A scholar from Spain finds the UNCG Ayn Rand Collections useful

By Sha Li Zhang, April 26, 2010

I met Dr. José Rodolfo Hernández Carrión in late March 2010 at a chili party at the Casa Chu hosted by Dr. Clara Chu, Professor and Chair of the LIS Department at UNCG. As a librarian, I naturally asked Dr. Hernández what he thought about the UNCG Libraries’ collections in helping his research needs at UNCG. Without hesitation, Dr. Hernández told me that he was very happy with the Ayn Rand Collections at the Libraries. It was one of reasons for him to visit UNCG in 2010.

Dr. Hernández is Associate Professor in the Department of Applied Economics at the University of Valencia in Spain. As a visiting scholar, he came to UNCG on a three-month research journey in spring 2010. According to the announcement from the LIS Department which hosts the scholar at UNCG, Dr. Hernández conducts research on Economics Education for Change: Internet 2.0 and New Pedagogies in Teaching Economics. He studies social media, information and communication technologies (ICTs), and learns management systems and new pedagogies, with the purpose of acquiring excellence in new strategies to more effectively teach and enhance economics’ curriculum in the Schools of Law and Economics at his home university.

Since 2007, the UNCG Libraries established the Ayn Rand Collections located on the second floor of the main building at Jackson Library. The collections were purchased through a BB&T fund donated to the Libraries. Dr. Hernández commented, “I found the area, where the collections were placed, very familiar and enjoyable. In fact I am using some books for my teaching right now in Valencia and I think that your library very well provided the materials for Critical Thinking Literacy in the Economic field.”

Dr. Hernández spent a lot of time at the Jackson Library. As a matter of fact, he has a small study on the seventh floor in the Tower. Dr. Hernández notes that “about my favorite place in the library is the seventh floor where you can find similar books for Critical Thinking in Economics. I think that the titles are very good. I didn't check missing things so I am finding items here, what there is, more than looking for specific titles here.”

With more and more scholarly publications on digital formats and on open access modes, Dr. Hernández also expects the library materials related his fields are available online. During his visit at UNCG, when Dr. Hernández started checking out more print books, he sent questions to me and asked why the Libraries do not provide pdf files or digital format for this kind of material. He assumed that these materials “should be free access right now and perhaps it could be attractive and at low cost to digitalize the old ones.” From the aspect of preservation, Dr. Hernandez notes that “we have to contribute to preserve these old books that are getting valuable by themselves as rare and ancient.” I explained to Dr. Hernandez that we have increased acquisitions funds in purchasing materials in digital formats, especially for electronic databases, datasets, and electronic journals. For monographic publications, we also increased spending on electronic books in past two years. While some of the digital monographs (published prior to 1923) are freely available on internet via Google and other vendors’ mass digitization projects, access to electronic monographs published after 1923 still need to be purchased (vs. freely available via internet) by the Libraries. According to the current copyright laws, we may follow the same pattern for some years to come. This may be different from European countries. Nonetheless, we made several rush orders on the requests from Dr. Hernandez. The titles that he suggested will be added to the Libraries’ collections soon.

More photos on Dr. Hernandez's visit at UNCG are at http://www.flickr.com/photos/iminerva/sets/72157624463434057/

LAUNC-CH 2011: networked individuals & networked libraries

On March 7 2011 I attended LAUNC-CH Annual Conference (Librarians' Association at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill) at the Friday Center (yum, good food!) in Chapel Hill with this year's theme "Staying Vital in a Time of Change." My favorite part was the Keynote "Networked Individuals, Networked Libraries" by Lee Rainie, Director of the Pew Internet & American Life Project. His presentation slides are available online and worth checking out to see the latest data and details on social networking and technology adoption, the way people have changed the way they access, share and create info, and the way that libraries can adapt to this new information ecology to “stay vital” to their users. here are some of my notes from the session:

2/3 of Americans have broadband at home but digital divides are still really prevalent. Age still matters - after age 71 broadband drops off. Spanish speakers are less likely to be on broadband.

40% of people are now associated w/ religious groups that they did not grow up w. People are moving away from the family, small community,places where they grew up. They are developing their own beliefs and growing their own networked groups.

Wireless. Mobile. Fastest growing tech. 40-45% cell users surf internet on it. 55% own laptops up from 30% in 2006. Adults 57% use mobile Internet. But Hispanics and Blacks are higher users of cell than Whites. Prob more for money if they can't afford both. Rural is always lagging from urban regardless.

Apps world will rise and web will slowly die. Better for commercial world - you can sell them an app and learn more about the customer.

7%of adults own iPad type devices-up from 4% last year - and ebook readers growing too.

Info Ecosystem creates a sense of place and sense of presence. "Alone together" concept. Anywhere and any device. Contact people how we want, when we want, but on a social researcher perspective this is changing everything in how we related and communicate.
For libraries this changes not just collations but space - the world is becoming placeless! Be where your people are not hosting or expecting them to be in your place.

Social networking is growing to older adults too. Online videos growing, top area is comedy video. But second is news and educational. Older adults and women are top video creators. Online social networks and ubiquitous mobility. Libraries can be nodes in peoples network, to help them solve problems as well as learn from them too on what they want and need. Embedded librarians.
Expertise and influence in social networking has created amateur experts.

How networked information users are connecting:

• Attention zones-hard to stay focused on one thing to get done . "Continuous partial attention." But also deep dives into info is possible, we all can become experts in any area. Info snacking (I love this term!) - quick 2-3 mins info snack, when you are waiting for something.
• Media zones- social streams, toss a line in there every so often. Or try immersion like gaming. Creative participatory zone, libraries are adding to this creation. Study or work zones.

How networked information users reply on networks:

• As sentries - word of mouth - from friends, login to facebook to see what friends are reading or doing, to share or ask opinions of them - what use to be city newspaper is now Facebook
• Also as info evaluates- people go to their online "friends" - and ask friends is this true? and how much attention should I pay attention to it? what do you all think?
• As forum for action- everybody's a publisher!
  

Time Management Workshop

Here are the slides from the Time Management/Project Planning workshop. Please let me know if you have any questions!

Staff Dev Workshop: Time Management

View more presentations from Lynda Kellam

Non Librarian Conferences

This Fall I attended and presented at 2 non-library conferences which I found worthwhile, seeing trends, gathering ideas and connecting with people beyond the library walls.

In October I headed west to Denver, CO for AASHE - the Association of Advancement of Sustainability in Higher Education. My presentation - No Money, No Travel, No Problem! UNC Focus Forward 2010 - was about the virtual UNC system wide best practices in sustainability conference I helped plan and run last spring. The best part of this conference for me was the greenest of it (of course) - no paper handouts, compost bins by all trash cans, no water bottle (refill stations only), veggie/vegan meals way more than others, all compostable box lunches, etc (read more about the greening here). I enjoyed sessions though some not directly related to libraries:

• Lots of green student run initiatives on campus like park(ing) day where they take over parking spots and make them a park; student led groups to bring campus beyond climate neutral; green RAs; Green Spring Break trip (have fun in Florida but service learning cleaning up and fixing up state park); one student group offers plate rentals for anyone having an event on campus for free!
• Northwest Earth Institute in Portland creates and offers self directed, active learning, community based discussion guides.
• There were some sessions on embedding green messages through campus garden, freshman sustainable read, sustainable play/theater, painted rain barrel contests.
• A bike check out program was cool idea - students get one for 7 days, w/ helmet and lock - on campus where all parking is off campus w/ shuttles encourage pedestrian/biker friendly atmosphere.
• There were presentations on the toxins in art materials in art programs on campus, creating a greener student theaters, a campus ban of "no idling on campus" (cars idling emit so much more CO2 so turn off your car when waiting), and student push to ban bottled water on campus (learn more about the marketing gimmick the water bottle industry wants you to believe) who's blind taste test show people prefer tap vs bottled which is unregulated, often from your own tap and costs $8/gallon vs free!
  
• An interesting panel of administrations of campus discussed how to get your admin on board with a sustainability message from 4 very different campus.
  

In November I traveled to Wilmington, NC for UNC Cause 2010 - an ITS conference for mainly UNC system schools. I presented with Jenny Dale: Going the Distance Without Leaving Your Desk discussing the library's new Elluminate virtual room and the workshops and orientations we hosted online. Being an IT conference, the wireless was great (well except the morning we presented when it was down!), no handouts were given (yea! save a tree!), people had their tech of choice to take notes and engage with the twitter feed and all presentations were online. I tended to go to the social media and instructional technology sessions than the heavy IT sessions:

• Yammer Time - a microblogging platform that is a cross between Facebook and Twitter used at ECU for cross campus collaboration and communication;
• UNC-CH's session on Poll Everywhere, which I have used for a polling groups via twitter, the web or txting, but learned a lot more about its functionally and users needs as they shared their survey of students and faculty (presentation);
  
• Delivering Digital Classroom Content: The Hybrid Theory of Classroom Capture where a panel discussed Mediasite, Podcast Producer with iTunes U, Camtasia Relay, and Podcast Producer for classroom capture possibilities - a lot of discussion was on video recording faculty issues & legalities, and back up & storage issues of large video files but interesting to learn about other possible capture products;
• Video Games as Instructional Tools session discussed using videos for training, education, problem solving, quizzes, staff development, etc. Zach offered the Library Adventure Games files free to use too (created by Scott Rice).
  
• Zaneta Summers of WCU, discussed their new management of multi-format software education for students by students (unconf discussion, no presentation to share). They build a software system to help more efficiently manage services: their students who are there to support other students when they need assistance with various software can now be managed through this system with allows students works to add their available schedule times, testing them on skill level by software and thus can link up student needing help with one who is available and knowledgeable; and these students workers can co-teach with staff and take training themselves to learn better how to teach and how gain skills they are lacking.
• Learning Space Smackdown panel discussed how each of their campus improved and expanded their learning spaces . Some had lots of staff, some utilized student tech help, some went high end, some built their own desks but all offered some ideas in planning learning spaces (hope their presentation will be online soon!)
• Alternative Reality Games (ARGS) on Campus was presented by UNC-CH folks (including librarians) about their spring ShBANGE who's goal was toe help undergrads learn to communicate better in relationships while playing a game with lots of clues and puzzles. Read more about it here.
• I really enjoyed listening and learning from the last presenter Tim Jones from NCSU(sorry but yea many ITS people can be dry when presenting :) Where U At? Location Based Services for Higher Education. Based on Fouraquare and Gowalla, they created their own location based mobile app to personalize the campus tours (get facts and history via phone), collect and share student geo-tagged info (involved the students, then they will get interested), and offer incentives for attendance at events (let students know there is an event nearby). Even their chancellor got involved!
  

Library Assessment Conference

Library Assessment Conference, October 24-27, 2010, Baltimore, MD

Mike Crumpton & I attended this conference for the 2^nd time. Once again, it was very valuable in providing both philosophical overviews and practical advice for assessment projects. Rather than give a blow by blow account of the sessions I attended I’ll just give some highlights. The overall theme was that we need to emphasize our value. There weren’t a whole lot of solutions but that is the big question. I encourage folks to check out the presentations on the conference web site: http://libraryassessment.org/

The Proceedings will be published as well. And be thinking about the 2012 conference in September in Charlottesville, VA – nice and close!

• We’ve gone through 7 stages of assessment from chaos to new metrics. We now focus on process rather than product.
• We need to organize date by outcome
• Some think library space is the future major purpose of libraries. We need to assess how space affects learning and creating new knowledge. Also need to take virtual space into consideration.
• Assessment needs to be about value not quality. (does good rather than is good). Customer drives values.
• We need to assess how we help achieve institutional goals

MAC/Medical Libn Assn Meeting - Lea's report

The 2010 meeting of the Mid-Atlantic chapter of the Medical Library Assn was an accessible, fun way to meet with other health science librarians and catch up on news. Here are some of the more interesting items...

-- Nifty ideas that I'd like to kick upstairs (for administrative attention) --

1. Annual Research Fair

Event started by the Tompkins-McCaw Library for the Health Sciences, Virginia Commonwealth University. They brought in the Office of Research Services, Creative Services, statisticians, and every other campus unit providing help somewhere along the research or publishing path. Each dept staffed a table, there were even vendor-sponsored booths.

2. Resources for Calculating Return on Investment/CBA (poster) - The report and guide include methods for evaluating “intangibles” and “social return on investment.”

3. What are the Effects that Two Author-fee Subsidy Programs Have on Researchers' Work Practices and Publishing Behaviors? -- UNC – CH provides $1,000/year to individual authors to reduce the impact of author fees.

4. Mapping patron needs and retooling staff duties

Information Sherpa: Assisting and Problem Solving along the Researcher's Path - Health Sciences Library, University of Colorado, Anschutz Medical Campus, Aurora, CO

Evaluated menu of reference and related services from the ground up – brainstormed to come up with a list of steps/needs along the “typical research path” for students and faculty. Used part of a vacant position to fill a large gap in services.

--Nifty ideas for me --

1. Mobile medical apps and mobile-friendly resources…

George Washington University developed a nice mobile-friendly site

* User surveys, content, library instruction/launch info reported in the poster Going Mobile: launching a mobile website and other mobile resources (pdf).
* LibGuide on mobile resources

The nice librarian staffing the poster confirmed the general, pain in the tush process for providing medical mobile resources to your patrons

* Mobile versions of vendor sites such as MD consult are easiest, since you just integrate them into your usual IP authentication system
* Mobile app download management can be time consuming, since each download (each patron) requires a serial number. The librarian must give a different serial number to each patron and keep a list (since the patron is likely to forget his/her number). She used to do this by sending a quick email to the students’ school email address (if they contacted her through a yahoo or gmail account, she would look up student info in their school directory). She has since delegated the provision and maintenance of serial numbers to a paraprofessional. VERY expensive, though DynaMed at least provides an unlimited number of downloads to academic institutions.

2. iPads are being adopted in health science and medical libraries. Deniz Ender (Rex Hospital Library and Information Research Center, Raleigh, NC) reported on the early stage of her grant funded project Using iPads in a Hospital Environment to Promote Clinical Applications. Ms. Ender compiled a list of the most popular free & paid medical mobile apps. She’ll make the iPads available to her users in November starting with an Open House.

Other librarians reported Open Houses or Sand box sessions in promoting new tech toys including iPads.


3. Updates from the NLM (National Library of Medicine) and the NN/LM SeA (National Network of Libraries of Medicine, Southeast Atlantic)

* PubMed Images database to launch in late October. Search for images in PubMed Central articles (will search the full text of image captions). PubMed abstract view will include image thumbnails.

* 1/4th of the abstracts added to PubMed are structured. Soon these will be searchable by section, eg “Methods.”

* The OLDMedline project (loading records from print indexes Cumulated Index Medicus 1960-65, Current List of Medical Literature 1947-59). Indexing records will go back to 1946, but budget issues have forced this project to come to a halt for the time being.

* Reminder that PubMed for handhelds is a research project (Lister Hill); it is NOT a production level system.

* Mobile Medlineplus http://m.medlineplus.gov/ - Reliable consumer health info with “universal” handheld device compatibility

* AIDSinfo mobile: http://m.aidsinfo.nih.gov

* TOXNET, including Hazardous Substances Data bank, Household Products database and more have additional content and linking


4. Upcoming workshops were mentioned w/out info on locations, dates, or links for calendar/registration pages

*2 day workshops from the NLM - Sequences, genomes, proteins, NCBI blast, human variation & disease (there “will be webinars” for these)
* Consumer Health – Dec workshop somewhere in the NNLM SeA region
* Nursing on the Net - Dec workshop somewhere in the NNLM SeA region
* Will duct tape cure my warts? – CAM workshop in Dec somewhere in the NNLM SeA region
* Health Literacy - Workshop somewhere in the NNLM SeA region, more details “available soon”
* Appraising the Evidence - Workshop somewhere in the NNLM SeA region, more details “available soon”
* PubMed for handhelds – Jan workshop somewhere in the NNLM SeA region
* E-science bootcamp – Summer 2011 workshop somewhere in the NNLM SeA region

Find Webinars!

A blog post on the ALA learning round table offers some great resources for keeping current with online webinars:

• Google Reader Bundle
if you use google reader for blog reading, here is an easy way to add a bundle of RSS feeds to your reader for library webinars.


• Brad Ward’s Library Webinars blog
a blog of various training opportunities for librarians.


• Stephanie Zimmerman’s Library-Related Training Opportunities Google Calendar
calendar of training opportunities.