The Distant Librarian

What Do Distance Education Faculty Want from the Library?

This was the last presentation of the conference, and was delivered by Samantha Schmehl Hines of the University of Montana-Missoula to a packed room.

In preparation for launching a survey for faculty at her own institution, Samantha looked at 13 surveys of what faculty members wanted from the library (all listed in her bibliography).  The response rates for these surveys were between 24-50%. 

Her meta-analysis of these surveys uncovered the following findings, which you'll probably recognize from your institution as well (though she admits there's nothing statistically valid here):

Commonalities with Faculty Services
•    It’s difficult to determine/reach those teaching at a distance
•    There is a lack of understanding of what Info Lit is or how it can be done at a distance.  Faculty feel it’s their role, not librarians’
•    Faculty often suggest integration of the library and library services into courseware – discussion forums, library instruction modules, subject guides, online lectures.
•    There is a lack of “time” in distant classes (Faculty don't want to give up "time" for library instruction)
•    Copyright concerns – online resources, traditional resources used in the digital classroom
•    Technical support – courseware, library resources
•    Notification of available services/materials – they don’t use resources much themselves, but want to guide their students. Email works
•    Use of the library and its resources is required for many assignments!  Faculty value library services and resources – lends legitimacy to online ventures.

Commonalities with Student Services
•    Faculty want us to provide handouts – Course specific, general guides, printable
•    Online Tutorials (could benefit faculty as well)
•    Faculty assume students know how to use library resources and services
•    Minimizing the difference in materials available on campus and off – full text is popular, speedy delivery
•    Increase awareness of what the library has to offer (let the students know)

When Samantha ran her survey, she got a response rate of 46%, with all 16 of her responses coming within the first week of the survey being posted, even though it was left up for 3 weeks.  She used SurveyMonkey to offer 10 questions to her faculty.  The results she came up with were:

•    She needs better publicity
•    Use faculty concerns to market services
•    Addressing copyright issues could hook them
•    Creating guides/handouts/tutorials increases awareness, could lead to collaboration

 Nothing really earthshattering here, but it's nice to have this analysis of surveys available...


Technorati Tags: OCLSC06, Service, Surveys

Journal of Library and Information Services for Distance Learning in trouble?

I chatted with Stephen Dew at the opening reception the other night ant learned that he’s stepping down as  editor of JLISDL.  Stephen’s technically the 2nd editor for this young journal, and as column editor I’m aware that it seems to be pretty difficult to raise content for this publication.  Not really sure why that is, but it struck me as odd that the proceedings for the OCLS conference will not be published in this journal, but instead will continue to appear in the Journal of Library Administration.  Are DE librarians writing for the OCLS Conference, and thus not for this journal?  Are we writing for other publications?  I have no inside information, but fear for the future of this publication :-/



Technorati Tags: OCLSC06, scholarship

What's in it for me?

A little rant based on a couple of the presentations I’ve seen here in Savannah.  This mirrors several of the wrap-up posts I saw after Computers in Libraries earlier this spring. 

I come to conferences first and foremost to get new ideas for services I can implement back home.  I want to be able to talk to the people who are doing interesting and innovative things; to pick their brains to see how I can tweak what they’re doing to best serve my clientele.  If it’s really relevant that I know something about your home institution tell me briefly, but I so don’t want to spend 15-minutes of a 55-minute presentation hearing about your home institution and your students!  One bullet on one slide is all that should take.

Please tell me what you did, but just as importantly please tell me how I can do it!  Where do I find the tools that you used, and is it something I should pursue, or is this something completely customized to your institution that I’ll never be able to implement?

So far nobody’s read their paper, which is great (please don’t ever do this at a conference, gentle reader), yet few of the presentations I’ve seen have really added a whole lot to the paper that’s printed in the proceedings :-(.

When you’re getting ready to present at a conference, please consider the type of presentation you enjoy the most, and try to make yours similar.  I know some conferences are all about reporting the research, and while there is some of that here, I think most of us get more out of the sessions where we can take something away. 


Technorati Tags: OCLSC06, conferences, presentations

Off Campus Library Services Conference Keynote - Marshall Keys

Last night the keynote was delivered by Marshall Keys, and was titled Lost in Translation: what today's trends show about tomorrow's libraries.  As I mentioned briefly in a previous post, this turned out to be pretty much the same talk Stephen Abrams gives on Millennials and what they mean to our future, but it was nice to hear it from someone else :-)  Several times Marshall admitted that many of his examples tend to make traditional librarians more uncomfortable than they were likely to make this crowd of DE Librarians, and I found that to be true.  As a whole, we do have a little more practice thinking outside the box.  What follows are several of the quotes I grabbed.  They should convey the gist of his talk.  Hopefully Marshall's ppt will be made available as well, at which time I will link to it.

Question overheard on Boston Mass Transit, asked by a young woman to a young man, "What's a cassette?" -- our users are changing!

Talked about blog mentality, illustrated with the following ideas:
1) What I think is important.  
2) What I think is important to other people. 
3) Things are important because I think they are important: the “whatever” corollary:
4) If I don’t think it’s important, it isn’t important
5) Esse est percipi (to be is to be perceived)

I was worried he was going to slam the bloggers, but he was just working up to pointing out that this is the mentality of our upcoming (and current) users.  Couple of quotes slamming Gorman and Cronin, and Marshall pointing out that our current library leadership doesn't seem to understand this mentality.

Privacy is unimportant - community is important.  This was a strong theme of his keynote, and later he pointed out that libraries seem to care more about our patrons privacy than our patrons do, and this may actually hinder our ability to deliver some of the services our patrons would like to see!

Lots of examples of community-based websites, and customized services.

Old – everything is on the internet
New – everything is on the phone

Chaotic technology – new stuff coming down the road – Any time, any where, any way – this is what people are used to today. 

I haven't had a chance to look this one up, but he mentioned the problem with peer-to-peer personalized information access and recommended the following article: Lean consumption – Harvard Business Review, March 2005.

This one really caught my eye -- Young folks today (13 - 25?) have no expectation of privacy because they do not believe that it exists in an electronic environment.  "If I view it or send it, they will see it, and I don’t care."  Wow!

What must libraries do to serve a world in which:

• users expect information to be delivered to them?
• users expect technology and interfaces to be highly personalized?
• users care more about convenience and community than privacy?

Emerging Technology – life beyond browsers -- The web browser is 2D envoronment, but video games (psp and Xbox) are 3D environments, and young folks are completely comfortable in 3D online worlds – what if people were accessing your library though these tools?  What if they could navigate their avatar through your 3D library?  (one of the poster sessions today was about this very idea - Appalachian State University Libraries are working on a VirtualWorld community called AppEdTech where students can walk around a virtual library and access the services within - not sure if collections are integrated as well - will do some more exploring to find out).

Libraries are committed to a medium (books), not a message.  Does the AMA have a "Centre for the Stethoscope" the way LOC has a "Centre for the Book"?  (trying to get a rise from the crowd here ;-)

Creating a library for the millennial generation.  Susan Goldberg Kent’s answer, “ The future for libraries is personalizing service on a customer interest basis”  and “The future focus of technology in libraries will be promoting and delivering content-rich programming.”  Users have the technology – we need to adapt to it.

Marketing message – any time, any place, any way you want it, your library is there.

RSS and push technologies mentioned at the 54-minute mark (1-hour presentation) :-)

The future is here, it’s just not evenly distributed – William Gibson

Only time for one question, which was whether, as academic librarians, we're doing our patrons a disservice if we "give them everything they want instead of teaching them how to find it themselves" and Marshall replied that we should really be following the special libraries approach where information is delivered directly to the CEO.  To paraphrase, "What’s important for students to learn in college is how to synthesize the information, not necessarily how to find the information.  Collaborate with faculty on the quality of information – it’s more important for them to learn to judge quality than it is for them to be able to find it themselves."

There was no time for rebuttal on this one, which is too bad as it could've led to an interesting discussion of library economics, among other topics.

Marshall's a good speaker with some good ideas.  Now I have to go back to explore again whether we can get our catalogue to display on a cell-phone screen (here's your warning, David!)



Technorati Tags: OCLSC06, future, survival

It's so green!

Have landed safely in Savannah for the 2006 Off Campus Library Services Conference, which is more than I can say for my luggage.  Hopefully it will arrive sometime tonight, as my presentation is at 8:30 AM on Thursday.  TWT.  (my co-presenter arrived late last night and still doesn't have her luggage!)

I'd forgotten what green leaves look like, and they look nice :-)  Looking forward to taking a nice walk tomorrow w/o a jacket :-)

The keynote this evening was given by Marshall Keys, and I'll get a post up to summarize it soon.  Very similar to the talks Stephen Abram gives on Millennials, but a little less frenetic, and of course with different examples.  I enjoyed it.

Dan Gall, the OCLSC tech guru, says that there's spotty free wireless available in the area from a service called Savannah Spanish Moss, so if you're here at the hotel (or in the area), look for that on your list of providers.  From their website:

Savannah Spanish Moss, Inc. was developed to showcase Savannah as a technologically savvy community in order to assist in attracting technology based businesses to the region. The purpose of this group is to implement a free to the user WiFi hot zone in selected areas of the landmark Historic District to demonstrate Savannah's commitment to technology and to showcase the technology base that exists in the Savannah area.

Technorati Tags: OCLSC06, wireless

Online Research Toolkit presentation

I'm just now finally getting around to looking at some of the presentations from last week's Library & Information Resources track of HigherEdBlogCon.  Great idea in theory, but I'm still finding it difficult to set aside the time to give the presentations the full attention they deserve. 

One presentation I did spend some time with today is Rebecca Hedreen's An Online Research Toolkit - Exploring Web 2.0 for Library Research.  Nice job, Rebecca!  Not only is it chock full of really useful information for we DE folk, but she actually uses some of the resources to teach about the resources.  You can meet your presenter via YouTube (Rebecca, next time put up a cubicle partition with a nice tropical scene behind you ;-), and then listen to her via the Odeo Flash Player, which I have since gone off to explore and use.  Thanks for the learning opportunity Rebecca!

The all-important weather update

It's been a while since I provided the all-important weather update on the blog, but hoo-ie, it's actually hot today!  Right now it's 22C (72F) and it feels much warmer here in my stuffy office.  Oh, but of course it wouldn't be Calgary if that was all there was to the story.  Here's the forecast for tonight:

 

And wouldn't you know it, The Weather Channel says the same thing (they often don't):

 

I know it's not even going to kill that one flower I saw earlier today, but I thought you should know I'm not pleased.

50 Ways to Take Notes

I've mentioned Writely before, and while it's not exclusively a tool to support distance learners, it's damn useful and something you and your students should at least be aware of.  Well I just learned about 49 similar tools!  Fifty Ways to Take Notes is an annotated list of Web 2.0 tools that allow you to keep notes online and so much more, from Quick Public Pages to Voice Recording.  Surely you can find something here that will help you stay organized!  As usual, there are several more suggestions in the comments section.  Found via O'Reilly Radar.


Technorati Tags: Writely, collaboration, notes

Thoughts on Macromedia Captivate

The Web4lib discussion list recently wrapped up a slew of posts discussing the virtues of Macromedia Captivate, with some additional discussion of Qarbon ViewletBuilder and a surprisingly (to me) small number of comments on Camtasia Studio.  You can pick up the discussion here - scroll down (or Ctrl-F) to the subject of [Web4lib] Macromedia Captivate (formerly RoboDemo).

Technorati Tags: screencasting, Macromedia

The Embedded Librarian - Library Journal article

A very brief article from the April 1, 2006 issue of Library Journal, The Embedded Librarian discusses how librarians at the University of Rhode Island made themselves more accessible to distance students (though everything they describe can be used by traditional students as well).  Librarians are enrolled as teaching assistants in several WebCT courses, offer an online Library Skills Tutorial, offer reference via IM, and are planning a blog to "promote core institutional values." 

Technorati Tags for OffCamp Conference

I know there will be at least a few other bloggers at OffCamp in Savannah next week - anybody up for settling on a common Technorati tag?  I propose OCLSC06.


Technorati Tags: OCLSC06

Survey of Off-Campus Library Services

A month ago I noted the rebirth of the Canadian Library Association's Services for Distance Learning Interest Group, and also noted that the new convener has a survey on what DE Librarians feel are the most important services to offer their patrons.  At that time I found the survey wasn't working correctly, but Laurie now has it back up as a fully-functional survey within a Macromedia Breeze presentation.  Please take the survey to help her with her CLA presentation, but also note how well the survey works within Breeze.  Might have to give that a try myself!


Technorati Tags: Breeze, surveys, DE, Libraries

Another RSS to E-mail service

Amit blogs that there's a new kid on the block when it comes to RSS to Email services, and it's likely to prove to be a big kid 'cause it's a service from Feedburner!  I haven't had a chance to try it yet, but I guess you can add it to the rest of the list of similar services.



Technorati Tags: RSS, email

Microsoft Academic Search launches

Well it was supposed to launch yesterday, and I guess it did sometime late last night, but Microsoft's Academic Search (beta!) is now live.  I'm on vacation for the next week so really won't have a chance to run through it until then, but you can get up to speed with Steven,  Dean and Gary.

Microsoft's Academic Search

Maybe it's just me, but the impending launch of Microsoft's version of Google Scholar, Academic Search, seems to be slipping up without much notice in the blogosphere.  They've mentioned it at Search Engine Watch, but apparently a week or so ago three of our colleagues were invited to Redmond to give the product a spin before its official launch tomorrow (April 11).  Best coverage so far is at Dean Giustini's UBC Google Scholar Blog.Folio, where two entries have been posted so far about the product.  The second one has a list of what Dean considers to be the positives and negatives of the product.  Stay sharp!


Technorati Tags: Microsoft, Librarians, Search,

The Myth about Student Competency - “Our Students Are Technologically Competent.”

Educause Review has a short editorial called The Myth about Student Competency - “Our Students Are Technologically Competent.”  The article seems to bounce back and forth a little between what I would call technology literacy and information literacy, but the overall points are the same; that while students coming in to higher education today are very well exposed to technology, that doesn't necessarily make them competent in its use.  There are a few quotes from the ALA Presidential Committee on Information Literacy report that highlight the point of the article, including, “Information literacy is a survival skill in the Information Age…. Information literate people know now to find, evaluate, and use information effectively to solve a particular problem or make a decision —whether the information they select comes from a computer, a book, a government agency, a film, or any number of other possible resources.”


Technorati Tags: InfoLit, Educause, Libraries

Australian Tome Raiders

See this article about a project to connect all Australian libraries and their collections of 40 million items on the internet will allow readers to find books, copy them or EVEN buy them from online stores.


Technorati Tags: Libraries, Australia

An Article on integrating library information into Course Management Systems

The most recent issue of Innovate, the Journal of Online Education, has an article by John Shank and Steven Bell called A_FLIP to Courseware: A Strategic Alliance for Improving Student Learning Outcomes (you'll need to register with the site to be able to read it - it's free).  Basically this brief article discusses ways librarians should be working with faculty and course adminstrators (the folks who manage and build the course shells) to better integrate library information and services at the course level in the CMS.  A few juicy quotes to pique your interest:

At the system level, simply creating a more obvious library presence through the addition of buttons that link to the library is an appreciated but ultimately inadequate gesture. Because the courseware systems constantly evolve, there will always be opportunities for new and innovative ways by which the library can be integrated across and throughout the system. For this reason librarians should have an ongoing role in the administration of the campus courseware system.

and

We anticipate that in the not-too-distant future, many library databases will allow search results to be generated as RSS feeds. When that is possible, a librarian could structure a database search that would feed the equivalent of a constantly updated subject bibliography into a specific course site. A faculty member could request that the librarian conduct a search related to a topic being discussed in class, and the RSS feed would deliver a regular stream of articles related to that topic for student awareness. Working with faculty members, librarians could also capture RSS feeds from news sources and provide students with highly customized packets of news related to their course topics from thousands upon thousands of Internet resources. These are just some of the ways that integrating new and developing technologies such as RSS or social networking software into courseware promotes a collaborative approach to connecting students to the highest quality information resources.

There are a few good examples and links in the article, so if this is a new concept for you it's a very good read.  I remember Rebecca Hedreen blogged about many of these same ideas about a year ago...

2006 ACRL Distance Learning Librarian - Monica Craig

As reported by Michael at The Information Literacy Land of Confusion, Monica Craig as been recognized as  the winner of the 2006 ACRL Distance Learning Librarian Award.  Congratulations Monica!


Technorati Tags: ACRL, Librarians