Adventures in Library School

That’s right folks, “Adventures in Library School” turned one last week (May 9th for those of you keeping track). I missed posting on the actual date in the rush to get ready for a brief vacation back in Colorado, but I wanted to do something to mark the occasion. It seems like calling out favorite posts from the past year is a common theme of blogoversary posts, so I’m going to follow that trend, and take a little trip down memory lane. Here are my 5 faves from the last year (in chronological order):

1. Hello World! Where it all began….
2. A Visit to the British Library. The first adventure I chronicled on this blog was my trip to England last May/June. While there, I managed to fall absolutely goofy in love with the British Library (which, considering that it’s a very old school library, is managing to pull off the Library 2.0 thing pretty well). ::wistful sigh::
3. The Dewey Binary System. I have a… quirky… sense of humor, sometimes. I may be the only person who finds this funny, but since this is my blog, I’m the only person who has to find it funny.
4. Tucson Rivers: Easy Come, Easy Go and Tucson Rivers Pt. 2. Okay so this is kind of cheating, but these two posts really do go together. Tucson had some pretty amazing rainstorms last summer, and I was lucky enough to be able to document some of the results.
5. It’s Not About Us: Un-Sucky Design and the 21st Century Library. In which I get my rant on and explain my library service philosophy. I’m pleased to note that since that rant, the self-checkout stations at my local public library have actually been replaced with something usable.

And with that little blast from the past completed, it’s now time for me to make a fairly important announcement.

These are the last words I’ll be writing on “Adventures in Library School”.

No, no. I’m not going to quit blogging (I’ve been doing this for a year, I’m addicted now). But I’ve run into a slight problem…. You see, this blog is called “Adventures in Library School” and I’m no longer *in* library school and suddenly the blog name doesn’t seem quite right….

So, I now have a new blog, “Adventures in Librarianship” and a new home for it at www.adventuresinlibrarianship.com. And, although I’m sorry to have to make folks do this, it’s time to update your browser bookmarks and your RSS feeds, ’cause I be movin’. See ya’ll over on the new site.

(And a prize goes out to Rebecca Blakiston and Tom Ipri for being the first folks to note that my blog had outgrown its name - I owe each of you a drink the next time I see you in Real Life.)

Yes, that’s right folks! I’ve finally jumped onto the Twitter bandwagon. Another Web 2.0 sheep is born. Baaa!

So, if any of you out there in libraryland are still reading this blog after its long hiatus, and want to read a bunch of allegedly funny, occasionally snarky (but probably ultimately inane) comments from me about my day in 140 characters or less, I can be found at http://twitter.com/advinlib

I’d have signed up sooner, but I knew I didn’t need that kind of a timesink while the semester was still going on (school was a supersized black hole of a timesink all by itself, didn’t need any help).

And to my family, who no doubt have absolutely *no* clue what I’m talking about. Twitter is a sort of strange little mini-blog. The idea is to post updates that answer the question, “What are you doing?” The catch is that your answer to that question has to be 140 characters or fewer. Yes, it probably really is just about as dumb and inane as it sounds. However, it’s really taken off amongst the geek set (library geeks included) as another way to stay connected with friends. So, library geek that I am, I’m giving it a whirl!

I think the 140 character limit could be a good thing for me. As y’all might have noticed, I tend to ramble a bit so putting a limit on the amount I can write at a time could be a good writing exercise. I’m choosing to think of this as internet haiku.

Well, I did it. I’m now done with library school. The last of the projects has been turned in. The last of the forum messages posted. The last bits of my internship got finished up a while back. As the old schoolyard rhyme goes: “No more homework! No more books! No more teacher’s dirty looks!”

I’m not going to recap everything that’s happened (I’ll just start whining and ranting, and I don’t want to do that), instead, I’ll just leave it at saying that I’m overjoyed to finally be done.

I need a vacation.

At the risk of sounding stupid for making the same apology and excuse for not blogging that every other blogger seems to make… sorry I’ve been so quiet lately, but I’ve been busy. And since I expect the busy to continue until this semester draws to a close, I expect to go back to radio silence shortly.

However, I have some awesome news that I’ve just got to share.

The University of Arizona’s Library Student Organization has just won the American Library Association Student Chapter of the Year Award!

In the spirit of ALA’s New Member’s Round Table (NMRT), the Student Chapter of the Year Award is presented in recognition of a chapter’s outstanding contributions to the American Library Association, their school, and the profession. The purpose of the award is to increase student involvement in ALA through student chapters, and to recognize future leaders in the profession. (ALA | Student Chapter of the Year Award Committee)

LSO has done some really great things this past year: the symposium, the blog, oodles of professional development programs, lots of fun social events, getting virtual students involved by letting them use Skype to attend our meetings, and a bunch of stuff I’m forgetting right now. It’s been a great ride and helping out with all this stuff has been one of the highlights of my time in library school. So I’m over the moon that LSO has received recognition like this.

Rock on, LSO!

That wooshing noise I’ve been hearing lately was January speeding past. In the time since I last blogged, the following has happened:

School started again - my final semester here at Arizona. I’m taking two classes and an internship. The semester got off to a slightly rocky start due to a hacker getting into the UA Library’s computer system - causing them to shut everything down and make sure there weren’t any nasties lurking in any of their systems, from public desktops all the way up to their servers. A good thing to do from a security standpoint, but shutting off library systems like electronic course reserves and interlibrary loan at the beginning of the semester caused, to put it mildly, problems.

I think my classes are going to be interesting this semester. I’m taking a class about marketing library services - an interesting subject in itself, and it’s being taught by one of the best teachers in our department - I think it’ll be fun. My other class is about diversity in libraries and although I think it will be interesting too, I’m slightly worried by the fact the the professor doesn’t quite seem to have figured out what to do with the class. We’ll see.

Then there’s my internship, which is proving to be quite interesting already, even though I’ve barely started. For one thing, (and I realize in the grand scheme of an internship as a learning experience, this is a trivial thing, but…) I have an office. Of my own. This is a first for me, and I’m probably more excited about this than I need to be…. Then there’s the project I’m working on, which looks like it’s going to turn out to be even more interesting than I originally thought.

I thought I’d be helping to design and produce a little online, interactive tutorial for a single subject for one of the Law Library’s legal reference classes. Well, it looks like I may get to do a bit more than just one tutorial - they’ve never taught this class as a virtual class before, and it’s looking like I may have a hand in helping to figure out how to best translate the whole class from a 5-day on-campus intensive class to a 1-day on-campus plus 3 week online hybrid class.

That’s just… cool.

Oh, and I went to ALA Midwinter, and I think I’m still disoriented. My, but that is a large conference…. Still, I enjoyed myself. I got to see some of the friends I made at Internet Librarian, meet some new folks, attend some informative sessions, see the new Seattle Public Library (oooo, shiny….), hang out with some of the gang from Tucson and go sight-seeing, sample some really excellent microbrewed beer, get a couple of nice tips on job possibilities, attend the LITA Blogs, Interactive Media, Groupware, and Wikis Interest Group committee meeting (cool group, that - and they’ve got some neat stuff going on - I hope I can find the time to stay involved with them). I even managed to blog about Midwinter, just not here. If anyone’s interested in my very short report, head over to the Library Student Organization blog: http://lsoarizona.blogspot.com/2007/01/seattle-impressions.html

And since getting back from Midwinter, I’ve also gotten to fulfill my first work as editor of our student webzine by putting up our first issue of the year (if you’re interested, you can find it here: http://www.sir.arizona.edu/lso/bibliotech/2007jan_vol4_no2/default.htm). I can’t claim full credit for the editorial work, though - the previous editor gathered most of the stories, I just did a bit of copyediting and posted them - but it’s a start. I’m glad it’s up, too. Now I can start pestering people in earnest for contributions for the next issue.

Big things are happening with my position as LSO webmaster, too. We’re realizing that since our school has a large group of virtual students (both distance students and local students - by the time I finish, I’ll have taken 2/3s of my classes virtually, and I live in Tucson), and since web technologies like blogs, wikis and podcasts becoming important for librarians to understand, we really need to give some thought to our group’s web presence. So, we’ve started a committee to take a look at what LSO can do to better support our virtual members, and what we can do to give LSO members a chance to play around with this technology a little. Should keep me from getting too bored as webmaster.

And of course with less than a semester to go before graduation, my job search is beginning in earnest…

So, yeah, January’s been a bit busy. However things are finally starting to settle down to a more normal level of chaos, and I hope to be posting a little more regularly from now on.

I’m sitting in on the social computing section of our intro to library and information science class and since we’re talking about blogging, I thought I’d post a message from the class. If any 504 students are reading this, feel free to comment.

So, while catching up with my newsfeeds after an exciting holiday season (pictures to come eventually), I discovered that I’ve been tagged with the “5 Things” meme that’s been floating around (thanks David). This is kind of a tricky one, though, since a significant portion of my readership are family (who know more about me than I’d prefer to share in this space), but here goes:

1) In addition to being the LSO Webmaster this semester, I’m also going to be the editor of our student webzine, Bibliotech. Muwhahahaha! I get to unleash my inner copyeditor! What fun.

2) I have delusions of authorship (of books, that is). I have this idea for a sci-fi story that’s been kicking around in my head and growing and evolving for years. Someday I hope to have the time to write the thing down.

3) I am a huge, huge, geeky, pathetic Terry Pratchett fangirl. I’ve read all the Diskworld novels, and I’m slowly working my way through some of the more obscure titles (”The Bromeliad Trilogy”, “Only You Can Save Mankind”). My 3 favorite Pratchetts? “Night Watch”, “Going Postal”, and “Thief of Time”.

4) I’ve only ever left the country twice, but in the course of those trips, I’ve crossed the Equator, the International Dateline, and the Prime Meridian. Okay, so the Equator and the Dateline were crossed while on an airplane in the middle of the Pacific, but I’ve still crossed ‘em. I love to travel, so here are some other travel-related things I hope to do: Visit all 50 states, visit every National Park in the US, visit all 7 continents.

5) When I was a kid, I wanted to be an astronomer, and it’s all Carl Sagan’s fault. I even got as far as getting myself an A.S. in Physics before Calculus and Differential Equations finally defeated me. Although I don’t follow the world of astronomy as much as I used to, I still love to just watch the night sky, though….

And since just about everybody I know and read has already been tagged with this meme, I’ll throw it out to anybody who hasn’t yet been tagged but wants to participate.

I have two bits of news that I’ve been sitting on for a while, and it looks like I can finally announce both of them.

First newsbyte: For the spring semester, I will be interning at the library at the University of Arizona John E. Rogers College of Law. I’ll be helping one of the reference librarians there put together an interactive learning module for one of the library’s legal reference classes. I’m overjoyed about this: I’ll get to do some fun geeky things, and I get to be a little bit involved in teaching, which is cool (my parents are both teachers - love of teaching is in the blood).

Second newsbyte: Election results are in, and I am now officially the Webmaster for my school’s Library Student Organization. Because my school has a significant number of distance students, our online presence is important, and I’m hoping that in my time as webmaster I can come up with some ways to give our distance students more of a chance to particpiate in the organization.

Of course, between these two things, regular classes, a job search, and life in general, I’m going to be extremely busy during the spring semester. But hey, I’ve never done bored well, and sleep is overrated.

Next semester’s gonna rock!

My User Interface and Web Site Design class this past semester allowed me to get reacquainted with an old web design site I’d lost touch with: Web Pages That Suck. And then when the updated, “Biggest Mistakes in Web Design 1995-2015” article came out, I had a minor epiphany. Take a look at mistake number one:

These ladies are laughing at you. Why? You designed your web site for your needs, not their needs. It gets worse. After they stop laughing, they’re going to one of your competitors’ sites and buy something. …

1. The only reason my web site exists is to solve my customers’ problems.
2. What problems does the page I’m looking at solve?

Too many organizations believe that a web site is about opening a new marketing channel or getting donations or to promote a brand or to increase company sales by 15%. No. It’s about solving your customers’ problems. Have I said that phrase enough?

Now, this is definitely something that’s important to keep in mind when you’re designing the web page or online catalog for your library, but how about expanding the idea just a bit and applying it to the library as a whole?

1. The only reason my library exists is to solve my customers’ problems.
2. What problems does the library service I’m looking at solve?

How many library services and/or programs exist to solve library customer’s problems, and how many of them exist to solve the librarian’s problems? And how many of those services that we think exist only to solve our customer’s problems are designed in a way to make the service easier for the customer to use (not easier for the librarian, easier for the customer)?

• Is your signage written in library jargon, or is it written in language the average human is able to understand?
• Is your self-service holds pick-up section arranged by something your average customer is likely to instantly understand, like the customer’s last name, or have you just used your library’s standard classification system? (I’m looking at you, University of Arizona Library)
• Is your self-checkout system easy enough for the average person to figure out, or does it require some not-readily apparent “magic gesture”? (I’m looking at you, Pima County Public Library)
• Is your nifty new WiFi service public, or is it only available to library card holders (and then only after they’ve entered their 15-digit, impossible to remember library card number)?
• Are your online databases directly available to folks who are logged into your WiFi network, or do they still have to enter their 15-digit impossible to remember library card number (again)? (Even if they wouldn’t have to do this if they were using one of the library computers.)

I could go on, but I think those examples make my point.

Oh, and for the folks who dispute that the library exists solely to solve our customer’s problems, and say that it also exists to preserve the information, knowledge, and wisdom of the world, I will say this:

Why is it so important to preserve all this information, knowledge, and wisdom?

Oh, that’s right. It’s because somebody will need to use that information, knowledge, and wisdom someday….

Now that the semester’s over and I’ve had some time to think, I’m realizing that there are some odds and ends I’ve been meaning to mention and haven’t gotten around to. So, in no particular order, here they are:

Everybody’s slides from the SIRLS/LSO Symposium are now up on the web and can be found at: http://www.sir.arizona.edu/lso/symposium06/presentationsFinal.htm There were some really great presentations this time around, and although just looking at the slides isn’t quite the same as being at the presentation, there’s still some good stuff there.

I’ve got my own page of presentations (including slides) here: http://www.adventuresinlibraryschool.com/presentations/ I’ve only done two presentations so far, but I’m hoping that the list will slowly grow - the two I’ve done so far have been fun.

I’ve also got a page with my various Flickr photo albums here: http://www.adventuresinlibraryschool.com/photos/ including (and I’m really sorry I’ve been forgetting to mention this for so long) all of the photos from my trip to England this summer. For the friends and family who have been waiting for months to see the England pics, they’re also available directly by going here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/adventuresinlibrarianship/sets/72157600222260041/