CogSci Librarian

Favorite Children's Books

2008-07-20T08:33:00.007-04:00

Two very interesting "sets of information" lately on my favorite children's books. (I say "sets of information" because one is a podcast of a lecture, and the other is an article / interview / podcast ... so what is the proper name for these bits of information? but I digress)

First, I read the article in last week's New Yorker about children's libraries, Anne Carroll Moore, arguably the mother of all children's librarians, and E.B. White's Stuart Little. Jill Lepore describes the "Department of Work with Children" at the New York Public Library and provides background on Anne Carroll Moore, the NYPL's first children's librarian, including details of how Moore championed good books for children. Lepore describes how Moore pestered White to write a book for children, but then recoiled from Stuart Little. Stuart himself prevailed, of course, and the rest of the article follows Stuart's progress. The New Yorker also includes a blog post by Lepore who "writes about how she got to the bottom of the Stuart Little battle" and a podcast discussion between Lepore and Roger Angell about the article.

Then I downloaded a podcast of Anita Silvey talking about some of the 100 best children's books to students and school librarians at Simmons Graduate School of Library & Information Science. I had the great fortune of taking Modern Book Publishing with Anita while I was at Simmons, and she is terrific storyteller. In this lecture Anita gives, in her words, "30 short book talks," which turns out to be 1-2 minutes about some delightful books for children and young adults. I was enthralled for virtually all of the talk, and I learned many interesting tidbits about some of my favorite children's books like ...

One series of books was written by a mother and daughter, although only the mother was credited as the author.
One picture book was rejected over 20 times, and one of my all-time favorite YA books was also rejected over 20 times.
One picture book was written during WWII and could be used today to comfort children who are concerned about family members fighting in Iraq.
One series of books was written by two German Jews and was smuggled out of France shortly before the Nazis invaded Paris.

Listen to the podcast to find out about these books and more! (or read Anita's books 100 Best Books for Children and 500 Great Books for Teens) Anita is full of fascinating tidbits, like "it doesn't matter how you get a great book" and arguments why publishers and librarians view controversy differently and "great artists do whatever needs to be done" to get a great book.

If you like (or liked) children's books, or if you have children who read, I highly recommend both the New Yorker article and the Anita Silvey lecture.

For More Information

Lepore, Jill. The Lion and the Mouse: The Battle that Reshaped Children’s Literature. The New Yorker, July 21, 2008.
--- The Book Bench: Jill Lepore writes about how she got to the bottom of the “Stuart Little” battle. (blog post)
--- and Roger Angell discuss “Stuart Little” and children’s literature (podcast)
Silvey, Anita. The Stories Behind the Classics April 26, 2008, Student School Library Conference @ Simmons College GSLIS.
--- 100 Best Books for Children, Boston : Houghton Mifflin, 2004 and 500 Great Books for Teens, Boston : Houghton Mifflin, 2006.

Reading Fiction Improves Empathy

2008-07-14T15:08:00.006-04:00

Stephen Abram pointed out a fascinating article from the (Toronto) Globe and Mail, citing some research which shows that folks who read fiction have "exceptionally strong" social skills. The Globe and Mail interview Keith Oatley about his research, and they quote him as saying:

"Fiction is really about how to get around in the social world, which is not as easy as one might think," said Keith Oatley, one of the researchers and a professor in the department of human development and applied psychology at the University of Toronto. "People who read fiction give themselves quite a bit of practice in understanding that. And also, I think reading fiction sort of prompts one to think about these questions - you know, what are these people up to?"

The newspaper refers to a June 2008 New Scientist article in which Oatley describes work done in his (and others') 2006 article "Bookworms Versus Nerds: Exposure to Fiction Versus Non-Fiction, Divergent Associations with Social Ability, and the Simulation of Fictional Social Worlds." They identified fiction readers as those who knew names of novelists compared with those who were mostly familiar with non-fiction authors (hmmm, what about readers' advisors?) and gave them two tests. The first, Simon Baron-Cohen's "mind-in-the-eyes" test, measures empathy and social acumen, while the second is an "interpersonal perception" test. They found that fiction readers "had substantially greater empathy and performed somewhat better on the interpersonal perception test" than those who were more familiar with nonfiction authors. (emphasis mine)

Oatley wonders which was the cause and which the correlation; that is, perhaps people who are more empathetic are drawn to fiction, rather than the idea that reading novels promotes empathy. In fact, Mar randomly assigned subjects to read a short story or a non-fiction essay and found "that those who read the story performed better on social reasoning" and that the effect is immediate. Oatley and colleagues performed a similar exercise on 166 participants and found that those who read a Chekhov short story "... underwent larger changes in personality than those who read the control text... Results from the emotions questionnaire indicated that the personality changes were mediated by the emotions experienced while reading: a person's emotional state is known to influence their scores on personality tests."

Oatley suggests that fiction is "a simulation that runs on the software of our minds. ... Just as computer simulations can help us get to grips with complex problems such as flying a plane or forecasting the weather, so novels, stories and dramas can help us understand the complexities of social life." (emphasis mine)

Ah, fiction. Fiction is good for you. I'm going to read my novel, now.

For More Information

Abram, Stephen. You'll like this post. Stephen's Lighthouse, July 11, 2008.
Baron-Cohen, Simon; Wheelwright, Sally; Hill, Jacqueline. The 'Reading the mind in the eyes' Test revised version: A study with normal adults, and adults with Asperger syndrome or high-functioning autism. Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry, Vol 42(2), Feb 2001. pp. 241-251.
Mar, Raymond A., Keith Oatley, Jacob Hirsh, Jennifer dela Paz, and Jordan B. Peterson. "Bookworms Versus Nerds: Exposure to Fiction Versus Non-Fiction, Divergent Associations with Social Ability, and the Simulation of Fictional Social Worlds." Journal of Research in Personality 40, no. 5 (10, 2006): 694-71. (pdf preprint on Mar's web site)
Mick, Hayley. "Socially Awkward ? Hit the Books." The Globe and Mail, July 10, 2008.
Oatley, Keith. "The Science of Fiction; Reading Novels Isn't just Entertaining, it Helps You Navigate the Complex Social World." New Scientist, June 28, 2008. 42. (preview; or find the full-text @ your library)

Social Networking Sites from NASIG

2008-07-08T11:20:00.013-04:00

This list of social networking sites comes from an article I'm co-writing with David Lee King, based on the presentation he gave at NASIG 2008 on Emerging Trends, 2.0, & Libraries. David referred to lots of cool sites which highlighted his point about various social networking sites @ your library.

The article is in press (actually, it's still on my computer!) but will be published by the Serials Librarian. Once it's been finalized, I will post the pre-print here with further details about publication.

In the meantime, here are some of the “sites that share stuff” which David described while defining and explaining Web 2.0. As I write in the paper, the demonstration was really key in understanding how these sites work. My notes cannot accurately convey the interactivity of these sites either, so David and I hope that you will go visit some of the sites that sound intriguing. Below, you will find some of the sites David showed, along with some of his examples.

Flickr	See David’s Flickr photo “stream” at http://www.flickr.com/photos/davidking
YouTube	See the Topeka Shawnee Library’s videos at http://youtube.com/user/TopekaLibrary
Last.fm	Share the last song you listened to!
LibraryThing	See David’s LibraryThing catalog at http://www.librarything.com/catalog/davidleeking
MySpace	Steele Creek Teen Library on MySpace: http://www.myspace.com/steelecreeklibrary
Twitter	David’s Twitter “feed” is at http://twitter.com/davidleeking MarsPhoenix Twitter “feed” is at http://twitter.com/marsphoenix
del.icio.us	See the Lansing Public Library’s del.icio.us bookmarks at http://del.icio.us/lansingpubliclibrary
Sample wikis	St. Joseph County (Indiana) Public Library's Subject Guides http://www.libraryforlife.org/subjectguides/index.php/Main_Page Chad Boeninger’s “Biz Wiki” http://www.library.ohiou.edu/subjects/bizwiki/ Stevens County (Washington) Libraries Wiki Project http://209.173.246.13/index.php/Main_Page
Instant Messaging	Search the Topeka Shawnee catalog for subject keyword = “willen” and on the “no hits” page, you’ll see a Meebo widget for IM when the library is open: http://catalog.tscpl.org/ (if the library is closed, you’ll see an email form for questions)
Podcasts	Thomas Ford Memorial Library’s Click-a-Story http://www.fordlibrary.org/children/clickastory/ Oral histories from the University of Georgia’s Richard B. Russell Library http://www.libs.uga.edu/russell/collections/oralhistory.shtml
Videocasts	Brookside Baptist Church (Brookfield, WI) “Live Services on the Internet” http://www.brooksidebaptist.org/liveservices El Dîa de Los Niños/El Dîa de Los Libros (Topeka & Shawnee County Public Library) http://tinyurl.com/dianinos
Extending the Library Catalog	Hennepin County Library Catalog entry for the Da Vinci Code: http://tinyurl.com/hennepin (note how you can refine or broaden searches using LCSH as well as the ability to leave feedback on items in the catalog) Ann Arbor District Library Catalog entry for Eating Korean: http://tinyurl.com/eating-korean ((compare the user-generated tags to the Library of Congress Subject Headings for the item)

Michael Gazzaniga Now

2008-07-08T08:14:00.004-04:00

I've just seen / heard about a couple of interviews with Michael Gazzaniga, the father of cognitive neuroscience:

He was on the Australian radio show All in the Mind in June, and they introduce him as follows:

One of the big names of the brain is Michael Gazzaniga, whose career was forged in the lab of Nobel laureate Roger Sperry. His striking experiments continue to uncover the differences between your left and right hemispheres. Today he's on the US President's Bioethics Council, heads up a major project on neuroscience and the law, and is a prolific writer of popular neuroscience. He joins Natasha Mitchell to reflect on the brain's left and right, and the mysterious nature of free will.

He was in Australia for the International Human Brain Mapping Conference, and Natasha Mitchell's 30-minute interview covered split brains, the discovery of "blind sight," and free will. You can listen to the podcast or read the transcript; you can also subscribe to All in the Mind via iTunes.

Ross Buck, professor in the University of Connecticut's department of Communication, points me to an upcoming interview in Seed magazine. While the published interview won't appear until the August issue of Seed, you can read the full transcript of the conversation between Tom Wolfe and Michael Gazzaniga. You can also watch a video of the interview at the Seed Salon. About the interview and video, they say:

Tom Wolfe + Michael Gazzaniga

Wolfe, who calls himself “the social secretary of neuroscience,” often turns to current research to inform his stories and cultural commentary. His 1996 essay, “Sorry, But Your Soul Just Died,” raised questions about personal responsibility in the age of genetic predeterminism. Similar concerns led Gazzaniga to found the Law and Neuroscience Project. When Gazzaniga, who just published Human: The Science Behind What Makes Us Unique, was last in New York, Seed incited a discussion: on status, free will, and the human condition.

Note that UConn has several of Gazzaniga's books, and I will shortly order his latest, Human : The Science Behind What Makes Us Unique.

For More Information

Gazzaniga, Human : The Science Behind What Makes Us Unique. New York : Ecco Press, 2008.
Interview: All in the Mind, ABC Radio National, June 21, 2008.
Interview: Seed, August 2008. Interview transcript online July 1, 2008.

Giving Good Airport

2008-06-11T08:27:00.012-04:00

While on my flight home from NASIG last week, I used my iPod Touch to watch a New Yorker conference session called Deconstructing the Airport. Paco Underhill, founder of market research and consulting company Envirosell, talks about how to remake air travel for the twenty-first century. Underhill has written books on the Science of Shopping and the Call of the Mall (subtitled "the geography of shopping"), and now turns his attention to airports. If I may translate what he does into library / IT language, he talks about usability / user interaction assessments of people as they use airports.

For instance, he says that people's perception of time spent waiting while in a security or check-in line is usually longer than the reality -- up to 50%, in fact! Underhill suggests that the entire airport needs to be completely redone, in part for functionality, and in part to reduce our perception of this long wait time. He gives many examples of functionality, but here are two I liked: the "body bubble" is different in airports than it is in other areas of our lives -- we have only one hand free (if that) and we are pulling / carrying a suitcase, and possibly also a backpack. So our peripersonal space is totally different - but that is not taken into consideration when designing the airport. Another ha! moment: "the filthiest place in the first world is the bathroom in the economy section of an airplane."

As I watched all this, I started thinking that there are a lot of similarities between how Underhill describes the problems with airports and the difficulties some of our patrons face in libraries.

Underhill says: "... we live in a world that is owned by men, designed by men, managed by men, and yet we expect women to participate in it." Amen, brother! (but I digress) Except ... I'm not really digressing. What if we modify that phrase like this:

"... we create a library that is owned by librarians, designed by librarians, managed by librarians, and yet we expect novice library patrons to participate in it." (changed words italicized) It's a slight modification, but all of a sudden some of us might have a better understanding of what the library is like for our patrons. D'oh!

Underhill gives some great ideas on how airports could be "reinvented:"

Free WiFi everywhere, among other suggestions to improve incessant travel waiting. again I say, Amen, brother! (and also: thank you! to my local airport, BDL, which does offer free WiFi)
Offer different lines at security, for families, registered travelers, etc.
Offer healthy food choices! halal, vegetarian ...
Shopping (and other services) that reflect a one-handed customer. He suggests offering a wand-style checkout like the Exxon/Mobil Speedpass to reduce physical difficulties paying for items in an airport.
Rocking chairs like at the Charlotte airport, and other kinds of movable seating (his demonstration of the rocking movement is charming).

Sounds like it could be called Airport 2.0. Let's hope airports and libraries can both redesign themselves (quickly) to be usable, and functional for real users.

For More Information

Underhill, Paco. Deconstructing the Airport "Stories from the Near Future," the New Yorker Conference, May 23, 2008. Available through iTunes.
Also possibly of interest: Airport Wireless Internet Access Guide, which lists airports which offer free WiFi. Yay!

Presentation on Marketing the Library

2008-06-07T08:00:00.001-04:00

I'm just finishing up my attendance at NASIG 2008 (that's the North American Serials Interest Group) on the collaboration between vendors and libraries to market (or promote, if you prefer a softer touch) library databases to patrons.

| View | Upload your own

We broke the session into three groups: Brie Betz, Account Development Manager at Elsevier spoke about the program from the vendor's perspective, and how it's been a great success at the University of Connecticut and other places at increasing usage. I spoke about managing the program from the librarian's perspective and Deb Barberi, one of my GSLIS students and Student Ambassador for the 2007-2008 academic year, talked about teaching the program and working with the UConn graduate students.

The conference folks have created a NetVibes page () for the conference - they're pulling in Flickr photos, blog posts, and other material tagged with nasig2008. Check out all the activity, and see if you can find the photo of me at David Lee King's presentation on Emerging Trends & Web 2.0 on Flickr, or on David's blog.

PrimateLit -- free database!

2008-06-02T11:43:00.011-04:00

One of my colleagues at the University of Wisconsin has worked on an impressive database called PrimateLit. This database

provides bibliographic access to the scientific literature on nonhuman primates for the research and educational communities. Coverage of the database spans 1940 to present and includes all publication categories (articles, books, abstracts, technical reports, dissertations, book chapters, etc.) and many subject areas (behavior, colony management, ecology, reproduction, field studies, disease models, veterinary science, psychology, physiology, pharmacology, evolution, taxonomy, developmental and molecular biology, genetics and zoogeography).

I did a search for mirror neurons, and found over 200 results -- plus a subject heading for mirror neurons. The metadata is impressive: you can search or browse by taxonomy (macaca), diseases (depression) anatomy (frontal cortex), behavior (theory of mind), disciplines (experimental psychology), and much more!

A cool feature of PrimateLit is that it

... attempts to identify each user's institutional affiliation and automatically provide links to that institution's online journals and other content from within search results. If PrimateLit can't automatically identify the proper institution, the user is prompted to manually set the preference through a simple form.

For librarians, this means that it takes advantage of OpenURL technology, and if you've registered your OpenURL resolver with WorldCat.org, it will automatically display your OpenURL resolver of choice. For researchers, if your library has done this behind-the-scenes magic, it means that if your library has the full-text of an article cited in PrimateLit, you will be able to get to it easily. Click on the "Institutional Affiliation" button on the search page to see if your institution is participating.

Here's what it looks like at UConn:
Where clicking on "UCONN Links" will ultimately lead you to the full-text of the article, if UConn has it online.

Quite impressive!

More About Feline Diabetes & Diet

2008-05-29T11:09:00.001-04:00

My first post on Feline Diabetes & Diet is still getting hits in Google searches, so I wanted to update what I've since learned about it ... just to keep the record balanced (or perhaps more muddled).

In that first post, I cited an unpublished study suggesting that carbohydrates weren't less important than weight in treating feline diabetes. Which suggests that carbohydrates aren't bad for cats with diabetes.

BUT!

I’ve since read Your Cat : Simple New Secrets to a Longer, Stronger Life, by veterinarian Elizabeth M. Hodgkins (c2007). She has carefully studied diet and feline diabetes in her practice and she strongly believes that cats shouldn't eat carbohydrates at all. Her own practice suggests that diabetes can be completely controlled by diet, and she cites examples of cats she has known who have switched to all canned food and no kibbles ... and who have no longer needed insulin. But this is only her practice and not a solid clinical trial, so your experience may vary.

Hodgkins pokes holes at some mainstream studies showing that cat food is healthy, and overall makes some very compelling arguments. Primarily, she states that "studies" show that for young cats, a short-term diet including a lot of carbs does no harm; she argues that this does NOT show that long-term, carbs do no harm.

Research is starting to support Hodgkins' arguments. Deborah Greco, DVM, PhD, an endocrinologist at The Animal Medical Center in New York, explained a "Catkin's diet" (Google search results) at the 2004 American College of Veterinary Internal Medicine. Her report was cited in a November 2004 article in DVM Newsmagazine:

Greco notes that in a cat's natural environment, mice would be a main staple, composed of roughly 40 percent to 45 percent protein, 3 percent to 5 percent carbohydrate and 40 percent to 45 percent fat.
"Cats should have a diet that is high protein, high fat and low carbohydrate," Greco says. "High levels of carbohydrates in dry food causes overproduction of insulin, increased hunger and weight gain."

Hodgkins' book strongly encourages cat "owners" to remove all carbohydrates from their cats' diet, and feed their cats nothing but canned food (or even raw food). Note that her recommendation is for ALL cats, not just cats with diabetes.

As a science librarian, I would like to see well-crafted, substantial, long-term, large-cat, published clinical studies of carb or no-carb diet in cats, diabetic or not. But until then, I will be feeding my healthy, non-diabetic cats low-carb, high protein diets in the hope of keeping them healthy and non-diabetic.

For More Information

"Battle feline obesity with 'Catkins' diet, expert advises." DVM Newsmagazine 35.11 (Nov 2004): S6. Academic OneFile @ your library.
Hodgkins, Elizabeth M. Your Cat : Simple New Secrets to a Longer, Stronger Life. St. Martin's Press, 2007
Tremayne, Jessica. "Tell clients to bite into 'Catkins' diet to battle obesity, expert advises" DVM Newsmagazine (Aug 1, 2004).

Disclaimer:This blog is not a tool for self-diagnosis or a substitute for professional care.

Updates

2008-05-15T08:37:00.005-04:00

In which we revisit some earlier posts and see what's new. This is partly because now that classes are over, I have time to catch up on old issues of the New Yorker and New Scientist, leading to some blog bits.

Crows
Last July, I wrote about the intelligence of crows and scrub-jays. In March, "hacker and writer" Joshua Klein spoke at TedTalks about crows and how he taught them to use a specially-created crow vending machine.

As Klein leads up to the vending machine (truly amazing), he shows some fascinating videos which nicely illustrate how crows learn, specifically a shot of a crow bending a wire to pick up food in a lab, and another shot of a crow using cars to crack her nuts -- then waiting for the light to change so she can collect the nut bits in safety. I won't spoil the vending machine story for you, as it's really fascinating.

Politics, Emotion, and ... Genes?
I've written occasionally about politics and the brain, and I read an article in an early February issue of New Scientist about some studies that suggest "political positions are substantially determined by biology." Jim Giles summarizes recent studies in various journals, and the findings are startling: twin studies suggest that political orientation is genetic (American Political Science Review, 2005); there may be a connection between fear of death, art preference, and one's political leaning (American Psychologist, 2003), and "there is probably a set of genes that influences openness, which in turn may influence political orientation" (Journal of Research in Personality, YEAR). Giles cautions, however, that "there is no shortage of critics who question the whole idea of linking politics with biology." For more, check out the article, or read some of the articles that Giles summarizes.

The Pirahã
I summarized a New Yorker article about the Pirahã about a year ago; in January, New Scientist interviewed the linguist Daniel Everett, who, along with his family, are the only non-Pirahã who speak that language. If you're interested in the story of the language of the Pirahã, and what it says for language acquisition (including a conflict with Noam Chomsky), the interview is a good read.

For More Information

Klein, Joshua. The Amazing Intelligence of Crows. TedTalks, March 2008.
Giles, Jim. "Born That Way." New Scientist, Feb. 2, 2008. Not available for free online, but full-text may be available @your library, in Academic Search Premier and other databases.

Alford, John, Carolyn Funk, and John R. Hibbing. Are Political Orientations Genetically Transmitted? (pdf) American Political Science Review. Vol. 99(2), May 2005, 153-167.
Jost, John T. The End of the End of Ideology (abstract). American Psychologist. Vol 61(7), Oct 2006, 651-670. Full-text may be available @ your library in PsycARTICLES.
"Heritabilities of Common and Measure-Specific Components of the Big Five Personality Factors" Journal of Research in Personality, vol 32 (4), April 1998, p. 431. Not available for free online, but full-text may be available @your library, in ScienceDirect.

Else, Liz and Lucy Middleton. "Interview: Daniel Everett." New Scientist Jan 19, 2008, p42-45. Subtitle: "Out on a limb over language: linguist Daniel Everett went to Brazil as a young Christian missionary to work with the Piraha indigenous people. Instead of converting them, he told Liz Else and Lucy Middleton, he lost his faith and his family, and provoked a major intellectual row." Not available for free online, but full-text may be available @ your library, in Academic OneFile.

Pet "How To" Videos from Cornell

2008-05-12T13:40:00.003-04:00

I found some wonderful cat videos @ Cornell University College of Veterinary Medicine which provide details on how to care for your ailing cat.

In this case, not even ailing -- but how to brush a cat's teeth. We have a cat struggling with gum health, and we have been brushing her teeth for well over a year. We don't use the implements shown in the video; rather, we use a q-tip and some veterinary oral rinse. And we didn't introduce the new health regime the way the video suggests, tho' if I had to do it over, we would have. (note: early in the video are shots of sedated cats getting their gums cleaned; be prepared to cover your eyes if you don't want to see cats in an operating theater)

They have a long series on Caring for Your Diabetic Cat, which, sadly, I no longer have to do. The video has a great explanation of what diabetes is and how it affects your cat (including some distinctions between feline and human problems related to diabetes), how to give injections, and nutritional therapy. The series on Trimming Your Cat's Claws is very helpful -- and useful if your cats like to scratch things.

If you are caring for a cat, I recommend looking at the list of videos Cornell offers and watching the ones that apply to your cat.

For More Information

Videos for Cats, Partners in Animal Health and Cornell University College of Veterinary Medicine. 2008.
Videos for Dogs. Partners in Animal Health and Cornell University College of Veterinary Medicine. 2008. Only one there so far; maybe they'll add more soon.

Database of Political Ads

2008-05-07T13:40:00.002-04:00

There's a cool database of political ads online at http://projects.washingtonpost.com/politicalads/

The Washington Post has collected (links to) over 500 ads in the database, and this is the description of the resources:

The database includes political advertisements funded by campaigns, parties, committees, and independent advocacy groups. Most of the ads are tied to specific U.S. House, U.S. Senate, or gubernatorial races throughout the country. Some of the ads are more general "issue" or advocacy ads not tied to a particular race or candidate. You can search for ads based on the criteria listed below.

They are categorized by campaign, person, content, tone, characters, etc. Some of you may be especially interested in this group of emotional ads.

It's a nice idea in theory, but of the 5 ads I tried to watch, only 2 worked. Still, if you're interested in politics & communication, you might want to check this out.

Teaching Citation Searching to Grad Students

2008-05-05T19:13:00.004-04:00

One of my student / trainers / colleagues and I co-wrote an article for Computers in Libraries about the UConn peer-to-peer training program. I've written about the Elsevier Student Ambassador Program here before (June 2007), but that post was brief, and the article is more detailed.

Chelsea writes a great deal about how she taught other UConn graduate students the nifty process of looking to see who's cited an article, and by doing find MORE related articles, and finding seminal articles in a particular field. We both like citation searching databases like Scopus and Web of Science because they let you do some very interdisciplinary searching with a few mouse clicks.

The article was great fun to write, and I hope it gives you some ideas about a novel way of searching.

For More Information

Hammond, Chelsea C. and Stephanie Willen Brown (2008). Citation Searching: Search Smarter & Find More. Computers in Libraries, Vol. 28 No. 5. Thanks to the folks at Information Today for making the article free online!

Friday Fun

2008-05-02T08:18:00.004-04:00

Saw this amusing web-based librarian colorforms-like game (anyone remember colorforms from childhood?) where you dress up your librarian any way you like. I pretty much liked the basic buttoned-up librarian, but I did revise mine just a bit to include beads, a splash of color, and un-bunned hair.

take a look at librariandressup.com & see what you think!

(thanks, as always, to Candy)

Memory and the Reference Librarian

2008-04-29T16:46:00.010-04:00

Ah, the intersection of cognitive and information science -- truly a dream for the CogSci Librarian. Today's confluence twins the reference librarian and memory, based on a recent article by Walter Butler in Reference Services Review entitled "Re-establishing Memory: Memory's Functions and the Reference Librarian."

Butler does a nice job of defining memory and then using some practical examples of how this relates to the work of a reference librarian. I'll summarize the bits I like, but if you are interested in memory, I recommend the article in full because the explanations are relatively simple and very clear, especially with respect to how memory works.

In Butler's introduction, he explains how memory is a "tacit expectation" for reference librarians, and he breaks memory down into three realms:

Memory in the librarian's brain
External devices which assist in knowledge storage
The establishment of memory in the patron's brain

For a great definition of memory, I turn to my trusty reference friend, the Dictionary of Psychology by Raymond Corsini. Memory, he writes, is

1) the ability to revive past experience, based on the mental processes of learning or registration, retention, recall or retrieval, and recognition; the total body of remembered experience. and 2) A specific past experience recalled.

The entry lists 24 different types of memory and provides 16 see also references. My other trusted friend in this realm is the International Encyclopedia of the Social and Behavioral Sciences, which has 48 articles with memory in the title. If you want to learn more about memory, I encourage you to refer to these sources. But I digress.

Butler talks about memory in the context of both neuroscience (where memories are stored) and psychology (describing types of memory). It's fun to mesh the types of memory with the reference librarian's toolkit. For instance, semantic memory -- which refers to "knowledge about general facts," such as "words, chemical formulas, equations, and names" -- might map to ready reference in the librarian's world. Butler refers to Tulving by defining episodic memory as "something which is personally experienced and includes a place and time" -- which might map to the patron's personal interaction with the librarian. Finally, schematic memory, referring to how we perceive objects, people, and events, refers more to the place of interaction -- and maps (heh) to where the interaction takes place: in the library, online, or remotely.

Butler suggests that these types of memory relate to three areas of reference librarian tasks, which he selects from the Reference and User Services Association (2000) Guidelines for Information Services, where librarians are considered ...

Service providers: Butler talks about working or short term memory and long-term memory for librarians as service providers with this example of a patron who asked where he can find the chemistry books: "The location of chemistry books is the long-term, schematic memory [for the librarian], whereas the user is the new, short-term memory, which has the potential to become an episodic memory." Reference librarians may use systems such as written lists, browser bookmarks, or folksonomy tags as external memory devices.
Educators: Written notes for the patron, handed to her after the session, may serve to reinforce learning. Further, Butler suggests that an interview closure tool such as a short survey could serve as an external memory aid to help "trigger ... both the short-term memory and possibly strengthening associative long-term memory." Butler wonders how this kind of tangible memory tool might be used for phone transactions; I would argue that an email might serve to reinforce what the patron learned during the phone conversation . For IM / chat / electronic encounters, the physical act of typing back and forth with the librarian may serve as an additional learning function for the patron.
Knowledge managers: Librarians need a lot of memory to manage their knowledge! There are many different types of knowledge to manage in the librarian's world: awareness of their users, technical and resource literacy, and the ability to appropriately share this information with their patrons are a few that Butler mentions; he adds that "the institution [must] practice memory skills" as well -- the librarian's knowledge is great, but it does the institution good if the librarian can share her managed knowledge with new colleagues.

Going back to librarians as educators, I was struck by Butler's assertion that if librarians use "diagrams to show a process of structure, users may be able to secure memory better." Remember (ha!) that next time you are tempted to draw a Venn Diagram to illustrate some complex library math.

And then go ahead and draw the diagram!

For More Information

Butler, Walter. (2008) Re-establishing Memory: Memory's Functions and the Reference Librarian. Reference Services Review, 36(1), 97-110. Available through Emerald online, or @ your library.
Corsini, Raymond. (1999) Dictionary of Psychology. Routledge. Possibly available @ your library.
Smelser, Neil J. and Paul B. Baltes. (2001) International Encyclopedia of the Social & Behavioral Sciences. Elsevier. Sometimes online and possibly available @ your library.

Confluence of Cats & Science

2008-04-23T10:18:00.003-04:00

YouTube says: "Two professional engineers illustrate the proper care and practical benefits of cats." In this case, three cats. The video is narrated by engineer and "guy who has all those cats", who talks about food (especially tuna), cat hobbies (such as lounging, floral arrangement regurgitation, and various forms of low-energy performance art) and potential uses of cats as energy sources (not quite successful).

According to YouTube, "None of the cats, humans, or engineers were mistreated in the making of this film. They were however, slightly annoyed."

This video definitely some sound reasons for cat acquisition and retention.

(thanks to Christine for the link!)

Extra-Curricular Librarian

2008-03-27T14:35:00.001-04:00

I recently spoke at the Spring 2008 meeting of PVAAL, the Pioneer Valley Association of Academic Librarians. My topic was "The Adjunct Life and other LIS Extra-curricular Activities," and at the talk, I reflected on my five years teaching library students and blogging. I promised to post links to what I talked about here, as well as the PowerPoint I used.

So ... the Adjunct Life comes from the title of an article I wrote in June for Library Journal (The Adjunct Life). I summarized the article and added new bits, but if you want to know what it's like for me to teach, this is a good review.

I talked about blogging -- why I do it and how I find the time. Why? I addressed some of that in an October blog post entitled "Another Reason I Blog." Another handy side effect of my blog is that I can point people to it as a way of getting to know my professional interests. It's a more comprehensive business card / resume, which illustrates my thinking and quirks (and sometimes even my cats).

Finally, I talked about two articles I am co-writing with a graduate student at UConn. We are writing about our shared experience in the Scopus Student Ambassador program, which I blogged about back in June. What was (is, we're still writing the second article!) fun about the process was that we had different angles on the project -- Chelsea was very interested in the peer-to-peer nature of the training, while I was focused on the great partnership between the UConn libraries and Scopus. And we both get two articles out of it! (More on them when they are published ...)

So ... all of this extra-curricular activity takes a lot of time. Is it worth it? Mostly, yes. The good thing about blogging is that I can do it on my time -- so when I am feeling unintelligent, I can keep my mouth / blog shut, and when I am feeling inspired or determined to understand something better, I can blog about it. Teaching is it's own reward -- the students are great fun, inspiring, and they encourage me to keep up with LIS trends, technology, and databases, all while keeping perspective on the essentials of library theory

Managing (Medical) Complexity

2008-03-23T10:37:00.008-04:00

Another terrific medical article by Atul Gawande in the New Yorker. This one is about doctors using checklists to decrease the amount of infections in the Intensive Care Unit (ICU). I read it when it came out in December and didn't plan on blogging it ... but the article has stayed with me, so I thought I'd blog it. a) because maybe it'll interest you, Dear Reader, and b) so I could re-read the article and cement its ideas even more firmly in my memory.

The Checklist describes the work of Paul Pronovost, MD, PhD (public health) who developed a checklist to routinize the roughly 178 daily tasks ICU patients need. Gawande states that the average stay of an ICU patient is 4 days, and the survival rate is 86%. Pronovost's checklist, designed specifically to lower the rate of line infections in ICU patients, was implemented at Johns Hopkins in 2001. A year later, their 10-day line infection rate had dropped from 11% of all patients to 0%. Yes, zero percent! They reran the numbers and followed patients for another year. Over the 27 months of using the checklist, they had only 2 line infections. Astonishing!

Pronovost observed two main benefits of these checklists: a) they help with memory recall. As Gawande notes, "When you’re worrying about what treatment to give a woman who won’t stop seizing, it’s hard to remember to make sure that the head of her bed is in the right position." And b) the checklist itemizes "the minimum, expected steps in complex processes." Gawande notes that nurses were empowered to enforce the doctors' adherence to the checklist, thus improving their use.

Sadly, because a checklist for physicians is not sexy, Pronovost's ideas have not been widely adopted in this country. One exception is the 2003 implementation in the inner-city Detroit hospital Sinai-Grace, where line infection rates dropped by 66%. This was estimated to have saved over 1,500 lives and $75 million dollars over three years. Pronovost and the Keystone Initiative published these results in a 2006 New England Journal of Medicine article.

Gawande personalizes the case studies with his usual flair; the article discusses the near-drowning of a 3-year old in Austria who by age 5 had "recovered her faculties completely," (her doctors had used a checklist) and a Massachusetts limo driver who suffered a serious line infection in the hospital and fortunately recovered (his doctors had not used a checklist). He also talks about the process by which the US Army Air Corps implemented flight checklists as they rolled out the B-17 in the mid-1930s, commenting that "[m]edicine has entered its B-17 phase."

I hope that more hospitals will take this checklist approach, as it certainly seems to be a sound idea.

For More Information

Berenholtz, S. M., Pronovost, P. J., Lipsett, P. A., Hobson, D., Earsing, K., Parley, J. E., et al. (2004). Eliminating catheter-related bloodstream infections in the intensive care unit. Critical Care Medicine, 32(10), 2014-2020.(abstract in PubMed)
Gawande, Atul. Annals of Medicine: The Checklist. The New Yorker, Dec. 10, 2007.
Hales, B. M., & Pronovost, P. J. (2006). The checklist-a tool for error management and performance improvement. Journal of Critical Care, 21(3), 231-235. (abstract in PubMed)
Pronovost, P., Needham, D., Berenholtz, S., Sinopoli, D., Chu, H., Cosgrove, S., et al. (2006). An intervention to decrease catheter-related bloodstream infections in the ICU. New England Journal of Medicine, 355(26), 2725-2732. (See also Erratum: An intervention to decrease catheter-related bloodstream infections in the ICU. (2007). New England Journal of Medicine, 356(25), 2660.)
Walker, Tim. Make a list of "crucial basics" and check it twice. Hoover’s Business Insight Zone, Feb. 11, 2008.
In researching this post, I found a Hoover's blog post by Tim Walker commenting on the checklist idea and wondering how it could be applied to business and career.

Reference Theory & Practice

2008-03-20T12:54:00.005-04:00

I'm thrilled to link to my article on The Reference Interview: Theories and Practice, recently published by Library Philosophy and Practice (LPP). They abstract it thusly:

The reference librarian's task is to translate the patron's question into one that can be answered with the library's resources. The first element of that task is to know what the patron wants; the second is to know what resources the library has and how to use them. Reference librarians must learn continuously throughout their careers, both because new resources become available, but also because patrons present questions requiring new resources. This article will focus on how to determine what kind of information the patron needs through the reference interview.

If you're interested in reference, I recommend the article.

And if you speak Albanian, I would suggest you read the first iteration of the article, "Intervista referale: teori dhe praktika," published in Biblioletra in November (pdf of entire issue). The article was originally solicited by my former student and president of the Kosovo Librarians Association Besim Kokollari, and he translated it into Albanian.

For More Information

Brown, Stephanie Willen. The Reference Interview: Theory and Practice] "Intervista referale: teori dhe praktika," [Article in Albanian] Biblioletra, v4, n2 (2007): 7-11. (pdf of entire issue)
-- The Reference Interview: Theories and Practice, Library Philosophy and Practice (LPP), February 2008.

Neuroanatomy Now

2008-03-18T13:42:00.004-04:00

Neuroanatomy seems to be hot in my podcast feed lately. Ted | Talks just featured a presentation by Jill Bolte Taylor, neuroscientist and stroke survivor.

(or read the transcript)

And my favorite brain science podcaster, Ginger Campbell, just podcast a "whirlwind (55 minute) tour of brain anatomy, based on Beyond the Zonules of Zinn: A Fantastic Journey Through Your Brain (2008) by David Bainbridge. Thanks to Dr. Bainbridge’s generosity (and permission) Ginger has embedded some of the brain anatomy figures on her podcast site, along with the author’s legends. This MRI of Bainbridge's own brain is pretty cool.

For More Information

Bainbridge, David. Beyond the Zonules of Zinn: A Fantastic Journey Through Your Brain. Harvard, 2008.
A Brief Introduction to Brain Anatomy. Brain Science Podcast, March 7, 2008. See also the figures page.
Taylor, Jill Bolte. My Stroke of Insight: A Brain Scientist's Personal Journey. Lulu.com, 2006.
-- Ted| Talks. February 2008.

A Little Light Music

2008-03-13T21:03:00.002-04:00

Time for a rare musical recommendation: the Aluminum Group. They cite the Carpenters, Sergio Mendes, and Brasil 66 as musical influences, and their "lushly orchestrated pop" is simply divine. They've been around since the mid-1990s, but I only just heard them. Where HAVE I been?!

Anyway, here are some favorites:
Lovely Day will make you happy.

The song "Post It", about a lost post-it note, will make you want to rummage in your purse. Hear it and other songs from their 2008 release Little Happyness at MintyFresh, their "record" label (sound quality isn't great, but you get the idea). You can also read a review of Little Happyness at Pitchfork Media.

Another Cool (End-user) Widget

2008-03-05T12:26:00.004-05:00

I'm close to reading an article in National Geographic about animal cognition (which I'll blog soon, hopefully), when I spotted this at the bottom of the page:

NGM Widgets
Put National Geographic images and puzzles on your web page.

Awesome. Widgets for normal people who want to see more National Geographic "stuff." This stuff includes a jigsaw puzzle out of a National Geographic photograph, a great photo of the day:

and their "Daily Dozen" - 12 photos they like each day.

So back to my earlier post about ESPN football widgets (Widgets! Libraries Need 'Em). We need to be offering creative widget-y things for end-users to put on their web space -- blogs, iGoogle, NetVibes, Facebook, course web sites -- so they can easily search & use library materials. I envision widgets for searching the opac (like what WorldCat does with its search box, only with stuff from YOUR library), searching EBSCO, ProQuest, iCONN, institutional repositories, archives (Conn. History Online, eg) ...

LibGuides and ProQuest are two companies I know of that let *librarians* create widgets and put them someplace handy (see my sample ProQuest widgets -- thanks PQ!). That's a great first step. But I'm talking about widgets for end-users: students (college, high school, graduate), teachers at all levels ... Look at the instructions for National Geographic's widgets and see how easy they are to create and use.

Anything that we put online for users to use should be made easier to use, find, and "widget-able" for people to put wherever they want.

A Story About Cochlear Implants

2008-02-27T19:59:00.005-05:00

Jane Brody writes in Tuesday's New York Times about Josh Swiller, a 37-year-old who has sensorineural hearing loss and recently received surgery for cochlear implants. Swiller was born with some ability to hear, and wore amplification devices, but several years ago, he had to stop using them due to headaches and ultimately lost all hearing. He was fluent in sign language and was adept at reading lips.

So three years ago he "underwent life-changing surgery, substituting a cochlear implant for the hearing aids that were no longer working..." With the implant, Swiller's hearing is at 100%, although he appreciates being able to remove it, particularly on the subway.

Brody mentions some touchy issues, like the opposition to cochlear implants by some in the deaf community because they believe that implants threaten that community. Indeed, she quotes Swiller as saying that "...[b]ecause of cochlear implants ... deaf schools around the country are rapidly losing enrollment." She also quotes him as saying that sign language can be learned later in life, "...but not English." Not sure I agree with that, but it's an interesting argument. Certainly learning to speak can be more difficult.

Finally, Brody describes what hearing at 100% was like for Swiller. It reminds me a bit of my experience achieving binocular vision, and must echo (excuse the pun) what Stereo Sue experienced.

“The first sound I heard was ‘sh’ — I’d never heard that or ‘s’ before,” [Swiller] continued. “Then one day, I passed someone on the street talking on a cellphone, and I heard everything she said crystal clear. That had never happened before — hearing something when I was not paying attention to the sound. I can now hear conversations from another room; before I couldn’t hear distant speech at all.”

Definitions

"Cochlear implants are electronic devices that contain a current source and an electrode array that is implanted into the cochlea; electrical current is then used to stimulate the surviving auditory nerve fibers (Wilson, 2000)." American Speech-Language-Hearing Association.
Sensorineural hearing loss: "...occurs when there is damage to the inner ear (cochlea) or to the nerve pathways from the inner ear (retrocochlear) to the brain. Sensorineural hearing loss cannot be medically or surgically corrected. It is a permanent loss." American Speech-Language-Hearing Association.

For More Information

American Speech-Language-Hearing Association. (2004). Cochlear Implants [Technical Report]. Available from www.asha.org/policy.
American Speech-Language-Hearing Association. "Types of Hearing Loss." Available from www.asha.org/policy.
Brody, Jane. Cochlear Implant Supports an Author’s Active Life. New York Times, February 26, 2008.

Books Brody mentions; links in WorldCat:

Chorost, Michael. Rebuilt : How Becoming Part Computer Made Me More Human. Boston : Houghton Mifflin, 2005.
Swiller, Josh. The Unheard : A Memoir of Deafness and Africa. New York : Henry Holt and Co., 2007.

Widgets! Libraries Need 'Em

2008-02-23T15:30:00.001-05:00

This is one of my favorite Giants, Osi Umenyiora. And this is an ESPN widget of him ... doesn't seem to include the postseason or the Superbowl (which is a shame), but it was *ridiculously* easy to add to this blog. Or, frankly, just about any other social networking tool on the planet, from Facebook to Friendster (still?!) to just about anything in between.

Shouldn't library tools be this easy to add to a user's site?

Imagine ... an OPAC widget. An Academic Search Premier widget. A Scopus widget. An Institutional Repository widget.

Why not?

Neuroscience in PloS

2008-02-22T19:16:00.003-05:00

Have you seen PloS? The Public Library of Science "is a nonprofit organization of scientists and physicians committed to making the world's scientific and medical literature a freely available public resource.." I've referred to two of their articles and I was intrigued by Bora's recent post at A Blog Around the Clock about PloS One and its efforts to publish in all areas of science, including various aspects of cognitive science.

Here is a recent interesting articles in PloS One:

Are Animals Autistic Savants from PloS Biology, where Giorgio Vallortigara and colleagues critique Temple Grandin's question "Do animals have privileged access to lower level sensory information before it is packaged into concepts?" and Grandin responds. And here's a blog post, Do Animals Think Like Autistic Savants in which the article is summarized in, um, plain(er) English for us non-scholars.

And check out the articles @ PloS One in these categories -- all free for the world to read!

(Academic) Librarians, make sure you're making these journals available to your patrons. PloS is indexed in PubMed It's not indexed in Biosis, PsycINFO, Scopus or Web of Science, and sadly, Ulrich's doesn't indicate that it is indexed in PubMed. Indexers ... consider adding PLoS!

For More Information

About Open Access, from the Public Library of Science.
Vallortigara, Georgio and colleagues. (2008) Are Animals Autistic Savants PLoS Biology 6(2): e42. Grandin responds.
Zivkovic, Bora. "PLoS, it rhymes with floss: Interview with Liz Allen." A Blog Around the Clock February 19, 2008.