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ACRL NMDG: MW 2011 program

ACRL New Members Discussion Group Program: Personal Branding for New Librarians

Date: Saturday January 8
Time: 10:30 AM – 12 PM
Location: HIL-Aqua 304

Join us for the exciting, informal, and lively panel discussion about personal branding and digital identity for new librarians at ALA 2011 Midwinter at San Diego!

Many new and budding librarians make personal branding attempts online by setting up and maintaining a professional blog and/or using other social media tools such as Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, etc. for networking and to learn more about librarianship. However, not many librarians succeed in creating their distinct digital identities, continuing the efforts at personal branding, and establishing their own personal brands online. What is and should be the purpose of personal branding? What are some of the benefits and pitfalls of engaging in personal branding activities? How can you successfully establish and manage your digital identity and personal brand online? How do you draw a line between your public identity and your privacy? How do you find time to continuously develop your personal brand along with your professional growth?

The four panelists who have been actively managing their personal brands will discuss their thoughts on personal branding and offer strategies, tips, and advice for new librarians. At the program, helpful guides and further information for new and budding librarians to start their own personal brands will also be provided.

Panel Moderator:
- Bohyun Kim, Digital Access Librarian, Florida International University (Twitter: @bohyunkim, Blog: Library Hat)

Panelists (in alphabetical order):

- Brett Bonfield, Director, Collingswood Public Library (Co-founder and blogger at In the Library with the Lead Pipe)

- Kiyomi Deards, Subject Librarian for Biological Sciences, Chemistry, Biochemistry and the Cedar Point Biological Station, University of Nebraska Lincoln
(Twitter: @KiyomiD, Blog: The Library Adventures of Kiyomi)

- Lisa Carlucci Thomas, Digital Services Librarian, Southern Connecticut State University
(Twitter: @lisacarlucci, Columnist at the Journal of Web Librarianship)

- Andromeda Yelton, Recent Library Science Graduate/Budding Librarian
(Twitter: @thatAndromeda, Blog: Andromeda Yelton)

What is an emerging technologies librarian?

Post on cjc-l this morning asks what is an emerging technologies position and how it is different from a systems librarian. My rambly, probably not especially useful reply is below. I’m interested in what you think these terms describe and how one is not the other (they are quite distinct in my opinion).

Well, to answer your question from my perspective, what systems librarians do is tech-oriented, but not remotely emergent.

It might help to first understand where an emerging technology is situated in the scope of things. When I look at the SJSU specialization description provided it caused me to headscratch a bit as none of what’s listed there is especially emerging technologies related, in my opinion, and seems to be largely focused on digital libraries.

I might recommend a review of the materials from last year’s LITA Emerging Technologies IG program: What is your library doing about emerging technologies? Slides and the 206 associated tweets may prove useful. The slides don’t contain the speakers’ content but do contain really pertinent questions to ask oneself.

In particular, slide 6 relates to what I’d suggest focusing on understanding: the difference between bleeding edge technology (experimentation, prototypes), emerging technology (feasible, uncertainty), and mature technology (mass market). I recall the panelists talking about the lack of understanding of differences in these areas and how critical it was to understand that libraries have a tendency to take mature technologies that are simply new-to-libraries and pretend as though they are emergent. It would stand to reason that an institution hiring specifically for someone to watch these trends and strike when the time is right would expect the candidate to be clear about the differences (e.g., Facebook and Twitter are not remotely emerging) and to be poised to explain the impact, benefit, risk, and projected return on investment to library stakeholders in a variety of contexts.

Other conversations about emerging technology in libraries focus a lot on mobile…by which I mean the development of mobile architecture, products, and services as opposed to the assertion that “mobile is a trend we should jump on”.

Ultimately, there’s no clear cut answer here, but perhaps these resources will add to the conversation.

how do you keep track of tacit knowledge and collaborative stuff?

I’m part of a two-librarian team tasked with research solutions for what we’re calling a knowledge bank or internal repository.

What kind of solutions do you implement at your library for this? We’re currently using a shared network drive but it has many problems and doesn’t meet our needs. Shared files are constantly deleted or misplaced (inadvertently) by users. The network isn’t accessible from off-campus. People can’t really share narrative, short of creating a word document and putting some thoughts in it and hoping people intuit from the file name why it might be useful.

Tools already under consideration (or nixed from our list): Drupal, WordPress, various wiki products, NING, CONTENTdm. What am I missing?

Full disclosure: I just want it to be Drupal, but due diligence means I gotta consider some alternatives. (:

Feeds

FYI I finally got around to rerouting my feed through Feedburner. Update as needed. Thanks!

Tying loose knots

Since I posted about my quest for moon boots the other day I’ve been thinking and rethinking some of my views. I’ve also been using our current housebound-due-to-snow status to catch up on a lot of reading. I suspect I’m about to go on a really long ramble.

I’ve talked in the past about the debate amongst my colleagues at PCC: some of us want to streamline and simplify the home page and others want to put everything conceivably relevant to a student right out there. I have always come down firmly on the side of simplify and streamline for a number of reasons. They’re not original ideas and most revolve around the idea of developing in users a base level of skill and competency that functions in any library system. I also just visually deplore homepages that are crammed full of links and blurbs.

That’s all well and good when you’re operating within a local library context, but what good is it when you’re not talking about the library? Like, when you’re shopping for boots. I realized that I’m asking these sportswear companies to do exactly what I don’t want to do with our website—put stuff front and center so I can find it (or use a reasonably structured schema of some kind). To me library and online retailer are different use environments most of the time, but they probably result in the same expectation from a number of our users.

That’s reminiscent of a conversation over at command-f. I wish I’d been paying attention several weeks ago when it happened, but I’ll just play catch up on my own now. Continue reading…

Roads too few or too many?

We’re having a number of debates discussions amongst our librarians these days. Principally the discussions have taken two avenues: 1) access to electronic information via the library website and 2) federated searching via the library website. Basically it’s all about our website and how we envision it being used.

Some librarians advocate for the most simplified process possible. Students don’t need to know that articles come from databases and that peer review is an editorial process. Proponents of this argument suggest that we add links to the homepage that will take the user to the expected content with as few decisions (clicks) as possible along the way. Want a peer reviewed article? Follow the peer reviewed article link, in which the requisite checkboxes will have already been checked on your behalf.

A good bit of support for the first viewpoint (shortcutting) says that we see and interact with so few students in the library (distance learning, y0), via email, or on the telephone that we have to assume a large percentage of the unseen are not finding what they are looking for. And if they’re finding it, they’re likely doing so with more frustration than necessary. For this reason it has also been suggested that we invest in some kind of federated searching tool.

For me, personally, I have a difficult time wearing the librarian hat and the design hat at the same time. I’ve been accused of striving for the ideal (and perhaps missing the reality) in these discussions—and I’m generally okeh with that.

My librarian objection is that is our job to teach these skills and I fear our students will go out into a world full of libraries that might not have a “Peer Reviewed Articles” link. If we’ve taught them to think categorically about research they will know that they learned that articles are found in databases and try to start there. I don’t want to find that we’ve handicapped our students by “dumbing things down.” True, not all of our students (by far) have any plan for further formal education. I still expect them to become competant consumers and producers of information. This also doesn’t mean that I don’t grok the other argument, I’ve just chosen to hope for the best, I guess.

If our students don’t have these skills let’s work harder to get the education to them, not make it easier to check-out on the process. Distance learning students need librarians and IL instruction—hell, everyone needs this stuff if you ask me—and I’m just going to have to stalk those students who are roaming the campus but never coming in the library. Don’t want to learn controlled vocabulary in the library? Fine, I’ll bring it to you in the cafeteria, the gym, and this here screencast tutorial.

My design stance on this is that providing all of these links is just adding clutter to the homepage. Good design needs room to breathe and all of that jazz. It’s a pretty short argument, but an important one. We just spent the better part of year a completely scrapping our woefully inadequate website and building a new one. The last thing I want is to see it overrun with rampant linking. That’s what all that beautiful nav is about.

A colleague’s Frostian reflection today was that she wished our students didn’t have to choose between two roads (on our website) in order to search for information. I think this is an interesting notion. Where she sees too many roads, I think I see too few. I see the need to simplify access for some students but not at the expense of options and precision.

How do you navigate these discussions in your library? Where is the happy medium? Do we need to go to the completely customizable portal model? Click here if you want your website eerily simplified, click here if you’d like frustration with a side of controlled vocabulary…

Brainfire

I love the way I feel after a conference, like I have all of this brainfire motivating me and synapses pinging all over the place. This is a sharp contrast to how I feel at the end of the quarter, which is a lot more accurately described as brainfried. The challenge is to keep all of this fire going through the summer and into fall quarter. Hopefully having another conference in August will keep things rolling along.

I think it’s amazing that just a few weeks ago I was as skeptical of Twitter as many folks out there and now I think I’m a solid convert. Without Twitter I’d have spent much of ALA alone and hungry. I know there has to be some application for community college libraries– I just haven’t figured out what it is yet. I’ve heard my boss might have caught some serious brainfire at ALA as well, so I am looking forward to connecting with her and seeing what our collective imaginations can come up with.

As with every national conference I attend I am always struck by the numbers of librarians out there stagnating away in libraries with administrators who are afraid to do something different than they’ve always done. I feel like I need to keep pinching myself because I certainly don’t suffer under any stale conditions. How awesome to have a boss who wants you to dream big and figure out ways to apply those dreams in practical, user-centered ways. I swear I’m not sucking up, just reflecting.

If, like me, you are blessed with an environment in which you can dream big, I recommend a column in the current RUSQ, written by Michale Stephens. Taming technolust: Ten steps for planning in a 2.0 world offers concrete steps to take on your way to embracing the twopointopian mishegas while ensuring that you don’t go overboard with “flashy, sexy technology” that does nothing to further your end goals.

Finally, a use for Twitter

I had forgotten to mention this, but I was really impressed by something that happened the other day. elliehearts sent out a tweet looking for screencap software recommendations. I recommended Snagit, in part because Techsmith had been giving out free licenses for an outdated version.

Of course as soon as I tweet my recommendation I realize that Techsmith isn’t actually doing that free license offer anymore. (It was a pretty old deal, who can blame them?) So I retweet elliehearts to tell her that it is no mo. She sends me back an @msg explaining why she’s hunting for screencap software anyway. We agree it’s a bummer on the Snagit issue.

About 2 hours later we both get an @msg from betsyweber at Techsmith, making sure we know there’s a free 30 day trial at Snagit.com and and that they have educational pricing packages.

That’s just good Twittering. I realize some people might feel invaded, but that’s what happens when you allow your tweets to go public, which is an opt-in function. I for one think Techsmith just got a big gold star.

Webvisions podcasts

Webvisions podcasts are now up at http://www.webvisionsevent.com/wp/?p=65. And on that note, I’m too lazy to finish those session reviews. Email me if you want my notes. (:

Webvisions: Design is in the details

These guys win my award for best presentation slides of the entire conference, no contest. Sadly I can’t give them the same award for polished verbal presentation, but you can’t winnem all, eh? I wasn’t really sure whether the schtick about forgetting who was presenting which slides was authentic disorganization or a poorly executed attempt at humor. In any case…

Design is in the Details, presented by Bryan Veloso and Dan Rubin focused on how the tiny details are what distinguish a good design from a great design. You can check out the entire presentation at their site, Design is in the Details.The presentation focused on the essentials of good design feel: layout, type, and pixels.
Continue reading…