librarians
cpikas | June 23, 2010Yet again someone said to me in a meeting: librarians don't like web 2.0, they always push back against it. Ok, so this clearly doesn't describe all of the librarians I hang out with online or any of the ones I work with. My guess is that there are two things that really spawned this. The whole don't-use-wikipedia thing and the whole controlled vocabulary rules thing.
I've described well-meant but overly simplistic heuristics some educators used to teach about evaluating web sites. Along with those, there's typically and outright ban on Wikipedia. The truth is that there is a lot of good and…
cpikas | June 21, 2010New book club, sounds really coolâ¦. but most importantly, the author has an MLS from Simmons!
cpikas | May 13, 2010John Dupuis comments about a review of This Book is Overdue, saying that libraries' roles in their institutions are not well understood by others in the institution because of inherent insularity in academe - silos, in effect. Drug Monkey basically sees the library as infrastructure. When I say infrastructure, I mean the SL Star (RIP) and Ruhleder (1996) version:
Embeddedness. Infrastructure is "sunk" into, inside of, other structures, social arrangements and technologies;
Transparency. Infrastructure is transparent to use, in the sense that it does not have to be reinvented each time or…
cpikas | April 6, 2010The following is by Susan Fingerman. She and I were discussing all of the media commentary, so when I heard she actually read it, I asked - no, make that begged - for a review. She was kind enough to supply.
By now many of you have probably heard about This Book is Overdue: How Librarians and Cybrarians Can Save Us All (Harper,2010). The author Marilyn Johnson was inspired by the really interesting obituaries of librarians while writing a prior book on obituaries. Does the irony of this strike anyone else out there? Will we (librarians) and the places we work be more interesting, more…
cpikas | April 6, 2010I expect D to have a more thorough take (she always does!), but there's finally a more widespread outcry against Ebsco. A few of us commented about the exclusive rights to magazines and closing access to Ageline. There was also (rightfully) a kerfuffle about deep linking to HBS articles.
Now we hear from Meredith Farkas about exclusive access to military history journals and a more general piece by Sarah Houghton-Jan.
When I've posted something negative about Ebsco, I've gotten a phone call or e-mail from someone in management there. It's always been to solicit more information on the issue…
cpikas | January 31, 2010There's a lot of discussion about women in STEM and business and the barriers they face (justifiably so!), but what about men in the "female professions"? Do they face the same glass ceiling?
It turns out that there's a classic paper on this that coined the term, "glass escalator." It is somewhat classic, so I briefly looked for more recent work that cited it to see if it had been debunked, but didn't find any studies that did not confirm the results*
Here's the citation:
Williams, C.L. (1992). The Glass Escalator: Hidden Advantages for Men in the "Female" Professions. Social Problems, 39,…
cpikas | January 28, 2010I've only been a college student and grad student at one institution and I have to confess, the library treats students as second class citizens. Particularly technical services. When I mentioned in a sociology class that I am a librarian, a whole bunch of grad students piled on with complaints about interlibrary loan. One guy got only the second page of an article the first time he requested an article, then a completely illegible copy the second time, and then finally a whole copy the third time - after numerous e-mails and about 6 weeks. He kept asking because he didn't want to let them…
cpikas | January 26, 2010Dorothea Salo reports that the scientists she spoke with at Science Online 2010 did not get why she was there or even why librarians would be interested in science communication. For some reason, I didn't get that so much, if at all, this year at this venue. Not that I haven't gotten that in the past. What happens now is a bit more interesting. Someone who doesn't know me either personally or through my blog will start down that direction, and someone else will say something along the lines: Oh, that's Christina, she's ok. This happens at work quite a bit, too. Huh.
This isn't exactly what I…
cpikas | January 16, 2010This is a session by Stephanie Willen Brown and Dorothea Salo .
They started with a bunch of questions. About half the room was librarians, of the others split between affiliated with an institution and not. Where do you go for full text? Google, Google Scholar. Does that work? Sometimes - if not quick if not free to me then move on.
See if your state library has research databases - like NClive, iConn. Contact one of us and we'll put you in contact with someone local.
Come ask your librarian if you need help with anything - even if they don't already provide that service, you help them with…
cpikas | November 18, 2009Let me start by quoting an e-mail Dawn Pointer McCleskey sent to the SLA-DC listserv today (I have her permission). This is in reply to an e-mail from a younger member who mentioned how teachers and nurses have reclaimed their place and have formed very active and well-respected communities without giving up their identities. (I paraphrase - unfortunately, the listserv requires you to login to see the thread)
...the younger members of SLA are definitely here, though I wasn't able to make it to the town hall meeting because I was at ASIS&T that week.
Your point about nurses and teachers…
cpikas | October 19, 2009A couple colleagues (Joe and Sara) wondered if support for the new name is divided between corporate and academic members.
Actually, I've heard from folks from research labs (gov't, private, and corporate) really who really hate the name, too. My take: it's business researchers vs. science researchers. I think there are more fingers in the pot and more competition for competitive intelligence and market research than honest to goodness science and engineering work like you'd have at a pharmaceutical or communications technology company. (these companies also have business researchers, but I'…
cpikas | October 15, 2009My primary professional society, SLA, has been going through this big "align in 2009" business. They've decided we need a new name because CEOs of corporations don't understand what librarians do. So here it is:
Association for Strategic Knowledge Professionalswhich will go by ASKpro
rrrrright. So now people know exactly what we do. Oh I am *so* tired of people thinking that renaming their position or the place in which they work will make people love them. We are the most pathetic crowd.
Some of the comments from my colleagues on listservs, friendfeed, and on twitter are hilarious. I pointed…
cpikas | August 22, 2009Dr. Free-Ride answers the question about what credentials are needed to become a philosopher. It's interesting to note, actually, that in library schools - places where one goes to study to become a librarian - folks might have a PhD in just about anything. From education to computer science to anything starting with information (systems/studies/science/technology/management) to economics or business or psychology.... In fact, most of the courses you need to take to become a librarian are taught by adjuncts who are practitioners.
Funny thing is that ALA's accreditation committee wants to…
cpikas | July 2, 2009In a recent post I mentioned giving real feedback to vendors and people designing systems and services for us. Sue left a comment that the vendor basically acts like she's alone in this - and they say that to me, too, but we soldier on. (oh, and AIAA says we're the only ones who have any problems with their digital library)
Right now, AIP Publishing has a beta of their new journal pages that you can try out and then either e-mail them or fill out a survey with your feedback. Please do, they're some of the good guys.
Similarly, Jonathan Rochkind is impressed by the feedback he got at a recent…
cpikas | June 10, 2009This is the first in a series discussing things that librarians do.
Stephanie
Willen Brown pointed me to this hilarious video from UT Arlington.
Actually, the other librarian's reference interview isn't the model of
perfection, either, but we'll talk about that.
The purpose of a reference interview is for the librarian to understand
the patron's information need - what information will be useful to them
to resolve a problem or learn about something or whatever.
When done right, the patron can go from a sort of general
unease (anomalous state of knowledge[1]) to information in hand/on…
cpikas | June 7, 2009SLA is the Special Libraries Association - it's really my home
professional organization.
I often go to basically 3 conferences in my profession: SLA,
ASIS&T, and Computers In Libraries. You come back
from SLA and you want to buy
something. You come back from ASIS&T and you want to
style="font-style: italic;">study something or
just think about things. You come back from CIL and you want to
style="font-style: italic;">build something. So
they all have purposes. By far, though, SLA is the most
important to what I do for a living.
This year should be really exciting -…
cpikas | June 2, 2009Is that all our vendors hear when they ask us to try out their new
interfaces? A couple of us were kvetching on friendfeed about
this.
Lemme tell you a little story. A little while ago a really
important society publisher in the geosciences re-did all of their web
pages and they were pretty - jewel tones (not what I would have chosen,
but pretty none the less). If you had a doi or were using an
open URL resolver, you would go straight to the article and be
satisfied - I pulled a bunch of articles for people this way and didn't
notice. Then one day, probably 6 months after the site had…
cpikas | May 31, 2009Then I have the job for you. If you are a scientist, but you want to get out of the lab, want to have a little more variety in your life, like helping people and finding information, but still want to use your science degree and be part of the scientific enterprise, then you might want to consider becoming a librarian.
You know a little about what a librarian does and if not you can see my recent post. Don't worry, though, all of those functions are not typically done by the same person. You don't have to be in public service, actually, you could deal with metadata or building discovery…
cpikas | May 22, 2009I believe in libraries and librarians.
I think it was Dana Roth who posted this quote to a listserv:
"To ask why we need libraries at all, when there is so much information available elsewhere, is about as sensible as asking if roadmaps are necessary now that there are so very many roads." ~Jon Bing, Professor of IT Law, Univ. of Oslo
I hear this all the time - why do we need libraries? why do we need librarians? If it weren't for accreditation, we would get rid of this place... Young kids today, they can find whatever they need on the web. I can find it myself - why just the other day,…