Conference themes

What sort of theme would you like a small-ish, regional, academic library conference to have?

No reason. :)

The Broader Question

I'm late to this particular party, which might be the closest thing to an unforgivable sin in the blogosphere (god, what a horrible word). But sometimes being late to the party has certain advantages.

Perspective, for one. Reflection, for another. Context, for a third.

So by now everybody who could possibly care one way or the other knows that the Journal of Access Services ran an issue that consisted entirely of articles by the Annoyed Librarian. Hilarity ensued, and you wouldn't have needed a Magic 8-Ball to predict exactly how: it's the death of peer review! OMG, how can anyone take the Journal of Access Services seriously now?! Or library science scholarship for that matter?? How will I explain this to my students? What were the editors thinking?? (It turns out the editors didn't even know--how's that for setting the dog among the pigeons?)

Let me advance this thought: if the state of scholarly publishing in our field is so perilous that a joke issue of a journal (something not unheard of in other disciplines, including ones with a much longer and more substantive history of scholarship than ours, which is most of them--the British Medical Journal's Christmas issues come to mind, or the Annals of Improbable Research) is capable of destroying it, then we have much, much bigger problems than the Annoyed Librarian.

Assuming that you think the Annoyed Librarian is a problem.

I'm not here to accuse those who think so of having no sense of humor. I personally find the AL's schtick pretty one-note; this profession has plenty of sacred cows, but once you've shot them, is it necessary to come back around and beat up on the carcass? Maybe the AL agreed, and decided to do this as a way of following his or her own act. I don't know, and it doesn't really matter. Because if this stunt and the response to it generates an examination of library science scholarship, and particularly its flaws, then it will have served a useful purpose.

Reading the Research: Journal of Academic Librarianship

Tidbits from volume 34, issue 6.

Toolkit Approach To Integrating Library Resources Into The Learning Management System:
Regardless of what librarians choose to label the various ways of doing this, articles like this one are among my favorite examples of why "How we done it good"-style reports are worthwhile. Course management systems are just one way that online library services, like online services of other kinds, are becoming distributed--in both senses of the term.

The Value of LIS Schools’ Research Topics to Library Authors’ Professional Work
This title almost seems to be begging the question, but perhaps I'm jaded--after recent conversations with professionals in various social sciences, which is where library science has borrowed its research methodology, I'm going to go out on a limb and say that LIS courses in research methods would be valuable if students gained firmer grounding in how to actually do research. In fact, rather than trying to reinvent the wheel, I'd like to see library schools farm this one out to the nearest social science program.

There's also the assumption that all research in the library science field ought to follow a particular methodology. Personally, my favorite scholar in the field from whom I've gained the most professional benefit is Patrick Wilson...

Do clickers improve library instruction? Lock in your answers now
This one interests me because I've actually used clickers in a classroom setting recently. Leaving aside the much bigger and thornier question of how one actually teaches people to use the library and conduct literature searching (the two are not equivalent, if in fact they ever were), the question of retention is a good one and I'm not surprised to learn that the answer seems to be no. It's not that the things don't work, but a quick quiz at the end of a session (which is how I've used them) doesn't tell you anything about how students will actually use what you teach them. In my library we try to time library instruction for as immediate applicability as possible because really, the only way you're going to remember how to do this stuff is if you use it.

Clicking in the classroom

Today's Inside Higher Ed has a brief article on the use of click-response technology in the classroom.

I've used them once, during a recent guest presentation to a general chemistry class of 140 students, most of whom did show up in class that day. I'm still ambivalent about them--the clickers, not the students--because I'm not sure they're as useful as their proponents claim. I do have to say, though, that they provided a pretty good snapshot of whether students got what I was talking about. What they didn't tell me, since I hadn't tested student understanding prior to the presentation, was how many students came in already knowing what I was talking about. That, unfortunately, would have taken more time than was available.

We're also working on a project on my campus that uses clickers in a plagiarism prevention workshop, adapted from such a workshop developed and presented elsewhere. We haven't piloted it yet, though.

My tentative conclusion is that they're useful but not revolutionary, and by themselves simply present another option. I prefer more hands-on and less lecture in my workshops, and class discussion when I can get it. I can see clickers' applicability for some types of library instruction, though.

Another shift in the sea: CS Monitor going online

In a way, I'm surprised it took this long for a major newspaper to shift to primarily online. Even when I was getting a printed paper, I typically took the weekly one because I haven't had time to read a paper every day for years (whereas it's easy to dip into a news site for a few minutes in a break from work or during lunch). And I've been seeing this shift with research journals, too; it's been going on for years, of course, but for more and more publications, scholarly and non, online is becoming the principal rather than the alternative publishing venue. (In the case of scholarship, often with prices to match. Unfortunately.)

I'm sure that all the national dailies are trending this way. I'm also sure that none of them wanted to be the first to jump. I find it interesting that even the Monitor is saying that it basically has to do this:

"Changes in the industry - changes in the concept of news and the economics underlying the industry - hit the Monitor first," given its relatively small size and the complex logistics required for national distribution, Mr. Wells said. "We are sometimes forced to be an early change agent."

And so it goes...

On the road again

Today, I am off to the ACRL-Oregon fall conference. I've gone to the Washington one the last few years, but this will be my first time going to Oregon. (For the conference, anyway; I've been to the state several times.) I'm going down early because ACRL-WA has a board meeting this afternoon. And before I go, the car needs servicing, so I get to spend my morning in the shop. Thank goodness for mobile technologies, or I'd have to tell you all about that afterward.

Er. Maybe that's not a good example.

Anyway, I'm developing a fondness for local and regional conferences. I'd started to draw back my emphasis from national events even before the latest economic downturn started to make that an eminently sensible move; although I still have a commitment that will likely take me to ALA this year, I wouldn't be going to ACRL if it weren't in Seattle already.

What I'm finding, though, is that a lot of really interesting stuff happens at these smaller-scale conferences. For me, "really interesting" means stuff I can take back to my job and almost immediately apply. I don't get the occasional derogatory comment about "how we done it good" kinds of presentations; personally, those are the ones I find most useful. Maybe I'll feel differently after a few more years in this profession.

Anyway, I'm looking forward to going for a run at Menucha. It looks beautiful.

I've been a little "eh" about the conference theme--the once and future catalog? Really?--but I think I get what they're getting at. The way we almost inevitably end up designing library websites constitutes, to me, an inherent failure of the OPAC. Maybe it's because I used to work for Amazon.com and have seen how this can be done well--there, the website and the catalog are so thoroughly integrated that nobody thinks of them as separate entities. And yet libraries almost have to do this, because catalogs handle so much so poorly.

I'm going to a users-group meeting on Voyager next month, and hoping afterward to brush up my somewhat rusty XML skills and really do some cool things with my library's website.

It's also been awhile since my last road trip. I've laid in a good supply of music, and downloaded the free portion of this audiobook. If I like the story (I expect I will, I like Jay Lake's work), I'll be buying the rest.

On another note

It's Open Access Day! Which I didn't know until this morning, or there'd be something more here, since there's a blogging competition going on.

Oh, well, maybe next year. Meanwhile, follow the link to learn about OA and read what other people (librarians, scholars, and more) are writing.