A Wandering Eyre

Ever wonder when the word “blaster” was first used? Check out the Science Fiction Citation Dictionary from the OED people. (link from Defective Yeti who has a nice post about questions today)

–Jane, 1925

The Impacts of E-Journals on Services

Dell Davis, Assistant Director at the Houston Academy of Medicine – Texas Medical Center Library

Billie Peterson-Lugo, Assistant Director, Resources and Collection Management at Baylor University

Sondee Weiss, Senior Library Service Specialist at the Houston Public Library

According to Dell Davis, E-Resources are changing the way we interact with our public. Reference interactions are down, there are fewer desk hours scheduled, but 40% of the questions at the Texas Medical Center relate to electronic access. Reference staff should be trained in technology, libraries should have wifi, and users should be educated as well. Copyright has become a serious educational issue.

Billie Peterson-Lugo talked about students. Young and old, returning or traditional, they all want instant gratification when it comes to research. E-journals impact all departments, public services and service areas that never interact with a public desk. At Baylor, their gate count is down, but they still have more people per day than their student life center on campus. (I think that is amazing. Keep in mind, as well, that many people access our resources online and we never know about it) Billie talked about Open URL and, like any resource, it is great when it works and a wall when it does not.

Sondee Weiss discussed some of the problems inherent in E-Journals, such as some electronic versions are different than the print. (What came to my mind were different editions of the same paper containing different articles) This can, of course, cause headaches for the user and the librarian.

During the question and answer session, we talked about educating our users more. Information literacy standards and different approaches to educating faculty was a big concern across the board.

–Jane, serials, serials, everywhere

Staffing for E-Journals

Jeanne Harrell, Director of Acquisitions at Texas A&M University

Judith Hiott, Director of Electronic Resources at Houston Public Library

This panel was interesting as both women have had different experiences with e-journals. Jeanne, who works at Texas A&M, walked the audience through the many structural changes the Acquisitions staff has had to undergo in the last 2 years to cope with the changing needs surrounding e-journals. Many of the staff moved from monographs or print serials to electronic resources. In two years, the electronic serials staff went from 1 to 5. They also have many highly trained paraprofessionals taking on more responsibilities. Jeanne stated that libraries are going to have to start adequately rewarding our paraprofessional staff for the highly trained work that we expect of them.

Judith Hiott, from HPL, discussed the movement HPL had undergone from print to electronic journals. Though they retained many of their print subscriptions, they have made the move to electronic format whenever possible. The largest challenge HPL has faced is negotiating contracts with vendors. The existing contracts for other organizations the size of HPL are all academic libraries who have a much higher usage rate. Judith has had to start from scratch when negotiating fair prices for her libraries. (This is a good example of one library using its power to change the way that some of the vendors do business.)

–Jane, negotiating the e-journal world

The theme for the symposium was “E-Journals, Are We There Yet?: Drawing A Road Map to Collections, Usage, and Integration.” I went to the keynote speech and two sessions. I enjoyed the symposium for two reasons. First, many of the librarians were from the Houston area and surrounding region, which gave us the opportunity to interact and converse with librarians from our immediate area. We face many of the same issues and often send users to each other’s libraries. Second, everything had a practical edge. All the sessions I attended were more than theory and there was plenty of good discussion at the end of each. I plan on going again next year and I highly recommend it. As usual, my thoughts are in parenthesis.

Trouble Downloading, aka Problems in Scholarly Communication

Keynote given by Margaret Landesman, Head of Collection Development at the University of Utah

Margaret’s talk focused on the things that keep e-journals from being more accessible and useable. They are great when they work, but when they do not work, our users give up and go elsewhere. Common roadblocks she mentioned were that our interfaces are faulty: there is no spell check, there are multiple paths to a journal and only one is correct, and embargos are often not listed or listed incorrectly. (That is if they even know what an embargo is)

Margaret spent a large portion of time on the points of view held by library professionals and others which make it hard for us to move forward. Funders, for instance, have heard us asking for money for many, many years. No matter how much we get, we always want more and the legislatures do not understand why we, libraries, do not wield the power in the publishing world. (This makes sense, but it is something that we do not always talk about. Why don’t we have more power over the publishers? There are some movements in HE, such as large, respected research institutions signing pacts saying that their professors will not work with journals who price gouge and ask for a reversal of the current pricing structure of academic journals.)

There are beliefs held by librarians that hold us back as well.

• Our users will always be our users. (Google and pay as you go information services are proving us wrong thousands of times a day)
• We will never be properly funded and we should not look to be in the future.
• We are a societal good and therefore everyone will see the inherent value in what we do. (If this were true, we would never have to argue for funding or wonder why there are less people in the library.) Margaret called this the “acolyte mentality.” It goes along with the idea that because we are in academia we are not a business. (Wake up! We are a business and the sooner we realize that, the sooner we will stop making excuses for giving people what we feel they need instead of what they are asking for.)
• Better ILS or linking software will enable us to give better service. (This was my favorite bit) Maragret said that we will never be able to build a better Google and we should harness that power, not run from it. (Tell it like it is!)

What we have to realize and do:

• We will never have enough money so we have to start making some choices.
• We have the information and the credibility.
• We have to compete with our competitors.
• We should see ourselves as investment managers.
• Price increases are not the issue, the starting price is. An expensive journal that increases 15% is still expensive, while a cheap journal stays cheap.
• We are becoming the campus aggregators. (This was especially enlightening) As the cost of journals increase, individual departments are canceling their subscriptions and relying on the library to provide access, publisher’s circulation numbers go down and their overall cost per issue goes up, and this results in a larger cost for us in the long term.

I believe that we have to compete. I have been poo pooed for my beliefs on this, but I believe we will compete or we will fail. As Margaret put it, “aggregate or be aggregated.” We have the power to be as important as any Google or Yahoo if only we harness what we do well and learn from others in the areas in which we do not.

–Jane, moves forward

Universal will air a new trailer for Serenity during Friday’s showing of “Serenity: part 2″ on the Sci-Fi Channel. I am going to TiVo it so I can watch it over and over on Mr. R’s plasma tv. Oh joy abounds.

–Jane, a flutter

Updated: Thanks to the trusty folks on the Serenity Movie Site, I have come across the international trailer for Serenity, which is much better that the first one released in the U.S.

In between episodes of Firefly, (Hey check out the shiny banner on IMDB’s Firefly page!) I have been writing up my posts from the Serials Symposium. I realize now that I need to insert some URLs I have at work. Therefore, I will not be posting my wrap-up until tomorrow morning. Sorry, but I am sure you will be able to contain your excitement.

–Jane, back to goofing off

p.s. As a complete aside having nothing whatsoever to do with the above, the spell check for Blogger does not include the word brisket, which I found amusing.

Listening to:

Road to Perdition – Main Theme

Israel Kamakawiwo’ole – Somewhere Over the Rainbow

Sonny Rhodes – The Ballad of Serenity

I spent all day on Friday at the University of Houston’s Serials Symposium. I will have some write ups to offer soon, later today if you are very lucky. I spent Saturday, working and then attending a BBQ Cook-off at a little hole in the wall bar south of Houston. My uncle was one of the cooks; they won best brisket and potato salad. It was hot, but there was plenty of cold beer and meat the likes of which are hard to come by elsewhere.

I also worked Sunday, so I took today off. What a blessing that has been. I have gotten to take my time reading my email and feeds. Glorious leisure! I am all caught up, for now, and I have gathered some offerings for you. So put on some mellow music, relax, read, and enjoy.

Biblio Bits

Karen’s got the right idea; I would not mind finding one of these in a birthday wrapping. Mine is only 2 ½ months away.

Meredith talks about keeping up and what library school does (not) teach you. My library school experience contained technology in the form of one Internet/HTML class which was not required. We used Blackboard for all of our classes. Like Meredith, everything I know about library technology, I have learned from others or taught myself. While I do not think that everyone should know everything about technology in libraries, I do think we should at least be aware of what is going on around us and stop being so afraid of things. I am a glutton for technology, but I do not think everyone should be exactly like me. That would be boring!

Lis*dom has a nice roundup, with links, about the book “banning” business going on in Florida. Reading is power and anyone who thinks different has only to look at the number of counties in many different states that are dealing with people who would like to control what others are able to read.

An interesting article about young authors. Unfortunately, my favorite, Christopher Paolini, only gets mentioned in a chart. For those of you who are looking for something wonderful and fun, might I suggest Eragon? The second book in the series, Eldest, comes out August 23^rd.

Nerdy Bits

Wanting to look at listservs in your RSS reader? Here is a nice breakdown of how to do it in Bloglines. (Thanks to Meredith for the link)

I came across this on Whedonesque today, because, you know, I am obsessed and have nothing better to do. It is sung to the tune of the “Hero of Canton” a song in the Firefly episode Jaynestown. Joss is my master now.

Just Desserts

Now this is what I call karma. If you are going to be that big of a witch in public, at least be original. (Link from bookslut)

–Jane, someday she’ll wish upon a star

Last night, I met up with two of my friends, A and D. (that makes me think of: Today’s show is sponsored by the letters A and D!) We converged upon Onion Creek, a delightful coffee house and bar on the north side of Houston, and sat outside under cloudy skies. We have not been together for a few months, despite the fact that D lives only 40 minutes away, and I am determined to not let the time pass as it has before calling and dragging his butt out of the house.

As always, we talked a bit about everything. Politics: in which I, the “liberal”, told A, the Republican, that I think that Bush may have actually made a good choice for the Supreme Court. He made me repeat that sentence twice while he grinned like a maniac. A and I also gave D a quick rundown of the Rove/Plame business and I still believe I am correct in thinking people would care more if sex was involved. The state of Texas education: D just got a job as a high school algebra teacher, so we ganged up on A and argued Bush’s education policy. Religion: the usual stuff about how we are all going to hell, but especially me, according to A, because I am a “hysterical” liberal. There were also the required stories about idiotic things we did when we were young and stupid. Unfortunately, we are all still both.

I had so much fun that I felt not so hot this morning. I am now fully recovered. Thanks for the fun guys. You are both amazing.

Overheard when I was returning from the restroom in the bar:
Woman to man: I don’t care. Whatever you want. I am easy.

Someone should have told her she is not supposed to tell him that at the beginning of the date.

–Jane, sponsered by the letters Q&A

A list of things unrelated to each other:

This week I have been the proverbial chicken with my head cut off. Seriously, I am leaving a trail of blood behind me as I walk down the hallway.

I held a training session for librarians and other staff about wikis, blogs, and RSS yesterday. There was a lot of information to cover, but I got through and we were able to have some wonderful discussion about how we could use some of these new tools in our library. Wow. It was amazing to see the light bulbs going off in the room. I was energized for the rest of the day.

The best part of my training was when I put up this post, as an example in my Bloglines feed list, and waspwoman busted out laughing as she got to the punch line. Priceless I tell you.

There was a different training some of us attended in the afternoon which was alternatively good and mind sucking. I came across an article from the July 18th edition of the Wall Street Journal (to which I would link but last time I checked you had to register, boo, just believe me already) that said that Amazon alone had 1.5 million pre-orders for Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince. 1.5 Million. I had to scoop my jaw off the floor after reading that one.

In a meeting today, my boss’ boss reminded us that we are holding a contest to rename our Reference area which currently has this horrible acronym that makes absolutely no sense. She said she wants it to be different and “fun”. I had a brilliant idea (with apologies to Kevin Smith) We could name it “Reference Wow!”

–Jane, Blogs Wow!

After two days, I am finished with Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince. Do not worry for I will reveal nothing of the plot. The characters are older and dealing with different things this year and I think I prefer the last couple of books for this reason. I am in quite a daze, still, and I am sure it will be awhile before that glazed look leaves my eyes. HP fans will not be disappointed.

Oh, if you want to place a comment on this post no spoilers please!

–Jane, got caught in the magic