best way to search.

He insists. Naturally we get garbage.

"You must not be doing it right."

I'm trying to offer him online options, but in order to do that I need to find out if he's an affiliate. I start to ask and he storms out of the library.

Meanwhile, first student comes back. The 1989 edition is off the shelves. Is there anything older than that available?

It was not a good night.

So you're in a car

2008-03-18T16:32:00.002-04:00

and you realize (even if its only on a subconscious level) that you are lost. Do you:

Keep on driving
Look for another car on the rationale that the driver surely must know where he or she is going
Stop and ask for directions

To me the answer is always #3. Why waste my time and that of my passengers', not to mention the gasoline when I could get back on the correct path right away?

I had a reference interview today with two students who were very very lost. Paper is due Friday. And they apologized up and down, this way and that for not knowing what they are doing. I also got the "I'm sorry you must have something important to do." To which I replied, "Yes, helping you."

People don't like to ask for help and I just don't get it. Like the guy who will drive clear into another state rather than stop at a gas station to get directions, they will wander around for days lost and confused. Why? Because it's an admission of what? irredeemable failure? stupidity?

The system is flawed. Sorry, it is. All the OPACS and the Link Resolvers and the databases--it's become so complex.

"The user is not broken."

Would you use a screwdriver to hammer in a nail?

2008-02-20T09:36:00.002-05:00

On one of the listservs I read, not too long ago, there was a flurry of exchanges about Wikipedia. Now this is a largely student listserv, so there's always a bit of, well...let's just say passion. It's not a new debate. Wikipedia is a morass of unverified garbage. Wikipedia is what 2.O is all about. Pick your side. Wikipedia freaks people out for some reason. Freaks a lot of librarians out. It scares me to say this, but so does Google (although I must admit I've caught myself saying this on occasion too).

"Well, you know what they do. They go straight to Google."

Well, yeah, they do. So do I. I have Firefox set up with a search plugin for Wikipedia. I also have one for Science Direct and one for EBSCO. But I go to Wikipedia and Google a lot.

That doesn't make me a bad librarian. It doesn't make a user a stupid person either. These are tools. And they are often starting points. What would make me a bad librarian would be if I took what it said on the Wikipedia page and stopped there. It would make the user kind of stupid if he or she did the same. But it is not a bad or evil thing to begin with Wikipedia.

It's not exactly the primrose path to hell. It's a tool. And like any tool, you need to know what its purpose is and when to reach for it. My reference professor spent a lot of time on learning to use reference books. I am profoundly grateful for that. When I train the library school students I work with, I put a lot of emphasis on the books too. It's important. But those are not the only tools we as a profession should be turning to.

The Free Range Librarian posted this about 2 years ago. I have it tacked to my door.

For anyone who actually reads this. I urge you to take a look at it. Because it applies here.

EAHIL

2007-09-18T08:13:00.000-04:00

I came back this weekend from a wonderful library conference. Normally I attend MLA, but I had an opportunity to offer a continuing education course at EAHIL, in Krakow, Poland. So I ended up doing a 4-hour course on teaching methodologies.

There's presenting or teaching in front of students and then there's presenting in front of your peers. I can handle students. Let's just say I was incredibly nervous for this class. To my relief it went rather well. My audience was marvelous and I came away with some great ideas myself.

Because I taught the class, I had the chance to attend the rest of the conference. It's a lot smaller than MLA--about 360 attendees--but it was a really well-organized and informative conference. I particularly liked getting the European perspective on library issues. Interesting to learn that Evidence-based Practice hasn't gotten a firm foothold in many European countries (excluding the UK).

More later...

Addy will know

2007-09-04T08:43:00.000-04:00

Directly from a friend of mine with a connection to the band:

"How often are librarians the theme of a popular song?

SNMNMNM's "Addy Will Know" is a musical tribute to the modern Librarian. "Addy" refers to a real librarian and includes actual call numbers in the bridge.

The "contest wiki" at the address below explains how you can win a copy of their new CD "Crawl Inside Your Head." There is also an opportunity to be featured in an upcoming SNMNMNM music video!

"Addy" will hit the college airwaves September, 3 2007. You can contact your local college or university radio station now and request that they "ADD ADDY!"

Want to learn more?

It's all in the wiki!"

Enjoy!

Why We Teach

2007-08-28T16:04:00.000-04:00

I'm in the thick of orientations for the new semester. By this point, I can do EndNote in my sleep. I've taught MEDLINE so many times, it's scary. I'm almost at the point of not needing to go into a class with even a piece of paper. (When I was a newly minted librarian, a ream of notes was not uncommon). My expectations for these sessions are low. I go in with a realistic set of goals and objectives. I figure that a handful of students will remember the majority of what I teach and that the remainder will hopefully remember a couple of key points.

There's no fear anymore. To be honest, there isn't a ton of optimism on my part either.

Today I had a fantastic experience. Let me pause for a moment. "Fantastic experience " and library orientation do not usually go hand-in-hand, particularly when you are dealing with students new to the research process. Normally, they just don't get it. They either think there's nothing to finding the literature or they think their previous efforts are going to cut it. Also, they're not at the point of need.

Reader, today was different. First of all this was a great group. Every class has a personality and anyone who tells you different has no clue. You get a group of people together and something chemical happens to them. Some groups are morose. Some are rowdy. Some would be bored to tears even if I did handstands.

This class was different. They were attentive. They were intelligent. They were funny. They were engaged. Even when we were deep in the MeSH and the mysteries of explode versus focus, I had their attention. They oohed and ahhed when I showed them EndNote. They were writing notes. They were laughing.

In short, it was great. I'm exhausted but it's a good kind of exhaustion. I've had great classes before. It's just that typically those take place in a workshop scenario or when the instruction is tied to an assignment. I think this is the first time it's happened with a general beginning of semester orientation.

So now I'm awaiting my next session with optimism and anticipation.

New source of medical images

2007-08-16T14:14:00.000-04:00

The Wellcome Trust has made their collection of medical images available for use under a Creative Commons license. The Wellcome-images collection is huge. I've been poking around on their site and having a good old time.

I rather like this one. It is, however, unclear to me how syphilis and the lithograph relate. The image would seem to indicate that you can contract syphilis from a swimming pool (last time I checked, that's not the case). More likely is the far more subtle implication of being cautious of picking up strange people in social settings for some sort of illicit affair.

In any case, I think this is a great lithograph.

Searching and salt

2007-07-02T12:18:00.000-04:00

Library instruction can occasionally be a lot like the experience the Ben Stein character has in Ferris Bueller's Day Off. That is, despite all of your efforts, the students just kind of stare at you, mouths agape.

Every so often you have what they call a "teaching moment." It's when you and the student(s) are in sync. They suddenly get it. You can see it on their faces.

It's a great feeling.

So I'm teaching a class on Evidence-Based Practice, which can be a dense subject. It's lecture too, even worse. But they're with me. They're asking questions. I'm getting feedback. It's going really well. The class being all women, I use my shopping analogy for searching. Basically here's how I put it:

When you go shopping for clothes, most people will tell you that the most efficient way to do it is to TRY on the clothes first. See if you like them. See if they fit. See if they are what you want. Don't just buy a bunch of things and take them home, because chances are you'll only have to return them. So when you're searching, you have to use the same approach. LOOK at your results. Do they work for what you need? Do you like them? Do they FIT?

Class loves this. We're onto search techniques. They're taking notes. They're asking more questions. And we get into the advantages of doing all your searches on one line versus breaking them apart and adding them later. I use my cooking analogy:

It's like cooking. You can always add more salt, but you can't take it out if you've added too much. So sometimes it is good to--

"Just add a potato."

Now I cook (hence the analogy) and I'm intrigued by this. As, I might add, are most of the class. Turns out that if you throw a potato into a soup or a stew or whatever it will absorb the extra salt and you can just dispose of it.

I managed to recover the class by saying that as far as I knew there was no equivalent to a potato in the Ovid interface.

Humbling moment that was...

Bizarre reference questions

2007-04-30T09:25:00.000-04:00

Loved this article on crazy reference requests.

Bringing history to life

2007-04-17T13:46:00.000-04:00

We have a really talented library school student doing a practicum in our History of Medicine collection. Her name is Tyler Love and she's been photographing some of the medical instruments and ephemera. All of which, by the way, have fascinated me for a number of years now. Every time I'm down there I see something I never noticed before.

Her photographs themselves are really good, but what I particularly love is the sense of discovery she conveys and how she's sharing that sense with us.

Picture above is hers and used with permission.

NLM backs down on subheadings

2007-01-31T12:33:00.000-05:00

This tech bulletin came out yesterday. Sometime last year there had been a move on NLM's part to pare down the subheadings in the MeSH vocabulary. Their self-stated goal was "to make the use of qualifiers easier for the searching public," who use PubMed. It didn't make a lot of sense to me at the time and it still doesn't. They've backed down on this so it's a moot point.

However, my educated guess is that the searching public wouldn't know a MeSH term much less a subheading if it walked up and punched them in their collective faces.

Librarians and the people they train or instruct search with the MeSH. I would bet money that most non-medical users are doing keyword searches like they do in Google. The proposed list of changes would have made our jobs harder and I don't think they would have helped the public much. Glad to see sanity has prevailed.

What would you like on your tombstone?

2007-01-29T09:50:00.000-05:00

I like to walk around old graveyards. I know some people find that morbid; my late father refused to set foot in a cemetery unless someone was being buried, but I like the sense of history--usually personal history--you get. For years I've wondered about the symbols that are present on tombstones. Some of them, like celtic knots, I knew about, others like the draped urn were a mystery. I've looked for books and such, but have never had much luck.

Actually when I think back on it, my search for this information was one of those screaming signs that I was meant to be a librarian. I scoured the catalog using subject headings and related terms. I browsed various sections of the collection based on call numbers. I looked through back of the book indices. All to no avail. At some point, it became more about the hunt than the end result. Anyhow...

Then recently I came across this blog, appropriately titled Cemeteries and Cemetery Symbols. Inspired, I did a little more digging (pardon the pun) and found some more sites, including this one and this one and this one.

Cataloging really can be fun!

2007-01-23T14:00:00.000-05:00

I've been really interested in BlogShares for the past couple of months. (Okay, obsessed, but I think this is the kind of thing librarians need to be paying attention to).

For the uninitiated, BlogShares is an online fantasy game which mimics the stock market. The stocks are based, not on companies, but on blogs. You start out with $500 in B$ currency and see how well you can do. The game can be played for free, but you are only allowed a limited number of transactions. Premium members who pay a nominal fee per year, have no such limits. Essentially, the blogs' worth are based on how many incoming links they have, but buying and selling can result in higher or lower prices.

The truly fascinating part of the game for me, with very real library implications, has to do with the directory that they have created. The rules of the game define what makes an active blog. Players can gain and chips for correctly reporting errors for inactive blogs, spam blogs, non-blogs, etc. They can also gain chips and karma for correctly voting blogs into industries. Players with a certain level of karma, and presumably more experience/accurate votes, then moderate the initial votes before the blog is finally assigned to those categories. Moderators who are too quick or players who make consistently incorrect votes are often reported so the controls are pretty good.

So let's say, someone looks at my blog. Demographically, by clicking on my profile, they could immediately vote for Americas, USA, New York, Buffalo, female. As I have only posted in one language, they could vote for English. If time goes by and I start posting exclusively in French (unlikely to happen), someone could come along and vote against English and pick French. Reading the content, they might then look at the industry organization and determine that the blog covers primarily libraries, and specifically university libraries. Arguably the case could be made that it also concerns a lot about education and what they term special interest libraries. Or not. (Players do get docked for incorrectly voting so they may leave the more complicated content categories to others. There is also strategic voting and how it relates to rare ideas, but that's another post).

There's a search interface, which admittedly could be better, as could the directory they've established. However, as this is meant to be a game, that's understandable. I could, however, go out there, and search for blogs from Buffalo and get a decent enough list.

It's not really tagging. The categories are not arbitrary. I don't think they think in these terms, but the creators of the game have set up their own folk taxonomy. New industries come along, old ones are reorganized, it all works out in a fairly organized fashion and it's fascinating to watch. Players are acting a lot like catalogers and they're paying for the privilege.

I'm not suggesting that we fire all the catalogers and charge patrons to reorganize our monographs. Certainly this is nothing to fear. Just as Yahoo! Answers or Google Answers were never any threat to reference librarians. I've been a librarian long enough to remember the lectures on how the World Wide Web was some vast uncharted ocean that would be impossible to ever organize. Well, here are users--untrained, non-MLS-possessing users--organizing blogs. For fun.

Something to think about.

And now back to the depths of evidence based practice, from which I may never emerge...

Why don't they want me?

2007-01-19T09:53:00.001-05:00

Finding a library gig (especially an academic post) is neither a quick nor easy process. There is a lot of work that goes into the preparation. The resume and cover letter that works in the business world is totally unsuited to academia, so those need to be reworked. Going through postings and researching potential employers takes time as well. Cover letters have to be specific to the position. You need to line up references. Then should you be lucky enough to get as far as interviewing (phone and/or in person), there are a whole host of other things that need to be accomplished. All of this does not take place in a vacuum. Usually you're finishing up library school, possibly working other jobs, and/or dealing with family.

And then what?

Well, I'm guessing most applicants either experience one or more of the following at least once:

A rejection letter before you get to the phone interview stage
You never hear from the potential employer--this happens an awful lot and there is no reason why it should. Applicants deserve the courtesy of a reply, even if it's a canned letter.
A rejection after you get to the phone interview stage
A rejection after you get to the in-person interview stage

Often you just don't know why they rejected you. You're told over and over again by people in library school not to take it personally, but that's a really hard thing not to do. The truth is that a lot of the times it's not really you or anything you did.

Which is why I really loved this post from the Wandering Librarian.

Also, there's a great thread on the NMRT-L listserv right now about rejection in the job process.
You don't have to be a member of ALA to join.

Is there a doctor in the house?

2007-01-10T10:27:00.000-05:00

Interesting article about physical therapists in California who possess a DPT degree now being able to use "Doctor" as a title.

In other news, UK PubMed Central is now up and available.

Suitcases

2006-12-08T09:37:00.000-05:00

One of my colleagues sent this link to me. It's the haunting and fascinating Willard Suitcase Exhibit Online. Willard was a state psych hospital and after its closing, workers found a bunch of suitcases and trunks in the building's attics. Apparently these were the belongings of the patients that they brought with them when they were admitted. Many of these patients never left the facility.

The history of the treatment of the mentally ill always gets to me. A number of these patients were admitted when they really didn't suffer from mental illness. There's one account of a man who was a Japanese sailor on leave who got lost in New York. He didn't speak English and people thought he was behaving oddly. He was sent to Bellevue and then moved to Willard. He stayed there for over 30 years.

Chilling.

Now this is an industrial video!

2006-12-06T16:30:00.000-05:00

One of the LIS grad students who works at our library helped created this hysterical irreverent set of videos for a class. Entitled "Managerian," and inspired (I am told) by some of the less than stellar industrial library training films created in the early 90's, it can be viewed here.

Google Answers is dead but are the GARs?

2006-11-30T09:56:00.000-05:00

Many of the soon-to-be-ex-Google Answers Researchers are debating starting up a new service of their own. Meanwhile Yahoo Answers is inviting the GARs to check out their own service.

I know this isn't the most popular opinion in LibraryLand, but I think there's a place for services like GA. Not everyone wants to do their own research, nor do they necessarily find it convenient to come in to a library and ask for help. There's a reason corporate librarians don't spend time showing their patrons how to do the search. I'm sorry to say that my own attempts to get assistance at the respective reference desks of public libraries were often really unsuccessful. I was willing to dig to find my own answers. Not everyone is. Sometimes it's simpler to pay somebody the money to do the work for you.

On a totally different topic, the second issue of the open-access, peer-reviewed journalLibrary Student Journal is out.

Google Answers is no more

2006-11-29T09:18:00.000-05:00

Google announced that they're canning their 4-year-old Google Answers project. I have to admit to feeling a little misty about it. For those few dark months after I graduated from library school, Google Answers kept me afloat. Yes, I was a Google Answers researcher (GAR). I know there are librarians who were appalled when GA was instituted, but my experience was pretty positive. I concentrated on questions that required the use of print sources and I learned an awful lot about reference books and our local collections. I got to know some of the GARs; on the whole, they're an impressive lot--knowledgeable, thorough, conscientious. I'm really hoping Google decides to keep the archive of questions and answers up because it was truly an interesting experiment. It would be a shame for all that data to disappear.

New Wiki

2006-11-24T12:07:00.000-05:00

Nice to see a wiki started up for academic medical librarians who serve as liaisons to department.

Call for Papers

2006-11-21T16:55:00.000-05:00

Two of my colleagues have started up a new journal, Communications in Information Literacy. Here's the Call for Papers.

This is news?

2006-11-20T11:11:00.001-05:00

Inside Higher Ed has a piece on information literacy or rather the lack thereof. There's a distinction between possessing technical facility and possessing critical thinking and/or research skills. Why most people fail to see that has always boggled my mind. Just cause someone can use a cellphone doesn't make critical thinking obsolete. I suspect you could get a chimp to learn how to text message.

This cracked me up

2006-10-25T12:07:00.000-04:00

Librarian of the future?

Any how, it's kind of fun for the first couple of times. She gets old after awhile, however. Apparently, I'm not the only one who thinks so.

On another note, Firefox has officially released version 2.0. I've downloaded it and am playing around with it. My biggest beef is that some of my extensions aren't compatible with the new version, however, it's early days yet.