40 posts tagged “librarianship”

The issue of privacy in academia has been on my mind recently. Our systems analyst was recently making the rounds checking our computers, and according to him, it was to "tighten certain controls" so they (the IT people and the administration) could monitor my computer use better. Our analyst can't do much about it. He gets his marching orders and has to make things work. I knew that my computer at work was monitored, but apparently they want to snoop around even more. Then I log into Facebook this morning and get their prompt to review my privacy settings only to discover that Facebook may have made things worse; in other words, at least some of the new settings for privacy are worse than what they had before. All this makes me think because as an academic librarian one of the things I try to do is educate my students about protecting their privacy online.

These are a few stories and documents that have recently caught my eye on the topic:

• Michele M. Reid, writing for C&RL News, provides "The USA PATRIOT Act and Academic Libraries: An Overview." This is worth reading, and as certain provisions of the act face sunset expiration, contact your legislators to make sure those provisions do not get renewed. A hat tip to Resource Shelf.
  
• Mary Minow, of the Library Law Blog, asks about "Library staff privacy and staff pictures on library websites." I left a couple of comments on that post. It has made me think in light of our practices in our library here. Her question of where do we draw the line in terms of our privacy and the information and images of ours that get put on library websites for the sake of "being welcoming" is a valid one.
  
• The Center for Democracy and Technology has put forth a "Take Back Your Privacy" Campaign. I need to take a closer look at this. It looks like a very good resource. 
• Here is a brief account, with text of the complaint, on the lawsuit the Electronic Frontier Foundation has filed against some federal agencies regarding their use of social networking software for investigations of individuals. Or, as the title of  Mashable's post says, "Is the CIA Following You On Twitter?" 
• From CSO Online, "6 Ways We Gave Up Our Privacy." This is worth reading and food for thought. A hat tip to LIS News where a couple of the commenters, while not substantial, do raise the question of how much librarians should be willing to give up in terms of their privacy to be employed. If you have looked at recent library job applications, the assumption that the applicant is knowledgeable of things like social software means they likely have to have an account in something like Facebook. It is not really an option not to do it if you want a job in this profession at least. 
• Mary Minow asks another interesting question for us in libraries: "Can library management legally access employee's Facebook and MySpace pages?" She is looking at a case in New Jersey that raises some questions for the rest of us. As I mentioned earlier, it is a given that my bosses monitor my online activity, but does it follow they have a right to try to access my restricted pages, as in the pages I have protected by passwords and intended to be private?
  
• Rory Litwin, of Library Juice, looked at "Privacy Smoke and Mirrors" a while back. He also considers the illusion of privacy Facebook wants to portray to its users. 
• It is fairly well known that those applications found on Facebook for games, quizzes, so on are a serious privacy leak. The New York Times featured a story on "What Facebook Quizzes Know About You." It includes a link to an ACLU quiz to help you become aware of what you lose when you use those third party applications. 
• And in case you need more evidence, a study recently revealed that "online social networks leak personal information to tracking sites." It may sound alarmist, but it is true, and if you use social networks, you should be concerned. Read the press release, then you can see the full paper. A hat tip to Resource Shelf. 
• Barbara Jones, in a paper for IFLA, gives an account of the PATRIOT Act and the Connecticut Four. Text of the paper here (PDF). A hat tip to Resource Shelf. 

Once again, I have to sit though another webinar that my library director made me watch. I will say right away that I hope this was some kind of free event because if we (read the library) paid for it, we should be demanding our money back. The title of the webinar in question was "Cultivating Loyal Customers by Delivering Meaningful and Memorable Service." It's one of those seminars that TLA (Texas Library Association) provides for librarian continuing education. The featured speaker was " Steve Wishnack [who] is the founder and President of Think & Do, providing consultation, seminars and workshops that help organizations cultivate customer relationships" (his website:  www.thinkanddo.us). According to the TLA website, he has both BA and MS degrees in Education from Brooklyn College, Brooklyn, NY. So that is what education majors who don't go into schools to teach do: they become consultants, and I am not saying that in a good way.

A side note: I just looked up the information online. I am guessing we did pay for it, or the library director paid. Either way, I want the 45 bucks or so back.

Getting back on track, this was basically an hour and half or so of condescending, patronizing platitudes about how to provide good customer service. And when Wal-Mart is used as the example of good customer service, you have to know this is just not right. One of my colleagues noted that the speaker's presentation had a 2005 copyright date, an indication the presentation had not been updated since that time, so we are not even getting any new information. Which once again leads me to say: tell me something I do not know.

What follows are some notes from the presentation with my comments in parenthesis:

• Customer service has to be meaninful, that is, it satisfies a customer need. Customer service is also memorable, which means that it leaves a lasting impression.
  
• (Clearly the presenter sees the library as a business, which puts him on par with other library gurus who go for the library as business concept). The library is a place that conducts library business (yes, he actually said that), and customers are the people the library does business with (yes, he also said that). Libraries are not for profit, but they are in a service business.
  
• There are two types of customers. External customers are the ones outside the library staff (i.e. the patrons, so on). Internal customers are the ones who work at the library (I think this is a little overreaching with the customer paradigm).
  
• Some issues:
  

• Competition: Things like the Internet and Google.
  

• Market share.
  

• ROI, the return on investment. This is what the community, or the university in our case, wants to know.
  

• Assets: this includes the items in the library, such as the books, computers, the building, so on (however, there was no mention of the people. The librarians could be considered assets in the measure that they are information specialists. In fact, I just saw in some article I can't recall now a discussion of this very idea, so the idea of the librarians as being an asset to their campus was pretty fresh in my mind. It was not something this presenter even considered).
  

• The presenter gave Stephen Covey's The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People as a reference. That did not exactly inspire much confidence in the presenter.
  
• The ABCs of customer relationships:
  
• Attitude: this comes from inside.
  
• Behaviors: This is how you express your attitude. (And I have to make a pause here because, as my colleague pointed out, we may be cynical for instance, but we are careful not to show it to the patrons. It's called being a professional, which apparently the presenter nor my boss keep in mind. Because we are professionals there are certain attitudes or views that we do not show or express to the patrons even when they justly deserve it. Again, it is called being a professional, something that was lacking in this cookie cutter presentation).
  
• Connections: How we interact with others.
  
• The value of loyal customers:
  
• They use the library more.
  
• They are easier to serve.
  
• Free library advertising.
  
• (However, just because they are loyal, it does not follow they are good customers. Maybe the presenter needs to read this column by Shaun Rein on "Get Rid of Jackass Clients." Rein also mentions the work of Bob Sutton, who is a favorite of mine and whom I respect a lot more).
  
• When a customer feels mistreated, only 5% will tell you. 95% will not return (see my note above. Out of that 95%, I bet a good number of them we'd be happy if they never return). 80% will bad mouth you (sure, I would rather they not do that, but it is a fact of life you cannot please everyone. You put your best foot forward, you do your best to provide for their service or needs, but you are not their personal lackey or slave).
  
• A cute acronym (this presentation had a few of those): MAGIC.
  
• Making A Good Impression Counts.
  
• Another cute acronym: RATER
• Reliability: dependability, accuracy, consistency.
• Assurance: knowledge, trust, competence, confidence.
• Tangibles: physical appearance of our people and our workplace.
  
• Empathy: caring and attentiveness.
  
• Responsiveness: willingness to help promptly.
  
• The most deadly attitude to customer service is indifference (I can agree with that. You do need a degree of passion and caring to work with people).
  
• (The director made it a point to send a memo after the presentation. She writes: "We all know how easy it is to slip into cynicism and negativity. Certainly, difficult situations will NEVER improve if they start with negative attitudes, but courtesy and a positive attitude CAN improve interactions. The speaker did stress that 'it takes PRACTICE to make good customer service permanent" ).
  
• (Again, like the presenter, the director needs to do some further reading. I hate to say this but there are moments that no matter how my attitude is, the customer comes with a bad attitude and no amount of good attitude on your part is going to fix things. Again, this was not addressed at all in the presentation nor acknowledged by the director).
  
• Quote from the presentation: "Our customers will be enthusiastic about us if we are enthusiastic about our customers" (again, see my notes above on professionalism. As I saw elsewhere, I don't have to like the patrons to help them and give them good service).
  
• Another quote: "Fix the problem, not the blame" (the director likes this one. I will just not go there).
  

This is another note on webinars that my boss makes me attend. For some reason, our boss is on a roll in terms of making us watch webinars related to academic libraries. Actually, yesterday she mentioned that one of the reasons was that, since some of the webinars were free, that she was trying to get some training for us given the fact that the budget overall is tight. However, I tend to think that there is such a thing as being too cheap. No, I don't think she herself is cheap. I just think the way the training is done is cheap. This particular one, an ACRL webinar on "Academic Librarianship by Design" was not free, but it certainly felt cheap. It felt cheap because it yet another one of those webinars where I was not hearing anything I had not heard before. This one dealt with ways to integrate library services into a campus's course management system (CMS) like Blackboard. I suppose on the positive side, if something can be salvaged, is that the webinar pretty much reaffirmed a lot of what we are already doing. It confirms the things that our instruction librarian has been fighting for, often with either opposition or right out indifference from the IT folks, to get the library into Blackboard.

• Yes, we do have a library tab on Blackboard that provides links to various services (and boy did we have to fight over that one).
  
• Yes, we do have embedded/blended librarians.
  
• Yes, we are pretty good at using things like Elluminate, virtual reference, online chat, so on. 
• Yes, we are good at creating content and tools that our patrons will need and use.
  

So, once again, tell me something I do not know already. Show me something new, and something that I can actually use with the resources and restrictions I have to face. Yes, it is nice to see what other places are doing, but after a while, I want a little more substance than a basic overview. And I don't want to sound picky or superior, far from it, but basically stuff like this is just too basic. We do that stuff already with what we got. Unless unlimited money appears (unlikely to happen) and major attitude overhaul in IT and the administration happens (even less likely), we are not going to be doing things that some of the more well-heeled places presented are doing.

Am I frustrated? I suppose I am because I could have been getting some good work done in the library, and instead I had to sit for almost two hours listening to stuff that I know already because I am already doing it, or I already read about it someplace else. There is a reason the tagline in my professional blog is "I read a lot of the library literature so you don't have to."

What I am saying is this: there is a time when you have to stop watching what others are doing. It is time to put your money where you mouth is and actually start doing it. Stop worrying about what some other place is doing and concentrate on what it is we are doing. Focus on what it is we do well and measure how well we are doing it. From what I have seen so far, we are doing a lot better than many of those other places I hear about on these webinars. So, how about we focus on our work for a change? Just a thought.
 

There are days when I wonder if my profession as a whole has a death wish. Not only do outsiders rail on and on about how libraries need to be closed, how they will "evolve" into new spaces (that have nothing to do with the mission of an actual library), or how no one really needs them, but librarians and library professionals insist on deprofessionalizing their own profession, taking the library apart piece by piece, turn it into an arcade or entertainment center, and pretty much go for the lowest common denominator. Of course, if you mention any of this, and you put your name on it as I am doing now, you risk the ire of your professional brethren who will label you as someone who "does not get it." I am not quite sure what to make of the whole mess. Sure, I have my opinions, but I just don't feel like writing a whole post about it.

I have seen a good number of items that have given me food for thought, so here they go in my notes. Maybe some writing will come out of it, maybe not. But I cannot help but wonder why do my professional brethren insist of self-destruction?

• Two members of ACRL debate about the future of academic libraries, and from the looks of it, take a mild common ground where they toss the ball and say, "who knows what will happen." Not exactly something to inspire confidence. The event is reported by Inside Higher Ed in "Bookless Libraries?" 
• Campus Technology looks at the 21st century library as "A Space to Collaborate." Mostly highlights of a new very elegant digital library in Calgary and a few other places. In other words, an example of what gets done when you have a lot of funding to do it and people who think that electronic will overtake everything else. 
• Here is the Effing Librarian on "The Future of the Library Cafe." He has a way of using jokes and satire to make serious points that I like because often makes issues very accessible to others. This is definitely worth a look. He also has a new advocacy poster to help keep libraries open.
  
• Then again, we need reassurance that "librarians still have vital role in the Web 2.0 era." Good to know that librarians are not headed for the scrap heap and have to start taking Geritol just yet. The article found via Resource Shelf.
  
• And via Inside Higher Ed, here we have another college administrator speaking on "Libraries of the Future" where "the university library of the future will be sparsely staffed, highly decentralized, and have a physical plant consisting of little more than special collections and study areas." Funny how administrators who would never dream of doing our front line work with students are the first ones who want to outsource our librarians and library resources.
  
• Stephen Abrams points to an article in the journal New Review of Academic Librarianship. I have to check to see if we carry the journal, then see if I get around to read it. For now, I am using this note to remind myself. Apparently the issue Abrams mentions deals with the ever present topic of the future of the academic library. 
• And speaking of the short-sighted who want to close libraries, there are these folks in Omaha. Found via LISNews, where they have some comments.
  
• And in the quest to make unlibraries (to borrow Effing Librarian's term), the Annoyed Librarian tells us that "Something's Gotta Give." AL also tells us that "the future is now" in the context of school libraries getting rid of book collections for e-books or other online access rental.
  
• Jessamyn West has some thoughts on the Cushing Academy (aka as the school library that got rid of its book collection). A lot of comments over there. Another response on the topic at PhiloBiblos blog.
  

There are other things out there in the librarian sector of the blogosphere, but I can only take so much at one time. I may keep adding more as I get back in the mood.
 

I am posting this here because it seems Blogger is having another one of its "I am not working" days. I need to seriously consider moving my main blog someplace else. Unfortunately, here is not really an option since they restrict comments to registered users, something I dislike. Anyhow, here is the post.

Roy Tennant wrote a list of "The Top Ten Things Library Administrators Should Know About Technology." What caught my eye on this were the items dealing more with people. Maybe it is because I am not a "techie" librarian like a lot of the celebrity libloggers are. Or maybe because I tend to think that your technology is only as good as the people you have running it. The idea of good people managing your library's technology has been on my mind lately, and if I was passing this on to my boss, I would especially highlight the following items from the list:

• "Maximize the effectiveness of your most costly technology investment -- your people." Mr. Tennant makes a good point about making sure you have good resources for your people. Don't bog them down with cheap or less than the best equipment. But I will also say to turn that equation around. Don't go around skimping on good people either. You need to hire good people to manage your technology. Just like library administrators have a specific skill set, which may or not include technological prowess, tech people also have a unique skill set, and it is one not all librarians or library staff have or desire to have (and I say this in terms of temperament, not unwillingness to learn). If you know you are going to need a good systems analyst or similar, hire one. Don't try to skimp by tossing the responsibility to another overworked professional in your library who may not have the full range of skills or the temperament to do it. And don't say "they can learn it" when you define "learning it" as just hand them a folder and hop to it. That's not right.
  
• "A major part of good technology implementation is good project management." Indeed. Again, this goes to the idea that everyone has different skills. It also goes back to the idea that you need good planning, and that you need to be proactive, not reactive. In other words, plan ahead and don't wait for the crisis to happen.
  
• "The single biggest threat to any technology project is political in nature." I think what Mr. Tennant wrote here pretty much speaks for itself. To administrators, he asks: "Are you willing to throw your political support behind it? Are you willing to invest the resources required to make it a success? Will you marshall the entire organization to support, promote, and use this new site or service? If not, simply don't bother." As I always say, put your money where your mouth is, otherwise, shut up. 

Anyhow, my quick two cents. I may add to this later, or probably just add it along to another post with a few other things about library managers.

The whole fiasco with Elsevier and their fake journals (and unlike the more polite people, I have no problem calling a spade a spade, and these were basically fake journals sponsored by a big pharmaceutical passing themselves off as serious journals) has been discussed in various librarian blogs. This is why I am just scraping some of my thoughts here and leaving it out of the main blog.

Here are some links for those who may be interested:

• Barbara Fister, writing for ACRLog, on "This Journal Brought to You By. . ." 
• Jessamyn West notes "in case you needed another reason to raise an eyebrow at Elsevier" at librarian.net. 
• And by the way, the Annoyed Librarian had a very nice reply to this whole mess as well. You do have to grant some of AL's points: in this case, Elsevier basically pulled a fast one.
  

The one thing I thought about when I read about the issue is that this just makes our work teaching information literacy that much more harder. As information literacy or instruction librarians, we spent a lot of time teaching our students how to evaluate resources. We spend even more time telling them to rely on "peer reviewed" publications. And now we get that we can't even trust the "peer reviewing" since it is not so much scholars doing it as some big pharma corporation. Let's consider the ethics of the matter, which is about the only thing we can really consider. I mean, we can be angry at Elsevier, but in the end, Elsevier is like any other big corporation, and they did the move that would make them money, ethics be damned. But the larger problem does go back to corporations like Elsevier who take research (often done with federal money, i.e. paid by your taxes) and repackages it and sells it to the libraries. Until those doing the research actually take some control and come up with some better ways to disseminate their information in an ethical way, the corporations will keep doing this, and we as librarians will just have to be that much more wary of information sources. And to be honest, why the heck the federal government (in the U.S. at least) not make it a requirement to make any federally funded research be published for free (put it in PubMed or something like that), since we paid the tab, is simply beyond me.It can be done; there is just a serious lack of spine to do it, but then again, that is politics for you. And let's not even start on why the U.S. government often outsources their information to vendors (can you say Lexis, for example?).

But it is also going to take the scholars to finally get a clue as well. Until academia decides to have the intestinal fortitude to come up with other ways to evaluate for tenure besides how many articles you get in an Elsevier journal (or other big corporate-owned journal), and until scholars basically stop serving on those editorial boards, and instead help create better models of distribution where the information is not held by some conglomerate more interested in the bottom line than some ethics, things will not change. Now, I am not an expert by any stretch; others from advocates for open access to repository librarians to those librarian bloggers with bigger reputations have been saying it. I am just a librarian with a thought or two and a dislike for the way things are currently done. And at the end of the day, I am the librarian in the front lines who has to teach the students how to evaluate sources, and now I have to start making another distinction: that is a real scholarly journal, and that other one is paid for by Merck (or insert your big pharma company here). This publisher seems to have some integrity, and this other one is pretty much open to the highest bidder. Because we often make a big fuss when a student plagiarizes or tries to pass other's work as their own. But when a company like Elsevier basically commits an act of academic dishonesty (or just plain dishonesty), they don't exactly get raked over the coals as they deserve. Then again, we should know better as information professionals to question the sources of information. And we should be noting and be aware that a lot of that information we depend on in academia is coming from a corporate source, the type of source not necessarily interested in things like ethics or integrity. We have to remember that their interest is the bottom line and the investors. If it so happens they provide information products academia can use so much the better. But make no mistake, they are not doing it out of the goodness of their hearts. This means we should be on our guard and constantly asking questions and demanding accountability. 

And those are my two cents, for what they may be worth.
  

The Taiga and the Darien statements have been making the rounds of the librarian bloggers. I did read them, and to be honest, I had some serious mixed feelings about them. I did not quite feel all warm and fuzzy like a lot of my more prominent colleagues seem to be feeling. Anyhow, while I would like to write some kind of response, as is often the case, I just don't have the time now. So I am making some notes and jotting down some relevant links for my reference, and just in case I do manage to get down to writing something.

• Walt Crawford, of Walt at Random, urges us to go look at the Taiga material. He found them a bit extreme. He himself does not comment, but refers us to a response by John Dupuis, from Confessions of a Science Librarian. Still, this is just the sort of thing Walt could develop for C&I.
  
• Meredith Farkas, of Information Wants to Be Free, says she has been provoked by the Taiga Forum.
  
• Jessamyn West, of librarian.net, urged her readers to discuss and comment the Darien material.
  
• The Effing Librarian took a stab at the Darien statements too.
  
• The Annoyed Librarian had a reply for both the Taiga items and the Darien stuff. I have to admit there were a couple of things here that resonated with me. This is part of the reason I have some mixed feelings about the whole thing.
  
• Here is Laura Crossett, of lis.dom, discussing "On First Looking into the Darien Statements."
  
• Barbara Fister, at ACRLog, gives us "More Provocative (if less provoking) Statements" looking at the Darien materials.
  

OK, these are the things that have come across my feed reader. I am sure in time others may pick up on this; whether they make it to my feeds or not is a different issue since I did prune my feeds a while back. However, given the librarian bloggers echo factor, I am sure anything important will simply get linked by one of the remaining bloggers in my feeds.

Apparently the topic of tenure for academic librarians has been making the rounds in the librarian blogs. I am in the camp of those who do not like the idea of tenure for academic librarians (or any other hybrid idea), and I have my reasons for that, which I would prefer to outline at some later time. Part of it, to give an indication, is that I think it interferes with the extensive work we already have to do as librarians. That one of my colleagues is floating this idea around is not exactly something that pleases me, but let's keep that out of this blog. Anyhow, I have seen a few things that caught my eye related to the topic, so I am making some notes. I may or not develop this into a more substantial post or not.

• While this one is not directly about tenure, it did catch my eye. In the long term, when you think about it, asking for tenure does involve some salesmanship on the part of academic librarians, so maybe the post is relevant. Anyhow, here is Steven Bell (who is tenured and does believe in tenure for librarians) on "Academic Librarians are not Salespeople--But They Should Be."
• The Annoyed Librarian had a series of posts on this, mostly replying to others. If you go to her (I am assuming it is a "her").
  
• "Who gets faculty status?"
• "Academic Librarians: 'Please Love Us.'" Which addresses a bit on the tenure, but also the seemingly constant insecurity a lot of academic librarians seem to have because the academic faculty seem to either not think of them much or just plain disregard them. 
• More on academic librarians taking themselves too seriously in "Thanks for your support." 

Steven Bell had an interesting post over at the DBL Blog asking "Does UX Still Matter in Tough Economic Times." He looks at Starbucks as an example. I have to wonder about that example because, if one looks at the company, at the end of the day Starbucks is simply the case of a company that got away from their user experience. They tried to be a lot of different things to different people, and they lost their way. That, at least based on studies and tests, their coffee gets beaten by the likes of McDonald's and Dunkin Donuts certainly sends the wrong message. Starbucks, as I understand it, grew on the basis of providing a unique exclusive coffee experience where baristas would actually make your luxurious coffee right then and there. Once the company started doing things like using a push button machine instead of a more traditional espresso machine, it was down hill from there. I mean, the kid at Mickey D's can push a button just as well as the guy at Starbucks. I mean, there is a reason why no Starbucks barista has ever won at the barista world competitions, as this story from the NYT points out.Then came the breakfast sandwiches to compete with Dunkin Donuts, sandwiches which were pretty much panned and then Starbucks got rid of them to stem the bleeding. The point is not to slam Starbucks. The point is that their woes, while partially due to the economy, are mostly due because they got away from their core user experience. Once their cheaper competition was able to offer something comparable, Starbucks lost what made them unique. Why would I pay $4-$6 for a decent cup of coffee when I can get it for less at the Dunkin Donuts or Mickey D's? In the interest of disclosure, I will say that I don't get my coffee at either Starbucks or the fast food joints. I prefer to make my own at home. If I buy coffee to drink then and there, I prefer to go to some local place where I know an actual barista will put some work on making a special drink.

The point eventually is to ask if UX (user experience, for those who may wonder) is relevant to libraries. I would say the answer is yes, and I would say we can very easily fall victim to the mistakes Starbucks has made that they are now paying for dearly. And given the tight economy, and the fact that funding for libraries is shrinking at abysmal rates at a time when we need libraries the most, a good service experience will probably make some difference. Notice I say some difference. You can have the greatest service experience, but if you still lack materials and resources inside your pretty building with the very helpful staff, you will end up on the losing end. Yes, you have to provide a good experience, but you also need to have a good product. For libraries, that is pretty much the dual need: good service and items people want. We can leave the "want or need" debate for another time. The reason I say that is because news are often filled with the feel-good stories about libraries providing free books, A/V, computers, etc. for their patrons, like this story out of the Boston Globe or this one from MSNBC (via Libraries and Life). That is all nice and dandy but you have to have the products (good books in good condition, A/V that people actually want to check out and watch, so on. This could be a separate rant, but I will restrain myself). So, is UX relevant? Yes, but being nice alone is not going to do it. Much like Starbucks now trying to sell instant coffee. Instant? Really? Maybe they need to get back to basics and concentrate on what they once did well: creating a good experience around a good cup of coffee. And maybe some libraries need to get back to basics as well instead of worrying over the frills. Just a thought.