I have been interested in course specific student portals created and maintained by the academic library since I was a MLIS student, so I was pleasantly surprised to come across a webinar entitled "Students, Faculty and Librarians: Making Connections through Course Pages" After watching the broadcast I printed off the recommended article: Portals for Undergraduate Subject Searching: Are They Worth It? by Jane Nichols and Margaret Mellinger. It was a clear read that touched on most if not all of the questions I had kicking around in my mind after the presentation. Ultimately, I found two ideas particularly interesting.
One, a "librarian's" concept of type of resource (book, article, video) is more and more difficult for the traditional undergraduate to understand; "The task force concluded that OSU Libraries’ arrangement by type (database, journal, catalog) hindered users ability to find subject specific information (486)." Rather than looking for type, a student is looking for information on their topic.
I see this idea played out more and more as student work through the library portion of our required Researching and Writing Course. Even though we try to create clear lines between reference books, news, journals, books, and web pages in the assignment tasks student continually return resource lists that pay no attention to the type of resources but rather concentrate on the content. I have been wondering for some time now if the fact of the matter was that TYPE means little to students and it was encouraging to read that this is not a shortcoming of our teaching technique but rather a result of a conceptual difference.
Second and more applicable to this 23 Things exercise was the comment on a surprising find; users were not that interested in expending their time and energy on customizing their own library page or portal. This was a helpful reminder; while the tools and possibilities are ever-expanding; when we as a library create for our users we cannot expect the user to want to expend excessive amounts of time or energy. Yes, tools are great; yes, visuals are interesting; but we need to do the work and customization so that the user can easily and quickly meet their need.
Monday, February 11, 2008
Thursday, February 7, 2008
Thing Six, Online Image Generators
I have enjoyed the creative possibilities the mash ups and image generators offer and see no reason why I wouldn't choose to use at least one for the various advertisements and programs I generate over the course of the year. Not only are they very easy to use, the added personalization would be far more interesting and eyecatching than many of the "canned" images from which I currently choose. While I am not so sure the students on campus would be particularly interested in a photo of me, there are definitely popular professors and campus figures who would be fabulous faces to use! This would even allow for opportunity to pull other departments into library activity and create an increased feeling of campus unity!
Wednesday, February 6, 2008
Thing Five, using mashups
I found this lovely photo using the very fun Retrievr mash-up. What a great way to find images that include desired color scheme or shape and movement. Not to mention a fun and serendipitous little exercise.
Another fun mash-up is Tagnautica. I love browsing and often hear people lament the loss of the serendipitous find because of the move away from the library stacks and into the digital realm. I went from "tea" to "trees" in five clicks and had a blast browsing through the results!
The caption mashup was also fun and would actually be a great tool to use in our library. Adding captions to photos of librarians to advertise for events or provide helpful reminders (Please return materials to the shelving carts, example) would be an interesting and easy way to personalize our services.
Thing Four, Photosharing
Photo sharing was a wonderful discovery. I live a great distance from my family so we have been using Flickr for almost a year now to share vacation photos and slice of life pictures. We appreciate the privacy settings Flickr allows and have found this photo sharing technique keeps us closer and prompts some fun discussion, both real time and virtual.
I had not, however, thought of using this tool in the library setting, but the Clemens Library proves there are some fun ways to share visually with their patrons. Their "bookshelves" actually remind me of two things our library does on site.
One, we have a "new books” shelf that we keep at the entrance of our library in a reading nook. It may be fun to translate that into the digital realm so that distance students (and busy professors) who don't regularly visit our library can keep an "eye" on the new acquisitions. Two, the photos also remind me of elements of our monthly display. Our library briefly expounds on a topic and then highlights resources that viewers can use to learn more. This month's topic is fair trade: digital tools would be a great way to get the information out to a larger population! I even found a wonderful photo of a Ghanaian Primary School that I was able to post in this blog as an example of images that could augment our displays.
I will definitely be more aware of how photo sharing can help visually augment our library's displays and activities. As I sit here I am even reminded of our library social events and how Flickr could be a great way to advertise, organize and, document these programs.
I had not, however, thought of using this tool in the library setting, but the Clemens Library proves there are some fun ways to share visually with their patrons. Their "bookshelves" actually remind me of two things our library does on site.
One, we have a "new books” shelf that we keep at the entrance of our library in a reading nook. It may be fun to translate that into the digital realm so that distance students (and busy professors) who don't regularly visit our library can keep an "eye" on the new acquisitions. Two, the photos also remind me of elements of our monthly display. Our library briefly expounds on a topic and then highlights resources that viewers can use to learn more. This month's topic is fair trade: digital tools would be a great way to get the information out to a larger population! I even found a wonderful photo of a Ghanaian Primary School that I was able to post in this blog as an example of images that could augment our displays.
I will definitely be more aware of how photo sharing can help visually augment our library's displays and activities. As I sit here I am even reminded of our library social events and how Flickr could be a great way to advertise, organize and, document these programs.
Ghanaian Primary School
Using Flickr, we could augment our displays with pictures that we take. When the library remodeled, we posted our photos directly on the library's website. But we could opt to create a group and have a slide show complete with tags when we complete our project. It would also greatly increase our options for visual in many different situations; visuals with text add so much power to a message. Instead of a dry board of text on Fair Trade Chocolate we could create a digital display complete with the photo of celebrating Ghanaian children outside of their school, a school built with profits from Fair Trade Chocolate!
Tuesday, February 5, 2008
Thing Three, The Wonderful World of RSS Feeds
I am a big fan of RSS feeds and have been for a while. I love the fact that I can not only consolidate all of the sources I am interested in in one place but that I am also notified of any new content.
My bloglines "Professional" folder makes it easy for me to scan the current postings of other librarian bloggers and continually brings to my attention articles and reflections I would not have looked for on my own but prove both interesting and informative. It is hard to stay kept up with The Kept Up Librarian but my Blogline feed sure does help!
Personally speaking, I also appreciate the fact that I can keep up with all the new recipes Heidi Swanson shares on the beautifully photographed 101 Cookbooks without obsessively visiting her site. And what librarian doesn't enjoy a word, or two, of the day?
As a user and professional I can see numerous benefits: I save time and exert little effort while still staying abreast of personal interest stories and professional articles of note. As a librarian, I need to continue thinking about ways our library might apply RSS feeds to the benefit of our particular users.
My bloglines "Professional" folder makes it easy for me to scan the current postings of other librarian bloggers and continually brings to my attention articles and reflections I would not have looked for on my own but prove both interesting and informative. It is hard to stay kept up with The Kept Up Librarian but my Blogline feed sure does help!
Personally speaking, I also appreciate the fact that I can keep up with all the new recipes Heidi Swanson shares on the beautifully photographed 101 Cookbooks without obsessively visiting her site. And what librarian doesn't enjoy a word, or two, of the day?
As a user and professional I can see numerous benefits: I save time and exert little effort while still staying abreast of personal interest stories and professional articles of note. As a librarian, I need to continue thinking about ways our library might apply RSS feeds to the benefit of our particular users.
Friday, February 1, 2008
Thing Seven, 2a.
For the sake of a speedy co-worker I skipped ahead to Instant Messaging. It is, I will admit, difficult to talk to oneself in the virtual world.
The two of us spent a very brief seesion experimenting with Google talk. While it was simple enough to install I cannot say that I was terribly impressed with its functionality. At one point we completely lost one another; not a great situation if you are chatting with a distressed (or cranky!) student. Additionally, I found that I had a hard time contining my work and keeping track of chatting developments. I felt it might become challenging to pay attention to the user and perform research simultaneously. Perhaps my difficulties had a bit to do with my distate for multi-tasking, but I had expected a better notification system.
While I would be really interested in trying IM for reference I would like a chance to play around with some different providers. I would also be interested in hearing how other libraries deal with streamling their choice of tools considering the broad number available and the fact each student may prefer a different one.
The two of us spent a very brief seesion experimenting with Google talk. While it was simple enough to install I cannot say that I was terribly impressed with its functionality. At one point we completely lost one another; not a great situation if you are chatting with a distressed (or cranky!) student. Additionally, I found that I had a hard time contining my work and keeping track of chatting developments. I felt it might become challenging to pay attention to the user and perform research simultaneously. Perhaps my difficulties had a bit to do with my distate for multi-tasking, but I had expected a better notification system.
While I would be really interested in trying IM for reference I would like a chance to play around with some different providers. I would also be interested in hearing how other libraries deal with streamling their choice of tools considering the broad number available and the fact each student may prefer a different one.
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